San Luis Potosí is one of the states in the Mexican federation which has received considerable attention from historians; the books by James Cockcroft (on the PLM) and by Jan Razant (on nineteenth-century haciendas) come immediately to mind, and there is a substantial body of literature on Saturnino Cedillo. Romana Falcón’s excellent new book is not only a major contribution to potosino studies, but it also tells us a good deal about the peculiarities of caciquismo as it developed in the state throughout the first four decades of the revolution.
The relationship between land and political power is at the heart of the book. But, as Falcón points out, agrarian struggles in San Luis Potosí did not normally revolve around simple demands for the restitution of land. The absence of a vigorous network of centuries-old communities meant that the issues of the day were more often wages and better living conditions. Only in the indigenous areas of the Huasteca Potosina and the Valle del Maíz was this pattern consistently broken.
It was this history that spawned the state’s many noted cacique families—the Carreras, the Cedillos, the Santos, and many others whose careers and personalities are sensitively reconstructed by Falcón. At the center of caciqual authority stood, as always, the elaborate network of reciprocal exchanges of power and resources between patron and clientele and Falcón’s study provides much data on the specific content of these networks in particular localities.
The author is particularly effective in demonstrating how the peculiar sociology of much of the state contributed to the forging of an anarchic, “popular” caciqual tradition which emphasized generalized antisystemic violence. Falcón contrasts this “conservative” current of agrarista caciquismo with the “radical” variants which she has examined in her earlier work on Adalberto Tejeda in Veracruz. It is not at all clear, however, which of these variants of revolutionary caudillismo is most widespread. A more substantial consideration of the experience of other regions would have been a help here.
This book is also a general treatment of San Luis Potosí’s experiences during the revolutionary era. There is extensive new information on such issues as the enrichment of the military caste (the case of Juan Barragán); the conservative character of the state’s Maderista and Carrancista leadership; continuities in the pre- and post-revolutionary patterns of land tenure; the rise and fall of the Cedillo empire; and, in a particularly valuable section, on the character of “elite agrarismo” as practiced by the Rafael Nieto and Aurelio Manrique state governorships of the 1920s. The study is pleasantly and clearly written. It is also densely researched and draws heavily on primary sources from Mexican, U. S., and British archives. It should be on the reading list of all historians of twentieth-century Mexico.
