Mexican Army Research Articles

Texas Devils: Rangers and Regulars on the Lower Rio Grande, 1846-1861 (review)

20ogBook Reviews265 service would boost the fortunes of their region and pave the way for a southern transcontinental railroad. Elsewhere, in his discussion of Henry Skillman's mail operations in Texas during the early 1850s, Sells says that "Negro soldiers" provided protection for Skillman's mail line (131-132). Buffalo soldiers were not detailed to the Texas frontier until after the Civil War. The above arejust a few of die many errors that diminish diis overview's odierwise commendable assets. Sells, a Colorado native now retired from the financial services industry, clearly has a strong affinity for his subject matter. Readers will find much of the book informative and many of the stories engaging. This work provides an illustrative example, however, of why copyeditors at every publishing house are wordi their weight in gold. Texas Christian UniversityGlen Sample Ely Texas Devils: Rangen and Regulars on tL· Lower Rio Grande, 1846—1861. By Michael L. Collins. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. Pp. 328. Illustrations , notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780806139395, $26.95 cloth.) Anyone wanting to know more about the history of the Texas Rangers and the United States Army and the role they played in the history of the Lower Rio Grande will thoroughly enjoy this refreshing and tantalizing book. In a grand sweeping narrative, Collins ably demonstrates that the Mexican War was only die beginning of a series of tumultuous events on the border. As many as five thousand Texas Mounted Volunteersjoined Gen. Zachary Taylor 's army on die Rio Grande in 1 846. Although Taylor viewed the Rangers as brave and gallant, he saw them as lawless and uncontrollable. Rangers such as Ben McCulloch,John Salmon "Rip" Ford, Walter P. Lane,John Coffee "Jack" Hays, and Samuel Hamilton Walker all became legendary during the war. A veteran of the Mier Expedition and the "black bean" incident, Walker came to be known as the ¦ "Thunderbolt of die Texas Rangers." Killed at the Batde of Humanda at the end of the war, he is best remembered today for the Colt Walker revolver, the largest and most powerful black powder repeating handgun ever made. As an adjutant in the Rangers, Ford came to be known as "R. I .P." after writing "Rest in Peace" at die end of letters of condolence. One of the most interesting Texas volunteers, however, is John Joel Glanton who is referred to as a half-savage Indian fighter with a penchant for scalping die enemy, and who was certain to have been courtmartialed as a war criminal had he not escaped back to Texas. After a murderous, scalp hunting career murdering Indians in northern Mexico, Glanton arrived at the Yuma Crossing on die Colorado River where he seized control of the ferry from the Yuma Indians. In response, the Yumas caught Glanton and his men in a drunken stupor, killed and scalped most of them, and then cremated their bodies in a big bonfire. Largely men of myth with a barbaric code of conduct and notorious for their excessive violence and biting racism, "Los Diablos Téjanos" left deep and lasting scars on die history of the border that remain to this day. In the 1 850s, the lower Rio Grande was also plagued by filibusters lusting for conquest, many of them Knights of the Golden Circle. Some dreamed of creat- 266Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober ing a Republic of the Sierra Madre as an independent buffer state in northern Mexico. Probably die best known filibuster wasJosé María de Jesús Carvajal who rallied several hundred Texas mercenaries into a mob called the "Liberating Army of Northern Mexico." In what was known as the "Merchant's War," Carvajal and his rabble captured Camargo and attacking Matamoros, only to be defeated by a superior force of the Mexican army in street-to-street, house-to-house fighting. Certainly the most serious uprising on the Rio Grande, one that would send hundreds of Texas Rangers and the United States Army scurrying for the Rio Grande, was the Cortina War of 1859-1860. Although Collins did not have available a recent biography of Cortina that corrects many of the errors of previous writings on die subject, his treatment of this...

Reassessing the Location of Vince's Bridge: Critical Prelude to the Battle of San Jacinto

