Mexican Independence

On this Mexican Independence Day, our Review of the Week explores pronunciamiento politics in Mexico in the decades following its independence

Posted on September 16, 2019 in Reviews of the Month

Independent Mexico : the pronunciamiento in the age of Santa Anna, 1821–1858

Fowler, Will. Nebraska, 2016
358p bibl index afp, 9780803225398 $40.00, 9780803284678

This is University of St. Andrews professor Fowler’s fourth and last monograph in the Mexican Experience series, which tells about more than three decades of pronunciamiento politics from independence in 1821 to the Civil War of the Reforma (1858–60) and the French Intervention (1862–67). The grit of the book is the array of political actors, groups, and communities that aggressively petitioned government at the local and national levels as a means to address grievances. Fowler chooses to look at it from the perspective of the Spanish experience rather than as an extension of the colonial experience, where colonized Indians regularly petitioned the government, often resulting in revolt. After independence, this practice picked up steam, with the political aim often a coup d’état. The pronunciamiento grew more sophisticated in time, and by the mid-1850s the Age of Reform solidified political alignments. Lost in the compact narrative are ideological rifts such as that personified by Lucas Alamán and the heirs of Bourbon Reforms, who wanted to secularize Mexico. An important work that can be built on to answer other questions.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.
Reviewer: R. Acuña, California State University, Northridge
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Latin American & Latina/o Studies
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – History, Geography & Area Studies – Latin America & the Caribbean
Choice Issue: May 2016

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