La revolución mexicana y la opinión pública española

The author states that her aim is to provide historical evidence about the way the Mexican Revolution was perceived in Spain. Sevilla Soler’s original hypothesis was that as the former metropolis, the series of events that took place in Mexico from 1910 to the early 1920s were of the most interest in Spain. However, as her essay widely demonstrates, the Spanish intellectual debate about the Mexican Revolution was rather poor and not provocative.The author analyzed the treatment of the events related to the Mexican Revolution in the Sevillian press — basically El Correo de Andalucía, El Liberal, and El Noticiero Sevillano. In doing so, she acknowledges the side effects of using the press as the main source for the study of public opinion: the press usually reflects the facts in a partial and subjective way, and the media are ideologically contaminated in most cases. Notwithstanding both risks, the author chooses to focus on the press, appreciating its relevance for the history of subjectivity more than for the analysis of the objective events.The newspapers she consulted enable her to contrast different ideological positions. El Correo de Andalucía and El Noticiero Sevillano were conservative, monarchical, and Catholic, while El Liberal was inspired by republican and liberal principles. The first chapter analyzes the evolution of the Sevillian press during the first decades of the twentieth century, which results especially useful for readers not familiar with it.The book follows a chronological path, departing from the crisis of the Porfiriato and finishing with the consolidation of the constitutional system. In between, it pays attention to the different phases of the Mexican Revolution (maderismo, civil war, huertismo, and the fight for the constitution). The author enriches her newspaper sources with a wide knowledge of secondary sources. She also provides a very interesting bibliography, but unfortunately the book lacks an index.As a study focused more on a history of subjectivity than on the account of historical facts, this volume is fascinating in at least a couple of ways. Sevilla Soler explores the ways news was transmitted at the beginning of the last century. She is not interested in the veracity of the different news pieces but rather in the process and reasons for selecting particular news items and the way they were treated in the Spanish press. Additionally, the author offers useful information about the making of a Spanish public opinion related to the process under examination.Sevilla Soler’s conclusions are certainly unexpected. As she states at the beginning of her study, her research process led her to a totally different point than what could be reasonably expected by the original hypothesis. Thus, there were not radical differences between ideologically distinct media when they faced the most relevant moments of Mexican revolutionary process. First of all, not all the events that we consider today essential for the explanation of the revolution received the expected treatment by the Spanish media. Additionally, the media did not differ in their valuation of some characters or transitional regimes (Huerta’s, for instance) and, consequently, did not give rise to differences in public opinion or to a Spanish debate on the Mexican Revolution.On the other hand, the newspapers she examined agreed with modern assessments on the relevance of a couple of factors: the position adopted by the foreign policy of the United States, and the consequences of the revolution for the Spanish colony in Mexico. Since the events of 1898 were fresh in memory, Spanish public opinion was still quite sensitive to American involvement in Mexican affairs, especially after the incident of Tampico that led to the landing of American troops in Veracruz. The interests of the Spanish colony in Mexico were, according to the author, a permanent reference for the Spanish media for the analysis and valuation of the Mexican revolutionary process.Rosario Sevilla Soler’s book can be considered as a substantial contribution to our knowledge of the making of public opinion as a process of “subjectivization” of political information. The study of the reception and transmission to the public of a major event like the Mexican Revolution in the former metropolis constitutes an ideal laboratory that the author handles masterfully

Art · Humanities · Ideology · Monarchy · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Public opinion · Sociology · History · Law · Media, Journalism, and Communication History · Political Dynamics in Latin America · Spanish History and Politics

• "Presentación del dossier "Prensa, historia política y opinión pública en el siglo XX

  Open Access•Sergio Arturo Sánchez Parra, Anderson Paul Gil Pérez et al.•Ciencia Nueva Revista de Historia…•2023

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