In 1968, dissident students at the National University considered Miguel Alemán the personification of state authoritarianism and corruption, and they blew up his statue with sticks of dynamite. By and large, historians have shared a similar verdict, noting how the Alemán administration (1946–52) decapitated independent labor organizations, shifted the regime rightward, boosted official graft, and consolidated a strategy of industrial development that imposed great costs on the countryside. This book does not overturn these established themes. Rather, it rounds out our image of Alemanismo by emphasizing two lesser-known factors: the emergence of a generation of civilian bureaucrats since the 1920s, of which Alemán was the most successful member, and the postwar international context. Thus, Ryan Alexander argues that Alemanismo echoed broader Latin American development policies designed to deflect and harness US power and wealth, while “its specific forms reflected the generational tendencies of the Alemán-era leadership” (p. 142).
The first...