All three armies present at the Battle ofSanJacinto crossed Vince's Bayou. The destruction of the bridge over that small, muddy bayou would delay reinforcements to or retreat by the Mexican army. Map drawn by the author. Reassessing the Location ofVince's Bridge: Critical Prelude to the Battle ofSanJacinto C. David PomeroyJr.* Vince's Bridge, or rather its destruction on April 21, 1836, is an important event in Texas history because it delayed the escape of Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna from the Battle of San Jacinto, resulting in his capture the next and giving the Texans crucial momentum in their war for independence. En route to San Jacinto, the armies of Mexican generals Santa Anna and Martin Perfecto de Cos and Texian General Sam Houston each crossed Vince's Bridge. Santa Anna and Cos had traveled from Thompson's Crossing on the Brazos River to Harrisburg and then on to SanJacinto. Houston's Army approached Harrisburg from the north and crossed Buffalo Bayou before crossing Vince's Bridge. Houston knew that the bridge was "on the only road communicating with the Brazos."1 Nearly twenty-five hundred additional Mexican troops were located at or around Thompson's Crossings.2 Houston ordered Vince's bridge destroyed in anticipation of his attack on Santa Anna on the afternoon of April 2 1 , thus cutting a vital transportation route for reinforcements and preventing escape by either army from the battlefield. The location of Vince's Bridge had generally been accepted as crossing over Vince's Bayou until the article 'Vince's Bridge: Question Mark of the San Jacinto Campaign" by George Charlton appeared in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly in ig65· In that article, Charlton argued * C. David Pomeroy,Jr. is a retired attorney and an avocadonal historian. He authored Pasadena: The Early Years (Pomerosa Press, igg3) and die "Pasadena" and "Allen Ranch" entries in die New Handbook of Texas. Mr. Pomeroy is on the Board of Directors of the San Jacinto Battleground Association, an Honorary Son of die Republic ofTexas, and a member of die Harris County Historical Commission. 1 Eugene C. Barker, The San Jacinto Campaign," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, 4, (Apr., 1901), 262. 2 Gregg J. Dimmick, Sea of Mud: The Retreat of the Mexican Army after San Jacinto, an Archeological Investigation (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2004), 8. Vol. CXII, no. 4 Southwestern Historical QuarterlyApril 2009 412Southwestern Historical QuarterlyApril that Vince's Bridge was over Sims Bayou, not Vince's Bayou.3 With the publication ofThe Texas State Historical Association's The New Handbook of Texas in igg6, Charlton's reasoning gained wide acceptance through Philip L. Fry's article on Vince's Bridge. Despite this official acceptance, a critical inquiry of the historical record regarding which bayou the bridge spanned finds significant flaws in Charlton's research, suggesting that the original assumption that the bridge spanned Vince's Bayou was correct. With "Vince's Bridge," Charlton took a fresh look at the location of the famous bridge from the San Jacinto campaign. He was struck by this comment from Eugene Barker: "[t]he whole episode of Vince's Bridge has received emphasis from the historians which is probably far beyond its importance. The bayou does not exceed three miles in length and could have been headed by either reinforcements or fugitives with the loss of but a few hours at most." Charlton also found noteworthy remarks by Randolph Clark of Texas Christian University who stated, "[t]he bridge never existed except in the minds of the historians." After his review, Charlton dismissed both comments and concluded, The destruction of Vince's Bridge was of great strategic value in connection with the San Jacinto Campaign and was in no way a myth."4 In his article, Charlton homed in on Barker's comment about how small the bayou was and therefore not a significant impediment to advancing or retreating soldiers. Charlton's conclusion was that the bridge was not over Vince's Bayou, but probably over Sims Bayou because Sims was a much larger and longer stream. With a bigger stream, the delays would have been greater and, thus, the importance of the...

Why Following the Rules Matters: The Customs of War and the Case of the Texas War of Independence

It is commonly assumed that the pre-codified, customary law of war had little true influence on the decisions or behavior of combatants in the western world. Evaluating this assumption concerning the custom (or norm) of the giving of quarter to enemy combatants in the Texas War of Independence of 1835--1836, this paper finds a strong and widely accepted norm on this subject already by the early 19th century, which exerted significant influence on the behavior in and the results and consequences of the war. The following of this custom of war by the Texian Army, on the one hand, and its intentional and preplanned breaking by the Mexican army headed by Santa Anna for the supposed military and psychological benefits that would accrue from it, on the other, such as in the cases of the Alamo and Goliad, led to severe internal and external consequences for the Mexican side in the short and long term that greatly contributed to their failure to achieve their objectives and to the Texian success in achieving theirs. These consequences indicate the importance of the norms of warfare, even in the pre-codification era, and the major potential costs involved in their breaking or disregard by decision makers.

San Jacinto Monument Case History

The San Jacinto Monument was built in 1936 to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the victory of the Texan army over the Mexican army. The victory at the battle of San Jacinto followed the defeat at the battle of the Alamo and secured the independence of Texas, as well as several other states along the Mexican border. The monument consists of a 176.5-m-high column resting on a large square mat with each side=37.8m. The mat foundation was designed by Raymond Dawson who chose an average pressure of 223.8kPa under the mat. Dawson had settlement points placed on the mat foundation together with benchmarks away from the monument. The settlement of the monument has been recorded over the last 70years and shows a total settlement to date of 0.329m. The settlement appears to be almost complete. This remarkable case history is used to evaluate current practice of calculating consolidation settlement and a best approach is suggested for such structures. Other issues addressed include the depth of influence, the time rate of settlement, the elastic-modulus approach, and the ultimate bearing capacity.

Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas (review)

Book Reviews Jesús F. de la Teja, Editor PassionateNation: TheEpicHistory ofTexas. ByJames L. Haley. (NewYork: Free Press, 2006. Pp. 654. Acknowledgments, illustrations, selected sources, index. ISBN 0684862913. $35.00, cloth.) This volume is a general history ofTexas bya popularwriter-historian who hopes readers will conclude "it is accurate as far as it goes, and that they enjoyed reading it" (p. xviii). It is presented in five parts, each divided into several short chapters. An opening section that ranges from the early 1500s to 182 1 is devoted primarily to Spanish explorers and settlers. Their interactions with Indians, French explorers and traders, Anglo American frontiersmen; and the Mexican war ofindependence provide the major themes. The second part focuses on the short but complex era from the early colonies of empresarios in the 1820s to the successful revolution against Mexico in 1836. Growing tensions, primarily between Anglo setders and the Mexican government; important leaders; and military events dominate these pages. Following in a third grouping are chapters considering the Republic ofTexas, early statehood, and the Civil War and Reconstruction from 1 836 to 1 874. Political conflicts, diplomacy, military clashes, and struggles over economic and social changes fill these pages. The next section recounts the removal of the Plains Indians and the buffalo; the expansion of ranching; new political patterns; and cultural changes from 1875 to 1900. The twentieth century is encompassed in a final collection of chapters that describe the oil industry and economic changes; political battles and ethnic tensions ; world wars; and social trends. Devoting two-thirds of the pages to the nineteendi century, which is more than in any other recent history ofTexas, seems an overemphasis. Haley, the author ofan award-winning biography ofSam Houston and earlier volumes on Texas history, has taken on a daunting task. Histories of a state or nation often are written by a group ofauthors because the range oftopics and sources is monumental. He has read widely and presents a better-balanced picture than earlier popular histories of Texas regarding the diverse ethnic groups, economic interests, and political viewpoints that have shaped the state. Along with its strengths, this volume has some limitations. It includes wellchosen illustrations, but the volume lacks maps. The decision not to include an opening chapter on Texas Indians that would present their cultures and beliefs 88Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly more fully opens the way for some misunderstanding. A colorful narrative, for example, leads to several mentions of cannibalism that exaggerate its frequency without a clear explanation ofits ritual nature. The economic importance ofslavery is noted, and its significance as a political issue is discussed.Yet the lives ofslaves and their diverse responses to their enslavement receive little attention, although they formed 30 percent of the population in i860. The views of Plains Indians as they were forced onto reservations in the 1870s are more fully explored, however, as are African American efforts to overcome discrimination in post-Reconstruction years. Occasionally uiere are confusing statements; for example a sick Bowie is described as "not a factor thereafter" at the Alamo on p. 145. Yet when the Mexican army arrived at San Antonio, Bowie sent a message to Santa Anna asking about a parley on p. 154. Some overstatements also appear, such as die casualties of the Mexican army at the Alamo. Social life and culture receive attention in each section of the volume, but discussion of social life seems more limited in the twentieth century with little comment on music. For these reasons readers seeking more analyses of some events may also wish to see other recent histories ofTexas. Haley's writing is lively and filled with colorful stories as well as sharply drawn biographical sketches. The tone of his volume is usually informal and sometimes irreverent. Thus Passionate Nation is likely to attract a wide audience. Texas Tech UniversityAlwyn Barr Empires oftheAtlantic World: Britain and Spain inAmerica, 1492-1830. ByJ. H. Elliott. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Pp. 568. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 03001 1431 1. $35.00, clotfi.) Contingency and serendipity are some of the words that first come to mind to describeJohn Elliott's Empires oftheAtlantic World, the latest in a long list of...

AFLPs in Warmblood Sporting Horses: Genetic Correlation with Height at the Withers

The Mexican army produces Warmblood horses for jumping proposes. However, breeding is based on phenotype and stallions are selected stepwise until the end of growth, representing a high care and maintenance cost. In this work using 64 selective primer combinations and AFLP technology we identified specific molecular markers related with height at the withers measurements of Warmblood horses. AFLPs generated 14 specific polymorphic bands, giving a polymorphic ratio of 1.6%. Heterozygosity values were 0.205 and 0.311 for high and short groups, respectively. A 70 pb specific band present only in males, suggest that it could be used as specific marker to determine sex. Three specific bands were selected to determine genetic distances. UPGMA dendogram showed one branch that clearly grouped most of the shorter horses and other branch that grouped all higher horses, with a mixture of four organisms defined within the short group. Experiments currently in progress will allow us to identify other specific markers to make a genetic selection of high performance individuals in early stages of life.

Reprinting the Legend: The Alamo on Film

The battle of the Alamo is a mythic event. One might be forgiven for thinking that it is a mythical event as well. As far as the movies have been concerned, it may as well have been. Back when schoolchildren actually knew anything about history, the stirring and heroic saga of the siege and fall of the Alamo was as well known as Washington's crossing of the Delaware or Teddy Roosevelt's charge up San Juan Hill. To tell the story was to sing a hymn to gleaming, unassailable patriotism and, as Alamo Commander William Barret Travis wrote in his most famous letter, everything dear to the American character. The story that those schoolchildren knew was roughly this: in February 1836 a small but determined band of Americans holed up in the Alamo, a crumbling old mission-turned-fort just outside San Antonio, Texas. Texas was at the time still a part of Mexico, and the cruel and despotic Mexican dictator, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, felt that these Americans were interlopers and revolutionaries. He and his army of thousands lay siege to the Alamo. There were not that many defenders inside the walls of the Alamo, but what they lacked in numbers they made up for in ferocity, bravery, and sterling goodness. Young William Barret Travis, a firebrand lawyer and revolutionary, was in command. His co-commander, Jim Bowie, was too ill to take an active role in the defense of the fort, but his legendary knife and exciting exploits were such that his presence was more important than his actions. But even Bowie's fame paled beside that of a recent arrival-Davy Crockett of Tennessee. Crockett's fellow fighters in the Alamo were inspired by his colorful history as a bear hunter and Indian fighter. He was possibly the greatest living frontiersman, and he had cast his lot with the outnumbered Texans in San Antonio. Santa Anna's cannon pounded the walls of the Alamo for thirteen days. Despite Travis' repeated pleas for assistance, only one group of thirty-two men arrived as reinforcements. Finally, knowing all was lost, Travis gave a stirring speech to his men, telling them that they would surely die if they continued to defend the Alamo. He drew a line in the dirt with his saber and invited every man who would volunteer to stay and fight to the death to cross over the line. Without hesitation, they all crossed over. In the early morning hours of March 6, 1836, the Mexican army attacked. By sunrise the battle was over and every defender of the Alamo lay dead. But each Texan had taken scores of Mexicans with him into death. As Travis had promised in his letter of February 24, Santa Anna's victory was worse than a defeat. A few weeks later a vengeful Texan army under Sam Houston surprised Santa Anna at San Jacinto and defeated him in a battle that lasted a mere fifteen minutes. Santa Anna was captured and, in exchange for his life, gave Texas to Houston. Now the territory was an independent republic thanks to the martyrdom of the heroes of the Alamo. Of course, as in all true stories, the actual event was far more chaotic and complicated than that pristine myth of patriotic sacrifice. Scholars and historians have spent decades uncovering new details, and, every time they do, it seems that the legend of the Alamo is chipped away just a little more. James Bowie was certainly an adventurer-but he was also a slave trader, land swindler, and a sometime partner of the pirate Jean Lafitte. And it appears that the famed Bowie knife was created by James' brother Rezin Bowie. William Barret Travis abandoned his pregnant wife to take up with a mistress and arrived in Texas under suspicion of having murdered a man back in Alabama. And David Crockett, while admittedly a fine hunter, did not have much of a career as a fighter of Indians or anybody else. His most striking achievement in life had been serving two terms in Congress. Nor was the Texas Revolution quite the pure-hearted enterprise of which the storybooks sing. …

Sacrificed at the Alamo: Tragedy and Triumph in the Texas Revolution

Fans of Bruce Winders now have another book to place on their shelves, one that certainly matches, in quality and clarity, other works by the noted historian and curator of the Alamo. Unlike most studies of the famous siege and capture of the Alamo in 1836, Winders spends little time or effort in detailing who exactly was in the fort, where they were when the final assault took place, what their last words must have been, and whether they fell fighting or fleeing. Not that these are not interesting and worthy issues to many, but this author attempts a macro history to explain what brought a small Mexican army and a still smaller Texas one fatefully to San Antonio in February and March of 1836. In doing so, Winders enriches our understanding of the Alamo in dozens of ways.The author first looks at the meaning of republicanism as an ideology, in order to explain how the Anglo-Texans thought war was to be fought. If ever Jacksonian democracy ran amok, it was among these Anglo-Texans attempting to organize a government, pick civilian and military leaders, craft the war’s objectives, and raise an army of military equals. It did not work, which explains much about the strange indecisiveness of those who defended the Alamo. At the same time, the conduct of the Mexican army under Santa Anna sprang from a different historical environment—one that allowed it to move much faster and more decisively than its northern opponents.No nineteenth-century war among those of European descent was complete with-out homage to Napoleon’s shade. Winders finds the Corsican’s influence everywhere in the Texas revolt, with deference to the unique Gulf Coast environment of flat, hot land sloping toward the ocean. Line and column, volley and bayonet, infantry versus cavalry, and traditional tactics for assaulting a fortified stronghold were common subjects in the training of all military officers, and Texas events followed standard military practices hammered out and honed in the long European wars of the first decades of the century.Winders’s macro approach considers many other topics; among the most interesting is that of the Mexican civil war between centralists and federalists. Regardless of what some Texans might have thought, they were very much a part of this. Sacrificed at the Alamo demonstrates that what happened in San Antonio was merely a smaller version of what had happened to defeated federalists in the north a year earlier, in the so-called Rape of Zacatecas. If Mexican military leadership was consistent about anything, it was in its consensus on proper treatment toward defeated rebels. Giving quarter to traitors never seemed to produce the right results.No historical work on the Alamo will escape criticism, and Winders’s book will certainly receive some. His treatment of Santa Anna, for example, still has elements of an older view of the Mexican leader as a bombastic, inept Latin American caudillo. While acknowledging grave and tragic flaws in his character, modern scholarship has moved toward a more charitable view of the Mexican general, one that finds consistency in his political actions, patriotism in his approach to national problems, and decisiveness in pressing a military campaign. For a good and provocative read about the most famous event in Texas War of the 1830s, scholars on both side of the Rio will find Winders’s book well worth the time.

