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LIFE World Library
Le Mexique
Pictorial Hardcover. From Private Collection. 1964 - Time Life. Pages are tight, clean and un-marked.
- GenresTravelHistoryNonfiction
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1961
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 19, 2015
An extremely dated, yet pretty fascinating and interesting read about Mexico and its rich history. The photographs in this book are absolutely breathtaking.
January 21, 2025
I remember using other volumes in this series for delving into all things geographical when I was in elementary/middle school age and when these books were only 20 or so years old and well...it's not enough to say that this book is dated. I'm interested in going back and looking at other volumes in the series but I'm reminded that even when I was a pre-teen reading the volume from this series about the Middle East I knew better than to buy into some things that were being presented there and now that I've read this volume I can put my finger on what's wrong and it's not just that the times have changed because there are still books that do what this one does (and at least one other in the series did) -- This book is built on the principle that you can identify and essentialize a national character. And that kind of philosophy is in fact a major project of the 20th century (started even earlier than that) and that the older I've gotten the more I have come around to the notion that this notion is not only not real, but that it has been a damaging project globally.
So, when people talk about how this text is "out of date" the thing that we're talking about ultimately is that the very idea that nations (which are just geographical entities) have a character is not a scientifically provable/disprovable observation/theory but is more akin to an artistic project. The idea behind that kind of project is to make a thing true.
The thing is this book plays multiple sides of that game because on the one hand it uses all of that essentializing language to talk about Mexico even while it introduces facts that undercut it. So while it talks a lot about the idea of what constitutes this idea of Mexico with all its attendant cliches it also gives us details about people whose very existence defies those cliches.
One of the great things about this book is that it testifies to the continuity of indigenous culture (and languages) in Mexico into the 20th century.
The chapter on the Spanish conquest is actually decently anti-colonial, though the chapter on the independence movement glosses over a lot of nuance about the way in which Mexican independence was hijacked by conservatives who had been pro-Spanish royalists until they decided their interests changed. (The author notes this about Iturbide, but neglects to mention this as part of Santa Anna's bio.).
The chapter on the Mexican Revolution is actually a really good short intro to the subject and is the one real saving grace of this book. Worth keeping just for that and for the two endpaper maps which are really good maps to learn Mexican geography from.
So, this book is both great as an artifact of history (it's covered with the smell of Cold War diplomacy and post-colonial nervousness all over) but also as a good place to quickly become acquainted with the skeleton of the narrative of the period from the end of the Pax Porfiriana through the Cardenas era and into the 1960s.
So, when people talk about how this text is "out of date" the thing that we're talking about ultimately is that the very idea that nations (which are just geographical entities) have a character is not a scientifically provable/disprovable observation/theory but is more akin to an artistic project. The idea behind that kind of project is to make a thing true.
The thing is this book plays multiple sides of that game because on the one hand it uses all of that essentializing language to talk about Mexico even while it introduces facts that undercut it. So while it talks a lot about the idea of what constitutes this idea of Mexico with all its attendant cliches it also gives us details about people whose very existence defies those cliches.
One of the great things about this book is that it testifies to the continuity of indigenous culture (and languages) in Mexico into the 20th century.
The chapter on the Spanish conquest is actually decently anti-colonial, though the chapter on the independence movement glosses over a lot of nuance about the way in which Mexican independence was hijacked by conservatives who had been pro-Spanish royalists until they decided their interests changed. (The author notes this about Iturbide, but neglects to mention this as part of Santa Anna's bio.).
The chapter on the Mexican Revolution is actually a really good short intro to the subject and is the one real saving grace of this book. Worth keeping just for that and for the two endpaper maps which are really good maps to learn Mexican geography from.
So, this book is both great as an artifact of history (it's covered with the smell of Cold War diplomacy and post-colonial nervousness all over) but also as a good place to quickly become acquainted with the skeleton of the narrative of the period from the end of the Pax Porfiriana through the Cardenas era and into the 1960s.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews