Gladys I. McCormick. The Logic of Compromise in Mexico

In recent years, historians of twentieth-century Mexico have uncovered the wide-ranging popular resistance that existed between 1940 and 1968, a period previously understood as one of political stability. Ruled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, by its Spanish acronym), that supposed pax-priísta actually saw extensive protest in both rural and urban areas, as workers, peasants, students, and indigenous people challenged a party that betrayed the constitution’s social principles. Despite this resistance, the PRI remained strong, weathered crises, and ruled uninterruptedly until 2000. Gladys I. McCormick’s The Logic of Compromise in Mexico: How the Countryside Was Key to the Emergence of Authoritarianism traces the rise of this political system, showcasing the lives of three brothers, Rubén, Porfirio, and Antonio Jaramillo. Their rebellion, resistance, and accommodation, she argues, “helps explain the routinization of protest that eventually defused radical challenges to the governing regime, demobilized the peasantry, and generated a political culture resigned to the PRI-led state’s authority” (9).

Authoritarianism · Compromise · Constitution · Democracy · Indigenous · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology) · Sociology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies