Myths, Misdeeds, and Misunderstandings: The Roots of Conflict in U.S.-Mexican Relations byJaime E. Rodriguez O.; Kathryn VincentReview by: Terry RugeleyJournal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Spring, 1999), pp. 131-134Published by: Center for Latin American Studies at the University of MiamiStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/166240 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 131

empty, the budget has not been passed, and the legislature is under the pressure of mass resignations. In Stotzky's own words, "unless significant changes occur, before the second democratically elected president Rene Preval is able to consolidate the preliminary democratic reforms, the successors of [previous ruler RaCul] Cedras ... will still be there, and the country will still be split between a tiny group of elites and a vast poor majority."

Will Haiti once again fall into the tyranny or the anarchy of the past? Will democracy prevail in spite of its weaknesses? Whatever the outcome of events, Stotzky's book is an excellent source for readers interested in the drama and hope of this shattered nation and the lessons it provides for Latin America.

Carlos Basombrio Instituto de Defensa Legal, Lima

Rodriguez 0., Jaime E., and Kathryn Vincent, eds. Myths, Misdeeds, and Misunderstandings: The Roots of Conflict in U.S.-Mexican Relations. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1997. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index, 291 pp.; hardcover $45.

This collection of essays on interamerican history traces the fortunes of two nations whose interconnectedness is matched only by the shared problems mentioned in the title. It is the third book to grow out of a 1992 conference series at Baja California's San Antonio del Mar and at the University of California, Riverside, exploring "myths that abound in the recorded history of the U.S.-Mexican relationship." Following the editors' brief introduction are chapters on the two nations' earliest perceptions of one another; Mexican and Tejano views of the Texas Revolution; the history of border relations from 1848 to 1911; international relations from the 1910 Madero revolt to the 1950s; and a concluding set dealing with the sensitive issue of Mexican immigration to the United States. The chapters do not follow the pattern of opposing viewpoints, but instead trace related themes and threads through the two nations' past. Their story concerns a poorer nation struggling to establish itself beside a counterpart that is larger, richer, and more aggressive.

Earlier (prerevolutionary) history is the greater contribution here. "How Relations Between Mexico and the United States Began," by Virginia Guedea and Jaime E. Rodriguez O., sets the tone by exploring erroneous mutual perceptions that the two nations nursed from their earliest years. Mexican insurgents of the 1810s naturally looked to the United States for assistance, but found that their intended ally was restrained by fears of

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132 JOURNAL OF INTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS 41: 1

antagonizing its own European ally, Spain. There was no lack of private individuals willing to meddle in the conflict, however; and New Spain's discontents unfortunately interpreted their expansionist filibusterings as official U.S. support for decolonization.

Once Mexico did win its freedom, it found itself sharing the continent with a nation that had booming population growth and a vision of expanding to the west. The first U.S. representative to Mexico, Joel R. Poinsett, arrived with the hope of promoting the U.S. style of government, as well as forging border agreements that would leave Texas open to U.S. colonization. Poinsett sought out sympathetic factions for his mission; such internal divisions remained one of nineteenth-century Mexico's greatest liabilities in dealing with the more centralized United States.

Josefina Zoraida Vazquez's review of "The Colonization and Loss of Texas" expands knowledge of that episode beyond the familiar and excessively heroic portrait of the U.S. empresarios who eventually broke from Mexico. The author underscores the importance of Mexico's early economic problems, its need to fill sparsely populated border areas, and the changing and often divided nature of Mexican political leadership. Some of the Texas colony's problems related to its administration as part of the state of Coahuila-Texas; the Coahuila capital, Saltillo (sometimes Monclova), was far away from the Texas settlements, while Coahuila's political factionalism weakened its power to watch over the often unruly Anglo settlers.

The most striking feature of Texas colonization, however, was the prolonged dance around the issue of slavery. As the Mexican congress was abolishing human slavery in other parts of the new republic, the "Texians" (Anglo settlers in Texas) found newer and ever more ingenious ways of postponing or circumventing those prohibitions. The main Texian repre- sentative to Mexico, businessman Stephen F. Austin, shrewdly played on the economic concerns of Mexican officials and legislators to keep slavery alive north of the Nueces River. The main picture that emerges here is of colonists enjoying special privileges yet constantly complaining of dis- criminatory treatment.

