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A History of the “Pernicious Foreigner”: Jean Meyer and the Re-writing of the Mexican Revolution During the Global Sixties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2025

Jaime M. Pensado
Jaime M. Pensado*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States [email protected]
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Abstract

This article provides an intellectual history of Jean Meyer as an effort to shed light on the role that foreign historians played in the shaping of the Global Sixties in Mexico. His three-volume text composing La Cristiada (1972–74) has endured as one of the most cited and reprinted books in Mexican history, and to this day, its author has remained a hegemonic voice in Mexican academia. Yet little is known about the making of this groundbreaking book. In this effort, this article situates its methodology, revisionist arguments, and immediate perception in the political context of the era. It brings attention to Meyer’s rise in Mexican academia and examines the intellectual impact that three culminating events—the Cuban Revolution (1959), the progressive Catholicism of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), and the Tlatelolco massacre of 1968—had on his generation and in the shaping of the Global Sixties in Mexico.

Keywords

the Global Sixtiesrevisionist historyCatholicismrevolutionsthe 1968 student movement
Type
Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 81 , Issue 4 , October 2024 , pp. 589 - 622
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academy of American Franciscan History

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Footnotes

I thank Jean Meyer for his generosity as well as Julia Young, Stephen Andes, Gema Santamaria, Enrique Ochoa, and Eric Zolov for their excellent comments in various versions of this article. I also want to thank the two anonymous readers for their constructive feedback.

References

1. Jean Meyer, interview by author, Mexico City, March 8, 2016. On Article 33 of the Constitution, see Pablo Yankelevich, “Extranjeros indeseables en México (1911–1940). Una aproximación cuantitativa a la aplicación del Artículo 33 constitucional,” Historia Mexicana, vol. 53, no. 3 (January–March, 2004): 693–744.

2. Jean Meyer, “Le movement étudiant en Amérique latine,” Esprit, vol. 381, no. 5 (May 1969), 740–53.

3. Christoph Kalter, The Discovery of the Third World: Decolonization and the Rise of the New Left in France, c. 1950–1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 3.

4. Ibid.

5. See, for example, Alicia Olivera Sedano, Aspectos del conflicto religioso de 1926 a 1929. Sus antecedentes y consecuencias (Mexico City: INAH, 1966), and James W. Wilkie, “The Meaning of the Cristero Religious War against the Mexican Revolution,” Journal of Church and State, vol. 8. no. 2 (Spring, 1966): 214–36.

6. Ibid.

7. On the politicization of French intellectuals during the 1960s, see Kepa Artarz and Karen Luyckx, “The French New Left and the Cuban Revolution 1959–1971: Parallel Histories?” Modern & Contemporary France, vol. 17, no. 1 (February 2009): 67–82.

8. This is a critique of the literature that I also make in Jaime M. Pensado, Love and Despair: How Catholic Activism Shaped Politics and the Counterculture in Modern Mexico (Oakland: University of California Press, 2023).

9. Eric Zolov, “Introduction: Latin America in the Global Sixties,” The Americas, vol. 70, no. 3 (January 2014): 354. See also the collection of chapters in Chen Jian, et. al., eds., The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties: Between Protest and Nation Building (London: Taylor and Francis, 2018).

10. Zolov, “Introduction: Latin America in the Global Sixties.” See also Jaime M. Pensado, Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture during the Long Sixties (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), and Mary Kay Vaughan, Portrait of a Young Painter. Pepe Zuñiga and Mexico City’s Rebel Generation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).

11. Pensado, Love and Despair.

12. See, among many other examples, Vaughan, Portrait of a Young Painter, and Tanya Harmer, Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020).

13. Recent exceptions include Vania Markarian, Universidad, Revolución y dólares. Dos estudios sobre la Guerra Fría cultural en el Uruguay de los sesenta (Montevideo: Debate, 2020), and Pensado, Love and Despair.

14. Some of Mexico’s most important intellectuals of the 1960s, including Carlos Fuentes, shared a similar argument, suggesting that Mexicans were caught between the “Fascism” of the Southern Cone, on the one hand, and the authoritarian democracy of Echeverrismo, on the other hand.

