Leading Mexicanists--historians and social scientists from Mexico, the United States, and Europe--examine the three fin-de-siècle eras of crisis. They focus on the role of the country's communities in advocating change from the eighteenth century to the present. They compare Mexico's revolutions of 1810 and 1910 and consider whether there might be a twenty-first-century recurrence or whether a globalizing, urbanizing, and democratizing world has so changed Mexico that revolution is improbable. Reflecting on the political changes and social challenges of the late twentieth century, the contributors ask if a democratic transition is possible and, if so, whether it is sufficient to address twenty-first-century demands for participation and justice.
Contributors. Antonio Annino, Guillermo de la Peña, François-Xavier Guerra, Friedrich Katz, Alan Knight, Lorenzo Meyer, Leticia Reina, Enrique Semo, Elisa Servín, John Tutino, Eric Van Young "In these brilliant essays, eminent scholars examine the roots and processes of democracy, authoritarianism, and international relations in Mexico as a means of explaining contemporary events. By illuminating the rich creativity and changing constraints of Mexican politics, they validate the indispensability of historical analysis and cast doubt on the facile paradigms that render Latin American political development derivative, delayed, or deviant."--Mary Kay Vaughan