la patria del criollo: an interpretation of colonial guatemala by severo martínez peláez. trans....

BOOK REVIEWS

LATIN AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC TRANSFORMATIONS: INSTITUTIONS, ACTORS AND

PROCESSES. Ed. William Smith. Sussex, UK: John Wiley, 2009, pp. 381,$52.95.

CORRUPTION AND DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA. Eds. Charles H. Blake andStephen D. Morris. Pittsburgh: U Pittsburgh P, 2009, pp. 253, $25.95.

In spite of the large number and diversity of issues covered in thesetwo different books, they converge on a single topic: the “quality of thepost-authoritarian democracies of Latin America,” usually seen as regimeslacking universal civil rights, but having sustained democratic procedures.Whereas Smith’s book is compiled from many of the updated “most-read”articles on the topic published in Latin American Politics and Society, thejournal he edits, Blake and Morris center their book on “corruption anddemocracy,” which also unfold into a number of studies quite relevantto the shared topic. By and large, they indicate that there is an ongoingmulti-faceted process of change towards overcoming much of the so-called“democratic deficits” in Latin America, differently from previous diag-nostics that emphasized these deficits and tended to address these nationsthrough a single viewpoint, like “incomplete, partial, hollow, or shallow”democracies as P. Smith and M. Ziegler put it (Smith 13).

Therefore, both books make a significant contribution to the currentstudy of the quality of emerging democracies in the region, as they en-rich the scholarship on this theme, both theoretically and substantively.The current compilations cover a plethora of issues, from horizontal andvertical accountability, to the questions of social, economic and politicalinclusion, going through the dilemmas of participation and representationthrough formal and informal channels, among others.

Shortcomings for a more sustained democratization in the region un-doubtedly persist, and P. Smith and Ziegler (Smith) probe the central ques-tion, assuming the countries from Latin America to be “illiberal democ-racies,” based on Huntington’s third wave. Relying on sophisticated sta-tistical analysis, the authors insightfully suggest that there is no decisiveincentive to move from illiberal to liberal democracy, but they do notrecognize that the Latin American countries are doomed to remain illib-eral. Weyland (Smith) essentially agrees with this view, in his analysis ofthe impact of neoliberalism on authoritarianism, because of a number ofcauses, in which neo-populism stands out as an influential force.

In any case, in the general view of what I consider the common topicof the books, Foweraker and Krznaric (Smith) add a contextual qual-itative analysis to an equally sophisticated statistical approach that isquite skeptical about the possibilities of these countries becoming liberal

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democracies, given that powerful political actors, such as the oligarchiesand the military, are prone to obstruct the rule of law and manipulateelectoral politics. In fact, based on a similar concern of Weyland (Smith),Thacker (Blake and Morris) would agree with Foweraker and Krznaric,since the market-oriented reforms had plenty of room for rent-seeking be-havior, therefore sustaining “illiberal democracy,” a view also shared byRehren (Blake and Morris), regardless of the fact that this is a highly con-tentious issue. But Thacker would also come close to Weyland’s positiveview of neoliberalism in partially undermining illiberal components of thenew democracies, considering Uruguay’s and Chile’s longer traditions oftrade openness, as these countries scored highest in the region in controlof corruption. Therefore they also assume that culture may play a rolein the formation of the new democratic regimes, similar to Armony andArmony’s discourse analysis of the 2000s Argentine crisis (Smith).

Leaving aside an extended debate on the proper concept of corruption,and moving towards more concrete aspects of the phenomenon, Rehren(Blake and Morris) opts to distinguish different formats of contemporarycorruption. Given the persistence of clientelism in Latin American politicalparties, as the region underwent liberalization and democratization, herecognizes two new forms of corruption: one linked to the rebirth of partypolitics, and the other related to the new economic and social policies of the“dual transition,” each with distinct problematic impacts. Along the samelines, Bailey (Blake and Morris) disaggregates the policy-making process tostress that corruption may take place at any stage, although with differentimpacts and perceptions, all of which affect democratic governability, andtherefore democracy itself. Morever, both authors agree that the corruptionthat takes place in policy implementation is the most damaging of all.

The next challenge for understanding the role corruption may playis exactly the relation between perception and actual corruption, eitherfocusing on the police, like Blake does (Blake and Morris), or even onChile’s reactions to scandals, like Brinegar does (Blake and Morris). Theseand other contributions reach various conclusions, beyond the assumedinfluence of the latter into the former, that may not be the case, as percep-tion may be determined by other factors, possibly resulting in misleadingconclusions.

In the Blake and Morris volume, largely based on careful statisticalanalyses, the issue of accountability stands out, most notably through adismissal of the idea that it solely depends on the active participation ofcitizens. Based on their study of the Peruvian Vaso de leche program, Lopez-Calix, Seligsson and Alcazar (Blake and Morris) convincingly argue that itslack of accountability derives from an asymmetry of information betweenthe government and its clients, running top down in the policy design andimplementation. The topic of accountability is also dealt with in relationto Brazil, where Taylor (Blake and Morris) finds a disconnect betweenthe increasing recognition of corrupted practices, but not of sanctions,naturally undermining the trust in the democratic system, possibly solved

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through institutional reforms and regardless of what has been pointed outabove. This is a new problem following a possible solution, as in Morris’study on state-level corruption in Mexico (Blake and Morris), in which hefinds some evidence that decentralization may undermine corruption, butit may not be a sustained unidirectional change.

Focusing on aspects of the institutional design of these new demo-cratic regimes, Finkel (Smith) studies Mexico’s judicial reform of the mid1990s that expanded the power of the judiciary. Finkel explains that thisrepresented a major change for Mexico and could be understood as an “in-surance policy” for the challenges the PRI was beginning to face. Anothersignificant institutional change throughout the rebuilding of democraticregimes in Latin America was decentralization of government, either forimproving the performance of the public administration, or for empow-ering citizens, or both. With reference to the former goal, Eaton pointsout that this change was deeply influenced by various decentralizationreforms made during the authoritarian regimes, allowing authorities fromlower governmental levels to appear as important political actors whendemocracy was restored. However, Posner suggests that this did not hap-pen in Chile, because Concertacıon did not give enough support for theemerging local leaders to govern, but emphasized their political role forsustaining the coalition (Smith).

Surprisingly enough, Van Cott (Smith) indicates that in countries withlarge indigenous populations and ethnic cleavage, party system reformsmeant to restrict their participation may have had the opposite effect. Shecautiously suggests that restricting the number of parties, decentralizingthe political systems, and, more obviously, reserving offices for indige-nous citizens may have acted as an incentive for this engagement. This isreinforced by de la Madrid’s study (Smith) of these parties’ performance,while Zamoc (Smith) bends to the opposite side, asserting the problemsfaced by the indigenous leaders in interacting with the established system.

