Department of Political Science Mr. Klesner
Spring 1994 Horwitz House 3
PBX 5311, 427-2274
PSCI 48:
REVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT
IN MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA
In Latin America, all major political upheavals, especially extra-
constitutional changes of power, are revoluciones. These include right-wing military coups as well as the more familiar guerrilla-based insurrections. Does revolution have analytical value in this context? This course assumes that it does because there have been significant revolutionary upheavals in some Latin American countries in this century. Indeed, the continuing appeal of revolution to Latin Americans owes much to the successes of the revolutions we will study during this semester, or to their near successes. National development, defined economically, politically, and culturally, has been the goal of most twentieth-century Latin American revolutionaries, hence the joining of the themes of revolution and development in this course.
This course explores the political histories of Mexico, the countries of Central America, and Cuba since their independence in the nineteenth century, examining in particular the revolutions in Mexico (1910), Guatemala (1944), Cuba (1958), and Nicaragua (1979). The causes of these revolutions, the process of revolution, and the consequences of these revolutions for politics, society, and culture will be major topics. Where relevant, we will cover U.S. foreign policy toward the revolutionaries (and it is nearly always relevant). We will explore post-revolutionary politics, especially as it bears on economic development and socioeconomic reform, for each country in question. Finally, we will ask whether revolution remains an efficacious means to promote national development as Latin America approaches the twenty-first century.
Requirements. This course will make ample use of video resources and will expect student participation in class discussions, so attendance and class participation are critical. Fifteen (15) percent of the final course grade will depend on class participation. Students with excessive absences may be asked to leave the course. Students will have three writing assignments for the course, two of which will be critical reviews of books related to issues being studied in the course. A separate handout will explain how to write such reviews, each of which will be of about seven pages in length and count toward 25 percent of the final grade. One critical review will be due on March 4, the other on April 29. The third writing assignment will be a final take-home exam of about ten pages' length due at the time scheduled for the final exam. It will count toward 35 percent of the course grade.
The schedule of topics and readings includes both required and recommended readings. The required readings are available for purchase at the bookstore and will be on reserve at Olin Library. The recommended readings are listed as suggestions for further study or for the critical reviews.
AGENDA
January 17 Introduction to the Course
Part I: The Colonial Heritage of Latin America
January 19 The Conquest in Mexico and Central America
Video: The Age of Gold, part 3 of The Buried Mirror.
January 21 The Colonial State and Economy
Read: Stanley Stein and Barbara Stein, The Colonial
Heritage of Latin America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1970).
Part II: Mexico
I. Mexico in the Nineteenth Century
January 24 The Struggle to Establish Order
Recommended: Eric R. Wolf and Edward C. Hansen, "Caudillo
Politics: A Structural Analysis," Comparative Studies in
Society and History, 9 (1966-67), pp. 168-179.
January 26 Liberalism and Reform
January 28 The Porfiriato and the Coming of Revolution
Read: John Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New
York: Random House, 1970), Prologue & Ch. 1, pp. 3-36.
II. The Mexican Revolution
January 31 Revolutionary Beginnings
Read: Hector Aguilar Camin and Lorenzo Meyer, In the Shadow
of the Mexican Revolution (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1993), Ch. 1, pp. 1-35.
Recommended: Charles Cumberland, Mexican Revolution:
Genesis Under Madero (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1954).
Recommended: John M. Hart, Revolutionary Mexico: The
Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1987).
February 2 Contending Forces
Read: Aguilar Camin and Meyer, In the Shadow of the Mexican
Revolution, Ch. 2, pp. 36-70.
Recommended: Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution, 2 vols.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
February 4 The Zapatistas: Revolutionaries or Reactionaries?
Read for discussion: Womack, Zapata and the Mexican
Revolution, remainder of book.
Recommended: Manuel Azuela, The Underdogs.
III. Implementing the Revolution
February 7 The Constitution of 1917; the Revolution and the Church
Recommended: Peter H. Smith, "The Making of the Mexican
Constitution," in The History of Parliamentary Behavior,
edited by William O. Aydelotte (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1977).
February 9 Agrarian Reform; Populism and the Mexican Revolution
Read: Aguilar Camin and Meyer, In the Shadow of the Mexican
Revolution, Chs. 3-4, pp. 71-158.
Recommended: Nora Hamilton, The Limits of State Autonomy:
Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1982).
Recommended: Wayne A. Cornelius, "Nation-building,
Participation, and Distribution: The Politics of Social
Reform under Cardenas," in Crisis, Choice, and Change:
Historical Studies of Political Development, edited by
Gabriel Almond et al. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973).
February 11 The Revolution: Who Really Benefitted?
Read for Discussion: Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio
Cruz.
Recommended: Peter H. Smith, Labyrinths of Power:
Political Recruitment in Twentieth-Century Mexico
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
Recommended: Frank Tannenbaum, Mexico: The Struggle for
Peace and Bread (New York: Knopf, 1950).
IV. Institutionalizing the Revolution: The System of One-Party Rule
February 14 The Creation and Operation of the PRI
Recommended: Roger D. Hansen, The Politics of Mexican
Development (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1971).
February 16 The PRI and its Opposition
Recommended: Evelyn P. Stevens, Protest and Response in
Mexico (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974).
V. Development in Mexico: Desarrollo Estabilizador, 1946-1970
February 18 Import-Substituting Industrialization
Video: First half of From Boom to Bust, part two of Mexico.
Read: Aguilar Camin and Meyer, In the Shadow of the Mexican
Revolution, Ch. 5, pp. 159-198.
Recommended: Roderic A. Camp, Entrepreneurs and Politics in
Twentieth-Century Mexico (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989).
Recommended: Douglas Bennett and Kenneth Sharpe, "The State
as Banker and Entrepreneur: The Last Resort Character of
the Mexican State's Economic Interventions, 1917-1970,"
Comparative Politics, 12, 2 (January 1980), pp. 165-189.
February 21 Consequences of Industrialization: Migration and
Urbanization
Video: Continent on the Move, part 3 of Americas.
Recommended: Wayne A. Cornelius, Politics and the Migrant
Poor in Mexico City (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1975).
Recommended: Susan Eckstein, The Poverty of Revolution:
The State and the Urban Poor in Mexico (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1988).
VI. Crisis and Reform, 1968-1992
February 23 Failure of the Development Model and the Rise of Dissent
Video: Second half of From Boom to Bust, part two of
Mexico.
Read: Aguilar Camin and Meyer, In the Shadow of the Mexican
Revolution, Ch. 6, pp. 199-250.
Recommended: Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, Democracy in Mexico
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).
February 25 The End of the Revolution? Economic and Political
Liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s
Video: End of an Era, part three of Mexico.
Read: Aguilar Camin and Meyer, In the Shadow of the Mexican
Revolution, Ch. 7, pp. 251-267.
Recommended: John J. Bailey, Governing Mexico: The
Statecraft of Crisis Management (London: Macmillan, 1988).
Recommended: Judith Gentleman (ed.), Mexican Politics in
Transition (Boulder: Westview, 1987).
VII. Contemporary Issues
February 28 NAFTA: Panacea for Mexico's Problems?
Recommended: Riordan Roett (ed.), Political and Economic
Liberalization in Mexico: At a Critical Juncture? (Boulder:
Lynne Rienner, 1993).
March 2 Change in the Countryside: Revolutionary Potential? The
Situation in Chiapas and the South
Recommended: Roger Bartra, Agrarian Structure and Political
Power in Mexico, trans. by Stephen K. Ault (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
March 4 Mexican Cultural Politics in the 1990s: The Women's
Movement and the Return of the Church to Political
Respectability
Recommended: Joe Foweraker and Ann L. Craig (eds.), Popular
Movements and Political Change in Mexico (Boulder: Lynne
Rienner, 1990).
