The Mexican Revolution

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Mexican Revolution.In 1908 the President of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, gave an interview to an American journalist. He was 77 and had ruled the country in autocratic fashion for over thirty years. He discussed the country’s economic development and spoke of his intention to retire to his country estate after overseeing a transition to multiparty democracy.Things did not turn out quite like that. Two years later Diaz was toppled by a popular uprising. It was the beginning of a tumultuous decade in which different factions fought for supremacy, and power changed hands many times. The conflict completely changed the face of the country, and resulted in the emergence of Mexico’s most celebrated folk hero: Emiliano Zapata.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Alan Knight 4 episodes
  Professor of the History of Latin America at the University of Oxford
• Paul Garner No other episodes
  Cowdray Professor of Spanish at the University of Leeds
• Patience Schell 2 episodes
  Senior Lecturer in Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester

Reading list

• A Concise History of Mexico
  B. Hamnett (CUP, Cambridge, 1999) Google Books →
• In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution: Contemporary Mexican History 1910-89
  L. Meyer & H. Aguilar (Austin, Texas, 1993)
• Emiliano Zapata!: Revolution and Betrayal in Mexico
  S. Brunk (University of New Mexico Press, 1995) Google Books →
• The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata: Myth, Memory, and Mexico's Twentieth Century
  S. Brunk (University of Texas Press, 2008) Google Books →
• Porfirio Diaz
  P. Garner (Longman, Harlow, 2001) Google Books →
• Revolutionary Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution
  J. Hart (Stanford, 1987) Google Books →
• The Mexican Revolution
  A. Knight (CUP, Cambridge, 2 vols., 1986) Google Books →
• La Revolucion: Mexico's Great Revolution as Memory, Myth and History
  T. Benjamin (Austin, Texas, 2000) Google Books →
• Oil and Revolution in Mexico
  J. Brown (Berkeley CA, 1993) Google Books →
• The Life and Times of Pancho Villa
  F. Katz (Stanford, 1998) Google Books →
• Zapata and the Mexican Revolution
  J. Womak (Thames and Hudson, London, 1968)
• We Come to Object: The Peasants of Morelos and the NationalState
  A. Warman (The John Hopkins University Press, 1980) Google Books →
• The Women's Revolution in Mexico, 1910-1953
  Stephanie Mitchell & Patience A. Schell (eds.) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) Google Books →
• Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico
  Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan and Gabriela Cano (eds.) (Duke University Press, 2006) Google Books →
• Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico's Cristero Rebellion
  Matthew Butler (OUP, 2004) Google Books →
• Encyclopaedia of Mexico: History, Society, Culture
  M. Werner (ed.) (Fitzroy Dearborn, Chicago, 2 vols., 1997)

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Programme ID: b00xhz8d

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xhz8d

Auto-category: 972 (History of Mexico)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In 1908, an American journalist, James Creelman, visited Mexico to interview the country's president, whom he described as the foremost man of the American hemisphere.