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REVIEWS
| Deference and Defiance in Monterrey: Workers, Paternalism, and Revolution in Mexico, 1890–1950. By Michael Snodgrass (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xii plus 321 pages).
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| In this excellent monograph, Michael Snodgrass follows the course of labor history in what became the industrial powerhouse of the Mexican nation, Monterrey, from the years leading up to Mexico's Revolution (1910–1920), through that turbulent period, and then beyond into the major years of political institutionalization. That city, located in the North close to the U.S. border, was spared much of the violence of the Revolution, and even the labor movement itself was relatively peaceful compared to the rest of the country. However, Snodgrass shows clearly that the Revolution precipitated significant social change and that labor militancy was a part of the picture, despite the paternalism and sometimes retaliation on the part of Monterrey industrialists. |
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This study is a good example of the post-revisionist historiography of the Mexican Revolution, which views the outcome of that movement as neither an entirely positive transformation of the social order nor as a period of state formation in which the popular movement was betrayed by a coercive central government. Rather, Snodgrass asserts that "both company paternalism and revolutionary unionism were historical outcomes forged in the struggles between industrialists, the working class, and the revolutionary government." (Page 283). While thoroughly conversant with the theoretical and conceptual issues involved, Snodgrass lets the empirical evidence drive his complicated story. The three-way negotiations (some of them strongly and violently contested) that would ultimately shape working-class circumstances were not dominated by any one of the actors here indicated. The government was not securely aligned on either side, but, on balance, was more often supportive of workers in their struggles for better conditions, salaries, and dignity than not. In fact, even local, state, and national governments were by no means always closely aligned. Circumstances and personalities changed; surrounding national, binational, and global conditions had their own effects; and ideologies, while not as important as more pragmatic evaluations by actors on all sides, developed and to some extent influenced the course of these negotiations. |
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