Part III: Central America and Cuba
VIII. Reform and Reaction Guatemala
March 21 The Revolution of 1944
Read: Piero Gliejses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan
Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991), Prologue and Chs. 1-6,
pp. 3-133.
March 23 Arbenz Comes to Power
Read: Gliejses, Shattered Hope, Chs. 7-10, pp. 134-222.
March 25 The U.S. and the Guatemalan Reformers
Read: Gliejses, Shattered Hope, Chs. 11-15 and Epilogue,
pp. 223-394.
Recommended: Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala:
The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1982).
Recommended: Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter
Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala
(Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1981).
March 28 Consequences of the Coup: Political Reaction and the
Indigenous Population
Video: Rigoberta Menchu.
Recommended: Richard N. Adams, Crucifixion by Power:
Essays on the Guatemalan National Social Structure, 1944-
1966 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970).
Recommended: George Black, with Milton Jamail and Norma
Stoltz Chinchilla, Garrison Guatemala (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1984).
March 30 Guatemalan Politics Today: The Continuing Civil War
Read for Discussion: Rigoberta Menchu, I, Rigoberta Menchu:
An Indian Woman in Guatemala (London: Verso, 1984).
Recommended: Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala:
Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power (Boulder: Westview,
1991).
IX. The Cuban Revolution
April 1 Cuban "Independence" and the United States
Recommended: Jorge I. Dominguez, Cuba: Order and
Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978).
April 4 Castro's Revolution: The Overthrow of Batista
Recommended: Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985).
Recommended: Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, Cuba: The Making of a
Revolution (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1968).
April 6 The U.S. and Castro in the 1960s
Recommended: Tad Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait (New
York: Morrow, 1986).
April 8 The Cuban Revolution and Socioeconomic Change
Video: Portrait of Castro's Cuba.
Recommended: Carmelo Mesa-Lago (ed.), Revolutionary Change
in Cuba (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971).
April 11 Cuban Communism: The Political Model
Read: Richard R. Fagen, The Transformation of Political
Culture in Cuba
April 13 The Future of Cuba
X. The Nicaraguan Revolution
April 15 The Marines in Nicaragua, 1909-1934
April 18 Sandino, Somoza, and the U.S.
Recommended: John Booth, The End and the Beginning: The
Nicaraguan Revolution (Boulder: Westview, 1982).
April 20 Somocismo and its Collapse
Read: Stephen Kinzer, Blood of Brothers: Life and War in
Nicaragua, Chs. 1-4, pp. 13-55.
Recommended: Robert Pastor, Condemned to Repetition
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
April 22 The Sandinistas Take Power: Political Consequences
Read: Stephen Kinzer, Blood of Brothers, Chs. 5-7, pp. 56-
93.
Recommended: Shirley Christian, Nicaragua: Revolution in
the Family (New York: Random House, 1985).
April 25 The Sandinistas and the Economy
Recommended: Forest D. Colburn, Post-Revolutionary
Nicaragua: State, Class, and the Dilemmas of Agrarian
Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
Recommended: Carlos M. Vilas, The Sandinista Revolution:
National Liberation and Social Transformation in Nicaragua
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986).
April 27 Contras and Sandinistas
Read: Stephen Kinzer, Blood of Brothers, Chs. 8-20, pp. 94-
340.
April 29 Contemporary Nicaragua
Read: Stephen Kinzer, Blood of Brothers, Chs. 21-22, pp.
341-394.
Video: Did They Buy It? Nicaragua's 1990 Elections.
XI. Revolution and Its Alternatives as Models of Development in Latin America
May 2 The Future of Revolution?
May 4 Immigration as a Safety Valve for Revolutionary Societies?
May 6 Economic Integration and Development
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Posted: 21 Jun 1995