Introduction
In this review, an attempt is made in order to understand and grasp the subject of Mexican right history as brought out in his book entitled The Mexican right (1997). On this issue, Mexican communists and the Mexican Right coincided. A critical part of this right lies within the history of the 1930 in providing the answer. In the 1920 and 1930s the state sought to consolidate its hold on the Mexican countryside, foster national unity, promote political and economic modernization, and validate its claim to the emerging revolutionary hagiography by propaganda that employed nationalism and even Christian imagery. If the state was going to be transformed by the revolution so too was the Mexican right. At this point of time, the right had been largely defined, from independence until the demise of the Cristeros by the ongoing debate over the role of the Catholic Church in the Mexican society.
Discussion
The Cardenas era mainly focused on a neglected aspect of the Mexican political history. According to sentiments of the author, there are three classes of society with each having a natural political preference. In this context; the rich tend to be left alone, the middle class to the center and the ruling class to the right. Details regarding the origin as well as development of secular rights, Catholic rights and the opposing nature of the rightists to the revolutionary state are also highlighted by the author. The establishment of social ills that gave rise to the revolution of the Mexican right lead to the awakening of the Catholic social conscience, however, with the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum the Catholic Right began to reengage in politics in the Burkian reform tradition
The presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940), according to the author had been viewed as an apex of a successful Institutionalized Revolution. It is perhaps not surprising that the Mexican right was adrift ideologically. While pockets of the right steadfastly opposed the revolutionary government, other segments cooperated with it. For catholic rightists, the relentless persecution of the church continued, making the decision between opposition and cooperation easy. For other groups, the decision was not so obvious. The rise of the modern state meant that the right would have to adapt to new forms of expression and resistance beyond the older institutional avenues of church and the army.
As regard secular rights, a heated debate between the Mugica and the Jacobins regarding the nature of primary education, the delegates present at the meeting ultimately turned back attempts to revise the section as provided for in the constitution and allow for parochial schooling. The motive behind this push was aimed at providing for a free and obligatory secular primary school in Mexico as stipulated in Article 3 of the Mexican constitution.
Other anticlerical provisions were scattered throughout the lengthy final document, including measures that decreed marriage as a civil ceremony, restricted worship to church buildings, and required that priests be Mexican-born, abstain from politics and register with the government. With regard to rights of the Mexican people, the constitution through Article 27 addressed land reform, undercutting the position of the landed Porfirian elite, while Article 123 gave mandate to labour reforms, including the eight-hour workday, nondiscrimination on the basis of nationality and the right of unions to organize and collectively bargain.
Resistance to the United States intervention, whether military or economic, was the troubled relationship between Mexico and the United States. One of the most salient and unique aspects of Mexico’s contribution to the anti-Americanism was its targeting those institutions and policies in the United States that posed the most immediate threats to Mexico thereby asserting critical assessment of the important elements in American national life while avoiding all-out confrontations with the powerful nation that had a track record of interventionalism.
In fighting for their rights, the Mexicans did not express their arguments as broadly based hostility towards the United States as a nation nor did the Mexican people redirect their animosity to the North American people. Where did these rightists regime come from? The author is of the opinion that historians, who had focused so predominantly on the left have been slow to give answers. Nonscholorly explanations attributing the resurgence of the right to exogenous forces, such as machinations of the United States, fall far short of offering adequate explanation. While institutional rights of the Mexican people were slowly being wasted in the face of the Mexico’s Revolution, new rights undermining cardenismo later emerged regarding Mexico’s vital and conservative political culture.
Conclusion
As historians such as John Sherman and other interdisciplinary colleagues continue to approach and explore the footprints of the Mexican past by exploiting innovative ways, the concomitant advent of what historians and other anthropologists alike call a more adequate approach to political history may prompt some restructuring and revision of political history that may be forthcoming. Certain segments of the author’s examination as regard the Mexican right attempt to take the readers in this direction.
Bibliography
John Sherman. The Mexican right: The end of revolutionary reform 1929-1940: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997, 71 – 87.