The Indigenous Woman as Victim of Her Culture in Neoliberal Mexico

This article examines the appearance of an indigenous woman victim subject at the intersection of global and national rights discourses in Mexico. In the case of the rape of three indigenous women by the Mexican Army, in World Bank policy recommendations in which culture and gender are cast as 'impediments to development', and in everyday explanations for poverty, culture is cast as harmful to indigenous women. Structural violence and indigenous women's agency are obscured. This victim subject emerges to contest recent destabilizations of the meanings of gender and culture in the wake of indigenous women's militancy in the 1994 Zapatista uprising.

"They Are Our Brothers and Sisters": Why Zapatismo Matters to Independent Labour in Mexico

On January 1, 1994 an indigenous army of some 3000 Mayan peasants emerged from jungles and canyons of southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas and declared war on federal executive and Mexican army. On New Year's Day 1994, an insurgent guerrilla army calling itself Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) made its existence publicly known by seizing several towns in highlands of Chiapas including colonial city of San Cristobal de las Casas and declaring Ya Basta!, Enough!, to 500 years of genocide, colonialism, racism, slavery, and, most recently, neoliberalism embodied by North American Free Trade Agreement. Invoking constitutional right Mexicans to alter their form of government and laying claim to a legitimacy rooted in 500 years of indigenous suffering and resistance as well as legacy of Emiliano Zapata and Mexican Revolution, EZLN called a national uprising to topple corrupt government of President Carlos Salinas and Institutional Revolutionary Party which had ruled Mexico over 70 years.In days that followed New Year's Day uprising, several things would become clear. First, there would be no national uprising to topple government. Second, there would be no military solution sanctioned by national or international public opinion. Third, legitimacy of Zapatista insurgents and their demands would not only find acceptance throughout Mexican nation and even world, it would resonate with demands of others. Fourth and finally, indigenous Zapatistas had managed to catalyze and inspire a broad front of social opposition to longest-ruling dictatorship in contemporary world. One of most significant actors to support Zapatista struggle was independent labour movement in Mexico. In this paper I seek to illuminate bases upon which two movements, one of them and class-oriented, other rural and indigenous,-the labels themselves require unpacking-are able to find common ground and engage in a politics not only of solidarity but of accompaniment A politics of accompaniment is a relationship hulit upon mutual respect and support which reaffirms rather than denies autonomy and difference. The linkages which emerged between Zapatista movement and independent labour movement did not foment revolution in Mexico nor were they always effective or successful in terms of promoting interests of each of these movements. What makes these linkages significant, however; is fact that they occurred in absence of pre-existing links, direct channels of communication, or organizational infrastructure, and in face of a revolutionary history troubled by inability of urban workers and peasantry to articulate their struggles as a common one. In this paper, I examine how this intersection emerged, grounds that make it possible, and significance of such an intersection both Zapatirtas and independent unionism in Mexico. This is also an attempt to explore political relationships and possibilities and to begin to imagine new relationships and ways of envisioning and practising politics that may allow realization of new political spaces and practices.This paper is not an attempt to engage once in well-worn debate of class versus identity politics either as organizational and mobilizing principles or as analytical frameworks. As both Marc Edelman (2001) and Charles Hale (1997) note, not only has this debate become increasingly dated, it has also become decreasingly useful both in terms of evaluating recent scholarship as well as analyzing social themselves. In this respect, this paper responds to Kale's call for intellectuals to develop methods and analytical categories that engender constructive engagement with multiple inequalities that organize worlds we hve in and study (1997:584). Some recent work by social movement scholars has sought to materialize spirit inspiring Male's call, stressing a multilayered view of social movements capable of highlighting the interplay between collective identities, political opportunities, and culture (Whittier 2002:289) and even invoking need a more dialogic analysis of cultures of power and contention, ways in which they are mutually constitutive of each other and consequences this implies infusion of meaning into collective action (Steinberg 2002:224). …

