For some time this reviewer has believed that the career of Luis Cabrera and his contribution to the Mexican Revolution warrant scholarly evaluation. Journalist, legislator, minister, and advisor of presidents, Luis Cabrera was an intellectual who matured under the impact of the Mexican Revolution and contributed, in a measure, to its direction. Some years ago Cabrera’s daughter prepared a bibliography of her father’s writings. Now, Eduardo Luquín offers a compendium of Cabrera’s political writings.
Unfortunately the volume at hand is not a complete, systematic presentation of Cabrera’s thought. However, it is a step in the right direction. Included are selections of a political character which, in the judgment of the author, “molded the revolutionary conscience.” Reproduced are Cabrera’s journalistic attacks against the Díaz regime penned under the pseudonym of “Blas Urrea” prior to and during the Madero revolution. These are followed by Cabrera’s open letter to Madero relative to the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez and his 1911 article entitled with the famous injunction that “La Revolución es la Revolución.” Luquín has annotated these selections all of which Cabrera had included in his volume of Blas Urrea’s Obras Políticas (1921).
Cabrera’s important speech on the agrarian question delivered before the Chamber of Deputies on Dec. 3, 1912 and his 1950 discourse entitled “Carranza Revolucionario” complete the important selections included in the volume. No contemporaneous writings for the years 1913 to 1920, not to mention Cabrera’s extensive journalistic efforts from 1920 until his death, are reproduced. The reviewer can but share the editor’s regret at the narrowness and incompleteness of the selection.
