State, Dependency, and Nationalism: Revolutionary Mexico, 1924–1928

Abstract

The domestic and global forces that shaped Mexico's revolutionary struggle of 1910–17 continued to shape its state-building conflicts during the 1920s.Recent revisionist historiography underscores this point by emphasizing the bitter irony of the Mexican revolution. This literature contends that, despite the revolution's populist and nationalist aura, by the late 1920s it had done little more than subordinate the masses to an even more centralized state and deepen Mexico's dependence on United States governmental and capital interests. The revisionists argue, then, that the revolution had basically reinforced the country's old regime legacies and created a more institutionalized version of the Porfiriato's authoritarian state.