Maximino Avila Camacho and the One-Party State: The Taming of Caudillismo and Caciquismo in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

Maximino Avila Camacho and the One-Party State: The Taming of Caudillismo and Caciquismo in Post-Revolutionary Mexico is a political biography of General Maximino Avila Camacho (1891–1945), one of the most powerful regional politicians in Mexico from 1935 to 1945. He was a member of an officially sponsored party, known today as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which claimed to represent the goals of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1921) and which managed to win most federal and regional elections from 1929 until its first presidential defeat in 2000. Maximino (as he is commonly known) became a powerful politician at the time when the official party effectively transformed the Mexican political system from one based on the personal power of regional strongmen and political bosses relying on clientelistic networks (popularly known as "caudillos" and "caciques") to a modern one based on a centralized civilian administration supported by institutions. The story of Maximino, the powerful cacique of the state of Puebla, demonstrates that the emergence of the one-party-dominated Mexican state did not destroy caudillos and caciques but simply controlled them. Specifically, it shows how the official party incorporated these leaders and their authoritarian practices into the state's political machinery. The result was 71 years of one-party political domination based on a political culture that emphasized patronage, favoritism, corruption, coercion and co-optation. By tracing Maximino's career, from revolutionary soldier to powerful political leader, we learn how and why the goals that had originally inspired the "party of the revolution"-primarily democracy and social justice-were sacrificed in order to empower it.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Acknowledgments Chapter 2 Preface Chapter 3 Introduction Chapter 4 Chapter I. A Long and Winding Road to Peace and Stability (1820-1929) Chapter 5 Chapter II. The Authoritarian Workshop (1891-1934) Chapter 6 Chapter III. A New Breed of "Caudillo" (1929-1936) Chapter 7 Chapter IV. A Basket with Some Rotten Apples (1937-1941) Chapter 8 Chapter V. With a Gun in His Hand (1941-1945) Chapter 9 Conclusion 10 Glossary 11 Bibliography 12 Index

About the Author :
Alejandro Quintana is assistant professor of history at St. John's University.

Review :
In this well-researched and nuanced study, Alejandro Quintana offers a judicious yet devastating blow to any lingering arguments for a benign Mexican revolution in regard to the advancement of democratic structures and social justice. Indeed, Maximino, not Madero, is the truly iconic figure of Mexico's epochal twentieth-century conflict and its aftermath. This political biography of the legendary political boss who aspired to the presidency of Mexico provides a new perspective into workings of power politics in the wake of the Mexican revolution. Its careful reconstruction of the career and outsized personality of Maximino Ávila Camacho-military man, governor of Puebla, brother of a president-is a quintessential story of caudillo politics and the making of political dynasties in the turbulent 1920s, '30s, and '40s. Anyone interested in the mechanisms of post-revolutionary politics and the formative years of the "perfect dictatorship" of Mexico's PRI will want to read Alejandro Quintana's book. Quintana provides helpful insights into the national setting. Without denying that he was more colorful, ambitious, and talented than most of his contemporaries, Quintana presents us with a politician who, he argues, was fairly typical of his milieu. Quintana is clearly less interested in the scandalous details of Maximino’s life than in the political culture in which he operated.