16 - Mexico, c. 1930–1946

Summary

The best guide to Mexican history in the period is provided by the multivolume, multi-authored Historia de la Revolutión Mexicana, published by the Colegio de México, ten volumes of which cover the period 1928–1952. The first two, Lorenzo Meyer, Rafael Segovia and Alejandra Lajous, Los inicios de la institutionalizatión (Mexico, D.F., 1978) and El conflicto social y los gobiernos del maximato (Mexico, D.F., 1978) deal respectively with the political and social history of the Calles Maximato. Four successive volumes cover the Cárdenas presidency: Luis González, Los artífices del cardenismo (Mexico, D.F., 1979), sets the scene; the same author’s Los días del presidente Cardenas (Mexico, D.F., 1979) deftly captures both the key events and the president’s character; Alicia Hernández Chávez, La mecánica cardenista (Mexico, D.F., 1979) offers acute analysis and original research; and Victoria Lerner, La educatión socialista (Mexico, D.F., 1979) deals with education policy in the 1930s. Historical research on the 1940s – a crucial but relatively little-studied decade – has been pioneered by Luis Medina, Del cardenismo al avilacamachismo (Mexico, D.F., 1978); Bianca Torres Ramírez, Mexico en la segunda guerra mundial (Mexico, D.F., 1979); Luis Medina, Civilismo y modernizatión del autoritarismo (Mexico, D.F., 1979); and Bianca Torres Ramírez, Hacia la Utopía industrial (Mexico, D.F., 1984). Rafael Loyola (coord.), Entre la guerra y la estabilidad política: El México de los 40 (Mexico, D.F., 1986) is a valuable collection of articles dealing with domestic politics, international relations, the economy and culture during the war. Stephen R. Niblo, The Impact of War: Mexico and World War Two (La Trobe University, Institute of Latin American Studies, Occasional Paper, Melbourne, 1988) is a succinct, original study, especially of the socio–economic impact of the war.