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• W2899448099 abstract "Histories of Mexico tend to give a broad brush to the army of Porfirio Díaz. The details of daily life in the army have been missing. Stephen Neufeld, who is on faculty at California State University, Fullerton, spent years researching and writing this imaginative study. His task was to understand the army during the Porfiriato (1876–1911). Easier said than done.The portrait that he presents is sharp and explains a lot about Mexico during those years. Recruitment was forced and random. Young men, often those without local standing or protection, were literally grabbed from village lanes, chained together, and marched off to distant barracks where they were beaten into submissive ranks. The new soldiers were less recruits than captives. The barracks reflected their dishonored status. Many, such as the one at Tlatelolco in the capital, were former convents built around a central courtyard, with very high walls, barred windows, and guarded gateways. The atmosphere was more of a prison than military quarters. Many of these poor men were indigenous, with limited or no Spanish. The army's mission was to turn them into Mexicans. As Neufeld relates, “The barracks developed its own language, a cant largely indecipherable to officers that wed a community of conscripts from various regions who may not otherwise have shared a common tongue” (p. 210). In theory officers acted as teachers, but in Neufeld's telling the training routine was so brutal that one wonders how effective it could have been in producing effective soldiers.The ragged conscripts trained, drilled, and learned basic soldierly skills in the central courtyard. They also took their meals and spread their sleeping mats there. Seemingly the only relief that they had from the harshness was smuggled-in alcohol, cheap cigarettes, and marijuana, the singing of corridos, and their female companions, the soldaderas, and their offspring. The army rations, based on European foods, were designed to break with native diets, from which the conscripts were saved by the soldaderas' proper tacos. The women and children were allowed in only at night. By day they roamed the streets rummaging for food and water. Some did a lively commerce with such forage. For months on end they provided the conscripts with their main link to the outside. Eventually conscripts were allowed more freedom to go out.It seems a mismatch for the regime to have wanted educated professional officers to oversee such dismal ranks. The military academy, located in Mexico City's Chapultepec Castle, had the mission of taking “boys from privilege” and transforming them into earnest “young officers to lead the country forward” (p. 129). They “learned a scientific and rational approach to modern warfare and a shared military lore that . . . molded their worldview” (p. 129). Their destiny would be to direct Mexico “away from tradition and toward the progress they saw in London or Paris” (p. 129). The majority of cadets were from similar backgrounds, many from military families of upper middle or upper classes, raised in the larger cities. The tuition and cost of uniforms limited those who could apply. There were few indigenous or nonwhites. The routine, topics studied, and discipline were similar to the academies at West Point, Berlin, and Sandhurst. According to Neufeld, “The perfect cadet would be brave in battle and polished in salons, ready to face opponents with pen or sword, and able . . . to serve even a sworn enemy for the good of Mexico” (p. 133). The disillusion that most of them would experience when faced with the reality of the barracks must have been severe. The better connected would be the Europeanized face that the regime sent on assignment as military attachés.Neufeld gives the text a powerful structure that dissects the army's social and cultural history. He opens by carefully placing the army into the national story, then goes on to examine the horror of conscription, the destruction of the captive and the creation of the soldier through drill and ritual, the varied roles of the soldaderas, the education of the officer corps, life in the barracks, and the taking of the army into battle against Yaqui in the north and Maya in the south. As chapter 8 reveals, it was the modern conquest of Mexico, as the army made the colonization of the national map possible. His use of semifictional characters to people introductory sections is extremely effective.In discussing the legacies of the Porfirian army, Neufeld ominously proposes that it set a background for “the rising public fear” of today's military and the “widespread governmental corruption” that hinders “national prosperity” (p. 309). Throughout the twentieth century the Mexican army remained an “important element in the weaving of political culture” (p. 310)." @default.
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• W2899448099 date "2018-11-01" @default.
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• W2899448099 title "The Blood Contingent: The Military and the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876–1911" @default.
• W2899448099 doi "https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-7160586" @default.
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