Contemporary Mexico: Papers of the IV International Congress of Mexican History

CONTEMPORARY MEXICO

Published for the UCLA Latin American Center

as Volume 29 in the

UCLA Latin American Studies

Series Editor: Johannes Wilbert

BOOKS PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS IN COOPERATION WITH THE UCLA LATIN AMERICAN CENTER

1. Kenneth Karst and Keith S. Rosenn, Law and Development in Latin America: A Case Book, Latin American Studies Series Volume 28, UCLA Latin American Center. 1975.

2. James W. Wilkie, Michael C. Meyer, and Edna Monzon de Wilkie, eds., Contemporary Mexico: Papers of the IV International Congress of Mexican History. Latin American Studies Series Volume 29, UCLA Latin American Center. 1976.

3. Arthur J. O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart, Beyond the Codices: The Nahua View of Colonial Mexico. Latin American Studies Series Volume 27, UCLA Latin American Center. 1976.

(Except for the volumes listed above, which are published and distributed by the University of California Press, Berkeley, California 94720, all other volumes in the Latin American Studies Series are published and distributed by the UCLA Latin American Center, Los Angeles, California 90024.)

IV INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF MEXICAN HISTORY

October 17-21, 1973

Santa Monica, California

CONTEMPORARY MEXICO

Edited by

James W. Wilkie

Michael C. Meyer

Edna Monzón de Wilkie

The International Congress of Mexican History, held at ten-year intervals until 1969, is now held every four years, with the V Congress scheduled to meet at Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, in the fall of 1977. The I Congress was held in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1949 under the organizing aegis of Lewis Hanke and Silvio Zavala. The II Congress met in 1958 at Austin, Texas, with the program planned by Lewis Hanke and Archibald R. Lewis. In 1969 the III Congress met in Oaxtepec, Morelos, with organization directed by Daniel Cosio Villegas, Stanley R. Ross, and Alejandra Moreno, with the invaluable assistance of Howard F. Cline. The IV Congress Organizing Committee was chaired by James W. Wilkie, Michael C. Meyer, and Romeo Flores Caballero.

Sponsored by institutions and organizations from Mexico (El Colegio de México, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia) and the United States (Conference on Latin American History of the American Historical Association, Institute of Latin American Studies of the University of Texas, UCLA Latin American Center), the name of the meetings has varied over the years, as is discussed in Chapter 1. Proceedings of the previous Congresses have been published as follows: Proceedings of the First Congress of Historians from Mexico and the United States Assembled in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, México, September 4-9, 1949 (México: Editorial Cultura, 1950); The New World Looks at Its History; Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Historians of the United States and Mexico, [Austin, Texas, November 3-6, 1958], edited by Archibald R. Lewis and Thomas F. McGann (Austin: Published for the Institute of Latin American Studies by the University of Texas Press, 1963); Investigaciones Contemporáneas Sobre Historia de México: Memorias de la Tercera Reunión de Historiadores Mexicanos y Norteamericanos, Oaxtepec, Morelos, 4-7 de Noviembre de 1969 (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, El Colegio de México, University of Texas at Austin, 1971).

CONTEMPORARY MEXICO

Papers of the

IV International Congress

of Mexican History

Edited by

James W. Wilkie Michael C. Meyer Edna Monzón de Wilkie

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON

EL COLEGIO DE MEXICO MEXICO CITY

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

El Colegio de México México, D.F.

© 1976 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 74-79777

Printed in the United States of America

Photo:

Plaza de Tlatelolco, 1967

James W. Wilkie

Acknowledgments

The editors of this volume wish to thank the sponsoring organizations for support that made the IV International Congress a success: El Colegio de México; Conference on Latin American History; UCLA Latin American Center.

Cooperation of the following organizations was vital to the proceedings: Centro de Estudios Históricos, El Colegio de México; Committee on International and Comparative Studies, UCLA; Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología; Departamento de Investigaciones Históricas, IN AH; Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, UNAM; Latin American Studies Association.

And we are indebted to the members of our Organizing Committee for lending their talents to expedite planning:

Daniel Cosío Villegas Romeo Flores Caballero Alejandra Moreno de Florescano Luis González y Gonzalez Richard E. Greenleaf Stanley R. Ross

John Womack, Jr.

The Committee on Arrangements was led by Alejandra Moreno de Florescano and Edna Monzón de Wilkie, whose work was facilitated by the good auspices of Johannes Wilbert, Director of the UCLA Latin American Center. The UCLA Congress Staff was made up of Diane Gordon, Ava Kerson, Geraldine Larmie, David Parker, Carole Starcevic, Gabriela Toledo, Philip D. S. Gillette, and Claire Pirone.

Thanks are due to those involved in the publication of these proceedings: Grant Barnes and Sheila Levine of the University of California Press, Teresa Joseph and Colleen Trujillo of UCLA Latin American Center, and Alberto Dallai of El Colegio de México. The index was prepared with the assistance of Lourdes Machado, Elsa Jáuregui, Susan Deeds, and Sandra Buchman of the University of Arizona’s Latin American Area Center. Proofreading assistance was supplied by Steven Brown and Waldo W. Wilkie.

Santa Monica, California

Prefatory Note

The Congress took the occasion of its Santa Monica conference to honor the distinguished contributions of Nettie Lee Benson by designating her President of the gathering. This honor was passed on to her by Daniel Cosio Villegas, President of the Oaxtepec conference.

