Volume 2 picks up where the first volume left off: Madero is dead, and Victoriano Huerta is in the driver's seat, thanks to all the people who wanted an "iron hand" to restore order. Meaning, put the lower classes in their place. Problem with the iron hand is, it needs some strength behind it, and the Mexican Army wasn't up to snuff. Press-ganging people into fighting does not an effective fighting force make, something we can hope Vladmir Putin will learn soon. Or he can die, whichever.
Knight charts the course Huerta takes, which broadly is to consolidate as much power within himself as possible, and how he lacked the ability to hold control. Initially as Carranza, Villa, Zapata and many others rise up, the Federal forces can hold the cities, owing to greater force of arms and artillery, but the countryside belongs to the various rebels/revolutionaries. Which sounds extremely familiar to many other revolutions and civil wars.
When Huerta is ultimately defeated, Knight moves to the "war of the winners", the battle between the various revolutionary groups. There is an attempt to form a government, a constitutional convention, but it ultimately falls apart. Knight points the finger at Villa, claiming he attempt to intimidate the conventioneers by stations a large number of his men not too far away. It's an interesting contrast to McLynn's portrait of Villa (and Zapata) in his book, where Villa is portrayed and quoted as saying he is unsuited to run a country and that should be left to more learned men.
But in general, Knight seems more hostile to Villa and more forgiving of Carranza. If Villa's men wantonly execute several miners, Knight is more than willing to lay the blame at Villa's feet, even if he admits Villa was not there. But when Carranza sends Pablo Gonzalez to Morelos, and Gonzalez proceeds to destroy entire towns and forcibly relocate the people, this is somehow something for which Carranza bears no responsibility. This despite the fact Carranza wants to run the country (Carrancismo seems largely to boil down to, "Venustiano Carranza should be in charge") and insists he be referred to as First Chief. OK then, First Chief, then the actions of your generals reflect on you. But not in Knight's world, apparently.
He's highly critical of Zapata and Villa for not doing more to win urban workers to their sides, after he's repeatedly highlighted that urban workers did effectively jack shit during the fighting. If they haven't done anything so far, why would anyone expect them to start now? It's real Monday Morning Quarterbacking. Knight also wastes several pages criticizing those who attempt to apply the Marxist lens to the Mexican Revolution, and even after continues with little jabs about if so-and-so is a "petty bourgeois", and if so, does that mean his opponent is bourgeois. Look man, hash your petty rivalries with other historians out on your own time, I'm trying to learn about the Mexican Revolution, and this book is long enough already.
The book is, as with the first volume, highly detailed and thorough. When there's a section on challenges to the Carranza regime, he devotes a section to crime, and spends part of that highlighting bandits and discussing the line between regular bandits and "social bandits", and the differences in how people reacted. Then he works that changing response to the people growing weary with year after year of fighting. Which results in a dichotomy where the people are more inclined to form their own defense of their town (as Carranza's army is not much more effective maintaining peace than Huerta's), but less inclined to fight for change against the ineffective government. It seems a curious disconnect, but at a certain point, maybe a person just wants to focus on protecting what they still have.
Also, I was floored to see Knight include a graph of the declining value of the peso through the 1910s, plus two tables. Wonderful reprieve from the endless walls of texts.
'Maderista liberals, agraristas, die-hard parochials - all made major contributions before 1914; but decisive, permanent gains eluded them; and, ultimately, they all lost out for a similar, simple reason - because, unlike the eventual victors, they looked backwards, evoked a lost past, and stood against the main trends and pressures within Mexican society, which, whoever ruled in the National Palace, had an irresistible dynamic of their own.'
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