Initialed notices were written by members of the editorial staff.
The late Isidro Fabela, Minister of Foreign Relations under Venustíano Carranza, herein avers that his First Chief not only conceived, led, and effected “the Social Revolution of 1913,” but that he also grafted its lofty principles onto the Constitution of 1917. He achieved this despite the churlish and/or selfish opposition of Emiliano Zapata, Francisco Villa, the reactionaries, and United States authorities. A sovereign, proud, and “marvelous contemporary Mexico” is the legacy of Carranza’s admirable social reconstruction (p. 187).
The book’s format—four unbalanced chapters and three appendixes, covering the period 1913-1917—is convoluted. It is not a monograph, but rather a collection of diverse pro-Carranza documents, many previously published, loosely connected by tendentious narrative. Some excerpts from the Carrancista organ El Constitucionalista are worthwhile. There are various minor errors and distortions which Fabela, his coordinador, and investigadores failed to correct. They are perhaps inherent in the propagandistic and hagiographie nature of some of the sources.
The more serious distortions include the portrayal of Zapata as unprincipled bandit and Villa as bloodthirsty traitor and stooge of the reaction and American imperialism. The best of recent scholarship, most notably that of Katz, Warman, and Womack, holds that these figures were largely independent-minded social revolutionaries, while Carranza was the defender of his bourgeois class interests and the ultimate beneficiary of American foreign policy. This view is not convincingly challenged by La victoria de Carranza.
Although an unworthy adjunct to the fundamental sources which are the Documentos históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, revolutionary scholars will want to consult this work because it is a statement on the nature of Carrancismo by one of its major architects, and because it occasionally reminds us where to look for useful information on both pro- and anti-Carranza revolutionary figures.
