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The fall of Porfirio Diaz has traditionally been presented as a watershed between old and new: an old style repressive and conservative government, and the more democratic and representative system that flowered in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. Now this view is being challenged by a new generation of historians, who point out that Diaz originally rose to power in alliance with anti-conservative forces and was a modernising force as well as a dictator. Drawing together the threads of this revisionist reading of the Porfiriato, Garner reassesses a political career that spanned more than forty years, and examines the claims that post-revolutionary Mexico was not the break with the past that the revolutionary inheritors claimed.
Barra became interim president of Mexico in 1911 after the fall of dictator Porfirio Diaz, whom he had long supported, and ruled only a short time before popular insurrection and revolution swept the country. Drawing on extensive archival material, Henderson (history, Winona State U., Minnesota) presents a biography that portrays him as a reformer and bridge between the old and new governments. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The fall of Porfirio Diaz has traditionally been presented as a watershed between old and new: an old style repressive and conservative government, and the more democratic and representative system that flowered in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. Now this view is being challenged by a new generation of historians, who point out that Diaz originally rose to power in alliance with anti-conservative forces and was a modernising force as well as a dictator. Drawing together the threads of this revisionist reading of the Porfiriato, Garner reassesses a political career that spanned more than forty years, and examines the claims that post-revolutionary Mexico was not the break with the past that the revolutionary inheritors claimed.
What happens when the revolution burns out and the magic is gone? Pancho Randelli doesnt know or care. Released from jail to wander the wasteland, hes haunted by the loss of his great love, Susana, and wonders at the fate of his deputy, Carlitos. He fears for the life of his best friend and hopes he has not become just another victim of madness. In desperate search for Carlitos, Pancho begins his quest across the shattered landscape of a broken country. While trailing behind cold tracks and blurry memories, he finds something wholly unexpected: freedom. This is not the case for General Juan Marco Machado, who wallows in power at long last. For him, things are not how he originally imagined. Without magic, all the money and power in the world cannot save the general from downfall and despair. While Pancho may find what he seeks, the general finds nothing but anguish. At the end, neither man will escape the inevitable results of the ideas upon which the revolution advanced, lived for a season only to burn itself out.
REVIEWS ?a passionate literary experience.' Carlos Alberto Montaner ?Hirst strives to uncover the hidden roots of underdevelopment, amid the legacy of privilege, discrimination, and injustice. He also includes an analysis of why the history of Latin America is one of ongoing frustrations, with every so often the rise of a protector, savior, or leader of the poor, who eventually plunges those people into an abyss deeper and worse then what they had before the onset of these ?vigilantes'.' PanAm Post ?a tragicomic satire about the Chavista revolution, in the tradition of Latin American magical realism; fun at times, but overall worrying and disquieting, particularly as it relates to the future...
"This study shows how goods and consumption embodied modernity in the time of Porfirio Diaz. Through case studies of tobacco marketing, department stores, advertising, shoplifting, and a famous jewelry robbery and homicide, he provides a tour of daily life in Porfirian Mexico City, overturning conventional wisdom that only the middle and upper classes participated in this culture"--Provided by publisher.
At one gilded moment in history, his fame was so great that he was known the world over by his nickname alone: Rubi. Pop songs were written about him. Women whom he had never met offered to leave their husbands for him. He had an eye for feminine beauty, particularly when it came with great wealth: Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke, Eva Perón, and Zsa Zsa Gabor. But he was a man's man as well, polo player and race-car driver, chumming around with the likes of Joe Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Oleg Cassini, Aly Khan, and King Farouk. He was also a jewel thief, and an intimate of one of the world's most bloodthirsty dictators. And when he died at the age of fifty-six—wrapping his sports car around a tree in the Bois de Boulogne—a glamorous era of white dinner jackets at El Morocco and celebrity for its own sake died along with him. He was one of a kind, the last of his breed. And in The Last Playboy, author Shawn Levy brings the giddy, hedonistic, and utterly remarkable story of Porfirio Rubirosa to glorious Technicolor life.