Unrevolutionary Mexico: The Birth of a Strange Dictatorship (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780300253122)

An essential history of how the Mexican Revolution gave way to a unique one-party state

In this book Paul Gillingham addresses how the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) gave way to a capitalist dictatorship of exceptional resilience, where a single party ruled for seventy-one years. Yet while soldiers seized power across the rest of Latin America, in Mexico it was civilians who formed governments, moving punctiliously in and out of office through uninterrupted elections.

Drawing on two decades of archival research, Gillingham uses the political and social evolution of the states of Guerrero and Veracruz as starting points to explore this unique authoritarian state that thrived not despite but because of its contradictions. Mexico during the pivotal decades of the mid-twentieth century is revealed as a place where soldiers prevented military rule, a single party lost its own rigged elections, corruption fostered legitimacy, violence was despised but decisive, and a potentially suffocating propaganda coexisted with a critical press and a disbelieving public.

Author: Paul Gillingham
ISBN-10: 0300253125
ISBN-13: 9780300253122
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 05/25/2021
Pages: 464
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.81lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.40w x 1.50d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 03/01/2022