Alan Knight, Frank Tannenbaum and the Mexican Revolution

8/20/2019 Alan Knight, Frank Tannenbaum and the Mexican Revolution

1/21

Frank Tannenbaum and the Mexican Revolution

Alan Knight St. Antony’s College, Oxford University

Abstract

This article examines Frank Tannenbaum’s engagement with Mexico in the crucial years

following the Revolution of 1910– 1920 and his first visit to the country in 1922. Invited––

and feted––by the government and its powerful labor allies, Tannenbaum soon expanded

his initial interest in organized labor and produced a stream of work dealing with trade

unions, peasants, Indians, politics, and education––work that described and often

justified the social program of the Revolution, and that, rather surprisingly, continued

long after the Revolution had lost its radical credentials in the 1940s. Tannenbaum’s

vision of Mexico was culturalist, even essentialist; more Veblenian than Marxist; at

times downright folkloric. But he also captured important aspects of the process

he witnessed: local and regional variations, the unquantifiable socio-psychological

consequences of revolution, and the prevailing concern for order and stability. In sum,

Tannenbaum helped establish the orthodox––agrarian, patriotic, and populist––vision

of the Revolution for which he has been roundly, if sometimes excessively, criticized by

recent “revisionist” historians; yet his culturalist approach, with its lapses into

essentialism, oddly prefigures the “new cultural history” that many of these same

historians espouse.

As a young International Workers of the World (IWW) activist with a police

record, Frank Tannenbaum first traveled to Mexico in 1922, at a time when

the fires of the Mexican Revolution, ignited in 1910, were still smoldering.1

Like many American radicals, he went to Mexico to witness the birth of a

new revolutionary state and society;2 in particular, he went to observe and

assist the infant Mexican labor movement, which was already playing a major

role in the consolidation of the new revolutionary state.3 Thus, he came

armed with letters of introduction to the dominant Mexican labor confedera-

tion, the Confederació n Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM), and he soonestablished good relations with its powerful leader, Luis Morones, and the

Interior (Gobernació n) Minister, Plutarco Elı́ as Calles, who, following the elec-

tion of 1924, became “the first labour president of the American Continent.”4

Indeed, Tannenbaum soon succumbed to the aphrodisiac of power, preening

himself on his personal access to top Mexican officials (who were adept at the

seduction of gringo intellectuals) and his role as a mediator between the

United States and Mexico at a time when bilateral relations were severely

strained.5 But his mediation achieved scant results,6 and his labor research

soon fizzled out. He wrote a couple of “short articles” for the Americanreview Survey,7 but it rapidly became clear that his chief interests lay elsewhere.

When he began doctoral research at the Brookings Graduate School in 1924 he


2/21

in 1929, was entitled “The Mexican Agrarian Revolution.”8 Thus,

Tannenbaum’s contribution to what might be loosely called “Mexican revolu-

tionary studies” largely concerns peasants, Indians, and the countryside––not

organized labor.9

Before considering that important but contentious contribution, it might be

worth saying a word about his disenchantment with organized labor. This com-

bined both political and intellectual aspects. Like that other Central European

radical migrant, B. Traven (Ret Marut), Tannenbaum was initially seized with

enthusiasm for the Mexican labor movement and its radical potential.10 Here

was a working-class movement that boasted radical aspirations, an anarchist

lineage, and––most unusual for the 1920s––access to power. Over time,

however, the anarchist tendencies faded and power engendered a corrupt cor-

poratism; by the early 1930s (when, in fact, the Mexican labor movement wasin the midst of a major leftward realignment), Tannenbaum ruefully concluded

that “for the moment the labor movement in Mexico and even [ sic] the leader-

ship has declined, as so often everything seems to decline in Mexico, sacrificed to

political ends and personal fortune.”11 His subsequent writings on labor are

brief and somewhat formalistic; they stress (and perhaps exaggerate) the nation-

alist and anti-imperialistic role of labor; they rehearse labor laws and regulations

with little regard for the great gap that separated both from practical reality;12

and, in contrast to some of his agrarian writings, they rarely engage with the par-

ticularities of the matter––in other words, individual workers, factories, tradeunions, and working-class communities are scarcely mentioned.13

Tannenbaum’s work––which, of course, covered a huge range of topics

(land, labor, education, penal reform, race, and slavery)––often reflected his

current practical interests.14 Welcomed to Mexico by labor activists, he was

soon drawn into the different realms of popular education, land reform, and

Indian community life.15 These, it seems, also appealed to his intellectual

bent. As Michael Merrill argues, Tannenbaum’s approach was more

“Veblenian” than “Marxian”:16 he focused on culture rather than class, lament-

ing the dehumanizing effects of a soulless industrial society, stressing (in hiswork on slavery) the importance of human dignity and cultural (e.g., religious)

norms. Like other progressive American Mexico-watchers, such as Stuart

Chase,17 he valued what he saw as Mexico’s gemeinschaftlich cultural values,

rooted in small “traditional” rural (especially Indian) communities and threa-

tened by the onward march of urbanism and industrialism. Like Robert

Redfield,18 he focused on “folk” society, which he saw as both dominant and

perennially enduring in Mexico.19 In contrast, labor was a modern minority,

whose early promise of popular emancipation had flattered to deceive. Rural

Mexico was therefore both more important and more appealing. Hence, mostof Tannenbaum’s Mexican work adopted a rural, peasant, and Indian slant.

Frank Tannenbaum and the Mexican Revolution 135


3/21

popular, peasant, and even Indian agency. He has also become the butt of “revi-

sionist” critiques, which, to varying degrees, reject this view, stressing instead the

urban, elitist, top-down, careerist, middle-class, perhaps “bourgeois” character

of the Mexican Revolution.20

To identify Tannenbaum in these terms is not contentious; but to broach,

yet again, the thorny historiographical debates that surround the Revolution

and its sundry interpretations (“populist,” “revisionist,” “postpopulist,” and

“postrevisionist”) would be otiose and, in this forum, inappropriate.21 I will

therefore address the Tannenbaumian view of the Revolution with limited refer-

ence to those debates. It is, however, worth making a point of clarification at the

outset. Tannenbaum can be defended against “revisionist” critics on two counts:

first, on the grounds that his view of the Revolution is historically correct; and

second, on the grounds that critiques of his view are distorted (i.e., that criticsattribute to him things he did not say). While the first is more important, the

second also deserves attention. For, in some cases, the “Tannenbaumian” or

“traditional” view is presented in distorted––above all simplified––form. In

this article, therefore, I will address Tannenbaum’s interpretation in order

partly to correct such distortions, partly to understand what that interpretation

was about, and partly––though in fact rather less––to match that interpretation

with historical “reality,” as presented in the plethora of “revolutionary” studies

published in recent years.

The Tannenbaumian view can be culled from three principal sources: TheMexican Agrarian Revolution, Mexico: Peace by Revolution, and Mexico: The

Struggle for Peace and Bread.22 The first, published in 1929, is the most detailed,

footnoted, empirical, and (in places) tedious.23 The second (1933) and third

(1950) are much more interpretative, assertive, and discursive (at times ram-

bling and repetitive). However, the three hang together pretty well. For

better or worse, there is no great inconsistency, no sign of Tannenbaum

having radically changed his opinions during his “Mexican period” (i.e.,

during the 1920s and early 1930s).24 Thus, it is reasonable to take these three

sources as representing the Tannenbaumian view of the Revolution.Revisionist (and traditional) commentaries are correct to see Tannenbaum

as arguing for the popular, rural, agrarian, and spontaneous character of the

Revolution, in which respect he anticipates later theories of rural insurrection

and “peasant war.”25 The Revolution rises amid the anonymous masses and

the obscure, scattered rural communities, particularly the free villages of the

Mesa Central, Mexico’s Central Plateau.26 It is a creature of the countryside,

not the cities; Mexico City, in Tannenbaum’s view, is like William Cobbett’s

Great Wen, a sink of conservatism and opportunism, “the great enemy of the

Mexican Revolution.”27 Indeed, this stark urban-rural dualism––again redolentof Redfield and derivative of the North American Jeffersonian and populist

136 ILWCH , 77, Spring 2010


4/21

of socioeconomic class. The fundamental divide is between city and countryside

and, he seems to suggest, never the twain shall meet: “this is the great mark of

Latin American culture––the city belongs to one culture and the rest of the land

to another.”30 Tannenbaum’s Mexico thus resembles J.S. Furnivall’s “pluralist”colonial societies, sundered by a fundamental cultural and ethnic cleavage.31 As

a result, the rough-edged homespun revolutionaries who make it to the top––

and thus to the “center”––are likely to experience either alienation or cooption.

The young campesino caudillos of the 1910s, skinny and unshaven, become––

once they have “succumbed to the city”––the bloated, pomaded, gold-braided

generals of the 1920s.32 Womack’s image of Zapata in Mexico City––suspicious,

footloose, eager to return to his bucolic home––offers a neat example of such

unsullied popular parochialism (c. 1915); Guzmá n’s La sombra del caudillo, in

contrast, depicts the seduction and opportunism of the city a decade later.33

Similarly, Tannenbaum’s revolutionary intellectuals are a dubious lot: ambitious,

opportunistic, distinctly inorganic. Most intellectuals spurned the Revolution;

those who tagged along did so for the worst motives.34

Without––as I have said––wishing to enter into grand questions of

interpretation, I would suggest that this view has a good deal to commend it.

It offers a convincing encapsulation of important elements of the Revolution,

particularly in its early (1910– 1920) insurgent form. But, in important respects,

Tannenbaum goes too far. First, he appropriates some odd candidates for

popular, peasant, and indigenous status. In his propensity to see Indians every-where––generalizing that “small groups of Indians under anonymous leaders

were the Revolution”35––he practically turns Presidents Alvaro Obregó n and

Plutarco Calles––go-ahead, self-made mestizo men of the North––into rustic

Indians. The Sonoran duumvirate join a roster of revolutionary leaders, “all

unknown, unheralded, children of peasants, of Indians, barefooted in their child-

hood, more or less illiterate.”36 Obregó n, the great general of the Revolution, is

termed a “peasant ( sic) rancher.”37 Certainly he was a quintessential populist (in

the simple sense of that contentious term). But he was no peasant and he was far

from parochial; on the contrary, his combined military and political geniusdepended on an open mind (and an eidetic memory), on a keen awareness of

both global trends and US business opportunities, and on a shrewd grasp of

political potential and innovation––exemplified by his recruitment of the Red

Battalions in 1915 and his alliance with the CROM in 1919–1920.38 Calles,

the archnationalist and state-builder of the Revolution, was even more clearly

the antithesis of popular parochialism.

In casting his “popular/parochial/Indian” net thus widely and indiscrimi-

nately, Tannenbaum not only trawls in some anomalous individuals, but tends

to ensnare himself in an essentialist fallacy. (As I shall note in conclusion, “cul-turalist” interpretations seem particularly prone to essentialism.) “The people,”



5/21

Mexico’s Indians doggedly resist penetration and assimilation.40 But if they are

immovable objects,41 they have little of the unstoppable force about them.

Indeed, they are essentially inert, the objects rather than the subjects of

history, certainly until 1910.42 Indian and peasant communities, according toTannenbaum, have kept Catholicism at bay, have failed to internalize norms

of private property, and have refused to look beyond the narrow confines of

their tight, inert, egalitarian communities. “The little communities know

nothing of the nation”; “the Mexican Indian is parochial. His universe is exceed-

ingly limited”; in the face of the liberal desamortizació n (the disentailment of

corporate property), “the individual Indian proved himself a helpless child.”43

These sweeping assertions need to be clarified, qualified, and at times

roundly rejected. Recent debates about the “closed corporate peasant commu-

nity,” which have agitated both history and anthropology, are, in some senses,glosses on Tannenbaum’s image of suspicious, introverted, egalitarian commu-

nities; and the tendency has been to play down community “closedness.”44

Similarly, recent scholarship has stressed the importance of Indian and

peasant “agency” (that is, the capacity of “subaltern” groups to think, act,

mobilize, and resist in ways that can be both autonomous and effective). In par-

ticular, those groups, for all their alleged parochialism, have proved receptive to

new ideas concerning the nation and citizenship and, throughout the nineteenth

century, marched beneath national banners in pursuit of political goals.45 While

the scale and character of village mobilization is, in any given context, open todebate,46 it seems clear that Tannenbaum went way too far in denying “subal-

terns” both agency and ideas and that his broad-brush depictions of Indian/

campesino culture sometimes verge on essentialist caricature––as do his coun-

terimages of restless, rootless, individualist mestizos.47

Tannenbaum also incurs an obvious contradiction: for if the Indians and

campesinos were so inert, reactive, and isolated, how did they become the

autonomous shock troops of revolution after 1910? Take, for example, his

emphasis on the parochialism of the common people, the collective actor that,

for him, stands center stage during the Revolution. Tannenbaum’s perspectiveis strongly colored by his pervasive indigenismo––his preoccupation with

Indian “racial” and cultural characteristics. He is, no doubt, correct to stress

the local concerns of many peasant––perhaps particularly Indian––communities.

But, like proponents of the “closed-corporate-community” thesis, Tannenbaum

tends to see communal introversion as a static cultural “given,” directly anti-

thetical to national awareness and loyalty. I would suggest, however, that intro-

version was the result of a historical dynamic––to the extent that it existed it had

to be worked at, constructed, and sustained––and, furthermore, that the local/

national antithesis is exaggerated and potentially misleading, certainly for theRevolution and probably for the nineteenth century too.48



6/21

of Zapata again.49 Francisco Villa, too, was capable of expressing a bluff macho

Mexican patriotism. Even some Indian groups combined strong local attach-

ments with proclaimed national allegiances.50 No doubt there were groups––

particularly Indian groups in southern Mexico––whose grasp of and allegianceto the Mexican nation were more tenuous. Tannenbaum is especially fond of

citing the Chamula and Lacandones of Chiapas.51 However, it would be risky

to generalize on the basis of these cases.

I would argue that the correct antithesis is not so much that of parochialism

versus patriotism but of parochialism (or, in Luis Gonzá lez’s useful phrase,

matriotismo)52 versus state-building. For what the “parochials” chiefly resented

and rebuffed was not the patria per se, but the centralized nation-state built by

Dı́ az and––after a period of dissolution––rebuilt, along different lines, by the

revolutionary victors, the Constitutionalists, and Sonorans, after 1917.53

Furthermore, these parochial sentiments were not the monopoly of illiterate

Indian peasants: There were also––again, especially in the South––elites such

as the Yucateco plantocracy or the mapache (“raccoon”) rebels of Chiapas,

for whom local––and class––self-interest prevailed over sentiments of national-

ity and who strenuously resisted centralized state-building.

Finally, an excessive insistence on popular parochialism overlooks the

dynamic impact of the Revolution itself––something that Tannenbaum himself

rightly stressed. Communities that entered the revolutionary fray as dogged

parochials in 1910 or 1913 were hardly likely to emerge mentally untouched adecade later.54 On the contrary, the Revolution––and I refer particularly to

the Revolution as a chaotic, unplanned, often traumatic process, not the

Revolution as a conscious state-building project––forced “parochials” to

become “patriots” in the simple sense of requiring them to move, fight, ally,

propagandize, and politick. This, too, was something Tannenbaum stressed.

