MEXICO AND MEXICAN-U.S. RELATIONS
Tommie Sue Montgomery, ed., Mexico Today (Institute for
the Study of Human Issues, 1982). $6.95, paper, 138 pgs.
The “Mexico Today Symposium” was presented in six U.S.
cities in the autumn of 1978 in an attempt to familiarize
Americans with Mexican history and culture and with the
problems confronting U.S.-Mexican relations. The papers
delivered at that symposium have been collected here into one
volume that opens with an appealing essay by Octavio Paz on
the cultural clashes that have marked the history of relations,
or rather lack of relations, between the two countries. Paz
notes two fundamental differences: one nation is Catholic, the
other Protestant; and Latin America has assimilated her Indian
heritage while the United States has eradicated hers. Paz
makes a parting blow at Mexican democracy citing the failed
expectations of the revolution. A group of well-known Mexican
academics elaborate on these initial themes in the remaining
essays to present an interesting, balanced discussion, al-
though the contemporary essays are now somewhat dated.
(ISHI, 3401 Science Center, Philadelphia, PA 19104.)
Adolfo Gilly, The Mexican Revolution (Verso Editions, 1983).
$11.50, paper, 398 pgs. Born in Argentina, Adolfo Gilly began
his controversial political life as a student with the Argentine
Socialist Party, but turned to the revolutionary Left in that
country in the late 1940s. In subsequent years, he organized
Bolivian miners, following the MNR revolution; worked as a
foreign correspondent in Castro’s Cuba; campaigned for Sal-
vador Allende in the 1964 elections and later that year, started
liaison work with the Guatemalan guerrillas led by Yon Sosa.
He was arrested in Mexico in 1965 while on a support mission
for the Sosa faction and was sentenced to seven years’ im-
prisonment. It was while serving this sentence that Gilly wrote
his widely-read Marxist interpretation of the 1910 Mexican
Revolution. After his release, the state voided his conviction
and absolved him of all charges. Gilly is now a professor of
political science at the National University of Mexico. For this
first English-language edition of the work, Gilly has added
some new material. (Distributed by Schocken Books, 200
Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.)
Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, For We Are Sold, I and My
People: Women and Industry in Mexico’s Frontier (State
University of New York Press, 1983). $37.95, cloth; $10.95,
paper, 213 pgs. In 1965, the Mexican government instituted
its Border Industrialization Program (BPI) to encourage foreign
investment in the region and stimulate employment. Foreign
firms were promised duty-free importation privileges on
machinery, equipment and raw materials, with the incentive of
a large, non-union, cheap labor force, on the condition that
everything produced be exported. The extremely low, value-
added tax rate made re-importation no problem for the pro-
ducing firms. Today in Ciudad Juarez, just across the border
from El Paso, there are over 100 maquiladoras, or assembly
plants, in operation-all either subsidiaries or subcontractors
of multinational firms. More than half of them manufacture
Nov/Dec 1983
electronics, most of the rest, apparel-and most of them hire
women exclusively. The majority of these women migrate to
the border zone, work 48-hour weeks, are between 17 and 25
years of age, single, childless, without support from parent or
spouse and usually give over half of their wages to their families. Author Fernandez-Kelly worked in a maquiladora for two months as part of her impressively researched and well- written study detailing the frustrations and aspirations of the factory women. (State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, NY 12246.)
Patricia Preciado Martin and Louis Carlos Bernal, Images and Conversations (University of Arizona Press, 1983). $25, cloth; $12.50, paper, 110 pgs. In the 1960s, Tucson’s historic Mexican barrio was slated for demolition-despite protests from the community and the preservationists–as part of a major urban renovation plan, and the residents were forced out and scattered among that city’s slums. In Images and Conversations, the oldest of those displaced residents recount life in the barrio during this century’s early years. Their stories are festive ones of an independent and tightly-knit community, although more recent memories of racial attacks, bankrupt- cies and evictions occasionally creep to the surface. The real lesson here, garnered from some very astute comments from the residents, is for the urban planners who erase the cultural identity of the ghettoes, leaving immigrant populations or- phaned from their pasts–in this case, old people who enjoy memories of a sense of community but are now afraid to walk the streets. (University of Arizona Press, 1615 East Speed- way, Tucson, AZ 85719.)
Arnoldo de Le6n, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo At- titudes Towards Mexicans in Texas, 1821-1900 (University of Texas Press, 1983). $19.95, cloth; $8.95, paper, 153 pgs. There is little reason to assume that the scores of white settlers who flocked to Texas during the 1830s and 1840s regarded the Mexican inhabitants of the territory any differently than they regarded the Indians through whose lands they rampaged to get there. They didn’t. For the most part they despised the “Greasers,” but according to de Le6n’s excellent book, what did make this relationship unique was the particular violence and passion attached to their hatred. The puritan hysteria of the white settlers made them obsessed with the Mexicans, a people they viewed as the damnable offspring of Spanish popery and Indian paganism-a race imbued with a dark mysticism personified in the demonic habits of gambling, gaming, dancing, sexual promiscuity, nudity, sodomy and the old Aztec practices of sacrifice and cannibalism. After the U.S. Civil War, with abolition and the resurgence of the Indian wars, the Texan settlers felt more threatened, and attacks on the Mexicans became much uglier and more frequent. Plun- der, lynchings and murder became commonplace, legitimized by the Texas Rangers in an era of vengeance that lasted into the twentieth century. (University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7891, Austin, TX 78712.)
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