No sustained political party can be a safety net for democratic regimes,as suggested by Roberts (Smith) with reference to the personalistic emer-gence of Chavez in Venezuela, when neither party was able to handle theeffects of the neoliberal reforms. However, investigating Fujimori’s rise inPeru, Levitsky and Cameron (Smith) suggest that there is more than oneoutcome from a given conjuncture, as parties, in general, are created forsolving the politicians’ coordination problems.

Wampler (Smith) focuses on Brazil’s experiences of Participatory Bud-geting by the Workers’ Party (PT), and relates its success to a high-levelsupport of the local government to delegate the decision-making authorityto civil society organizations, as happened in Porto Alegre, but not in theother major cities he studied, such as Sao Paulo and Recife. PT also failed,at least partially, at the national level with respect to agrarian reform, asshown by Pereira (Smith). In its seven to eight years of government, therehas been an increasing decline of the importance of the issue in its agenda,contrary to most expectations. Pereira not only shows that Lula’s policies

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did not differ very much from those of his predecessor, but that he endedup pleasing the agribusiness more than Cardoso, considering other poli-cies beyond land distribution itself. Nonetheless, Samuels (Smith) stressesthe surprising uniqueness of Brazil in a scenario of weak partisanship, ascommonly assumed in Latin America. Exceptions in some countries andperiods must be recognized in the region, and PT in Brazil is a case in point,that can be understood through long-term party organization, recruitmentefforts, and interested people in politicized social networks.

Uglla’s study (Smith) of one aspect of Chile’s constitutional changesconvincingly shows that the consensus was hardly met, which differs frommore current views on the topic. The previous authoritarian Constitutionof 1980 mattered greatly, and Concertacıon accepted the reforms becauseit expected to make room for advancing more democratic reforms furtheron, which did not happen. In terms of founding issues, Carey (Smith)focuses on the questions of reelection that have been rejected since Inde-pendence, and stresses that the changes recently made did not make clearthe implications of its adoption.

Finally, Manzetti and Wilson (Blake and Morris) present a bleak butstrong argument that support for corrupt governments—and the “demo-cratic deficits,” we could add—will continue as long as there is relianceon clientelism plus tolerance (90), arguing against the popular belief thatthe passing of time may be the solution for this diminishing illiberal com-ponent of democracies in Latin America. In any case, given all the above,Blake and Morris conclude that the Latin American anticorruption glassmay be “one quarter full rather than three quarters empty” (194). Somesocial scientists, like myself, may add another quarter in the changinghalf.

Eduardo R. GomesDepartment of Political Science

Universidade Federal Fluminense

CONSOLIDATING MEXICO’S DEMOCRACY: THE 2006 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN IN

COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE. By Jorge I. Domınguez et al. Boston: JohnsHopkins UP, 2009, p. 384, $70.00.

The 2006 Mexican presidential race was “no boring affair putting Twee-dledee against Tweedledum,” as noted by a contributor to this excellentvolume on the 2006 campaign. Its main conclusion is indeed that the cam-paign mattered, and that it mattered a lot. According to MIT’s MexicoPanel Study, on which much analysis is based, half of voters switchedcandidates at least once. The real story of the 2006 race is therefore thatpolitical factors—mobilization of voters, assessment of candidates, andthe framing of issues—proved decisive. This volume is of interest to anystudent of campaign effects and party strategies, as its main strength liesin the comparative implications of these findings.

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One strong chapter is Alberto Dıaz-Cayeros et al’s study of the effectsof the social program Oportunidades and the health care Seguro Popular.They find that the governing PAN did “buy off segments of the poor”(240) through these programs, yet as offered on a universalistic basis, thisis hardly clientelism. A strong implication is that health insurance andcash-transfer programs can pay significant dividends for governments ofthe right.

In 2006, Mexicans abroad could finally vote in a presidential election,yet only 0.46 percent did so, overwhelmingly for Felipe Calderon. YetJorge Domınguez finds that this lopsided support is not reflected amongexpatriates in general. Rather, socioeconomic determinants appear deci-sive, as Calderon’s supporters, wealthier and more educated, were moreadept at overcoming excessive bureaucratic hurdles to voting. I suspectsimilar patterns might appear among other expatriate communities. Asthe number of countries with external voting provisions is rising, this is amodel chapter for replication in other contexts.

Chapters on candidate nomination are instructive and timely. DavidShirk argues that to understand an election one must understand how can-didates are nominated, and details the crucial role of internal party politics.One omitted point is the effect of the cancellation of PRD’s primary. AfterCuauhtemoc Cardenas was pushed to decline, the PRD founder refusedto campaign for the victor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) inMichoacan, the PRD’s heartland, or even confirm that he would vote forhim. This merely strengthens Shirk’s argument that nomination processesmatter. Shirk’s description of the PRD Sun Brigades, loose extra-party out-fits composed of paid canvassers, as “grass roots,” is more problematic.Credited with some triumphs in the 1990s, these networks later performedunevenly, notably in Mexico State in 2005, when they were reincarnatedas Citizen Networks and used by AMLO to sidestep the local party orga-nization. This matters because the PRD’s comparative lack of organizationis an oft-repeated point: Kathleen Bruhn likens it to a “sway-backed nag”in contrast to PAN’s “strong and healthy horse.” Yet AMLO’s favoring ofthe Networks offers a complementary explanation: they were assigned asubstantial amount of resources meant for the PRD, and in many statesrode roughshod over its organization. Given subsequent accusations ofelectoral fraud, it is no small irony that many of these “volunteers” failedto show up as the coalition’s representatives in many polling places.

Bruhn and Kenneth Greene find that Mexico’s elites are far more polar-ized than their voters, to the point of suggesting “representational failure”(111). Subsequent electoral and legislative alliances between PAN and thePRD may indicate that elite polarization was at a high in 2006, or that it isnonetheless superable. Even so, it is a paradox that the left-right dimensionappears to not matter much to Mexican voters. Greene notes the “anemiccontent of ideological left versus right orientation” (252) and its limited useas an electoral heuristic. Why is this so? The volume does not address this.Two possible explanation are that voters receive little cues from candidates

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on what left-right entails, or that this dimension does not capture the fullcontent of elite polarization, as in the case of AMLO’s relationship with thePRD. Bruhn aptly compares AMLO’s campaign platform with that of hisparty, and finds him quite centrist compared to the PRD elite. Yet to regardhim as “moderate” is misleading. Even without 20/20 hindsight—AMLOradicalized his discourses following his defeat—he was long known forshrill populist rhetoric. His and his followers’ lack of respect for insti-tutional processes was manifested on numerous occasions even beforethe dramatic post-election events revealed a fundamental disregard forMexico’s current democratic setups. As such, the claim that AMLO was“decidedly more moderate than his party” (17) must be qualified. Thepro-system/anti-system cleavage may thus be far from dead in Mexico,at least among sectors of its elite.

This volume ends on a notably positive note regarding the state ofMexican democracy, backed up by data from its individual chapters. Sincepartisanship, evaluations of incumbent performance, and economic votingmattered much, Mexico appears similar to more advanced democracies.Yet did this election unequivocally consolidate democracy? One must notforget that while Calderon’s voters found the election clean, only 16 percentof AMLO voters agreed, and the electoral court would later confirm severalirregularities. To the extent that a significant section of Mexico’s electoratestill believes the electoral dice to be loaded, not all of the readers of thisvolume may share its sanguine conclusions.

Dag MossigeDepartment of Political Science

Davidson College

THE QUEST FOR GOD IN THE WORK OF BORGES. By Annette U. Flynn. Londonand New York: Continuum, 2009, pp. x + 220, $120.00.

Jorge Luis Borges, the blind poet who became director of Argentina’sNational Library, fashioned his entire literary career on an ironic view oflife. One of the greatest ironies concerns the fact that, although Borgesat various times professed some version of agnosticism, skepticism, oratheism, he continually alluded to the existence of God in his writings.Given that this seemingly omnipresent spiritual component is so pervasivein his work, it is surprising that relatively few critics have investigated it.

Annette U. Flynn (Lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese at UniversityCollege, Dublin) acknowledges Borges’ numerous statements regardinghis skepticism, but declines to make assumptions regarding his personalreligious beliefs. She does, however, convincingly assert that Borges spenthis entire adult life and career engaged in a quest for truth, a “deep, thoughanguished and complicated” search for God, which she labels “a major andenduring preoccupation” (ix).

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Flynn divides her study into three parts, arranged generically. In PartOne she analyzes the Argentine writer’s denial of self, time, and God inhis essays from the 1920s to the 1950s. Borges engaged the concepts of du-ality, multiplicity, and fragmentation, especially with regard to personalidentity, and he was frustrated by the inability to discern answers to life’sultimate questions. This comes through clearly in his earliest essays, writ-ten in the 1920s. Borges was searching during these years for “order andstructure; for an underlying (absolute) reality or truth; for some perma-nence giving cohesion to our fleeting mortal existence; for some purpose”(37). Arguing for philosophical idealism, he concluded that the world wasa dream, an illusion, and beyond it there was chaos and nothingness – “noend, no purpose, no cause” (53). The texts from the mid-1930s to the early1950s reveal the persistent influence of Schopenhauer and Leibniz and con-vey his ongoing sense of frustration at failing to reach the transcendent.In 1953 in a new prologue to Historia de la eternidad he declares his beliefin Platonic Forms, a concept he had rejected in the original 1936 editionof that volume. In Flynn’s view this evolution in his thinking allows thepossibility of a form of reality based on faith rather than just knowledgeor experience.

The second section treats Borges’ short fiction, which he began com-posing in the 1930s. In these writings he further explores themes firstdeveloped in the essays and continues the search for answers through hischaracters as he delves into issues of identity, the nature of time and real-ity, and whether there is an absolute truth. Here, in the face of a God figurewho appears as a remote, unknowable arbitrary force, his characters areunsuccessful in their quest for a personal experience of the divine or sometype of fulfillment, an outcome indicative of Borges’ anguish over his ownfailure to achieve a sense of plenitude and wholeness. Flynn emphasizesthe stories from the 1940s, those which helped secure Borges’ internationalrecognition. She offers brief remarks rather than in-depth analyses in orderto highlight pertinent examples of his quest, the most obvious illustrationsof which are his objectification of ultimate reality in stories such as “ElAleph” (the one point that contains all points) and “La biblioteca de Ba-bel” (the one book that contains all books). In this context, the ubiquitousimage of the labyrinth aptly conveys the inability to reach his final goal,an encounter with God.

The pursuit of a metaphysical reality is even more pronounced in thesubject matter of Part Three, the poetry from the 1950s to the 1980s. Inthese compositions, in which scriptural citations often appear as titles ofpoems, Borges makes his way toward a spiritual reality along the samepath he had followed intellectually in his essays and creatively in hisstories. During these years the struggle to attain a personal knowledgeof God intensifies, as seen in “Lucas, XXIII” (1960), and it culminatesin an attempt to establish a link or some form of relationship with thecrucified Christ in “Cristo en la cruz” (1984). Flynn reasons that Borges’desires to reach the eternal and transcendent remained unfulfilled due to

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his unwillingness to move beyond mere knowledge of God into the realmof experience based on faith. She also notes his failure to recognize that “itis the very woundedness of the self and its incompleteness which are thedoorway to the divine who can make whole and fill what is incomplete”(128).

The volume concludes with the text of several poems gathered in anappendix, followed by endnotes, a well-ordered classified bibliography,and a detailed index. The Quest for God in the Work of Borges owes an obviousdebt to Edwin Williamson’s magnificent biography, Borges: A Life (Penguin2004). Like Williamson, Flynn stresses the search for the transcendent asthe key to understanding this complex literary genius. Although readerswill naturally be tempted to speculate on whether Borges ever resolvedhis spiritual conflict, they will ultimately come away without a definitiveanswer. Nevertheless, this groundbreaking open-ended study raises in-triguing questions and provides multiple avenues for further research. Itwill reward students and specialists alike with a new appreciation for thisfascinating writer and his work.

Melvin S. Arrington, Jr.Department of Modern Languages

University of Mississippi

EDITING EDEN: A RECONSIDERATION OF IDENTITY, POLITICS, AND PLACE IN AMA-ZONIA. Eds. Frank Hutchins and Patrick C. Wilson. Lincoln and London:U Nebraska P, 2010, 306 pp., $25.99.

‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here.’ This was the response to theAmazon expressed by the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt in a jour-nal kept during his pioneering travels to South America. Such a reac-tion encapsulates—as is noted in the introduction to Editing Eden—oneof two Western discourses of the Amazon from the sixteenth century tothe present. On the one hand, the lush tropical forest was heralded as anunspoiled Eden. On the other, as Humboldt’s jotting above exemplifies,the Amazon was figured as a place of disease and despair, an inferno ofmosquitoes, mud, and native ‘savagery.’