Like many contemporary observers––and unlike some recent analysts who

stress the planned, purposive goals of the Revolution––Tannenbaum favored

natural metaphors of revolution. For him, as for Mexican intellectuals like

Mariano Azuela, Manuel Gamio, and Antonio Dı́ az Soto y Gama, theRevolution was like a force of nature: for Azuela, a hurricane; for Gamio, a tur-

bulent sea; for Soto y Gama, an earthquake.55 Tannenbaum, with his penchant

for hydraulic metaphors, saw the revolution as a “sea in motion,” or––in a mem-

orable and apt metaphor––as a series of waves that rose and fell, sometimes

surging forward, sometimes lapsing into calm.56 Groups and individuals, react-

ing to the arbitrary buffeting of such impersonal forces, necessarily shifted

their horizons and priorities. The (convincing) notion of a demanding and

dynamic revolution, compelling change and reaction, sits uneasily alongside

Tannenbaum’s (unconvincing) depiction of static popular communities, display-ing timeless collective characteristics.



7/21

taciturnity. This, in turn, perhaps derived from his old anarchist leanings, which

led him to exalt and glorify the small, self-governing, gemeinschaftlich local com-

munity. But it was also strongly reinforced by his contact with Mexican edu-

cationalists in the 1920s. While displaying an idealistic concern for Indian andpeasant welfare, they were also determined to educate and assimilate and

were shocked by the popular resistance and recalcitrance that they often

encountered. Tannenbaum’s first––and most “scientific”––study is larded with

original citations culled from educational sources, which regularly lament the

Indians’ “uncultivated and apathetic” psyche, their “profound hatred of the

mestizo,” and their evaluation of education “as a means to learn evil.”57 And

this powerful stereotype, which runs through Mexican official thinking in the

period, recurs in Tannenbaum’s later work: “[T]he Indian,” he generalizes,

“has been at the mercy of the white master so long, he has been exploited solong, that . . . [he] has lost much of his self-respect, much of his confidence,

much of his sense of worth . . . so he has retreated into apathy, listlessness,

drunkenness, fear, humility, subjection [and] silence.”58

My argument is not that Tannenbaum was wrong to stress local, decentra-

lized initiatives. On the contrary, one argument on which virtually everyone––

traditionalist, revisionist, neotraditionalist, postrevisionist––would agree is

that the “Revolution” comprised “many revolutions” and that any valid analysis

must take into account these local and regional variations. Of this, Tannenbaum

was precociously aware. Indeed, it is illogical for him to be criticized for assum-ing a monolithic Revolution when he stressed the enduring significance of local

“particularisms,” amply recognized the great variety of Mexican rural society in

regard not only to villages but also haciendas, and depicted the Revolution itself

not as a monolith but a mosaic. “It has not been a national revolution in the

sense that all of the country participated in the same movement and at the

same time. It has been local, regional, sometimes almost by counties.”59

In part, I have suggested that Tannenbaum thought the way he did because

of his concern for Indian Mexico. Indeed, perhaps the most striking aspect of his

analysis is the stress he places upon race and ethnicity––the two being, withTannenbaum as with many contemporary observers, hopelessly muddled up.60

One consequence is that the number of “Indians”––and the cultural weight of

“Indianness”––are consistently exaggerated.61 Thus, I repeat, Tannenbaum

does not write like an old-style Marxist. No Marxist, old-style or new, could

assert that “the automobile has been more revolutionary in its consequences

than Marx, Lenin and Stalin combined.”62 Tannenbaum is also briskly impatient

with “isms” of any kind; he does not engage in standard Marxist––or indeed any

other––patter.63 Class, furthermore, is not the touchstone of Tannenbaumian

analysis (hence, his later disagreement with Eric Williams over the characterand significance of Caribbean slavery).64 True, he talks a good deal about



8/21

a discovery by the Mexican people of their own dignity”; Rivera’s murals are

“the most striking single example of the profound change taking place in the

spiritual life of Mexico.”65 Again, this––Veblenian?––approach may reflect

something of the old anarchist who rejected Marxist economic determinism infavor of a more voluntaristic commitment to human agency and creativity.

But it also reflects an antipositivist impatience with desiccated calibration.

Despite scattering a good many statistics throughout his work, Tannenbaum

anticipates today’s cultural historians in his scorn for knee-jerk

number-crunching:

All that relates to the conceptual universe men live in––their values, their ethical

biases, their notions of right and wrong, their artistic sense, their ideas of the good

life, their . . .

special sense of design, beauty and art––all this is beyond the skill of the statistician and beyond wholesale enumeration. A wide area of human compe-

tencies, possessions and beliefs lies beyond the easy reach of the sociologist and

economist.66

Yet it should also be noted that Tannenbaum’s “cultural” perspective on

the Revolution is quite partial. He has a lot to say about Indians, ethnicity,

nationalism, and nation-building.67 But Catholicism and anticlericalism are sur-

prisingly neglected. The Church figures prominently in his sketch––or

sketches––of colonial society. It forms an integral part of the damnosa haereditasof the colony, which the Revolution is bent on liquidating. This should, logically,

set the scene for a positive evaluation of revolutionary anticlericalism, which

was going full blast while Tannenbaum researched and wrote (indeed,

Tannenbaum sought to mediate, not very successfully, between the leaders of

church and state).68 But––compared, say, to Ernest Gruening69––Tannenbaum

evades the church issue. The Cristero Rebellion––the Catholic revolt that

shook western Mexico in 1926– 1929––receives hardly a mention. What

Tannenbaum has to say about it is not only brief but also dismissive.

The Cristeros are “armed marauders who harried the government and com-mitted widespread acts of depredation, purportedly in defence of the

Church”; the Church itself is termed a “hierarchical skeleton,” an institutional

has-been.70

How could Tannenbaum, researching and writing during the golden age of

revolutionary anticlericalism, arrive at these odd conclusions? First, although he

damned the colony, colonial racism, and the Catholic church’s contribution to

both, he also recognized––as the (future) author of Slave and Citizen was

bound to do––that the colonial church possessed certain redeeming virtues

and that Catholicism, by conceding the Indian a soul and, by extension,certain rights, offered a measure of paternalist protection, which, in contrast,



9/21

cultural historians––Tannenbaum equates both church and state as institutional

oppressors of a rich and particularistic popular culture.72

Second, Tannenbaum amply recognizes the religiosity of the Mexican

people: their shrines, pilgrimages, and cult of the saints. Given the intimateassociation of religiosity and local community, and Tannenbaum’s commitment

to the latter, it was not easy for him to dissect, deride, and dismiss popular

Catholicism. His response––common to leftist and liberal observers––was

therefore to dissociate popular religiosity from the institutional church. The

former––a heterodox syncretic hybrid––embodied a healthy gemeinschaftlich

parochialism (campanilismo, in Eric Van Young’s phrase).73 The patron saint

represented the local community, sanctioning parochial popular protest. The

institutional church, chronically weak if not altogether absent, stood for

creole conservatism, clerical authority, and class oppression. However, thiswas not an entirely convincing response, especially for the 1920s and 1930s,

when revolutionary anticlericalism was busy assaulting not only the institutional

church, but also popular religious beliefs and practices (some of which were cer-

tainly underpinned and sustained by the institutional church).74 Tannenbaum was

presumably aware of the abortive Mexican Schismatic Church, official iconoclasm,

and the attempt to generate an entire anticlerical counterculture complete with

secular myths, fiestas, and rites of passage.75 Why did he remain silent? Why

did he persist in playing down the radical thrust and historical importance of anti-

clericalism?76 Perhaps because this ambitious project smacked too much of statesocial engineering, of “top-down” cultural imposition on the part of the revolu-

tionary elites, a phenomenon that Tannenbaum recognizes in passing77 but that

does not form an integral or congenial part of his overall analysis. Or perhaps

he recalled––and regretted?––his own youthful anticlericalism in New York City.78

