This solidly researched and crisply written study of the revolutionary process in Veracruz between 1870 and 1927 is a welcome contribution to the urban history of twentieth-century Mexico. It traces the emergence of what the author calls “one of the most dynamic urban protests in twentieth-century Mexico: the Veracruz tenants’ movement” (p. xv). Wood nicely reveals how this broad-based movement, which united working men and women around household issues, grew out of long- standing complaints over Porfirian modernization schemes that had sharpened divisions between elite and popular classes. The urban poor, Wood argues, “shared a common culture and sense of moral outrage” (p. 214) and mobilized to press for significant housing reform, taking advantage of the “vacuum of sovereignty” (p. xvii, citing James C. Scott) between 1910 and 1917. Lawmakers like constitutionalist Governor Cándido Aguilar responded, promulgating a 1915 housing reform bill that fixed rent increases at no more than...
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