Paul Gillingham

The Emperor of Ixcateopan: Fraud, Nationalism and Memory in Modern Mexico

This article analyses the forgery and discovery of the purported tomb of Cuauhtemoc, the last Mexica emperor. An eclectic collection of contemporary sources outlines a subtle interplay between elites, cultural managers and peasants, who alternately collaborated and competed in manipulating the would-be invention. Groups traditionally undervalued in studies of nationalism, namely villagers and petty bureaucrats, went far beyond the mimesis of elites to significantly reshape parts of the national narrative. Their entrepreneurial success in manipulating nationalist symbols demonstrates that the instrumentalist use of the past is a cross-class activity.

A Sentimental Education for the Working Man: The Mexico City Penny Press, 1900–1910 by Robert M. Buffington (review)

The book makes its most decisive contribution to the study of nineteenth-century Mexico in chapter 3, by reconstructing a story obscured by the nationalist narrative of the liberal republic’s triumph over Maximilian, the French, and their conservative supporters. Richmond finds that, contrary to its reputation for weakness and ineptitude, the government of Maximilian realized tangible if short-lived improvements in the Yucata ́n. In this account, Maximilian, his wife Carlota, and governor Ilarregui take center stage as protagonists in an epic historical drama. Moreover, its short length and narrative approach make the book suitable for both advanced undergraduate courses and graduate courses.

Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata: The Jaramillista Movement and the Myth of the Pax Priísta, 1940-1962 (review)

Regional history has long been the gold standard for broader interpretations of Mexicos past. In extending that tradition past 1940, Tanalis Padillas study of peasant politics breaks new ground. She begins when most histories end, in the late 1930s, in the Zacatepec sugar mill in southern Morelos. From that peasant dystopia she traces two decades of grassroots opposition, spanning strikes, elections, bureaucratic wrangling, and three periods of armed resistance in the sierra. This thematic focus is also original, as extant studies treating the period tend to the cultural. While Padilla labels her approach postrevisionist, it centers on classic revisionist concerns: the interaction between economic, social, and political structures. Gender is profitably added as a category of analysis diat helps explain the resilience of peasant radicalism, among other things. This work is not so much timely as overdue: while the PRIista regime disintegrated historians remained bizarrely ignorant of its origins.