However, it is not entirely surprising that Tannenbaum played down a

revolutionary policy, which, through the 1920s and 1930s, was salient,

contentious, and––I would argue––seriously espoused by many within the

revolutionary elite.79 For, like Gruening, Tannenbaum had a soft spot for that

elite––especially, as he conceived it, the populist military. (Revolutionary intel-lectuals and licenciados were another matter.)80 He prided himself on his good

contacts: He lunched with President Calles, was embraced (literally) by labor

leader Luis Morones, considered Lá zaro Cá rdenas, the radical president of

the 1930s, a good friend, and was “lionized by Mexican officials,” particularly

educational officials.81 He did not suspend all critical judgement, and he was cer-

tainly not blind to revolutionary failings. Tannenbaum criticized Calles’s

growing conservatism, the presence of “conservative if not reactionary” person-

nel in government, and, as already noted, the tendency toward revolutionary

embourgeoisement .82 Nor did he––like some apologists––try to assimilate theRevolution to United States culture––as, for example, Ambassador Josephus



10/21

Nevertheless, Tannenbaum did defend the Revolution, adopting a relativist

and––Carleton Beals thought84––overgenerous stance. Tannenbaum’s defense

is interesting––and still of relevance today. As a Central European migrant,

brought up in the Austro-Hungarian empire, he had a lively sense of culturaldiversity and particularism. Mexico, he declared, in forthrightly illiberal terms,

had never enjoyed democracy and never would so long as entrenched social,

ethnic, and class barriers remained. Writing like Barrington Moore avant la

lettre, he stressed the social bases of––and barriers to––genuine democratization.

This argument, which Tannenbaum sustained well into the postwar period,85

easily led to a justification of revolutionary realpolitik. The Revolution might

be corrupt, violent, anticlerical, and, above all, incomplete. But it was a

step––or series of steps––in the right direction, and it was the necessary prere-

quisite of future democratization. In these terms, illiberal policies could be jus-tified since it was utopian to apply the norms of developed industrial

democracies to a society emerging from the womb of “feudalism.” Therefore,

Tannenbaum turned a blind eye to revolutionary anticlericalism, had a good

word for the revolutionary military, and wrote up not only Obregó n and

Calles, but also Emilio Portes Gil, the revolutionary boss of Tamaulipas,

and––most surprisingly––Luis Morones, the egregious labor czar of the 1920s,

whom he bizarrely compared to the peasant champion and martyr Emiliano

Zapata.86 Above all, he applauded Cá rdenas, “one of the kindest and gentlest

of human beings,” “the most beloved and disinterested figure in modernMexico,” with whom he chatted and vacationed, for whom he lobbied, and to

whom he proffered advice, information, and counsel.87

In thus defending the revolutionary regime, Tannenbaum located himself

within the old, still ongoing, debate about Mexican political development.

Could “Western” democratic norms apply, as both Education Minister José

Vasconcelos and historian Enrique Krauze advocated?88 Or was Mexico sui

generis, a distinct society and culture, which should no more import alien and

unsuitable political models than it should export them to other countries (e.g.,

Cuba).89 Tannenbaum clearly takes the second view. For him, como Mé xicono hay dos (“there’s only one Mexico”). This relativist view colors

Tannenbaum’s entire view of the Revolution. Francisco Madero, the martyred

first president of the Revolution––Krauze’s liberal hero––was less a bold demo-

cratic reformer than a “weak dreamer” who failed to discern Mexico’s pressing

social needs.90 Tannenbaum quotes the radical Francisco Mú gica––favorably––

to the effect that, had General Victoriano Huerta and the Federal Army not

overthrown Madero in 1913, the revolutionaries would have had to do so, and

that the ouster of the Apostle of Democracy was, in the terminology of Sellar

and Yeatman, A Good Thing.91 Indeed, Tannenbaum expresses skepticismabout Mexico’s democratic potential, at least in the short and medium term:



11/21

nothing to the masses”) but rather social reform and nation-building.93 In par-

ticular, Mexico needs peace and stability: The significance of the word

“peace,” which litters Tannenbaum’s text and titles, is clearly crucial, though

rarely commented on.94 Mexico, he repeatedly states, in oddly Hobbesiantones, is flayed by political violence: “all life, personal, social, political, even

cultural, is burdened by the expectancy of sudden injury, violence and

death.”95 Peace is a sine qua non of social development, which in turn must

precede democratization. Cá rdenas is praised not just for his populist charisma

and social reforms, but also––correctly––for his rejection of violence: “Cá rdenas

. . . had qualities of leadership which made violence unnecessary and governed

Mexico that way . . . [as] no-one had been able to do so before.”96 In a personal

letter to the president in 1936, Tannenbaum expresses “the greatest admiration

and enthusiasm for the Laguna agrarian reform,” remarking that “it must be amatter of no small pride that so important a change could have been achieved

peacefully and without any political disturbance.”97 It is a valid and relevant

point; indeed, concern for peace and security now ranks high on any list

of Mexican political priorities. However, it has a curiously conservative ring for

a protagonist of popular revolution.

There is, I think, a powerful––if positivistic––logic at work here.

Tannenbaum certainly does not seek a restoration of the prerevolutionary

days of Porfirio Dı́ az; there is no revisionist nostalgia for the Porfirian belle

é poque. He recognizes Dı́ az’s achievements––peace and material develop-ment––but excoriates the oppressive “industrial feudalism” upon which these

were based.98 The historic mission of the Revolution, therefore, is to destroy

“feudalism” (not, I repeat, a strictly Marxist “feudalism”) and to set about

nation-building–– forjando patria, in Gamio’s famous phrase.99 How valid is

this perspective? It is true that Tannenbaum’s depiction of Porfirian “feudalism”

is seriously flawed (though it is not surprising that this should be the case, since

he was writing barely a decade after the collapse of the old regime). We have

seen that he inflates the “Indian” population of the republic. He also exagger-

ates the scope of the hacienda, its economic irrationality, the size of the residenthacienda population, and the abuses of peonage. For Tannenbaum, haciendas

controlled most of the land, about half the rural population, and the latter lan-

guished in semi-servitude (if not outright servitude).100 Haciendas were ineffi-

cient, serving the (absentee) owner’s lust for power and prestige as much as

profit.101 Although these old myths still enjoy a certain currency, recent research

has seriously qualified the picture. Haciendas were less dominant, especially in

terms of resident population; they maximized profits (albeit within circum-

stances which might encourage a degree of autarky); and peonage was a

varied, shifting, complex category, often far removed from serfdom orslavery.102 In a similar manner, Tannenbaum exaggerates the inelasticity of



12/21

explanation, one that stresses structural causes, and does not capitulate to con-

tingency and happenstance.104 The fact that the hacienda was not the

all-embracing latifundio he suggested, or that the free (non-peon) population

was larger than he believed, does not detract from––indeed, arguably itstrengthens––his picture of the Revolution as a popular uprising, fueled by

agrarian discontent, organized by “free villagers,” and therefore particularly

strong in Central Mexico, where free villages were numerous but threatened.105

In addition, Tannenbaum caught––admittedly, in sweeping, sometimes overly

assertive, brushstrokes––something of the character of the popular revolution.