15. In a public conversation with Jean Meyer in Mexico City, on May 29, 2024, he explained that while the restrictions of Article 33 limited his criticism in Spanish publications, he did express his dissatisfaction with the Echeverría administration in French outlets. See, “Presentación del libro Love and Despair,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oihfwpRdywY.

16. See, for example, Claudia Gilman, Entre la pluma y el fusil: Debates y dilemas del escritor revolucionario en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2003).

17. See, among others, Juan González Morfín, “Conversación en México con Jean Meyer,” Anuario de historia de la Iglesia, no. 25 (2016): 453–76; Alicia Salmerón and Elisa Speckman, “Entrevista a Jean Meyer,” Secuencia: Revista de historia y ciencias sociales, no. 52 (January–April, 2002): 199–216; Christopher Domínguez Michael, “III, Jean Meyer: el historiador de la libertad religiosa,” Letras Libres (March 31, 2010); and Fausto Zerón-Medina, “Entrevista a Jean Meyer. ‘Necesitamos la escuela democrática liberal de Madero’,” Letras Libres (March 1, 2019).

18. My interviews with Meyer took place on March 8, 2016, in his home in Mexico City and on April 17, 2017, at the University of Notre Dame. In addition, I followed up with Meyer during various communications via email, from April 26, 2017, to December 20, 2020.

19. This is an argument that I also make in Jaime M. Pensado and Enrique C. Ochoa, México Beyond 1968: Revolutionaries, Radicals, and Repression During the Global Sixties and Subversive Seventies (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2018).

20. Jean Meyer, El libro de mi padre (Mexico City: Tusquets Editores, 2014); González Morfín, “Conversación en México.”

21. Jean Meyer, interview by author, University of Notre Dame, April 17, 2017. On the romanticism that many French intellectuals established with the Cuban Revolution, see Artarz and Luyckx, “The French New Left,” and Kalter, The Discovery of the Third World.

22. ¡Cuba sí! (Chris Marker, 1961).

23. Christopher Caldwell, “Régis Debray, Radical Conservative,” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (June–July 2021): 28.

24. Jean Meyer, interview by author, University of Notre Dame, April 17, 2017; Salmerón and Speckman, “Entrevista a Jean Meyer”; González Morfín, “Conversación en México.”

25. Melvyn Cox, “Régis Debray: A Study of His Political and Theoretical Works, 1962—1992.” PhD diss., Loughborough University, 1996, 15–28.

26. Jean Meyer, interview by author, University of Notre Dame, April 17, 2017; Francisco Juliao, “Del Papa Paulo a Regis Debray,” Siempre!, no. 866 (January 1970).

27. Eugenia Meyer and Alicia Olivera Sedano de Bonfil, “La historia oral. Origen, metodología, Desarrollo y perspectivas,” Historia Mexicana, vol. 21, no. 2 (October–December 1971): 372–87.

28. Jean Meyer, interview by author, Mexico City, March 8, 2016; Salmerón and Speckman, “Entrevista a Jean Meyer”; González Morfín, “Conversación en México.”

29. Jean Meyer, interview by author, Mexico City, March 8, 2016; González Morfín, “Conversación en México.”

30. Jean Meyer, interview by author, Mexico City, March 8, 2016; Knight, “Interpreting the Mexican Revolution,” Texas Papers on Mexico, no. 88-02. On the influence that González had on Ginzburg’s work, see, among others, Carlo Ginsburg, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It,” in Anne C. Tedeschi and John Tedeschi, eds., Threads and Traces: True False Fictive (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 193–214.

