In 1949 Daniel Cosío Villegas published an essay on the historiography of the Porfiriato which contained 256 listings. He expanded this in 1953 to a total of 858 books and articles. The flood of publication on Mexico’s recent history led him to add to the bibliography, and this revision (which includes the Revolution) appeared in 1965. It has 1,276 items and at first glance would appear to be fairly comprehensive. A check of the alphabetical index, however, shows some curious omissions, particularly of books published in the United States. Always alert to the interests of the HAHR editors, I looked for Pletcher and Quirk in the index. The name of the associate editor was missing, and so was a reference to his Rails, Mines, and Progress. I was pleased to find my dissertation included, but wondered why the two books on the 1910s were left out. Alfred Tischendorf was cited for his HAHR article (1957), but not the subsequent book, Great Britain and Mexico in the Era of Porfirio Díaz. Similarly, there was an article by Robert E. Scott, but not the Mexican Government in Transition.
Other outstanding books which failed to make the list were E. David Cronon’s Josephus Daniels in Mexico, Howard F. Cline’s Revolution to Evolution, Ernest H. Gruening’s Mexico and Its Heritage, John W. F. Dulles’ Yesterday in Mexico, Frank Tannenbaum’s Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread, and Eyler Simpson’s The Ejido: Mexico’s Way Out. The only American writer who is well represented on the list is Stanley R. Ross, who worked with Cosío Villegas at the Colegio de México. On the other hand, the Mexican historiography was fairly complete. The only important writer I could not find was Pablo González Casanova.
These (and many other) omissions would seem to indicate that Mexican historians are less aware of American scholarship in their country than they should be. Or perhaps they consider it less significant than their own work. Cosío Villegas has provided an introductory essay, but the listings are made without critical comments.
