Rubén Delgado Moya’s work is precisely what the title indicates, an outline or sketch of the Mexican Revolution. It treats the years from the Porfiriato through the first half of the Luis Echeverría administration, with three-fourths of the volume devoted to the period up through the Lázaro Cárdenas administration. It is intended for the general reader, not the specialist, as it adds nothing to the historiography of the Mexican Revolution.
Its value is primarily that it indicates what mainstream Mexican historians feel about their Revolution. For example, in following the lead of the late Daniel Cosío Villegas, Delgado Moya warns against studying the Porfiriato as an isolated historical incident that suddenly ended in 1910. Along the same line, the path taken by Emiliano Zapata was bound to fail because it was impractical.
The author is at his best when discussing the late Porfiriato, while the narrative of the post-1940 period is unquestionably inferior. He concludes with two questions that he indicates must inevitably be answered to determine if the Revolution has ended. First, have the objectives that were set out by the precursors and then by Madero and the 1917 Constitution been fulfilled; and, second, have the scales been balanced to atone for the million who died during the Revolution? Regretably, Delgado Moya’s Perfil brings us no closer to the answers.
