Is the Mexican Revolution Dead?

Ross, Stanley R., Editor, Is the Mexican Revolution Dead?, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966. (paperback)

Hispanic American Historical Review

Extract about Stanley R. Ross:

Stanley Ross's research took him through the full sweep of Mexico's modern history, from that nation's late nineteenth century search for modernization and nationhood through the Revolution of 1910 to the consolidation of the revolution by the one-party state. Perhaps Ross's greatest contribution to Mexican historiography is his political biography entitled Francisco I. Madero, Apostle of Mexican Democracy... Following the publication of the book on Madero, Stanley Ross focused his scholarship on collective historiography. ... Ross's most influential collaboration across borders has to be his edited volume called Is the Mexican Revolution Dead? (first published in 1966 by Alfred A. Knopf). This book ultimately was published in two English language editions, two Spanish editions, and in a Japanese translation. It became one of the best-selling "Borzoi Books on Latin America" issued by Knopf. Ross's edited volume achieved widespread readership as an assigned text in many undergraduate courses on Mexican history and politics, and the United States Information Service distributed many copies of the Spanish version of the book from U.S. embassies throughout Latin America. ... The book is remarkable for bringing together the opinions of some of the most successful politicians and intellectuals of contemporary Mexico. Among the politicians were ex-presidents Miguel Alemán, Adolfo López Mateos, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, and Luis Echeverría; party leader Jesús Reyes Heroles; revolutionary intellectuals Luis Cabrera, Jesús Silva Herzog, Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama, and Heriberto Jara; and labor leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano. Some of Mexico's greatest scholars also participated. They include Daniel Cosío Villegas, Leopoldo Zea, Moisés González Navarro, and Pablo González Casanova. North American scholarship was represented by such pioneer "Mexicanists" as Frank Brandenberg, Frank Tannenbaum, and Howard F. Cline.

Some reviewers scoffed at this edited volume for serving as the official party's view of the Mexican Revolution, which held that the Partido Revolución Institucionalista (PRI) had properly carried out the revolutionary ideals of social reforms and national economic development. However, even Ross himself demurred from this view, offering in his introduction his own viewpoint that the PRI-dominated government of the 1960s had ended the reforms in the interests of political control and the national bourgeoisie. Whatever the shortcomings of this influential volume, it did collect the varying and competing opinions of prominent Mexicans and North Americans into one volume. Ross had accomplished a major feat of cross-border collaboration, from which a whole generation of students and scholars benefited. It would not be going too far afield to assert that this was one of the seminal volumes in precipitating what would eventually become a high tide of revisionist critique, in which the PRI, for all its undoubted accomplishments, would be exposed increasingly for its strong-arm political tactics, its pervasive venality, and its artistry in constructing a self-serving version of Mexican history.