31. Jean Meyer, interview by author, University of Notre Dame, April 17, 2017.

32. Jean Meyer, “Cuba’s enfermé dans sa révolution,” Esprit, vol. 358, no. 3 (March 1967).

33. Jean Meyer, “Camilo Torres: In Memoriam,” Esprit, vol. 349, no. 5 (May 1966).

34. Jean Meyer, “Chili 1966: la démocratie chrétienne a l’épreuve,” Esprit, vol. 350, no. 6 (June 1966).

35. Jean Meyer, “L’Argentine dans l’impasse?,” Esprit, vol. 352, no. 9 (September 1966).

36. Jean Meyer, interview by author, Mexico City, March 8, 2016.

37. Ibid; Domínguez, “III, Jean Meyer”; Zerón-Medina, “Entrevista a Jean Meyer.”

38. Jean Meyer, La Revolución mexicana (Mexico City: Tusquets Editores, 2013).

39. Kalter, The Discovery of the Third World, 199.

40. Jean Meyer, interview by author, Mexico City, March 8, 2016.

41. Ibid; Jean Meyer, La gran controversia (Mexico City: Tusquets Editores, 2014).

42. Jean Meyer, interview by author, Mexico Cty, March 8, 2016; Meyer, La gran controversia.

43. Jean Meyer, interview by author, Mexico City, March 8, 2016.

44. Luis González, “La Revolución revisada por Jean Meyer” in Meyer, La revolución Mexicana; Jean Meyer, interview by author, Mexico City, March 8, 2016.

45. Specifically, under the advice of Cosío Villegas, Jean Meyer returned to Mexico, via Guadalajara, where the Mexican authorities did not question his return. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oihfwpRdywY.

46. Jean Meyer, interview by author, University of Notre Dame, April 17, 2017; Álvaro Matute, “El 68 y la historiografía en México. Alcances y limitaciones,” Estudios Historiográficos (1997): 87–95.

47. Jean Meyer, La Cristiada. Tomo 1: La guerra de los cristeros; Tomo 2: El conflicto entre la iglesia y el estado (1926–1929); Tomo 3: Los cristeros (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1972–1974).

48. Jean Meyer, interview by author, Mexico City, March 8, 2016.

49. Ibid.

50. Verónica Oikión Solano, “In memoriam. Alicia Esperanza Olivera Sedano de Bonfil (1933–2012),” Tzintzun. Revista de Estudios Históricos, no. 57 (January–June 2013): 234–42.

51. Luis Romo Cedano, “La inquietante originalidad de La Cristiada,” Históricas Digital (2015): 389–402.

52. Wilkie, “The Meaning of the Cristero Religious War.”

53. Jean Meyer, “Review of ‘The Mexican Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1920–1929,’” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 54, no. 2 (May 1974): 324–6.

54. Romo Cedano, “La inquietante originalidad.”

55. Ramón Jrade, “Inquiries into the Cristero Insurrection against the Mexican Revolution,” Latin American Research Review, vol. 20, no. 2 (1985): 53–69; Damián López, “La guerra cristera (México, 1926–1929): Una aproximación historiográfica,” Historiografías, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 35–52.

56. Luis Córdova, “Mucha narrativa, poco rigor histórico,” Cuadernos Americanos, vol. 34, no.194 (May–June 1974): 187–93.

57. Karl M. Scmitt, American Historical Review, vol. 82, no. 5 (December 1977): 1374–5.

58. John Lynch, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 10, no. 2 (November 1978): 364–6.

59. William Beezley, The Historian, vol. 39, no. 4 (August, 1977): 816–7; Maria Ann Kelley, Journal of the Church and State, vol. 21, no. 2 (Spring 1979): 341–3; Paul V. Murray, Catholic Historical Review, vol. 61, no. 5 (October 1975): 596–8; David C. Bailey, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 56, no. 1 (February 1976): 145–7.

60. Murray, 596.

61. Christian Lalive d’Epinay, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, vol. 21, no. 42 (July–December 1976): 173–7.

62. Lorenzo Meyer, English Historical Review, vol. 92, no. 365 (October 1977): 871–2.

63. Jean Meyer, “Mexique incertain,” Esprit, vol. 362, nos. 7/8 (July–August 1967).

64. Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960).

65. Jean Meyer, interview by author, Mexico City, March 8, 2016; Jean Meyer, Pro domo mea. La Cristiada a la distancia (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2004), 20.

66. Meyer, “Le movement étudiant en Amérique latine.”

67. John Womack, “Unfreedom in Mexico. Government Crackdown on the Universities,” New Republic, vol. 159, no. 15 (October 12, 1968).

68. John Womack Jr., “The Spoils of the Mexican Revolution,” Foreign Affairs (July 1970).

69. See, for example, the respective positions described in Gabriel Zaid, “Carta a Carlos Fuentes,” Plural (September 2, 1972).

