Mexico Under Siege: Popular Resistance to Presidential Despotism

Donald Clark Hodges, Daniel Ross Gandy, Ross Gandy

Zed Books, 2002 - History - 268 pages

Mexico Under Seige is a readable and well-informed political history covering the period from the ruling PRI s lurch to the right in 1940 through to its eventual expulsion from office in the elections of 2000. Based on two decades of interview material and new documentary sources, this book is the first to consider the full panorama of popular resistance to the alliance between the Mexican state bureaucracy, the president and the business class. This resistance embraced emerging urban labour protest, new peasant movements, revolutionary strikes on the railways and in schools, student opposition, and the re-emergence of guerrilla struggle culminating in the celebrated indigenous peoples resistance in Chiapas. Mexico Under Siege analyses the core parties of the resistance, including the suprisingly central role of the Mexican Communist Party, and explains why resistance achieved no more than ending the PRI s system of presidential despotism. Hodge and Gandy conclude with some provocative ideas about who now constitutes the common people s primary opponent and examine the prospects for genuine struggle in an electoral arena where neo-liberal economic ideology and the Mexican economy s closer integration with the United States dominate the political scene.
Reviews"

Contents

• Background of the Resistance: 13
• Mounting Labor Protests: 28
• The Peasant Movement in Morelos: 40
• Jaramillos Second Armed Uprising: 47
• The Jaramillista Legacy: 55
• Launching the Teachers Strike: 62
• The Railroad Workers Strikes of 1958 1959: 70
• The Second Strike 24 March to 13 April 1959: 76
• Launching the Movement of National Liberation: 82
• September 1965: 88
• Student Insurgency and the Tlatelolco Massacre: 93
• The Guerrilla Movements in Guerrero: 107
• Resurrecting the Student Movement: 133
• Urban Guerrilla Warfare: 146
• The Democratic Tendency of the Electrical Workers: 157
• Peasant Land Seizures and Committees of SelfDefense 17 3: 173
• Galvanizing the Indigenous People of Chiapas: 188
• Core Parties of the Resistance: 208
• Why the Resistance Failed: 234
• To the Progressive Forces of Mexico: 251
• Select Bibliography: 257

Popular passages

Page 57 - Martin Kenner and James Petras, eds., Fidel Castro Speaks ( New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1969), p.‎

Page 94 - Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?‎

Page 244 - The greatest talent in this work, comrade, is never to be associated with failure. Never to defend the weak, even when he is right. Never to attack the pillager of the treasury, if he is the owner of a great fortress. He might crush you and there is no use being a martyr.‎

Page 5 - If you want us to win and stay winners we'll have to burn all the papers. Many revolutions have started and then failed simply because papers weren't burned as they should have...‎

Page 89 - For this reason, since the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, in...‎

Page 58 - CTM's bureaucrat unions transferred to a new labour central, the Federation of Unions of Workers at the Service of the State (FSTSE). The organisation of the teachers also took place outside the CTM; they finally joined the bureaucratic central. This was encouraged by Cardenas' policy, and the CTM complained that it was a violation of the right to associate freely.‎

Page x - What happened at this finca now was exactly the same as occurred later throughout the whole Republic: the peons, accustomed for years to masters, tyrants, oppressors, and dictators, were not in truth liberated by the revolution, not even where the feudal estates were divided among the families of peons in little holdings, in ejidos. They remained slaves, with the single difference that their masters had changed, that mounted revolutionary leaders were now the wealthy, and that the politicians now...‎

Page ii - know-nots" through their monopoly of economic and political power. Why "political," why "new," and why "at loggerheads"? Our essay divides into three parts our tentative answers to these questions. * Donald Clark Hodges is Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate Professor of Political Science at Florida State University. Larry Lustig has been Lecturer in Philosophy and Government-Politics at University of Maryland University College since 1988. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 61,...‎

Page 231 - New," in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Lenin Anthology (New York: Norton. 1975), pp. 424-425. Democracy versus Dictatorship The proposition that the Civil War strangled the Bolsheviks' democratic inclinations and strengthened their tendencies towards dictatorship is accepted by many recent writers;20 and those who advocate it most strongly, like Cohen (see above, p. 52) and the French...‎

About the author

Donald C. Hodges is professor of philosophy at Florida State University. The recipient of numerous grants and research awards, including a Soviet Academy of Sciences Research Appointment in 1985, he has lectured widely throughout Eastern Europe and Latin America and taught for two semesters at Mexico's National University.He is the author of numerous books, including Intellectual Foundations of the Nicaraguan Revolution (1986).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Mexico Under Siege: Popular Resistance to Presidential Despotism; Latin American studies
• Authors: Donald Clark Hodges, Daniel Ross Gandy, Ross Gandy
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Zed Books, 2002
• ISBN: 1842771256, 9781842771259
• Length: 268 pages
• Subjects: History / Latin America / Mexico; Political Science / International Relations / General