Although Frank Hutchins and Patrick C. Wilson open their new col-lection of essays on the Amazon with some reflections on these pervasiveand persistent tropes on the region, they are justified in their claim tohave brought “new insights and more nuanced ways of thinking” (xi) toa subject as over-determined as it is various. Editing Eden consists of nineessays by anthropologists with specialties across the Amazon region, witha particular focus on the Amazonian territories of Colombia, Brazil, andEcuador. One of the central concerns of the volume is to explore the variedresponses of Amazonians to globalization. Building on recent work on re-sistance and agency among Amazonian communities, many of the essaysstrive to show how the Amazon is, in the words of Marshall Sahlins, “being

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re-diversified by indigenous adaptations to the global juggernaut” (citedin Hutchins, 6). Hutchins in his perceptive essay, for example, shows howKichwa communities in Ecuador have been able to resist cultural com-modification and rework ecotourism to suit their own ends, and MarıaClemencia Ramırez convincingly argues that, despite the failure of recentalternative development programs in Putumayo, Colombia, local commu-nities have, as an unintended consequence, learned to imitate the languageand methods of the NGOs and are now asserting their own capacity toestablish community-based projects. Beth A. Conklin’s dismissal of the“simple capitalist/noncapitalist dichotomy” (131) to describe Amazonianresponses to globalization is characteristic of the volume’s general dissat-isfaction with many existing accounts of how native peoples engage withmodernity.

As well as exploring local “cosmologies of capitalism” (Sahlins, citedin Conklin, 131), the volume interrogates a number of other false opposi-tions that have characterized scholarship on the Amazon to date, includingthe division between indigenous and mestizo communities. Michael Uzen-doski, who relates fractal theory to a number of Amazonian oral tales inhis rich essay, is compelling in his argument that indigenous Amazoni-ans and riberenos (river people) “share a common intellectual tradition”(55). Margarita Chaves also muddies the distinction between indigenousand non-indigenous Amazonians in her study of how migration and dis-placement in the Putumayo, one of the principal coca-producing regionsin Colombia and a frontline in the government’s war against the FARC,has led to alternative strategies of territoriality and identity-construction.Her essay shows that, in the case of displaced groups in the Putumayo,indigenous traditions are remarkably resilient even when transplanted tourban settings, with architecture and traditional cultural practices used tomark out and define new indigenous territories.

Although the essays in the collection are all extremely scholarly, manyare animated by personal reflections and anecdotes about time spent inthe field, as when we learn of Conklin’s “hurt and disappointment” (129)when the Wari’ people of western Brazil with whom she has worked formany years introduce her to new acquaintances by listing the gifts shehas given them or of Wilson’s experiences when based at the Federationof Indigenous Organizations of Napo in the 1980s. Usendoski’s essay in-cludes a number of fascinating stories of enchantment and metamorphosisas well as an account of the author’s lasting friendship with the Colombianpoet and storyteller, Juan Carlos Galeano. The essays in Editing Eden arealso all marked by an unusual degree of mutual engagement and unityof purpose, heightened by the inclusion in the volume of two summativepieces, one by Neil L. Whitehead at the end of part one and the other byAlcida Rita Ramos at the end of part two, which both draw together andengage with themes in the preceding essays.

What emerges strongly in this important book is that, far from con-forming to the static tropes applied by generations of travellers, explorers,

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scientists, and ethnographers, Amazonia and the people who populatethis vast and various place are marked by fluidity and heterogeneity, tran-sculturation and hybridity. Early in the editors’ introduction the reader isreminded that “‘to edit’ can mean ‘to adapt’” (xi). The title of the collection,Editing Eden, is thus revealed to be less about the process of redaction inthe outside world’s ongoing written and imaginative construction of Ama-zonia, than Amazonians’ ability to adapt to and adapt new circumstances,particularly global capitalism, and to have fruitful exchanges with “otherswho do not call this place their home” (xi).

Lesley WylieDepartment of SpanishUniversity of Leicester

SHOWING TEETH TO THE DRAGONS: STATE-BUILDING BY COLOMBIAN PRESI-DENT ALVARO URIBE VELEZ, 2002-2006. By Harvey F. Kline. Tuscaloosa: UAlabama P, 2009, p. 320, $32.95.

The peace talks between the world’s oldest active guerrilla group—the FARC (Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces ofColombia)—and president Andres Pastrana, ended up in a ferocious coun-terattack whose gunfire can still be heard in the most remote areas of thecountry. Harvey F. Kline, a political science professor at the University ofAlabama, documented the reasons for the break in peace negotiations inhis award-winning volume Chronicle of a Failure Foretold: the Peace Processof Colombian President Andres Pastrana (U Alabama P, 2007). His new book,Showing Teeth to the Dragons, is an amazingly well researched analysis ofthe process that followed Mr. Pastrana’s “defeat” in 2002 with the ap-pointment of the right-wing politician Alvaro Uribe Velez as president ofColombia. The FARC had a crucial word in the presidential elections ofthis South American country in the last fifteen years in two contradictoryways: Pastrana promised peace and the people elected him. The FARC,however, continued to roam freely across 16,200 square miles of Colom-bian territory, all the while strengthening their finances and arsenal. This,in turn, increased their potential for exerting violence and hence shatteredthe civil population’s hopes for peace. It was Uribe’s turn. He vowed warand this won him the election.

One of the greatest merits of this book lies in the sources that Klineused for developing his conclusions on the first four years of Mr. Uribe’spresidency. The resources are mostly anonymous interviews of politicalscientists, sociologists, historians, officials of private foundations, and jour-nalists. He also quotes the names of the most prominent columnists in thecountry. The nature of the sources confirms that the topic that Kline con-fronts is extremely recent and therefore volatile: it is moderately difficultto give a certain assessment of the first term of President Uribe even to-day, four years later. However, by considering the intrinsic difficulties of

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building a strong state in Colombia—a country that since its foundationhas entrusted forces not belonging to the state with its own security—theauthor describes the policies of Mr. Uribe on three fronts: the programof Democratic Security, the Law of Justice and Peace and, as a conse-quence of the latter, the peace processes with the rebel groups and theparamilitary.

Kline departs from an assumption that may be questionable for somebut evident for others: the situation in Colombia reached its lowest pointin 2002. Drug gangs exerted violence over the main cities, the guerrillakidnapped tourists and nationals at gunpoint on the major highways, andthe paramilitary committed brutal human rights violations against thecivil population. According to the figures and statements quoted by theauthor, Colombia is a much less violent country thanks to the policies ofDemocratic Security, a plan designed by President Uribe and backed by USdollars through the Plan Colombia, which envisioned a higher number ofarmy and police personnel that would expand a stronger and more securestate. The significant growth in numbers in both the army and the policeled, according to Kline, to a noteworthy decrease in the levels of homi-cides and kidnappings and a “smaller number of political archipelagoescontrolled by army groups” (168). By 2006 the reality was—and for themost part still is—that the guerrillas were incapable of launching attacksas atrocious as those that shocked public opinion during the late 1990s. Inaddition, more than thirty thousand members of the paramilitary surren-dered to the judiciary system.

Showing Teeth to the Dragons is a vital tool for understanding how thelocal public perceived of the first four years of Mr. Uribe’s presidency,particularly in comparison with the numerous books published between2007 and 2009 on the lessons of the negotiations with the rebel groupsand the project of building a strong state in Colombia. By the end of 2006and 2007 it was clear that the dragons Mr. Uribe was defying included theinsurgent groups and their relationship with drug trafficking, as well as therise of violence in a city like Medellın, and it is certain that the presidentsuccessfully defeated them. Kline’s final comments only mention someof the issues that would later take dominate the national media, suchas the taping of opposition members by security forces, the infiltrationof the paramilitary into the highest levels of government, the corruptionscandals that followed Mr. Uribe’s initiative to run for a third term, and theassassination of innocent youngsters by the armed forces in order to laterreport them as guerrilla members killed in combat. The fact that the authorneeds to protect the identity of the interviewed is not only a question ofstyle. By the end of his second term, it seems that Mr. Uribe may haveadopted some of his own dragon-like strategies.

Julio QuinteroDepartment of English and Foreign Languages

Waynesburg University

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EXPECTING PEARS FROM AN ELM TREE: FRANCISCAN MISSIONS ON THE CHIRIGUANO

FRONTIER, 1830-1949. By Erick D. Langer. Durham and London: Duke UP,2009, p. 375, $24.95.

Whereas scholars have devoted considerable attention to the impactof religious missions in frontier development during the colonial era inthe Americas, relatively few have dedicated their attention to the study ofreligious missions on the frontier after independence. Erick D. Langer, aprofessor of history at Georgetown University, has devoted much of hisacademic career to an examination of the Franciscan missions among theChiriguano Indians in southeastern Bolivia to rectify this situation. Empha-sizing the importance of Roman Catholic mission systems in republican-era Latin America, Langer posits that the impact of the Franciscan missionsin Bolivia “was profound because the missions transformed the frontieritself” (55). Langer, who acknowledges that the religious missions estab-lished after independence were less closely tied to the state than thoseestablished during the colonial era, explains that they were “key to thepenetration of national societies into the regions and indigenous landsthat the nascent republics claimed as their jurisdiction” (1).

Unlike previous studies of missions and the frontier in Latin Americanhistory that presented the Indians as either marginal characters or help-less victims, Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree: Franciscan Missions on theChiriguano Frontier, 1830-1949 presents the Chiriguano Indians as “actorsin their own right, adapting to and creatively resisting” outside forces (4).An evaluation of the interaction between Indians living on the mission andoutside the mission, the missionaries, and European and Mestizo colonistsand government officials provides a more complete understanding of theimpact of the missions on the frontier. Significantly, Langer, who placesthe missions in the larger context of the frontier and national policy, revealshow the missions changed over time.

Spanish colonial authorities found it virtually impossible to conquerthe Chiriguanos. Jesuit attempts to establish a mission system among theChiriguanos also failed. The Franciscans, however, were able to establisha limited mission system among the Chiriguanos prior to Bolivian inde-pendence that encompassed one-fifth of the Chiriguano population. Themajority of the Indians, however, did not convert and most of those whodid were nominal Catholics. Langer contends that most Chirguanos hadlittle desire to convert to Christianity. Rather, they viewed the Franciscanmissions as “an option to escape the pressures of frontier society” (16).Between 1810 and 1825, during the wars of independence, the Francis-can mission system in southeastern Bolivia collapsed and the Chiriguanosachieved an independence that lasted until the second half of the nine-teenth century.

Franciscan missionaries, primarily from Tuscany, began to reestablishthe mission system among the Chiriguanos in 1845. Langer holds that thereestablishment of the mission system was not the result of a “deliberate

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and long-range strategy, but rather a policy engendered by a weak statethat found itself unable to protect its citizens” (22). Chiriguanos activelysought this second establishment of Franciscan missions for their ownsecular reasons. Langer contends that the establishment of missions amongthe Chiriguanos had “little to do with a desire by the Indians to convertor integrate themselves into national society” (52). Few Chiriguano adultsconverted to Christianity. Most saw the missions, often built as smallfortresses, as refuges against hostile members of their own ethnic groupor land-hungry European and Mestizo settlers. The title of Langer’s work,from a common phrase in Spanish, references a comment by Franciscanmissionary Bernardino de Nino summarizing the “recalcitrance of healthyChiriguano adults to become Catholics” (161).

Chiriguano attempts to resist outside encroachment on their lands dur-ing the last quarter of the nineteenth century, culminating with the 1892uprising, failed. Although Langer posits several valid reasons for the lossof Chiriguano power, he astutely contends that the reestablishment ofFranciscan missions among the Chiriguanos was the most important. Bythe twentieth century, however, Bolivian governments decided that “themissions had outgrown their usefulness in the region” (217). The last Fran-ciscan missions in southeastern Bolivia were secularized in 1949.

Langer’s well-documented study is a valuable addition to the growingcollection of scholarship dedicated to frontier studies in Latin America.Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree should serve as a template for futurestudies of post-colonial mission systems.

Michael R. HallDepartment of History

Armstrong Atlantic State University

LA PATRIA DEL CRIOLLO: AN INTERPRETATION OF COLONIAL GUATEMALA. BySevero Martınez Pelaez. Trans. Susan M. Neve and W. George Lovell.Durham: Duke UP, 2009, p. 329, $23.95.

Although Severo Martınez Pelaez’s La patria del criollo focuses on theauthor’s native Guatemala, the work’s fundamental contribution to thefield of Latin American Studies lies in its questioning Latin American na-tional ideologies based on mestizaje through an in-depth analysis of thedevelopment of the notion of Guatemala as “patria” or homeland. Indeed,the author himself claims that “It is a mistake to believe that our conceptof nationhood [. . .] is the work of mestizos” (278) insofar as imaginingGuatemala as “patria” was always the work of Guatemala’s criollo class,a class defined more by “the ability to acquire and exploit servile labor”than race (279). Primarily drawing on the life of the seventeenth-centurychronicler Francisco Antonio Fuentes y Guzman and his work, the Recor-dacion Florida, Martınez Pelaez uses a diverse range of sources—from the

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Annals of the Kakchikels to travel writing by the Englishman Thomas Gage—to buttress his arguments. By elucidating the contours of how Guatemalawas “imagined,” La patria del criollo creates a nuanced picture of the differ-ent historical moments in which the concept of Guatemala as patria tookshape as well as of the ramifications that concept had in the twentiethcentury. Asserting that “Independence [. . .] marked the end of colonialrule but not the end of a colonial system of exploitation,” Martınez Pelaezthus sees “the coffee dictatorships [as being] the full and radical realiza-tion of criollo notions of patria” (278). La patria del criollo thus provides athorough background on the evolution of the ideologies and exploitativeeconomic systems contested by groups like Guatemala’s present-day Pan-Maya movement. As such, the work remains as relevant today as when itwas first published in 1970.

