Mexico Under Siege: Popular Resistance to Presidential Despotism

by Ross Gandy, Donald Hodges

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781842771259
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/01/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.21(w) x 8.59(h) x 0.83(d)

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).
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).

Table of Contents

1. Background of the Resistance
2. Mounting Labor Protests
3. The Peasant Movement in Morelos
4. The Revolutionary Teacher‘s Strike of 1958
5. The Railroad Workers‘ Strikes of 1958-1959
6. Launching the National Liberation Movement
7. Assault on the Madera Barracks, 23 September 1965
8. Student Insurgency and the Tlatelolco Massacre
9. The Guerrilla Movements in Guerrero
10. Resurrecting the Student Movement
11. Urban Guerrilla Warfare
12. The Democratic Tendency of the Electrical Workers
13. Peasant Land Seizures and Committees of Self-Defense
14. Galvanizing the Indigenous Peoples of Chiapas
15. Core Parties of the Resistance
16. Why the Resistance Failed

Editorial Reviews

Using newly discovered documents and their own interviews with key players, Hodges and Gandy help us understand the Mexican people's heroic resistance to the "perfect dictatorship" and raise important questions about how to change a still undemocratic system.” —James Cockcroft, author of Mexico's Hope: An Encounter with Politics

“An extraordinary work that shows how in a context of continual oppression the process of resistance never disappears, but only loses visibility in the search for new ways of expression.” —L.Miguel Morayta, author of El Potencial Revolucionario de los Pueblos Indigenes de Mexico

“Offers a comprehensive introduction to the Mexican revolutionary tradition and thus should be read by all US activists seeking a more international perspective.... This book has no parallel in English or Spanish.” —New Formulation, 2002

“A valuable book for those interested in deciphering contemporary Mexico. It's pages bring to the surface a submerged history, the story of the popular resistance to the post-revolutionary State and the authoritarian traditions of national and regional power groups.” —Ricardo Melgar, author of El Movimiento Obrero Latinoamericano

“I know of no more thorough and exhaustive account of the resistance movements of Mexico from the 1940s than Hodges and Gandy's exceptionally detailed work.” —Rodney D. Anderson, author of Outcasts in Their Own Land: Mexican Industrial Workers, 1906-1911

From the Publisher