He stressed, as already mentioned, the regional and local diversity of rural

protest. He recognized the chaos and violence of the process, noting that

some of the violence pitted village against village; he did not, in other words,

assert that the Revolution was a simple conflict of village versus hacienda, asis sometimes imputed.106 He realized, too, that spatial and temporal diversity

went together: Over both time and space the Revolution was a mosaic rather

than a monolith. Individual “revolutionary” administrations embodied broad

diversity:

[S]o piecemeal has the Revolution proved to be, that no general movement affects

all of the states at the same time. National laws are enforced in one state and not in

another . . . While in one part of Mexico the central government may be supporting

and protecting labor, in another the local governor may be persecuting, houndingand even shooting labor leaders, all in the name of the Revolution.107

Recent regional studies have abundantly confirmed this––if you like––“proto-

revisionist” argument. Tannenbaum also grasped the importance of generations:

“the Revolution was conceived by young men, it was fought by young men, it

has been controlled and guided by young men.”108

Finally, he placed great emphasis on the psychological, unquantifiable con-

sequences of the Revolution. Though he did not, of course, talk in terms of men-

talité , his analysis implied a cognitive shift that could easily be described in suchterms. Alongside the material and formal changes wrought by the Revolution

went a series of psychological changes, which affected classes, ethnic groups,

and the nation as a whole. “The passions of the [revolutionary] conflict,”

Tannenbaum declares, citing Gó mez Morı́ n, “stirred a nation into self-

consciousness.”109 And this collective prise de conscience endured, certainly

through the 1930s, perhaps beyond: “[W]ith all of its failings the Revolution

has come to mean a profound spiritual and social change in the total attitude

and relationship of the different classes.”110 This was not––like some of

Tannenbaum’s generalizations––mere assertion or wishful thinking. He citessupportive evidence: how the landless peons of San Benito, Chiapas, “are



13/21

irrespective of material changes, “the Mexico of today [c. 1928] appears different

from the Mexico of the Dı́ az regime”––offers a useful corrective to narrowly posi-

tivistic evaluations of revolutionary change (or lack of change) and, in my view, is

broadly convincing.112 Revisionist historians are right, therefore, to seeTannenbaum as a proponent not only of a popular revolution, but also of a genu-

inely social, transforming revolution. Whether they are right to dispute this

interpretation is another matter, which it would be inappropriate to enter into here.

Instead, I want to end on a conjectural note. Much of Tannenbaum’s writ-

ings on the Revolution––clustering, as they did, in the later 1920s and early

1930s––display a clear coherence. With time, his opinion, understandably,

shifted. By the late 1940s he was deploring the headlong growth of cities and

industry, the loss of “zeal and faith,” and the “mood of cynicism” that

accompanied this process.113 He advocated––without, it seems, placing muchfaith in the success of his advocacy––an alternative development model based

on small, decentralized, rural units whereby industry would be ancillary to agri-

culture.114 Nothing of the sort happened, of course. Such Jeffersonian visions

wilted as Mexico took a resolutely Hamiltonian path toward big industry, big

cities, and big government. Yet, as President Alemá n (1946–1952) reneged

on social reform, boosted business, and broke the independent unions,

Tannenbaum could still convince himself that “a feeling of equality and democ-

racy is the prevailing tone” in Mexico; and, nearly twenty years later, he could

draw comparisons between the conservative Mexico of Gustavo Dı́ az Ordazand Castro’s Cuba, which flattered the former.115

In short, while Tannenbaum was not blind to Mexico’s failings, he retained

a lively––some would say excessive––optimism concerning the regime born of

the Revolution. Had he lived to be a hundred, would this optimism have sur-

vived? That is hard to believe. Mexico City, the Great Wen, has become just

about the greatest wen on the planet. Cities and industries have sucked labor

from a declining rural sector; ostensible “peasants,” tied to monopsonistic

markets, have become de facto piece workers; land reform is finished and the

ejido (the agrarian reform community), long neglected, now faces formal dissol-ution. In Chiapas, which Tannenbaum traveled by burro in the 1920s, noting the

exploitation of the Maya, a major popular rebellion began in 1994. But the pro-

tagonists were not parochial defenders of a traditional folk culture but rather

media-savvy nationalists––some of them mestizos and many of them recent

migrants to the Lacandó n frontier––who condemn the North American Free

Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and neoliberalism while adroitly cultivating

world opinion on the Internet and proposing a new form of popular democracy.

The vigorous economic nationalism of the 1930s, which Tannenbaum

applauded, has given way to gung-ho North American integration and a cosmo-politan corporate capitalism. Millions of Mexicans, voting with their feet, have



14/21

technocrats, and, finally, since the victory of the Partido Acció n Nacional in

2000, to conservative businessmen and political Catholics, the political descen-

dants of the Cristeros whom Tannenbam disdained. And populism––the ideo-

logical matrix of Tannenbaum’s own political thought––has become a dirtyword.

In short, the Tannenbaumian vision of––and for––Mexico has withered.

Even the incongruous liaison of economic neoliberalism and political neopopu-

lism, which, with its Tannenbaumian emphasis on decentralization, autogestió n,

and popular empowerment, briefly flourished in the 1990s, proved to be more

rhetorical than real.116 As a prophet and advocate, therefore, Tannenbaum

was wide of the mark; his quasi-Gandhian philosophy of gemeinschaftlich

village culture could not withstand Mexico’s relentless social, economic, and

demographic change even if, in its fashionable new “green” incarnation, ithelped the Chiapas rebels win support from people around the word who

knew little of Mexico and even less of Chiapas. A failed prophet and advocate,

Tannenbaum was a better contemporary reporter, in which capacity he got some

things (roughly) right and should command the cautious respect of historians.

Since the Mexico he witnessed in the 1920s and 1930s was very different from

the Mexico of the “economic miracle” of the 1960s, or from today’s Mexico of

NAFTA and narco-violence, Tannenbaum could usefully report what he saw,

while palpably failing to foresee what would come after. Thus, the “traditional,”

“populist” Tannenbaumian portrait of the Revolution captures important fea-tures of the period 1910–1940, which recent revisionists––perhaps overly influ-

enced by post-1940 trends––have ignored to their cost.

And, for better or worse, Tannenbaum evinces an additional relevance for

today’s historians of Mexico (and Latin America). Though a leftist, he rejected

Marxian economic determinism in favor of culturalist explanations that stressed

ethnicity, ideas, and (though he did not use the term) “identity.” At times, he

lapsed into an intellectually lazy essentialism whereby whole social groups

(not classes) were invested with enduring characteristics that determined their

behavior. What determined those characteristics in the first place, however,remained obscure. Merrill (in his article in this issue) is surely right, therefore,

when he sees Tannenbaum as “an early harbinger of the ‘culturalist’ turn” in

labor history. Whether, to revert to Sellar and Yeatman again, that it is A

Good Thing depends, no doubt, on what one thinks about the “culturalist

turn,” its promises and pitfalls.117 What it also suggests, however, is that the

“new” cultural history, its assumptions and preoccupations, are not quite as

new as sometimes supposed.

NOTES

1. For useful accounts of Tannenbaum’s Mexican connection, see Helen Delpar, “FrankTannenbaum: The Making of a Mexicanist 1914 33 ” The Americas 45 (1988): 163 171 See



15/21

3. Tannenbaum had already written a study of American labor, The Labor Movement: ItsConservative Functions and Social Consequences (New York, 1921). Mexican organized labor,though it had played a secondary role in the armed revolution (1910–1920), displayed a preco-cious ability to ally with the emerging revolutionary leadership and thus to secure a prominent

place in the new regime: see Barry Carr, El movimiento obrero y la polı́ tica en Mé xico (Mé xico,1981); Jaime Tamayo, La clase obrera en la historia de Mé xico. En el interinato de Adolfo de laHuerta y el gobierno de Alvaro Obregó n (Mé xico, 1987); and Ramó n E. Ruiz, Labor and the

Ambivalent Revolutionaries. Mexico, 1911 –23 (Baltimore, 1976).4. Hale, “Frank Tannenbaum,” 233.5. Delpar, “Frank Tannenbaum,” 162– 163.6. Given the intransigence of US Ambassador James R. Sheffield––who considered

Tannenbaum to be a “hireling” of the Calles government––it is not surprising that the resultsof Tannenbaum’s mediation were “meagre”: Delpar, “Frank Tannenbaum,” 163–164.