One cannot overlook the fact that La patria del criollo, like the first-hand accounts and documents it analyses, is also very much a work ofits own historical moment. As an unapologetically Marxist analysis ofGuatemala’s colonial legacy, the book shares a good deal in commonwith other works published in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970ssuch as Eduardo Galeano’s Las venas abiertas de America Latina (1971). Ifsuch analyses seem like well-trod ground to 21st-century readers, I wouldsuggest that Martınez Pelaez’s engagement with mestizo nationalism—atopic often eschewed by many of his Latin American contemporaries—imbues La patria del criollo with a resonance not found in many other works.One need only open the average newspaper from any Latin Americancountry still struggling with the “Indian Question” to find that questionsabout national identity and the national past are alive and well throughoutthe region.

Ironically, within the context of current scholarship on indigenousmovements Martınez Pelaez’s engagement with race and ethnicity inGuatemala is also the book’s most glaring weakness. Finding that “con-quest and colonialism transformed pre-Hispanic natives into Indians”(281), Martınez Pelaez argues that Guatemala’s indigenous populationmust fold itself into the country’s Ladino proletariat in the name of classsolidarity. While railing against romantic, essentialist perspectives on in-digenous cultures, he himself states, “an Indian who wears jeans andboots can no longer be called an Indian,” a perspective that repeats es-sentialized notions of what constitutes indigeneity (288). These assertionsappear most forcefully in the book’s final section “The Colonial Legacy,” achapter which comes across as brief and hastily conceived if only becauseof the weight and rigor of the preceding chapters.

Translators Susan M. Neve and W. George Lovell have done an excel-lent job with the translation, rendering the text into natural and enjoyableEnglish. The introduction by W. George Lovell and Christopher H. Lutzcelebrates the book’s strengths but does not shy away from its aforemen-tioned weaknesses, citing critiques of the work by Robert Carmak and theK’iche’ Maya intellectual Enrique Sam Colop, among others. In doing so

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it provides the reader a well-rounded perspective on Martınez Pelaez andthe reception of the text itself. Lovell and Lutz also take pains to give thereader a thorough historical background of the author and the politics thatso dramatically affected his life, information that greatly enriches one’sunderstanding of the text. Martınez Pelaez himself saw his ideal audienceas being “educated but non-specialist” (xxii), and this translation of hismonumental La patria del criollo certainly holds appeal for a non-specialistpublic interested in learning more about Guatemala, Central America, orLatin America in general. However, the book’s detailed analysis of bothideological and material aspects of Guatemala’s colonial legacy will like-wise appeal to specialists already well-versed in the field.

Paul WorleyDepartment of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures

University of North Dakota

LOOKING FOR MEXICO: MODERN VISUAL CULTURE AND NATIONAL IDENTITY. ByJohn Mraz. Durham: Duke UP, 2009, p. 360, $84.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

In Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity, JohnMraz provides a masterful analysis of visual representations of Mexicofrom the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Drawing on the author’sexpertise as both a scholar of visual culture and contributor to the con-temporary arts scene, Looking for Mexico represents Mraz’s accumulationof an unmatched breadth of knowledge, and provides an excellent an-alytical synthesis of the development of modern visual culture. Boldlyentering what the author fully acknowledges is a “potential minefield”(1)—the question of mexicanidad and lo mexicano in constructions of na-tional identity—Mraz emerges unscathed, and indeed triumphant.

Mraz defines modern visual culture as that genre of images the tech-nical production of which both lends an aura of credibility to, and createsthe possibility of, mass production and consumption. His analysis beginswith the introduction of the daguerrotype to Mexico and the subsequentand more significant popularity of the mass-produced and comparativelyaffordable carte-de-visite. Also integral to Mraz’s definition is modern vi-sual culture’s capacity for the production of celebrities whose fame derivesfrom their appearance in widely-available images. The Empress Carlota,who collected assiduously and appeared in tarjetas de visita, provides atelling example of the genre’s early importance. Mraz follows the devel-opment of these images of Mexico and Mexicans through the arrival ofpicture postcards, photojournalism, cinema, illustrated magazines, anddigital imagery. The expansiveness of his topic necessarily dictates someselectivity on the part of the author, but the diversity of examples hechooses is nevertheless admirable. The analysis is accompanied by an ex-cellent series of images, including everything from the “Mexican types” of

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the Cruces y Campa studio and the digital manipulations of photographerPedro Meyer to frame enlargements taken from films such as Fernandode Fuentes’s El compadre Mendoza and Francisco Vargas’s El violın, provid-ing ample material for Mraz’s critical eye and illustrating his provocativearguments.

A simultaneous line of analysis is Mraz’s central focus upon the pic-turesque and anti-picturesque in the development of mexicanidad. Here,Mraz also begins in the nineteenth century, with images of Mexico’s de-feat by the United States and the occupation of Mexico City by the forcesof Winfield Scott. Although the tension between these two constructionsoften overlaps with the differences between foreign and national represen-tations of Mexico, as in Hugo Brehme’s exotic photographs of the Mexicancountryside, Mraz shows in his analysis of the works of Tina Modotti andthe Hermanos Mayo that foreign image-makers sometimes chose the morechallenging anti-picturesque path. Conversely, he suggests that Mexicannationals have also produced images that employ a picturesque gaze, asin Graciela Iturbide’s photographs of the women of Juchitan, for whomthe photographer was just as much an outsider as if she had hailed from aforeign country. Although both types of images have played a role in shap-ing lo mexicano, Mraz demonstrates that anti-picturesque visual culture isfilled with images that take a more critical approach to understandingboth the past and the present. He argues that the images of photographerssuch as Manuel Alvarez Bravo and filmmakers such as Jorge Fons showedthe irony and underside of successive Mexican governments’ pushes formodernity and development from the nineteenth century to the present.In doing so, they diverged from the likes of Gustavo Casasola (and hisfather before him), who contributed to the maintenance of the status quothat ensured continuation of the underdevelopment depicted as exotic inpicturesque images by populating historias graficas with photographs ofthe “Great Men” who were presumed to have made history.

Despite its overwhelming strength, a few minor issues detract from thisexcellent volume. Mraz’s writing style is engaging and his enthusiasmfor the subject palpable, but his excessive use of exclamation marks issomewhat distracting. More substantively, although the analytical threadsthat unify Mraz’s analysis are expertly woven throughout the text, thechapters lack effective introductions and conclusions, causing the diversetopics covered to seem more like vignettes than examples integral to theunderstanding of each period under discussion. Moreover, the volumeas a whole would have been improved by the addition of a conclusioninstead of the two-paragraph reprise that appears at the end of Mraz’sfinal chapter.

Minor criticisms notwithstanding, Looking for Mexico represents a sig-nificant advance in the fields of visual culture and Mexican history thatshould be read by all those interested in the construction of national iden-tities in Latin America and beyond. The implications of Mraz’s analysis ofthe importance of the visual sources of identity formation in periods and

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places where visual literacy predominates over traditionally-examinedprint culture have particular relevance beyond Mexico. Accessible, engag-ing, and innovative, Looking for Mexico will surely find a well-deservedplace on many undergraduate and graduate course outlines and becomea standard work on the topic.

