"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Friday, October 08, 2004

Mexico – Biography of Power (1810-1996) (Enrique Krauze)


Very interesting, helpful in getting some initial handle on Mexico.  Series of biographies of leaders:

  • Benito Juarez c. 1858; contemporary with Maximilian
  • Porfirio Diaz – 40 years until Revolution in 1910 – inspired “no re-election”
  • Francisco Madero – mysticism; Coahuila
  • Emiliano Zapata – peasant, Morelos
  • Francisco Villa – north
  • Lazaro Cardenas – around and active until the ‘70s; flirtation with Communism, looks out for peasants
  • Miguel Aleman – 1940s – associated with corruption, business/PRI ties
  • 1968 – killing of students just prior to Olympics

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