Myths of Demilitarization in Postrevolutionary Mexico 1920-1960

<p>At the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1920 Mexico’s large rebellious army dominated national politics. By the 1940s Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was led by a civilian president and claimed to have depoliticized the army and achieved the bloodless pacification of the Mexican countryside through land reform schooling and <i>indigenismo</i>. However historian Thomas Rath argues Mexico’s celebrated demilitarization was more protracted conflict-ridden and incomplete than most accounts assume. Civilian governments deployed troops as a police force often aimed at political suppression while officers meddled in provincial politics engaged in corruption and crafted official history all against a backdrop of sustained popular protest and debate.<br/>Using newly available materials from military intelligence and diplomatic archives Rath weaves together an analysis of national and regional politics military education conscription veteran policy and popular protest. In doing so he challenges dominant interpretations of successful top-down demilitarization and questions the image of the post-1940 PRI regime as strong stable and legitimate. Rath also shows how the army’s suppression of students and guerrillas in the 1960s and 1970s and the more recent militarization of policing have long roots in Mexican history.</p>