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Northern Illinois University

NIU Office of Public Affairs


News Release

Tom Parisi, Office of Public Affairs                                                      

(815) 753-3635

 

May 10, 2002

 

Historian’s book on the Mexican Revolution
named selection of book club

 

DeKalb, Ill.—In a coup of sorts for the Northern Illinois University Department of History, Michael J. Gonzales’ new book on the Mexican Revolution has been made a selection of the prestigious History Book Club.

 

Professor Gonzales is NIU’s senior Latin American historian and director of the university’s Center for Latino and Latin American Studies. Described as a path-breaking study, his new book, “The Mexican Revolution, 1910-1940” (University of New Mexico Press, 2002), presents an overview of the first social revolution of the 20th century. The book will be a September selection of the History Book Club, which is advised by a panel of distinguished historians.

 

“I’m honored,” Gonzales said. “Every author wants to be read, and the History Book Club typically chooses selections that would be of interest to both historians and non-historians. So this will be an opportunity to reach a larger audience and hopefully to inform people about the significance of the Mexican Revolution.”

 

Based on archival sources and an extensive secondary literature, “The Mexican Revolution, 1910-1940” examines the revolution from its origins in the Díaz dictatorship through the presidency of radical General Lázaro Cárdenas. Gonzales, whose father and grandparents emigrated from Mexico to the United States during the revolution, said the book will especially appeal to Mexican-Americans.

 

“Everyone who grows up in Mexico hears about the revolution, not only about the event but how it has shaped their lives,” Gonzales said. “Everybody in Mexico today views the revolution as a starting point for the contemporary history of Mexico.

 

“The revolution also was responsible for the first big wave of immigration to the United States. From 1911 to 1917, there was constant warfare, which decimated the economy and created a very dangerous environment for people to live in. People were desperate to flee that type of situation and find a safe, more stable environment for their families. This also coincided with a demand for labor in the United States during World War I, when many young American men went off to fight.”

 

Gonzales’ sweeping analysis of the revolutionary process includes discussions of agrarian insurgencies, shifting alliances among revolutionaries, counter-revolutions and foreign interventions. He delineates the triumphs and failures of revolutionary leaders such as Francisco I. Madero, Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Alvaro Obregón and Venustiano Carranza.

 

What emerges is a clear understanding of the tangled events of the period and a fuller appreciation of the efforts of revolutionary presidents after 1916 to reinvent Mexico amid the limitations imposed by a war-torn countryside, a hostile international environment and the resistance of the Catholic Church and large landowners. Gonzales’ conclusions refute the notion that the revolution simply produced a change in political leadership without creating meaningful reform.

 

“The revolution threw out the old guard, reinvented the state and made possible historic social and economic reforms,” Gonzales writes. “The revolutionary state gave landless peasants hundreds of thousands of hectares of land, nationalized foreign-owned petroleum companies and significantly expanded public education. If the final outcome failed to eradicate poverty, create democracy or achieve economic independence, the event still remains revolutionary.”

 

Copies of “The Mexican Revolution, 1910-1940” can be ordered online at http://unmpress.unm.edu/ or at www.amazon.com.

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