The sequel to Carlos María de Bustamante’s Cuadro histórico de la revolución mexicana is now available in its entirety to students of Mexico’s early national period. Patterned after the letters of Cortés to Charles V, the letters of Bustamante record in detail the events which marked the turbulent years between 1821 and 1837. Almost continuously in print, Bustamante’s ambitious publication program fell short when it came to the Continuación. By the time of his death in 1848, the Cuadro histórico itself had gone through two editions, but only the first three of the Continuatión’s ten manuscript volumes were published. The rest remained in manuscript for more than a hundred years until the secretary of the Biblioteca Nacional de México, Jorge Gurría Lacroix, initiated the first published edition of the complete work. Under the Biblioteca’s auspices three printed volumes appeared in 1953-1954; the fourth and final volume was finished in 1963 under the sponsorship of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Each of these volumes is indexed and all reflect the careful preparation which may be associated with the responsible institutions.
The Continuación has the same fundamental format, merits, and limitations as the Cuadro histórico (See my review of the latter in HAHR, XLIII [Feb. 1963], 122.). As Gurria Lacroix notes in his introduction to the first volume, Bustamante’s “writings are an almost inscrutable tangle, obeying no previous plan or organization; he wrote down everything that he saw and heard and everything which was told him without checking the veracity or falsity of the points recorded.” His zest for writing and his disregard for scientific caution have brought down on Bustamante much deserved opprobrium from his contemporaries as well as from more recent historians. But his various critics, from Alamán to the present writer, have found in Bustamante’s works enough that is reliable to warrant using him as a source. The wealth of minute detail presented in the Continuación will help historians who wish to explore the back alleys of political maneuver and infighting and the personality traits of a host of figures from Anastasio Bustamante to Lorenzo de Zavala. Characteristic of the work is Bustamante’s exhaustive account of the cholera epidemic which helped to undermine the regime of Valentín Gómez Farías.
When the congressional session closed in 1837, the author took pains to point out that he had been in a position to know what had transpired: “El asiento que ocupé . . . fué el noveno del segundo cuerpo déla [sic] izquierda del solio, el mismo que había ocupado desde las anteriores legislaturas porque se oye alli [sic] mejor lo que se habla” (IV, 485). The value of Bustamante is that he was an alert observer; the caution is that he was also an impassioned participant. “Memoirs” and “miscellany” are better descriptions than “narrative history” for the Continuación del cuadro histórico.
