The student of recent Mexican history faces serious obstacles in bringing his research project to a satisfactory conclusion. He cannot use the Foreign Relations archives, and most other collections of public papers are also closed to scholars. It is true that leading government or revolutionary figures frequently kept their own papers—and even the papers of other individuals. Thus private collections such as the Magaña papers or Martín Luis Guzmán’s archive came to be an important source for studying revolutionary history. Unfortunately all too few of the revolutionaries were as generous as Roque González Garza in sharing their treasure troves. The scholar who approached Guzmán or Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama was invariably turned away. They were writing their own histories, they insisted. But most of what they wrote went into newspapers and popular magazines all over the Republic, and the student had the devil’s own time trying to locate these articles after they appeared. Now Stanley R. Ross and three associates at the Colegio de México provide a useful guide to this fugitive literature. Not that the student’s difficulties are over. In all probability he still will not have access to the public archives and most private collections for some time. But he will find the newspapers a useful if not always reliable source of information on the history of the Revolution.
The magnitude of the project is indicated by Ross’ statement in the introduction that his group went through a quarter million issues of newspapers or magazines in their search for articles of historical significance. In this volume, the first of two, he includes citations from 102 Mexican newspapers, 67 in Mexico City and 35 from provincial cities. Articles are listed from 88 Mexican magazines and from 17 Spanish-language periodicals in the Southwest of the United States. Though this volume presumably represents only half of the total number of citations, 15,613 are given here. According to Ross, he and his associates utilized all of these periodicals for the half century between 1908 and 1958.
The first volume covers the period from the Porfiriato through the administration of Carranza. Volume II, when it appears, will carry Mexican history to 1940 and the end of Lázaro Cárdenas’ presidency. Each section is divided into subjects such as internal politics, economy, social and cultural life, the military situation, and external politics. Of special interest are sections on the Creelman interview, the Ciudadela revolt, the Aguascalientes Convention, and the Constituent Congress of 1916-1917. Cross references are provided to articles in other pertinent sections, and each citation includes a short, but adequate, summary of the article. It is difficult to imagine a more welcome publication on Mexico’s Revolution than this monumental project. Historians will be in the debt of Ross and his associates, Alicia Bazán Alarcón, Lilia Díaz López, and Fernando Zertuche, for many, many years.