7. Hale, “Frank Tannenbaum,” 231–232, which also notes that, on his first trip to Mexico,Tannenbaum and his wife “spent most of their time travelling, not studying labor.”

8. Frank Tannenbaum, The Mexican Agrarian Revolution (Washington, DC, 1929;

reprinted 1968); I shall cite this as MAR.9. In his later comparative study, A Philosophy of Labor (New York, 1950), Tannenbaum

focuses on Britain and the United States and “makes no mention of Mexico or Latin America”:Hale, “Frank Tannenbaum,” 244 n. 63. Of course, there were plenty of rural workers in Mexico;hence agrarian studies, like Tannenbaum’s, necessarily dealt with “labor,” broadly defined; butmost of that (rural) labor was unorganized, none of it was industrial, and much of it wasdeployed on small peasant plots. The relevant themes, especially as Tannenbaum chose totreat them, were therefore very different from those of classic labor history/studies. SeeMichael Merrill, “Even Conservative Unions Have Revolutionary Effects: FrankTannenbaum on the Labor Movement,” ILWCH , this issue.

10. Tannenbaum’s first reportage from Mexico in 1923 exudes “optimism and engage-ment”: Hale, “Frank Tannenbaum,” 232. On Ret Marut, alias B. Traven, a survivor of the

1919 Munich soviet, see Heidi Zogbaum, B. Traven. A Vision of Mexico (Wilmington, 1992).11. Frank Tannenbaum, Peace By Revolution: Mexico After 1910 (New York, 1966, first

published as Peace By Revolution: An Interpretation of Mexico, 1933), 246. I shall cite thistext as PBR.

12. PBR, 225– 266; Frank Tannenbaum, Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread(London, 1965; first published, New York, 1950), 113–121, 222–228. Frank Tannenbaum,Ten Keys to Latin America (New York: 1966, first published, 1962), contains no chapter,section, or index entry for “labor,” “trade union,” or “sindicato.” I shall refer to these twotexts as SPB and TKL.

13. One conspicuous individual absence is leftist Vicente Lombardo Toledano, the leadingMexican labor leader of the 1930s (thus, the successor of Tannenbaum’s chum, Morones), a keyally of President Cá rdenas, cofounder of both the (Mexican) Confederació n de Trabajadores de

Mé xico (1936) and the (pan-Latin American) Confederació n de Trabajadores de Amé ricaLatina (1939), who, in the entire Tannenbaum oeuvre, seems to get only two references, bothbrief and bibliographical (PBR, 117, 309).

14. Hence, it often “tends to be descriptive, anecdotal and casual in the conventions of scholarship”: Hale, “Frank Tannenbaum,” 223.

15. Tannenbaum’s switch from labor to agrarian research seems to have been influencedby the invitation which he received from the Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio to studyMexican rural education in 1924: Delpar, “Frank Tannenbaum,” 160.

16. Merrill, “Even Conservative Unions Have Revolutionary Effects.” Perhaps a casecould also be made that Tannenbaum was truer to the “early” Marx––the humanistic,neo-Hegelian Marx of the 1840s.

17. Stuart Chase, Mexico. A Study of Two Americas (New York, 1950; first published

1931).18. Robert Redfield, Tepoztlan, Mexican Village: A Study of Folk Life (Chicago, 1930) and

The Folk Culture of Yucatán (Chicago University of Chicago 1941)



16/21

very slowly in the future. Rural ways and traditions yield very slowly”: “Technology and Race inMexico,” Political Science Quarterly LXI (1946): 366. We are meant to assume that railways,roads, Porfirian development, the Revolution, the Depression, Cardenismo, urbanization,mass migration, and the Second World War all had scant impact on rural Mexico.

20. Alan Knight, “Interpretaciones recientes de la revolució n mexicana,” Secuencia(Mexico, Instituto Mora), n. 13 (enero-abril 1989).

21. For discussions of recent historiographical labels and trends, see Mary Kay Vaughan,Cultural Politics in Revolution. Teachers, Peasants and Schools in Mexico, 1930–40 (Tucson,1997), 8–9; Ben Fallaw, Cá rdenas Compromised. The Failure of Reform in PostrevolutionaryYucatá n (Durham, 2001), 1 –2; and Enrique Plasencia de la Parra, “Un recorrido por lahistoriografı́ a de la Revolució n Mexicana,” in Alicia Mayer, coord., Mé xico en tres momentos:1810-1910-2010 (Mé xico, UNAM, 2007, 2 vols.), vol. 1, 409–419.

22. As already noted, I shall refer to these as MAR, PBR, and SPB.23. Laura Randall, “Introduction,” in Laura Randall, ed., Reforming Mexico’s Agrarian

Reform (New York, 1996), 3, seems slightly hyperbolic in referring to The Mexican AgrarianRevolution as “a stunning work of scholarship.”

24. Although a moderate shift in opinion is noticeable by the late 1940s, as might beexpected, it is the moderation rather than the shift that demands attention. Even in his TenKeys to Latin America, Tannenbaum recycles a good deal of his earlier Mexican work, datingback thirty years. See also n. 19 above.

25. MAR, 2, 315; PBR, 115, 118, 127. For Tannenbaum’s exposition of the thesis of peasant––as against proletarian––revolution, see TKLA, 222– 223; and cf. Eric R. Wolf,Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York, 1969), ch. 1. There were, of course, powerfulforces in the “real world” that generated this preoccupation with the revolutionary potential of peasants rather than workers.

26. MAR, 4, 53.27. PBR, 117, 121–123.28. On Tannenbaum’s populist lineage, see the interesting article of Mauricio Tenorio,

“Viejos gringos: radicales norteamericanos en los an ˜ os treinta y su visió n de M é xico,”Secuencia 21 (oct.-dic. 1991), 96, 98, 103– 106. Such a lineage strengthens suggestions of Tannenbaum’s “Veblenism.”

29. MAR, 89–90; PBR, 4, 23, 117, 122; TKLA, 24–25.30. TKLA, 207.31. J.S. Furnivall, Netherlands India: A Study of Plural Economy (Cambridge, 1939).32. See the graphic passage in PBR, 124.33. John Womack Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York, 1969), 219; Martı́ n

Luis Guzmá n, La sombra del caudillo (Madrid, 1929).34. PBR, 16, 128. It should be made clear that Tannenbaum tends to define intellectuals in

conventional terms (i.e., as educated, citified litterateurs and the like); he does not countenancethe possibility of organic “peasant intellectuals.” However, this is not just a question of defi-

nition––or ignorance of Gramsci. Tannenbaum’s Indians and peasants, though they may bethe salt of the earth, are not overendowed with cognitive faculties. Note that pejorative stereo-types of revolutionary intellectuals pervade the novels of the Revolution: John Rutherford,Mexican Society during the Revolution: A Literary Approach (Oxford, 1971), 84–129.

35. PBR, 119.36. PBR, 119.37. SPB, 55.38. Linda Hall, Alvaro Obregó n. Power and Revolution in Mexico, 1911–1920 (College

Station, 1981).39. PBR, 11. Zapata, Tannenbaum goes on to say (PBR, 179) was “obeyed affectionately

. . . like an old Aztec king,” which suggests that Tannenbaum––whatever we may think about hisportrait of Zapata––was scarcely knowledgeable about Aztec kingship.

40. PBR, 33, 67, 102.41. Manuel Gamio, Forjando Patria (Mé xico, 1916). Gamio’s pioneering work exerted

a strong influence on Tannenbaum; Gamio himself had helped steer the novice Mexicanist



17/21

reformist efforts––education, labor and agrarian legislation––run up against popular indiffer-ence, if not hostility. Land reform, for example, is confounded by the behavior of people“whose habits of personal direction are limited, and whose provision for tomorrow is notor-iously childlike” (MAR, 257). Although there are ways of trying to resolve this ostensible con-

tradiction between Indian insurgency and incapacity (for example, by arguing that the armedstruggle was genuinely popular and autonomous, while post-1920 reform was elitist and author-itarian), a substantial contradiction remains at the heart of Tannenbaum’s interpretation of theRevolution.

