Sons of the Mexican Revolution
Sons of the Mexican Revolution
Miguel Alemán and His Generation
The 1946 Mexican presidential election signaled the ascent of a new generation of cosmopolitan civilian government officials, led by the magnetic lawyer Miguel Alemán. Supporters hailed them as modernizing visionaries whose policies laid the foundation for unprecedented economic growth, while critics decried the administration’s toleration of rampant corruption, hostility to organized labor, and indifference to the rural poor. Setting aside these extremes of opinion in favor of a more balanced analysis, Sons of the Mexican Revolution traces the socialization of this ruling generation’s members, from their earliest education through their rise to national prominence. Using a wide array of new archival sources, the author demonstrates that the transformative political decisions made by these men represented both their collective values as a generation and their effort to adapt those values to the realities of the Cold War.
Alexander ably organizes a narrative that maps the road Alemán and his circle of associates traveled.…An informed interpretation on the ways a regime underwent development in midcentury and its importance to the United States.
Sons of the Mexican Revolution presents a fresh account of the generation that came to power in Mexico beginning in the late 1940s. A critical contribution to understanding the contradictions that allowed the PRI to expand its legitimacy just as it was abandoning its most revolutionary policies.'—Susan M. Gauss, author of Made in Mexico: Regions, Nation, and the State in the Rise of Mexican Industrialism, 1920s-1940s
A must-read for the growing number of scholars working on the 1940s and early 1950s. The analysis and archival research will help scholars understand the early Cold War era in Latin America before the Cuban Revolution from a valuable new perspective.'—Ben Fallaw, author of Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico
Ryan M. Alexander is an assistant professor of history at SUNY Plattsburgh.
