In developing countries, the extent to which intellectuals disengage themselves in state activities has widespread consequences for the social, political, and economic development of those societies. Roderic Camps’ examination of intellectuals in Mexico is the first study of a Latin American country to detail the structure of intellectual life, rather than merely considering intellectual ideas. Camp has used original sources, including extensive interviews, to provide new data about the evolution of leading Mexican intellectuals and their relationship to politics and politicians since 1920.

After Mexico’s revolution of 1910–1920, intellectuals sought to forge a unified cultural nation out of the country’s diverse populace. Their efforts resulted in an “ethnicized” interpretation of Mexicanness that intentionally incorporated elements of folk and indigenous culture. In this rich history, Rick A. López explains how thinkers and artists, including the anthropologist Manuel Gamio, the composer Carlos Chávez, the educator Moisés Sáenz, the painter Diego Rivera, and many less-known figures, formulated and promoted a notion of nationhood in which previously denigrated vernacular arts—dance, music, and handicrafts such as textiles, basketry, ceramics, wooden toys, and ritual masks—came to be seen as symbolic of Mexico’s modernity and national distinctiveness. López examines how the nationalist project intersected with transnational intellectual and artistic currents, as well as how it was adapted in rural communities. He provides an in-depth account of artisanal practices in the village of Olinalá, located in the mountainous southern state of Guerrero. Since the 1920s, Olinalá has been renowned for its lacquered boxes and gourds, which have been considered to be among the “most Mexican” of the nation’s arts. Crafting Mexico illuminates the role of cultural politics and visual production in Mexico’s transformation from a regionally and culturally fragmented country into a modern nation-state with an inclusive and compelling national identity.

Explores the wide-ranging impact of the Mexican Revolution on global cinema and Western intellectual thought. The first major social revolution of the twentieth century, the Mexican Revolution was visually documented in technologically novel ways and to an unprecedented degree during its initial armed phase (1910–21) and the subsequent years of reconstruction (1921–40). Offering a sweeping and compelling new account of this iconic revolution, The Mexican Revolution on the World Stage reveals its profound impact on both global cinema and intellectual thought in and beyond Mexico. Focusing on the period from 1940 to 1970, Adela Pineda Franco examines a group of North American, European, and Latin American filmmakers and intellectuals who mined this extensive visual archive to produce politically engaged cinematic works that also reflect and respond to their own sociohistorical contexts. The author weaves together multilayered analysis of individual films, the history of their production and reception, and broader intellectual developments to illuminate the complex relationship between culture and revolution at the onset of World War II, during the Cold War, and amid the anti-systemic movements agitating Latin America in the 1960s. Ambitious in scope, this book charts an innovative transnational history of not only the visual representation but also the very idea of revolution. Adela Pineda Franco is Professor of Latin American Literature and Film at Boston University. She is the coeditor (with Jaime Marroquin Arredondo and Magdalena Mieri) of Open Borders to a Revolution: Culture, Politics, and Migration.

Mexican presidents Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940) and Luis Echeverría (1970–1976) used populist politics in an effort to obtain broad-based popular support for their presidential goals. In spite of differences in administrative plans, both aimed to close political divisions within society, extend government programs to those on the margins of national life, and prevent foreign ideologies and practices from disrupting domestic politics. As different as they were in political style, both relied on appealing to the public through mass media, clothing styles, and music. This volume brings together twelve original essays that explore the concept of populism in twentieth century Mexico. Contributors analyze the presidencies of two of the century’s most clearly populist figures, evaluating them against each other and in light of other Latin American and Mexican populist leaders. In order to examine both positive and negative effects of populist political styles, contributors also show how groups as diverse as wild yam pickers in 1970s Oaxaca and intellectuals in 1930s Mexico City had access to and affected government projects. The chapters on the Echeverría presidency are written by contributors at the forefront of emerging scholarship on this topic and demonstrate new approaches to this critical period in Mexican history. Through comparisons to Echeverría, contributors also shed new light on the Cárdenas presidency, suggesting fresh areas of investigation into the work of Mexico’s quintessentially populist leader. Ranging in approach from environmental history to labor history, the essays in this volume present a complex picture of twentieth century populism in Mexico.

Focusing on a period between the early 20th century and the literary boom of the 1960s, this study examines the role of intellectuals in Latin American politics. It looks at the way modernization impacted on intellectual life.