Amelia M. KiddleCenter for the Americas

Wesleyan University

GENDER AND THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION: YUCATAN WOMEN AND THE REALITIES

OF PATRIARCHY. By Stephanie J. Smith. Chapel Hill: U North Carolina P,2009, p. 272, $27.50.

The Revolution of 1910 is the most important event in the history ofcontemporary Mexico, an event that lasted for over a decade and touchedevery aspect of life. Traditionally understood as a civil war that ended thedictatorship of Porfirio Dıaz and returned the nation to its liberal politicalroots, only recently has it been revisited by scholars interested in the social,political, and cultural implications not just of the eleven years of armedconflicts, but also of the formation of the institutions and the politicalsystem that came out of it. Of particular interest have been issues of genderand race, whether directly or indirectly affected by the Revolution. Notonly is this book an example of such interest, but also a demonstration ofinnovative research, since as the author, Stephanie J. Smith, declares andproves, its most important contribution is its detailed analysis of “courtrecords to consider women’s lives in revolutionary Yucatan” (12).

Although the title may suggest that what happened in Yucatan ap-plies to the rest of Mexico, the truth is that the Revolution manifesteddifferently in the diverse regions of the country. Gender and the MexicanRevolution keeps this in perspective by focusing primarily on Yucatan andonly occasionally making references to the rest of the country, particularlyits capital, something that makes sense if we understand that “Yucatanwas an immensely valuable asset to the revolutionary government, sup-plying millions of pesos in taxes to Mexico City from its lucrative henequenproduction” (17). If we cannot generalize about the ways the Revolutionaffected the country, it is possible, nonetheless, to draw broad lines thathelp us understand the magnitude and scope of the movement. One ofthem is the new ways of looking at women and their activism everywherein the country, particularly how “women became adept at using emergentopportunities within the revolutionary judicial structure to fight againstyears of oppression” (2).

This is the main point of the book, and perhaps because of that its fivechapters seem a little repetitive. The first one is dedicated to women’s ed-ucation and feminist organizations, often promoted by rural teachers who

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were activists as well as educators. The second focuses on the militaryrevolutionary tribunals and the more traditional civil tribunals of post-revolutionary Mexico, which operated simultaneously. The third chapter,one of the most interesting, is a detailed analysis of the uneasy relation-ship between the revolutionary state and the Catholic church, particu-larly in matters of divorce, birth control, and free love, which are in theend a struggle for control over the female body and by extension of thetraditional family. This chapter also reviews how these issues did noterase the fact that both the church and the state “still shared a commonworldview of the primacy of men over women” (86). In a similar manner,chapter four focuses on divorce and the attempts made by the Yucatecanpost-revolutionary government to make it not only easy—particularly forwomen who could then initiate the process of a divorce without seekingthe partner’s consent—but also available to everybody, including foreignnationals who flocked to Yucatan for a quick divorce. Finally, chapter fiveexpands on the previous chapter by addressing issues that were seen by therevolutionary government as threats to society and patriarchal morality,especially prostitution, and the consequent attempts “to legislate moralitywith ‘modern’ health and sanitation codes” (146).

This book is an example of groundbreaking research in gender studies,and shows how much more there is to do for scholars of Mexican and LatinAmerican history. The Mexican Revolution, whether seen as an example ofdemocratization and egalitarianism or as a failure of liberal principles, is ariddle that has not ceased to surprise. This is relevant now more than ever,as Mexicans commemorate the centennial of their Revolution. It is seldomacknowledged that this Revolution was social and cultural, as much as itwas political, and changed, if not shook, preconceived ideas of race, class,and above all gender. Smith’s research shows that women were far moreactive and influential than is usually admitted, since “a shift in focus frommale political actors to everyday women uncovers women’s complex andongoing negotiations with revolutionary officials and reallocates powerform the center” (178) to the periphery. At one hundred years after theRevolution began, it is interesting to see how the country still struggleswith matters of individual freedoms and secular politics, and it becomesobvious how necessary studies like this one are.

Gender and the Mexican Revolution is a welcomed contribution to the fieldof gender studies and will definitely force us to see the Mexican Revolutionin a new light. An excellent introduction and a brief conclusion frame itsfive chapters, which are followed by a comprehensive bibliography thatincludes archival sources as well as government documents.

R. Hernandez RodrıguezWorld Languages and Literatures Department

Southern Connecticut State University

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THE SEDUCTION OF BRAZIL: THE AMERICANIZATION OF BRAZIL DURING WORLD

WAR II. By Antonio Pedro Tota. Trans. Lorena B. Ellis. Austin: U TexasP, 2009, 216 pp., $25.00.

The cultural exchange between Brazil and developed nations, and itsconsequences, has long been a topic of great debate in the country. Are for-eign cultural manifestations invasive and a threat to Brazilian culture? Ordo they create a cultural dialogue in which new Brazilian genres emerge?While literary critics and students of music have long discussed these ex-changes and debated their merits, Antonio Pedro Tota’s monograph TheSeduction of Brazil historicizes a crucial period of state-sponsored culturalexchange between the United States of Brazil and the United States ofAmerica: the Second World War. Melding diplomatic history with closereadings of popular culture, Tota argues that Nelson Rockefeller’s Officeof Inter-American Affairs, while simultaneously promoting Brazilian cul-ture in the United States and vice versa, did not create a true exchangeof ideas between the two peoples. That exchange, he claims, was unequaland paternalistic, trying to seduce the Brazilian nation into cooperationand alliance.

Compared to the plans of military intervention by other high officialsin the U.S. government, Rockefeller’s vision of friendship and coopera-tion was far from despotic, even if an imperialistic seduction. Rockefeller’ssuggestion to Franklin Roosevelt that the rapprochement of North andSouth America was a vital issue both economically and strategically ledto the creation of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs(OCIAA), and the appointment of Rockefeller as its coordinator. In com-petition with the German attempt to add Brazil to the list of Axis allies,Rockefeller quickly went to work.

He surrounded himself with powerful friends in the media industry,and soon shortwave radio news services, magazines, and films from theUnited States flooded into Brazil. Using his powerful contacts, he evenwent as far as convincing companies like Ford and General Electric tocontinue advertising in Brazil, even though they had nothing to sell sinceall production was devoted to the war effort. American networks broadcastinto Brazil as part of the war effort, since they had not expanded there dueto the low profit margins. The “Factory of Ideologies,” as Tota designatesthe OCIAA, tried to control American cultural production, suggesting tofilmmakers that they should research their Latin American subjects beforeportraying them, thus avoiding faux pas like Brazilian Tango or ArgentineSamba in their films.