Evidence-based medicine teaching in the Mexican army medical school

Training of medical students must include the skills necessary to use advances in scientific research. Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has been incorporated in undergraduate programs in several countries, a process that has not been well studied in developing countries’ medical schools. An EBM course was incorporated into the curriculum of the Mexican Army Medical School. In the first year of its implementation it was given to half the fifth- and sixth-year groups. At the end of the semester, a previously validated questionnaire designed to evaluate the effectiveness of EBM teaching was administered. In total, 67 students took the course and 64 did not. A significant increase in the self-assessment of critical appraisal skills and the self-reported use of the Cochrane Library were found. There was a significant increase in the attitudes score, 22.9 ± 5.9 (mean ± SD) in the non-EBM group vs. 28.8 ± 3.2 in the EBM group (p < 0.001), and a trend towards higher scores in the knowledge domain, 1.89 ± 3.3 in the non-EBM group vs. 2.56 ± 3.6 in the EBM group (p > 0.05). EBM concepts can be taught in a developing country medical school, with a short-term gain in attitude and probably in knowledge.

An Interview with Montserrat Fontes

Montserrat Fontes is a novelist, screenwriter, journalist, and teacher who was born in Laredo, Texas. When she was nine years old, she moved to Los Angeles to live with her maternal grandmother. She received her B.A. and an M.A. in Comparative Literature with emphasis on Russian literature from California State, Los Angeles. Fontes is the author of two novels. The first, entitled First Confession (1991), focuses on two children's lives as they grow up on the U.S./Mexican border; the second, Dreams of the Centaur (1996), won the American Book Award for Best Novel in 1996 and eloquently captures the Yaqui Indians' resistance against the Diaz regime. Fontes currently teaches English and Journalism at a Los Angeles High School, where she encounters students who speak almost one hundred different languages. I interviewed Fontes in January 1999 during her third trip back to Texas since she moved from Laredo in 1950. EMJ: I'd like to begin with some questions about your background, your education. Can you talk about when and how you started writing? MF: Sure, I started as a child. I always wanted to write songs because I was growing up at a time when Mexican singers were really taking off, Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, and we had maids that also sang. That was a very clear form of expressing emotions beautifully, so I thought, and they are. mother was always a poet as well as a poetry reader, and she would teach me how songs are poems. So when I wasn't achieving in school, she said, write a poem before you can come in the house ... EMJ: That's great advice. MF: ... and some people said, that's so sadistic. It really wasn't. I didn't feel unsure of myself, and I always knew that she was going accept anything as long as it was written because I did not like to literally write on a piece of paper. I didn't know that she was keeping my stuff; it's in English and Spanish, and so she mailed my stuff in to a poetry contest when I was in fifth grade, and that was when I was first published. I remember holding a book, and it had my poem called My Seashell, and it had something like an a-a-b-b-c-c rhyme scheme, but most importantly it was written in English. Back then I would just write mainly to myself. But when I had a near-death experience on the Rocky Mountains on the western slopes, and I was literally hanging from a 12,000 foot cliff, I said to myself, I haven't done it. I haven't written the books that I wanted to write. I had done some pseudonymous writing, and I had sold some ideas for screenplays, but I'm talking about the stuff that you pull out of your kischkas, out of your inner self; I hadn't gotten around to doing it. So I came back that summer, determined to do that. So basically I started writing that summer, in 1980, and my education had nothing to do with it. It was a matter of urgency. I had to tell the story of Victor in First Confession. I had to tell the story of the great love a mother can have for her son in Dreams of the Centaur, and now I have to tell the story of how a woman refuses to be defeated, which is the story of my grandmother, and as I said this morning, she's the parent that I choose to claim. You know, there are my biological parents, and I love them dearly, but the person who's my parent is my maternal grandmother. EMJ: You mentioned earlier that you're working on a so the story of the woman who refuses to be defeated is the third part of the trilogy? MF: Cormac McCarthy gave some really good advice; he said that when you say the word trilogy, you start with the last book first. So that way, if you don't finish it, you got it finished. So I knew I wanted to start with First Confession. That was the last part, and it ends in 1968 on purpose because that was the summer of the Mexican Olympics when the Mexican army turned itself lose on the Mexican students who were rebelling against the facade of Mexico, and all the bodies were burnt and only sixty reported dead, but hundreds of people disappeared. …

