These two volumes continue publication of the debates of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies of the Twentysixth Federal Legislation. The structure of these volumes differs from that of Volume I (HAHR, August, 1962), in that the debates are organized topically for the convenience of the reader, rather than chronologically as before. Volume II consists of two parts: (1) general matters, including debates over membership on the Chamber’s commissions, increases in deputies’ salaries, condolences, remunerations, licenses, and pensions; and (2) financial affairs, including debates on the budget, the amortizable debt, and the revenue law. Volume III is divided into four parts: debates on (1) labor, (2) agrarian reform (3) education, and (4) communications, industry, foreign relations, and war.
The debates cover the period from September 14, 1912, when the Chamber was declared legally constituted, to January 31, 1913, when sessions were suspended until that “tragic day, February 19, 1913.” Deputies indulged in frequent “lectures” and personal attacks on colleagues; they consumed so many hours debating such matters as changing the regulation prohibiting smoking in the chamber and the meaning of the rule on a quorum that some expressed concern over those “sterile discussions” while questions vital for the future of the country were deferred. The latter did, however, receive attention.
Of particular interest are the debates on the mild but unsuccessful efforts to improve wages of textile workers and the several proposals on agrarian reform. Despite the relative neglect in Madero’s Plan of San Luis Potosí, the agrarian problem figured prominently in the government’s thinking and in debates in the Chamber. Proposals ranged from the extension of credit at reasonable interest to small landowners, to taxation of uncultivated land as a means to bring pressure to bear on latifundists, to Luis Cabrera’s plan to reconstitute ejidos.
Arenas Guzmán, in carefully selecting and editing the debates, has excluded only those items that he considered of minor importance, such as loans to the states and various tax exemptions; he has retained the treatment of the problems that loomed large in the Mexican Revolution: land, labor, and education, problems to which, however, less than half the space in the two volumes is devoted.