70. María Del Carmen Velázquez, “Bibliographical Essay: The Colección SepSetentas,” The Americas, vol. 35, no. 3 (January 1979): 373–89.

71. Knight, “Interpreting the Mexican Revolution”; Mariano Azuela González, Los de abajo, first published with the Fondo de Cultura Económica in 1916.

72. Matute, “El 68 y la historiografía”; David C. Bailey, “Revisionism and the Recent Historiography of the Mexican Revolution,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 58, no. 1 (1978): 62–79.

73. Matute, “El 68 y la historiografía.”

74. Jean Meyer, “A propos d’un livre et d’un cinquantenaire: La mort de Zapata,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, vol. 26, no. 6 (1971): 1198–202. On Zapata as emblematic of the “New Left,” see Pedro L. San Miguel, “Mito e historia en la épica campesina: John Womack y la Revolución Mexicana,” Secuencia, no. 76 (January–April 2010): 135–56.

75. Womack, phone interview with the author, University of Notre Dame, December 10, 2020.

76. Jean Meyer, “Histoire d’un village mexicain: San José de Gracia,” Anneles, vol. 25, no. 3 (June 1970); Jean Meyer, “Un nouvel instrument bibliographique pour l’histoire d Mexique contemporain,” Anneles, vol. 21, no. 6 (November–December 1966).

77. Eric J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: W.W. Norton, 1965).

78. Bailey, “Revisionism.”

79. Matute, “El 68 y la historiografía”; Luis F. Ruiz, “Where Have All the Marxists Gone? Marxism and the Historiography of the Mexican Revolution,” A Contracorriente, vol. 5, no. 2 (winter, 2008): 196–219.

80. Jean Meyer, “Review of René Dumont, Cuba est-il socialiste? and K.S. Karol, Les guérrilleros au pouvoir: l’itinéraire politique de la revolution cubaine,” Esprit, vol. 393, no. 6 (June 1970).

81. François Chevalier, “Investigaciones contemporáneas. Memorias de la tercera reunión de historiadores mexicanos y norteamericanos. Oaxtepec, Morelos, 4–7 de noviembre de 1969, review,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 55, no. 2 (May 1975): 324–6.

82. All the presentations were published in Investigaciones contemporáneas. Memorias de la tercera reunion de historiadores mexicanos y norteamericanos, Oaxtepec, Morelos de 1969 (Mexico City: UNAM, 1971).

83. Womack, “Mexican political historiography,” in Investigaciones contemporáneas, 479 and 491.

84. Andrés Lira González, a doctoral student at Stony Brook and visiting professor at El Colegio at the time, read the paper to the audience in Meyer’s absence.

85. Meyer, “Historia de la vida social,” in Investigaciones contemporáneas.

86. Francisco Miranda, “Problemática de una historia eclesiástica,” Historia Mexicana, vol. 21, no. 2 (October–December 1971): 269–84.

87. Donald J. Mabry, Mexico’s Accion Nacional. A Catholic Alternative to Revolution (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1973).

88. James W. Wilkie and Edna Monzón de Wilkie, Frente a la Revolución Mexicana: 17 protagonistas de la etapa constructive: entrevistas de historia oral (Mexico City: UNAM, 1995).

89. Donald J. Mabry, “Mexican Anticlerics, Bishops, Cristeros, and the Devout during the 1920s: A Scholarly Debate,” A Journal of Church and State, vol. 20, no. 1 (1978): 81–92.

90. See, for example, James H. Sweet, “Is History History? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present,” Perspectives on History (August 17, 2022).

91. Womack, “Mexican political historiography,” 479.

92. Gabriel Zaid, “Intelectuales,” Vuelta, no. 14 (November 1990): 21–3.

93. Jorge Volpi Escalante, “The End of the Conspiracy: Intellectuals and Power in 20th-Century Mexico,” Discourse, vol. 23, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 145.

94. Most recently, Jean Meter has expressed a critical view of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

95. This is particularly true of Alicia Olivera Sedano. See Oikión Solano, “In memoriam.”

96. Artarz and Luyckx, “The French New Left”: 77–8.

97. As cited in Cox, “Régis Debray,” 7.