The Mexican Army as Cartel

This article deals with one of the least examined aspects of smuggling along the U.S./Mexico border: the role of the Mexican army as a major player in the traffic of drugs into the United States. It is hoped that this study will help to eliminate a lacuna in our understanding of organized criminal activity south of the border. It will do this by examining the chaotic conditions obtaining along the Mexican side of the border due to the breakup of the Matamoros cartel and the consequent functional necessity of the Mexican Army's stepping in to assure safe and unimpeded drug shipments into the United States. In addition, it will be demonstrated that the antidrug role of the military in combating the drug trade is a necessary adjunct to its role as a major trafficker in drugs. Finally, it will be argued that the administration's policy of ignoring Mexican military corruption as well as its incursions into U.S. territory is counterproductive in terms of effectively curtailing the drug trade, that it lends itself to the militarization of Mexican society, and that ultimately it threatens harmonious international relations with Mexico by encouraging an increasingly aggressive military presence along the U.S. border.

Your Mission, If You Accept It: “Texan” Culture and the Performance of the Alamo

On 21 April 1836, members of the Texian army under the leadership of General Sam Houston overwhelmed and routed the pursuing forces of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, President of Mexico, in a bloody, twenty-minute conflict on the plain of San Jacinto. The Texian army and terrified settlers, who had heard that Santa Anna promised death to all Americans still living in Texas, had been retreating towards the Sabine River and the relative safety of the United States, when they suddenly turned and attacked. The Mexican army, camping on an open plain surrounded by three rivers and in the middle of siesta, were taken completely by surprise. As Houston's forces stormed the camp, shouts went up from the men—the battle cry of retribution: “Remember the Alamo!! Remember Goliad!”

Militarism and Ethnicity in the Sierra de Puebla, Mexico

Perhaps the most enduring image of the Zapatista uprising, which began in Chiapas on 1 January 1994, is the masked figure of Subcomandante Marcos. Running a close second, however, would be the sight of this makeshift army filing past delegates at the opening of the Conventión Nacional Democrática in the Lancandona later the same year. Men, women and youths with their wooden rifles for weapons, dignity and silent determination as ammunition. They were not the first, and I dare say will not be the last, indigenous movement in Mexico to be driven to violence in defense of their rights. The state's firm response to the uprising was predictable and illustrates the most common reaction to the specter of an Indian with a gun in his hand. Ironically, the Mexican army has carried out such repression with a rank and file comprised largely of youths from indigenous backgrounds. These young men see enlistment as one of the few escapes from the rural poverty that did much to foster the Zapatista rebellion in the first place. Thus, an armed Indianper seis not a problem; it is merely when this person acts autonomously that the trouble begins.

The Mexican Army, 1822-1852. By William A. DePaloJr. , (College Station: Texas A &amp; M University Press, 1997, Pp. 288. No Price.)

The Mexican Army, 1822-1852. By William A. DePaloJr. , (College Station: Texas A &amp; M University Press, 1997, Pp. 288. No Price.)

The Zapatistas, Radical Democratic Citizenship, and Women's Struggles

The Zapatista uprising in Chiapas has presented a challenge for theories of democracy and citizenship. Although the demands of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation are framed in terms of democratization, we should not assume that these demands can be contained within the individualist parameters of liberal political philosophy. I use social movement theory and discourse analysis to discuss the novelty and political significance of the Zapatista rebellion, giving particular attention to indigenous women within the movement and their gender-based claims. In July 1996 the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) held a week-long conference at five sites in the Central Highlands and Lacandon forest regions of Chiapas in southeastern Mexico. Delegates from more than 40 countries attended the meeting, entitled the Encounter against Neoliberalism and for Humanity. For 6 days more than 3,000 thousand Zapatista sympathizers from as far away as Japan, France, Australia, and Argentina discussed the impact of capitalist restructuring and strategies of resistance in their countries. The goal was simply to engage in dialogue and build understanding Social Politics Summer 1998 © 1998 Oxford University Press Zapatistas and Women's Struggles • 159 between different perspectives. It was united by the theme of neoliberalism and the future of humanity, but it did not offer any single theory or political ideology under which all resistance could be subsumed. Indeed, most delegates insisted on the need to avoid creating another International. The collapse of communism was understood less as the end of history and more as the opportunity to create a new political imaginary that could articulate the plurality of popular struggles through a decentralized and democratic movement for global change. Rejecting the idea of predetermined processes of human emancipation, the encounter instead identified itself as the international of hope. Its practice would be governed by solidarity, communication and cooperation in furthering resistance to neoliberalism. Rather than proposing a common set of actions, each delegation was free to adopt the tactics and strategies that corresponded most to their historical and geopolitical circumstances. This encounter therefore raised several issues that help us link the particular experience of Chiapas to global problems of exclusion, theories of citizenship, and women's struggles. National borders have certainly been transcended by the Zapatistas, despite the fact that they are territorially restricted by more than 30,000 troops of the Mexican army. Only three Zapatistas have been able to set foot outside Chiapas since the 1 January 1994 uprising. The first was Comandanta Ramona, a young indigenous woman who attended a national congress of indigenous peoples in Mexico City in October 1996. A year later, two other Zapatistas traveled to Spain to participate in the Second Intercontinental Encounter For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism. The Zapatistas have revealed in a dramatic way that if traditional citizenship operates spatially, global citizenship operates temporally, escaping statist identities and embarking on a journey to a not yet existent global political community (Falk 1994). These citizen pilgrims inevitably face the backlash of those political and social forces that reassert territoriality as the basis for one's identity, as witnessed in the Mexican case by the government's attempt to delegitimize the Zapatistas by treating them as a purely local expression of civil disorder. However, the global appeal of the Zapatistas has now been firmly established, aided in part by cyberspace but more importantly by the novelty and inclusiveness of their political discourse. The fact that the intercontinental encounter was affectionately dubbed the intergaIdctica by organizers and participants only served to underline the temporal and global aspects of citizenship, rather than the territorial and statist traditions of modern social theory. Such an inclusive project raises once more the question of how women's struggles for equality are to be articulated with other social

The End of the 1824 Chumash Revolt in Alta California: Father Vicente Sarría’s Account

The 1824 Chumash uprising against three Franciscan missions in the central section of the California chain—Santa Inés, La Purísima Concepción, and Santa Bárbara—was the largest organized revolt in the history of the Alta California missions. The Chumash burned most of the Santa Inés mission complex. At La Purísima, they drove out the mission guard and one of the two priests in residence. The mission was not forcibly retaken by the Mexican army for almost a month. At Santa Bárbara, the Chumash disarmed the soldiers stationed at the mission and sent them back to the presidio. After an inconclusive battle against troops who were sent out against them from the presidio, most of the rebels retired to the interior, where they set up their own community. The revolt was finally brought to an end when a military expedition led by Pablo de la Portilla negotiated the return of this group to the Santa Bárbara Mission. The role of the Prefect of the Missions, Father Vicente í, in bringing the revolt to an end by persuading this group to return to the Santa Bárbara Mission has long been recognized. Antonio María Osio, most likely relying on what he had been told by his brother-in-law, Governor Luis Argüello, stated in 1851, “They [the Chumash] had decided not to return to the missions and expressed the low regard in which they generally held the inhabitants of California. Yet, at the same time, they revered Reverend Father Vicente í for his many virtues. Only he had the necessary power of persuasion to calm the Indians’ fears.” In 1885, as he described the negotiations between the Mexican military and the Chumash, Theodore S. Hittell wrote, “Communications were opened and a conference held; the two missionaries, Father President Vicente í and Father Antonio Ripoll of Santa Bárbara, acted as negotiators; and the result was that the Indians submitted unconditionally; were pardoned, and the fugitive neophytes marched back to their respective missions.” We offer here a translation of a letter which í wrote to the Bishop of Sonora, Bernardo Martínez Ocejo, a few months after these events. The document provides an excellent first-hand account of the conclusion of the revolt. It also offers a close view of the growing fear and anxiety the missionaries were experiencing in the early years of Mexican independence. As a context for the letter, let us briefly summarize the Chumash revolt.

The student health center as multicultural catalyst.

Stanford's student health center participated with underrepresented students in observing Black Liberation Month; Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Awareness Days; and Cinco de Mayo, the commemoration of a Mexican Army defeat of the French in 1862. For minority students on a campus where a majority of the students and faculty are White, the health center's involvement in these events was viewed as an affirmation and acceptance of worth of these diverse student groups. The outreach effort exposed health center caregivers to the cultures of the three groups when staff members attended the special activities, interacted with the celebrants, and became more sensitized to their needs.

A Rich Land, a Poor People: Politics and Society in Modern Chiapas.

Chiapas, a state in southern Mexico, burst into international news in January 1994. Several thousand insurgents, given a voice in the communiques of Subcomandante Marcos, took control of the capital and other key towns and held the Mexican army and government at bay for weeks. Proclaiming themselves the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, they captured both land and headlines. Worldwide, people wanted to know the answer to one question: why had revolutionaries taken over a Mexican state? No other study of Chiapas answers that question as thoroughly as does this book. The uprising and government's armed occupation of the state are but the latest violent episodes in a region that is now and has always been a rich land worked by poor people. By studying the impoverishment of the laboring class in Chiapas, Benjamin addresses how the Chiapan elite survived the Revolution of 1910 and remain in control of the state's development and destiny. More clearly than anyone else, Benjamin shows in his new final chapter that the contemporary agrarian uprising is the legacy of Chiapan underdevelopment.