Rockefeller, however, was not just selling America to Brazil, but doingthe opposite as well. Brazil’s participation in the 1939 World’s Fair andrepresentations propagating music and film were meant to showcase theculture of the country and convince Americans of its importance as anally. There were various venues for this, such as Carmen Miranda’s showsand Walt Disney’s animated films Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.

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The OCIAA established an exchange system for Brazilian artists and intel-lectuals, and Hollywood producers were instructed to hire Brazilians. Yetthey also presented the strategic importance of Brazil’s war effort in therole of supplier of raw materials, showing to the American public educa-tional films about Brazilian quartz used in the manufacture of radios, anddeclarations of coffee as an important tool for the American soldier in thefront line.

Tota sprinkles his analysis with colorful examples from music and film,closely reading them to illuminate the underlying tensions of what he seesas an unequal relationship. In his third and final chapter, he analyzes thereception of American culture through samba songs that critiqued Amer-icanization. Artists often satirically talked about American influence andBrazilian music in the United States. It is because of this critical dialoguethat Tota argues that the Americanization of Brazil was not an exercisein imitation. Rather, he argues, the invasion of American culture in Brazil“did not destroy Brazil’s culture, but most certainly it produced new cul-tural manifestations”(119). While this is similar to the anthropophagicalargument put forth by Oswald de Andrade among other Brazilian mod-ernists, Tota argues that there was also a degree of cultural resistance,and that the best way to interpret these cultural exchanges is perhaps as afusion of the concepts of cultural anthropophagy and cultural resistance.

Certainly, reading the light tone in which some Brazilian artists simul-taneously mocked and appropriated American music and culture, it seemsthat Tota is correct in his interpretation, certainly valid for what happenedamong the producers of popular culture. The research, however, couldhave benefitted from a more thorough attempt at understanding the pop-ular reception of American culture – while Tota cites a couple of opinionpolls and readership statistics for some magazines, his analysis hardlyelucidates what the consumers of popular culture, moviegoers and radiolisteners, thought of the American influence. Since the arrival of Ameri-can media in Brazil stemmed from government promotion rather than amarket demand, it does not imply in itself that Brazilians were fond of theAmerican culture suddenly presented to them in these media.

Felipe CruzDepartment of History

University of Texas-Austin

SATAN’S PLAYGROUND: MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS AT AMERICA’S GREATEST

GAMING RESORT. By Paul J. Vanderwood. Durham: Duke UP, 2010, 408pp., $24.95 trade paperback.

Making his way deep into the lost world of Tijuana’s legendary Jazz Ageentertainment complex, Paul Vanderwood has produced a truly transna-tional tale that is masterfully revealed through an array of sumptuous,

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sometimes spine-chilling, vignettes combined with probing historical anal-ysis centered on the city’s erstwhile upscale resort Agua Caliente. Earlierentertainment industry development in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands re-gion, with places like Mexicali’s Owl nightclub and an assortment of drink-ing and gambling establishments in Tijuana, preceded Agua Caliente. Sotoo did government collusion with organized crime as politicians such asEsteban Cantu presided profitably over the federal Territory of Baja Cali-fornia from 1915 to 1920. Soon, however, a new cohort would take chargeand significantly raise the stakes.

Vanderwood’s treatment is somewhat unique in that he carefully buildshis narrative through a combination of crime capers and cross-sectionalviews. Drawing in the reader with an opening scene involving robberyand murder, the key players are gradually brought center stage. Initially,it was three enterprising men who joined forces to build what would be-come the fabled resort. None, as Vanderwood reports, initially came fromelite, moneyed backgrounds. Instead, each had left home as teenagers andheaded west seeking their fortunes. Future Border Baron (as they wouldbecome known) Wirt Bowman had “bummed around as a lumberjack andrailroad section hand” while James Crofton earlier worked as a “flam-boyant circus barker” and Baron Long (his actual name) earned a modestliving as “a traveling flimflam medicine man” (37).

Crowning the Agua Caliente development deal, powerful Mexican gov-ernor Abelardo Rodrıguez soon provided the gringo entrepreneurs withthe tacit government backing essential for their success. In 1923, Rodrıguez,the relatively poor son of a teamster turned amateur boxer, baseball player,singer, police chief of Nogales and subsequent military man, was awardedthe governorship of Baja California Norte. Over his seven-year term, hewasted no time establishing himself as the new champion of the NorthernMexican entertainment district while unflinchingly helping himself to ahandsome cut of the profits. Rodrıguez effectively defended Baja’s incip-ient tourism industry by convincing his overseers in Mexico City that hewas helping to provide much needed jobs and critical tax revenue. WithProhibition in effect, construction of the Agua Caliente resort in mid-1927seemed both perfectly timed and beautifully positioned to make a killing.

Not unlike Las Vegas that would magically light up the Nevada desertsome years later, Agua Caliente went from relatively “barren desert oasis”to “magnificence” in three seemingly short years. At the start, there didexist a natural hot water spa—from which the site gained its name—thathad long attracted visitors. The area was owned by a Mexican namedSantiago Arguello whose relatives, having inherited the property, hadbeen dividing up and selling. Acquisition of the parcel upon which theresort would be developed took place under the authority of GovernorRodrıguez, who purchased the land and then leased it to the other threeBarons.

Rodrıguez saw to it that key infrastructural and regional developmentmatters were tended to. The governor’s brother Fernando headed up the

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effort, and Mexican taxpayers footed a large portion of the overall con-struction bill. On this fact Vanderwood comments, “[s]o Agua Calientewas being outfitted with government money [. . .] No one seemed to mind[. . .] No investigation followed [. . .] No expose [. . .] No sensational head-lines” (148). With its Mission Revival architecture eccentrically mixed withBaroque ornamentation, Mediterranean landscaping, Art Deco touches,Mudejar tilework, Moorish tower entrance and later Louis XV furnishings,whatever the place “lacked in symmetry and cohesion was compensatedby lavishness” (147).

At the heart of the book, Vanderwood chronicles the massive influxof visitors that came to Agua Caliente, or “Hollywood’s Playground” asmany called it. But others saw it as nothing more than the work of theDevil. President Lazaro Cardenas seemed to take the latter view. In July1935, he ordered the district’s casinos closed. Other than allowing theracetrack to stay open under new management, Cardenas soon drove thefinal nail in Satan’s coffin when he decreed in late 1937 that the site beexpropriated and transformed into an industrial trade school. In response,former employees occupied and sacked the premises. Shortly thereafter,they were forever shut out from any claim when Tijuana labor arbitersdenied their petition for severance pay.

Millions were lost, of course, but as Vanderwood informs us, the Bor-der Barons—Rodrıguez especially—survived quite handsomely even asthe site was gradually reduced over the years to a place where only a fewghosts and eccentric historians visit occasionally! All told, el maestro Van-derwood’s latest offering is a fantastic mixing of history and “true crime”at its finest.

Andrew Grant WoodDepartment of History

University of Tulsa

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