43. PBR, 61, 129, 203; MAR, 14.44. Eric R. Wolf, “Closed Corporate Communities in Mesoamerica and Central Java,”

Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13 (1957): 1–18, is the fons et origo from which atorrent of literature has flowed; a succinct review, with reference to Mexico, is provided byJames B. Greenberg, Santiago’s Sword: Chatino Peasant Religion and Economics (Berkeley,1981), ch. 1.

45. Friedrich Katz, ed., Riot, Rebellion and Revolution. Rural Social Conflict in Mexico(Princeton, 1988): and, for two case studies of early popular politicization, see Peter

Guardino, Peasants, Politics and the Formation of Mexico’s National State: Guerrero, 1800–57 (Stanford, 1996), and The Time of Liberty. Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca, 1750–1850(Durham, 2005).

46. This question lies at the heart of my debate with Eric Van Young and his magisterialstudy, The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology and the Struggle for Mexican

Independence, 1810– 21 (Stanford, 2001): see Eric Van Young y Alan Knight, En torno a laotra rebelió n (Mé xico, 2007), which contains articles originally published in HistoriaMexicana 214 (oct.-dic. 2004).

47. For mestizo stereotypes––which, of course, draw on a rich tradition, including anotherof Tannenbaum’s favorites, André s Molina Enrı́ quez––see MAR, 143; SPB, 15; TKLA, 42– 43,114, 121. Alejandro de la Fuente, “From Slaves to Citizens? Tannenbaum and the Debates onSlavery, Emancipation, and Race Relations in Latin America,” ILWCH , this issue. On Molina

Enrı́ quez and mestizaje, see Agustı́ n Basave, Mé xico mestizo. Aná lisis de la mestozofilia mexi-cana en torno a André s Molina Enrı́ quez (Mé xico, 1992).

48. Alan Knight, “Peasants Into Patriots: Thoughts on the Making of the MexicanNation,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 10 (1994): 135–161.

49. Womack, Zapata, 186, 300.50. For example, Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo, Ciudadanos imaginarios (Mé xico City,

1992), 68, 70–71. This, of course, raises the thorny question of whether popular proclamationsand petitions (i.e., the “public transcripts” of popular movements) were genuine and expressive,or contrived and instrumental. Perhaps it was good politics to sound patriotic (even if youweren’t), and popular protesters realized as much. On the problem of public and private tran-scripts, see James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (NewHaven, 1990).

51. MAR, 49–50; PBR, 5, 129.52. Luis Gonzá lez, “Patriotismo y matriotismo, cara y cruz de Mé xico,” in Cecilia Noriega

Elı́ o, ed., El nacionalismo en Mé xico (Zamora, 1992), 477–496.53. A roughly similar argument is advanced, for nineteenth-century Mexico and Peru, by

Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley,1995).

54. I would make a similar argument (on the basis of less expertise) for the Independencemovement: Van Young and Knight, En torno a la otra rebelió n, 32, 35–38.

55. PBR, 112, 183. Azuela also suggested a hurricane: Rutherford, Mexican Societ y, 122.56. PBR, 112, 147.57. MAR, 45–51. On the “blatantly deprecatory” attitudes of educational officials toward

“Indian peasants” in the 1930s, see Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution, 64.

58. PBR, 26.59. PBR, 45, 121–122; note also MAR, 72, 85, 110, 127, where Tannenbaum stresses the

complexity of agrarian society in which labor has “the intricacy of a cobweb” and hacien



18/21

any meaning.” Not that this confusion of genetic and social attributes was at all rare at the time;on the contrary, it was the norm, even among progressive thinkers who spurned the crude formsof racism: Alan Knight, “Racism, Revolution and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910–40,” in RichardGraham, ed., The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940 (Austin, 1990), 71–114.

61. PBR, 19–21.62. TKLA, 202.63. TKLA, 115–116, 127–128.64. Humberto Garcı́ a Mun ˜ iz, “‘Los ú ltimos treinta an ˜ os, 1898–1930’: un manuscrito

inedito de Frank Tannenbaum sobre Puerto Rico,” Op. Cit . (San Juan, Puerto Rico), no. 7,1992, 155. I am grateful to Dr Garcı́ a Mun ˜ iz for making this interesting study available to me.

65. PBR, 181; MAR, 135.66. Tannenbaum, “Technology and Race in Mexico,” 365.67. I have largely avoided the vexed question of nationalism––in the sense, not of

inward-oriented nation-building, but of outward-looking antiforeign and anti-imperialist senti-ment. Tannenbaum asserts the importance of popular xenophobia, linking it to foreign owner-ship of Mexican assets; but his evidence is thin (and relates largely to the

less-than-revolutionary South): PBR, 136, 229; SPB, 54. MAR, 358–392, contains detaileddata on foreign landholding and nationalist legislation, post-1915, but these data do not consti-tute proof of popular xenophobia. I do not, therefore, find his discussion of this topic entirelyconvincing. More important, perhaps, there is an inherent contradiction in Tannenbaum’spicture of a nationalist––and popular––revolution, mounted by essentially parochial, antina-tionalist peasants.

68. Hale, “Frank Tannenbaum,” 239; Delpar, “Frank Tannenbaum,” 163.69. Ernest Gruening, Mexico and Its Heritage (New York, 1928), 275–286. Interestingly,

Tannenbaum considered Gruening overly anti-Catholic: Delpar, The Enormous Vogue, 59.70. SPB, 66; PBR, 64–66. For a generally persuasive revisionist account of the Cristero

revolt, which stresses its popular authenticity, see Jean Meyer, The Cristero Rebellion: TheMexican People Between Church and State, 1926– 9 (Cambridge, 1976).

71. PBR, 36– 37; TKLA, 54–55. There is an obvious comparison here with Tannenbaum’sof slavery in Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas (New York, 1946).

72. PBR, 44.73. MAR, 11, 49; PBR, 38, 57. Van Young, The Other Rebellion, 62, 483, 491.74. Jean Meyer stresses precisely the religious orthodoxy of the Cristeros, minimizing syn-

cretic pre-Columbian elements. Perhaps he exaggerates; but the notion that the Cristeros werequasipagans won’t wash. See Jean Meyer, La Cristiada, t. III, Los cristeros (Mexico, Siglo XXI,7th ed., 1985, first pubd. 1974), 272–315.

75. For recent explorations of church-state conflict in this period, which, in general,confirm the high stakes and sincere convictions involved, see Matthew Butler, ed., Faith and

Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico (New York and Basingstoke, 2007).76. MAR, written as the Cristero War was fought, omits all reference; PBR, completed a

few years after its termination, contains chapters entitled “Conflict of Church and State” and“The Defeat of the Church,” 44–67, which focus on the prerevolutionary period and assumethat the “defeat” had already occurred. For the revolutionary period, Tannenbaum venturesonly one brief (half paragraph) reference to Catholic opposition to Federal schooling. Oddly,it is Tannenbaum’s last (Mexican) book––SPB, 133–134––that contains the fullest account,although this, too, is brief, neglects the Cristero rank-and-file, and dwells on the Caruanamission––an abortive mediation in which Tannenbaum himself was directly involved.