Bravo as well to Jesus F. de la Teja's reconstruction of the interests and attitudes of the pre-1836 Tejano community, the Hispanic residents of what was to become the nation, and later state, of Texas. Tejanos occupied a role that was politically, culturally, and morally ambiguous. They were an older and more traditional group than the post-1821 arrivals, less export-oriented and more in harmony, culturally though perhaps not politically, with the larger Mexican society. Repulsed by the slavery the Texians brought with them, they nonetheless did everything in their power to promote Texian colonization and to help postpone decisions on the slave issue, for these earlier inhabitants of the region saw their chance to make a fortune from the rising land values that accompanied the peculiar

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BOOK REVIEWS 133

institution. The Tejanos followed the Texians in revolution as well, but while the latter saw the 1836 struggle as an independence movement, the former demanded a return to the pre-1834 federalist system. Their treatment following Texas' independence revealed how mistaken the Tejanos' judgment of the situation had truly been.

Thomas Benjamin and Jestus Velasco Marquez evaluate previous historiographical perspectives on the U.S.-Mexican War and suggest new ways of evaluating the conflict. These consist mainly of seeking the internal causes and consequences of the war for its two participants. For Mexico, the defeat catalyzed state formation and national identity; for the victor, it made a civil war almost inevitable. The authors state correctly that the war "has not been studied as much as have other events in Mexican history," but new inroads may be more likely to come through detailed social histories of specific Mexican regions and provinces of the 1840s and 1850s.

The offspring of these conflicts was the border, a kind of third party in U.S.-Mexican affairs that commands interests and problems of its own. Manuel Ceballos-Ramirez and OscarJ. Martinez locate the region's genesis in strategies that emerged following the 1846-48 war and coalesced during the long reign of Porfirio Diaz (1876-1911). Under Diaz, the foreign filibusters into northern Mexico came to an end; mining and a free-trade zone generated a region sufficiently cohesive to stand on its own, and eventually strong enough to challenge Diaz himself over national priorities and political processes.

It is difficult to identify a common thesis or argument that runs through these chapters. Although the idea is never directly stated, however, it is fair to say that most of the contributions point to a certain randomness in U.S.-Mexican relations. Neither state can fully control the actions or attitudes of the people living therein; at the same time, through their relations, both foster situations that take on a momentum of their own. There is little room here for the notion of a state with a consciousness akin to that of the individual human being. We might say that degrees of state intention exist, particularly in their desire to further political and economic hegemony; but these studies of colonization, war, border life, and immigration reveal how popular initiatives and accommodations-and popular prejudices-complicate the course of history. This being said, one has to recognize from this book that historical circumstances have favored the United States much of the time.

Several criticisms come to mind. One is relatively minor: the selection and arrangement of material results in some redundancy. The early essays, for example, all review the comparative population growth of Mexico versus the United States. Similarly, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo returns again and again. Rhetorical tropes concerning the two countries' mutual misunderstandings recur so frequently that they begin to tire the reader. Some of the jousting with antiquated historiography could prob-

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134 JOURNAL OF INTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS 41: 1

ably be eliminated. Mario T. Garcia provides a brief but succinct review of Mexican immigration; certain incongruities appear, however, in Jorge A. Bustamante's essay on the same theme. The latter chapter follows a disciplinary approach askew from the rest of the book, because the other essays are all historical in nature, whereas Bustamante writes as a sociologist. This single contribution is not sufficient to establish the book as interdisciplinary. Moreover, the essay itself fluctuates between socio- logical definitions and compelling anecdotal narratives of the hardships of the immigrant worker.

These essays confine themselves to the level of state actions and perceptions. This is particularly true of the studies relating to the Mexican Revolution. We find little here about the preponderant U.S. presence in Mexico during the Porfiriato beyond the border area. Similarly, the two chapters that focus on the revolution, by Berta Ulloa and Robert Freeman Smith, build almost entirely on diplomatic correspondence at the expense of social, economic, and cultural issues. The familiar actors-Henry Lane Wilson, Victoriano Huerta, Woodrow Wilson, Ernesto Plutarco Calles, Josephus Daniels-all return to play their accustomed roles. It would have been rewarding to develop some of these issues with an eye to people and groups beyond these well-known embodiments of state power.

Finally, a great deal of the subject remains uncovered. We find nothing about the deeply problematic and highly topical issue of narcotrafficking, about the U.S. export of firearms and military training to Mexico, about the reorientation of Mexico's agriculture for the U.S. markets, about the growing maquiladora system, or about the long- running debt problem. The essays that do appear fearlessly tackle certain state-oriented features of interamerican history, but the triple M's of the title go beyond what the authors can justifiably cover in 250 pages.

Terry Rugeley University of Oklahoma

Serrano, Monica, ed. Governing Mexico: Political Parties and Elections. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 1998. Illustrations, bibliography, 217 pp.; paperback $19.95.

The title and subject of Monica Serrano's edited volume give an indication of the changes under way in Mexico. Ten years ago, such a book would have been filled with accounts of electoral fraud, phantom "paid for" parties, and the unimportance of either political parties or elections to the process of governing Mexico. Today, understanding the political parties in Mexico and the context of elections is indispensable for understanding

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