Revolution in Mexico's Heartland: Politics, War, and State Building in Puebla, 1913-1920 (review)
Historians once conceived of Mexican nation building as a strictly top-down affair: a century of caudillos was followed by an era of autocratic presidents. Over the past twenty years, the profession has increasingly favored examining that process from below—so much so, one might say, that the bottom (the peasantry, urban workers, rancheros and rockeros) has become the new top. David LaFrance, in his account of the bloodiest years of the Mexican Revolution, offers a third approach: a “view from the middle.” His viewpoint is not simply a matter of “decentering the regime,” though this meticulous history of the strategically crucial yet under-researched state of Puebla is in itself a great contribution to scholarship of the revolution. It also involves attention to the role of generals, caciques, businessmen and others from the middle sectors who exerted remarkable influence on the course of events, resisting the centralizing impositions of the government of Venustiano Carranza and hence facilitating the swift process of Álvaro Obregón’s 1920 coup. LaFrance emphasizes that the view from the middle is geographically and politically fragmented. For much of the period, four insurgent groups harassed the weak state government and offered pragmatic, localized visions of reform: Zapatistas spilling across Puebla’s western border with Morelos, Marquistas in the sierras of the northeast, Arenistas in the northwest, and former federal officers in the south. Simultaneously, distrust intensified between quasi-liberal Carrancista politicians and their more conservative military counterparts. Throughout the state, junior generals allied themselves with caciques (some were one and the same) and plotted their ascent to political office.