77. PBR, 44; TKLA, 101 offers a critique of educational bureaucrats who issue “long regla-mentos to teachers off in the jungle or in some mountain crevice,” thus “fill[ing] the air withsounds of activity . . . with little meaning for those far distant from the capital”; a critiquewhich stands somewhat at odds with Tannenbaum’s previous close association with––andreliance upon––Mexican educational bureaucrats of the 1920s and 1930s, who often did pre-

cisely this.78. Garcı́ a Mun ˜ iz, “‘Los ú ltimos treinta an ˜ os,’” 156–157; Delpar, The Enormous Vogue,

27



19/21

Church”: SPB, 68 (in TKLA, 63, he extends this critique to Latin American anticlericalism ingeneral). Such an interpretation greatly exaggerates both the cynical instrumentality of Callista anticlericalism and the naive gullibility of the people: see Alan Knight, “TheMentality and Modus Operandi of Revolutionary Anticlericalism,” in Butler, Faith and

Impiety, 21–56.80. PBR, 166; SPB, 54.81. Delpar, The Enormous Vogue, 27– 29, 60.82. PBR, 153; SPB, 68–70.83. Tannenbaum to L. Duggan, Oct. 13, 1938, Archivo General de la Nació n, Mexico City,

Ramo de Presidentes, Fondo Lá zaro Cá rdenas (henceforth: AGN, R-P, F-LC), 711/121; PBR,104; TKLA, 139, 165, 231. These, incidentally, are interesting parallels that would repay com-parative research; but Mexican and United States historiography tends to advance on parallellines, with few or no intersections.

84. Delpar, The Enormous Vogue, 60. Over the years, Beals and Tannenbaum also partedcompany on (1) the question of US policy toward Latin America, of which Tannenbaum wasmore supportive, Beals more critical; and (2) Latin American economic strategy, in that

Beals stressed industrialization, whereas Tannenbaum clung to his Jeffersonian vision of auton-omous rural communities: see John A. Britton, Carleton Beals. A Radical Journalist in Latin

America (Albuquerque, 1987), 161, 200.85. In the mid-1960s Tannenbaum was still arguing that “anyone who believes that an ega-

litarian democracy can be developed in ten years in Guatemala is due for an unhappy awaken-ing”: TKLA, 231. Defenders of Mexico’s ruling party, the PRI, sometimes justifiedpresidentialism and the one-party monopoly of national power in terms of pragmatism,realism, stability, and the lack of preferable or feasible alternatives: see, for example, the inter-view with Beatriz Paredes (sometimes seen as the progressive face of PRIı́ smo), “El presiden-cialismo ofrece estabilidad y gobierno fuerte,” in Este Paı́ s, 16 (1992): 28–36.

86. PBR, 126–127, 246–247. In the case of the CROM leader, Tannenbaum patted himself on the back for “really making a friend of Morones and developing an influence with him”––

even to the extent of arranging meetings between Morones and both the US Ambassadorand the papal Apostolic Delegate (to little effect, it should be added). Tannenbaum did,however, decline Morones’s offer that he (Tannenbaum) become an official publicist for theMexican government: Delpar, The Enormous Vogue, 29.

87. SPB, x, 71–75; Tannenbaum to the New York Times, n.d., June 1936, AGN, R-P, F-LC135.1/2; Tannenbaum to Cá rdenas, May 6, 1940, AGN, R-P, F-LC, 135.1/3. Tannenbaum’s cor-respondence with Cá rdenas displays both a degree of personal intimacy and fluent––but farfrom perfect––Spanish.

88. I am referring to the liberal-democratic José Vasconcelos of 1929, not the philofascistof a decade later. Cf. Enrique Krauze, Por una democracia sin adjetivos (Mexico, 1987). DespiteMexico’s recent democratization, the (historical) debate still simmers: in his highly criticalreview of Alicia Mayer, Mé xico en tres momentos, Krauze essays a “counter-factual exercise,”

suggesting that, had things turned out slightly differently in 1913, or 1929, a “civilian path” todemocratic political stability and peaceful social reform was entirely possible: see EnriqueKrauze, “La UNAM y el bicentenario, desvarı́ os histó ricos” (Dec. 2007), at http://www.letrasli-bres.com/index.php?art¼12530.

89. TKLA, 218ff.90. Enrique Krauze, Mı́ stico de la libertad: Francisco I. Madero (Mexico, 1987); MAR, 158.91. PBR, 150.92. PBR, 151. Note that this sentiment is repeated unchanged in the 1966 edition.93. PBR, 150.94. Peace By Revolution; The Struggle for Peace and Bread. “What is Mexico’s most insis-

tent need? Peace! Internal peace, a sense of stability, of permanence, of security”: PBR, 111.95. SPB, 16–19; PBR, 102–105. These two passages display a marked similarity.

96. TKLA, 144; see also SPB, 75–76.97. Tannenbaum to Cá rdenas, Dec. 16, 1936, AGN, R-P, F-LC, 135.1/3. The Laguna land

reform of 1936 involving the major cotton plantations near the north central city of Torreó n



20/21

99. Cf. Gamio, Forjando patria. Gamio is frequently cited by Tannenbaum: e.g., MAR, 143;PBR, 27, 112, 117.

100. MAR, 28–31; PBR, 187–195.101. MAR, 105ff.; PBR, 196.

102. Jean Meyer, “Haciendas y ranchos, peones y campesinos en el Porfiriato. Algunasfalacias estadı́ sticas,” Historia Mexicana, 35 (1986): 477– 509; François-Xavier Guerra, LeMé xique: De l’ancien ré gime à la ré volution (2 vols., Paris, 1985), v. II, annexe V; AlanKnight, “Mexican Peonage: What Was It and Why Was It?,” Journal of Latin AmericanStudies, 18 (1986), 41–74.

103. MAR, 116; PBR, 144.104. MAR, 144. I mention this because some recent “revisionist” theories of revolution

have tended to stress the role of accident and contingency as against structural (usually socio-economic) factors. Accident and contingency are, of course, important. But it is difficult tobelieve that the presence or absence of social revolution is due entirely––or even primarily––to random factors, and that revolution is a purely stochastic outcome. Cf. Alan Knight,“Revisionism and Revolution: Mexico Compared to England and France,” Past and Present ,

134 (1992): 185–6.105. MAR, 193–197.106. MAR, 63–64.107. PBR, 119.108. PBR, 133.109. MAR, 175–176.110. PBR, 180.111. MAR, 111, 135. Cf. Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution, Counterrevolution and

Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1986), 519–526.112. MAR, 134–135.113. SPB, 244.114. SPB, 242–245, sets out Tannenbaum’s “philosophy of little things” (e.g., fish farms

and hydroponics), criticizes all-out industrialization (while, at the same time, advocating “anincrease in the rate of capital accumulation”), and urges Mexico to “turn its eyes toSwitzerland and Denmark rather than to the United States as a model.” Note also PBR,223–224, for an early anticipation of this thesis.

115. SPB, 79; TKLA, 218–221.116. I am not just being wise after the event: Alan Knight, “Solidarity: Historical

Continuities and Contemporary Implications,” in Wayne Cornelius, Ann Craig and JonathanFox, eds., Transforming State-Society Relations in Mexico. The National Solidarity Strategy(La Jolla, 1994), 29–46.

117. On the cultural turn in Latin American, especially Mexican, history, see the specialnumber of the Hispanic American Historical Review edited by Gilbert Joseph and SusanDeans-Smith, 79 (1999). Latin American labor history in particular has been the focus of

robust debates between protagonists and critics of culturalism (roughly speaking): earlyexchanges, in what has become a long-running argument, are John Womack Jr., “DoingLabor History: Feelings, Work and Material Progress,” Journal of the Historical Society, 5(2005): 255–296; and John French and Daniel James, “The Travails of Doing Labor History:The Restless Wanderings of John Womack Jr.,” Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas, 4 (2007), 96–115.



21/21

Reproducedwithpermissionof thecopyrightowner. Further reproductionprohibitedwithoutpermission.

Alan Knight, Frank Tannenbaum and the Mexican Revolution

Documents

Transcript of Alan Knight, Frank Tannenbaum and the Mexican Revolution