The Mexican revolution began in 1910 with high hopes and a multitude of spokesmen clamoring for a better life for ordinary Mexicans. This anthology examines how the revolution brought change and often progress. Women, the landless, the poor, the country folk are among those receiving consideration in the twenty-seven readings, which range from political and economic to social and intellectual history. About half of the selections are previously unpublished. Combining the best new scholarship by modern historians; outstanding work by distinguished Mexicanists of the past; excerpts from mexico's finest fiction, poetry, and commentary; reminiscence; cartoons and illustrations, Twentieth-Century Mexico brilliantly illuminates the Mexican experience from Porfirio D�az to petrodollars. The concluding chapter ties together the strands of twentieth-century Mexican culture to help U.S. readers understand not only Mexico's present situation but also its relations with the Colossus of the North. Like its predecessor, Mexico: From Independence to Revolution (UNP, 1982), this book includes suggestions for further reading and an index.

Based on six years of research, including interviews with leading Mexican entrepreneurial and political leaders and the assessment of hitherto unavailable materials, this work focuses on the complex political relationship between the Mexican state and leading businessmen from the 1920s to the present. Analyzing nearly 3000 biographies to compare Mexico's two leading competitors for political power, the author uses a humanistic approach to test a number of assumptions about the relationship between the business community and the state and provides new insights into the existence of a power elite, the exchange between economic and political leaders, the self-image of Mexican entrepreneurs, the position of family-controlled firms, and the influence of capitalists on the decision-making process. Camp also provides detailed information on the ownership of Mexico's top 200 firms, including names of stockholders, board members, and managers.

Carlos Fuentes once observed that to be a Spanish American intellectual was to fulfill the roles, by default, of "a tribune, a member of parliament, a labor leader, a journalist, a redeemer of his society." Such statements reflect the view that the region's intellectuals have often acted as substitutes for the structures of a civil society. An alternative view casts Spanish American intellectuals in a far more reactionary role. Here, it is suggested that the elaboration of inert popular stereotypes such as the stoic Indian and the heroic gaucho has resulted in an infinite postponement of authentic cultural identity, and a perpetuation, aided by intellectuals, of a social order in which popular demands were either ignored or repressed. In the context of this debate, this book explores the roles played by intellectuals in the creation of popular national identities in twentieth-century Spanish America, and seeks to identify the factors which lie behind two such contrasting evaluations of their contribution. Ranging across the intellectual centers of Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Peru, it illustrates vividly the diversity and evolution of intellectual life in the region. Particular attention is paid to the idea of peripheral modernity and its influence on intellectual activity, as well as to the contributions made by intellectuals to the three major strands in debates on popular national identity: bi-culturalism, anti-imperialism and history.

The experiment with neoliberal market-oriented economic policy in Latin America, popularly known as the Washington Consensus, has run its course. With left-wing and populist regimes now in power in many countries, there is much debate about what direction economic policy should be taking, and there are those who believe that state-led development might be worth trying again. Susan Gauss’s study of the process by which Mexico transformed from a largely agrarian society into an urban, industrialized one in the two decades following the end of the Revolution is especially timely and may have lessons to offer to policy makers today. The image of a strong, centralized corporatist state led by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) from the 1940s conceals what was actually a prolonged, messy process of debate and negotiation among the postrevolutionary state, labor, and regionally based industrial elites to define the nationalist project. Made in Mexico focuses on the distinctive nature of what happened in the four regions studied in detail: Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey, and Puebla. It shows how industrialism enabled recalcitrant elites to maintain a regionally grounded preserve of local authority outside of formal ruling-party institutions, balancing the tensions among centralization, consolidation of growth, and Mexico’s deep legacies of regional authority.

In this history of the social and human sciences in Mexico and the United States, Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt reveals intricate connections among the development of science, the concept of race, and policies toward indigenous peoples. Focusing on the anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, physicians, and other experts who collaborated across borders from the Mexican Revolution through World War II, Rosemblatt traces how intellectuals on both sides of the Rio Grande forged shared networks in which they discussed indigenous peoples and other ethnic minorities. In doing so, Rosemblatt argues, they refashioned race as a scientific category and consolidated their influence within their respective national policy circles. Postrevolutionary Mexican experts aimed to transform their country into a modern secular state with a dynamic economy, and central to this endeavor was learning how to "manage" racial difference and social welfare. The same concern animated U.S. New Deal policies toward Native Americans. The scientists' border-crossing conceptions of modernity, race, evolution, and pluralism were not simple one-way impositions or appropriations, and they had significant effects. In the United States, the resulting approaches to the management of Native American affairs later shaped policies toward immigrants and black Americans, while in Mexico, officials rejected policy prescriptions they associated with U.S. intellectual imperialism and racial segregation.