A book such as this points up a constantly recurrent dilemma in the historical profession. While the proven scholars fight the battles of archival research, publish their monographs, and ponder when they will be adequately prepared for the eventual grand synthesis of a major historical movement, others become impatient and set out to provide the overview at the beginning of their academic careers. Occasionally the results are rewarding; much more often they justify the misgivings of the skeptics.
De Vore analyzes the Mexican Revolution primarily from the agrarian point of view. (The title is, of course, a translation of the Zapatista revolutionary slogan.) Using this agrarian thread to hold the narrative together, she traces the course of Mexican history from the fight against the Díaz dictatorship through the administration of Adolfo López Mateos. The emphasis is on the early revolutionary period, two-thirds of the book being devoted to the period prior to 1920. The frame of reference is decidedly pro-revolutionary.
The student looking for new ideas or even refreshing conjecture will be disappointed. Although occasional attempts are made to set the record straight, virtually all of what is said has been previously recorded. The book is based entirely on printed works most of which are secondary materials rather than primary sources. Even the selection of secondary works is inadequate. The section on the Díaz dictatorship, for example, contains no reference to the multi-volume Historia, moderna de México edited by Daniel Cosío Villegas. Stanley R. Ross and Charles C. Cumberland are notably absent from the footnotes on the Madero chapter. Although Juan Barragán Rodríguez’ two-volume Historia del ejército y de la revolución constitucionalista is cited in the bibliography, there is no textual evidence of its having been used. None of the documentary volumes edited by Isidro Fabela was consulted. As the author readily acknowledges in her footnotes, the newspapers and other documents mentioned in the text are taken from other secondary works.
Unfortunately the book is also replete with typographical errors and misspellings of Spanish names. Accents are haphazard. A sampling from the first third of the book will suffice: clery for clergy (p. 2); Flores Migón (p. 34); Otilio Montaña for Montaño (throughout): Cuidad Juárez (p. 75); Oroszco (p. 78); Tlalteloco for Tlatelolco (p. 85); Heurta (p. 87); Dorsal for Dozal (p. 92); Ochau for Ochoa (p. 93); Manuel Choa for Manuel Chao (p. 95); Panfilo Natero for Pánfilo Natera (p. 101); Benavidas for Benavides (p. 111); Benjamin Argumeda for Benjamín Argumedo (p. 109). Academic nit-picking? Perhaps, but when errors of this kind appear in such profusion, the conscientious reader can properly question the care with which the entire project was undertaken.
This book presents in reasonably acceptable form information which cannot be found between any other single set of covers. Perhaps its contribution lies here. The Mexicanist will still do much better, however, to direct his English reading student to Ross, Cumberland, and Quirk for the early Revolution, to Dulles for the middle years, and to Cline for the period since 1940.