Dr. Benson, a renowned Mexicanist, has received numerous honors: She is the first U.S. citizen to receive the Premio Americano, granted in 1974 by the Casa de Cultura for generously and invaluably [having] collaborated with many scholars working on matters relevant to the Americas, exemplifying her unselfish and continuing support of numerous endeavors undertaken in an attempt to shed light on the past and to investigate diverse problems pertaining to American reality. … and her great dedication, effectiveness, and modesty in assisting innumerable people who have sought her advice and help in carrying out their research into hemispheric matters. In 1970-1971 she was president of the Seminar on Acquisitions of Latin American Library Materials; and in 1973 she was chosen as the First Distinguished Graduate of the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin.

With regard to one of Benson’s most important contributions, see her reflections on The Making of the Latin American Collection (in the University of Texas at Austin], Library Chronicle 7:2 (1962), pp. 1-6.

About the Editors

James W. Wilkie, Professor of Latin American History at the University of California, Los Angeles, is consulting editor of UCLA’s new Journal of Latin American Loret a journal incorporating his theoretical statements in Elitelore (UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 22, published in 1973). Since 1970 he has been Associate Director of the UCLA Latin American Center where he is also Editor of the UCLA Statistical Abstract of Latin America and its Supplement Series. This is his ninth book published on the region. At the time of the IV International Congress of Mexican History in 1973 he was Chairman of the Committee on Mexican Studies of the Conference on Latin American History.

Michael C. Meyer, Professor of Latin American History at the University of Arizona in Tucson, is Managing Editor of the Hispanic American Historical Review (1975-1980). Since 1973 he has been Director of the Latin American Area Center at the University of Arizona; and during 1971 he was Chairman of the Committee on Mexican Studies. This work marks his sixth volume published on the region.

Edna Monzón de Wilkie, from Guatemala, has been Research Associate in the UCLA Latin American Center since 1968. She was Research Associate in Oral History at Ohio State University, 1966-68. The Wilkies’Mexico Visto en el Siglo XX: Entrevistas de Historia Oral was published by the Instituto Mexicano de Investigaciones Económicas (Mexico City) in 1969. Her most recent contribution, Dimensions of Elitelore: An Oral History Questionnaire, appears in the first issue of the Journal of Latin American Lore.

Contents 1

Contents 1

INTRODUCTION

1 The Congresses

2 The Congresses in Retrospect

PART 1 BACKGROUND OF CONTEMPORARY MEXICO

3 Legados del Pasado: Prehispánico

4 Legades of the Past: Colonial

5 Conciencia Nacional y Conciencia Étnica en la Nueva España: Un Problema Semántico

6 The Overmighty Family: The Case of the Sánchez Navarros

7 El Sector Externo y la Organización Espacial y Regional de México (1521-1910)

PART 2 POPULATION, SPACE, AND MIGRATION

8 Urban Growth and the Transformation of the Settlement Landscape of Mexico, 1910-1970

9 La Migración en México

PART 3 ELITES AND MASSES

10 Continuity and Turnover within the Mexican Political Elite, 1900-1971

11 Madero’s Administration and Mexican Labor

12 La Transformación del PNR en PRM: El Triunfo del Corporativismo en México

13 Social Security Stratification and Inequality in Mexico

PART 4 LAND REFORM

14 Agrarian Changes in Northern Mexico in the Period of Villista Rule, 1913-1915

15 Adalberto Tejeda and the Veracruz Peasant Movement

PART 5 THE CHURCH AND THE MILITARY

16 La Iglesia en Mexico, 1926-1970

17 The Mexican Army and Political Order since 1940

PART 6 POLITICS

18 Problems in the Evaluation of the Mexican Political System

19 Machine Politics and Socioeconomic Change in Mexico

20 Beyond the Pathological Approach to Mexican Family Research: A Study of Authority Relations in Family and Polity

21 PRI Politics in the 1970s: Crisis or Continuity?

PART 7 POLITICOECONOMIC POSITION OF MEXICO IN LATIN AMERICA

22 El Desarrollo Económico Reciente de México

23 El Acercamiento de Mexico a America Latina: Una Interpretación Política

24 Mexico and Brazil: Models for Leadership in Latin America?

PART 8 MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES

25 The Politics of United States-Mexican Relations: Problems of the 1970s in Historical Perspective

26 Piedras contra la Luna, México en Aztlán y Aztlán en México: Chicano-Mexican Relations and the Mexican Consulates, 1900-1920

PART 9 THE CHICANO AND THE MEXICAN

27 El Movimiento Chicano y Su Relevancia para los Mexicanos

28 Problems in Mexican- American Folk Tradition: The Southern California Scene

29 Otherness in Chicano Literature

30 Estructura, Violencia, y Cambio Social del Grupo Chicano

31 A Set of Categories for Combining Psychology and History in the Study of Culture760

PART 10 EDUCATION AND CULTURAL LIFE

32 Sistema Escolar y Sociedad en México: Aportaciones al Planteamiento de una Reforma Educativa Nacional

33 La Enseñanza de las Ciencias Sociales: Un Aspecto de la Reforma Educativa

34 La Cultura Mexicana en el Siglo XX

35 Literary Periods in Twentieth-Century Mexico: The Transformation of Reality

PART 11 PERIODIZATION

36 The Modernization of the Old Order: Organization and Periodization of TwentiethCentury Mexican History

37 Periodización e Ideología

38 Esquema de una Periodiza- ción de la Historia Política del México Contemporáneo

39 La Periodización de la Historia Contemporánea de México

40 Periodization of the Mexican Press

PART 12 STUDYING MEXICO

41 Anthropology in Contemporary Mexico

42 Estudios Regionales Sobre México en Francia: Evolución desde 1966

43 Twentieth-Century Mexican History: An Overview from the United States

44 Tendencias de la Investigación Histórica en el México Contemporaneo

45 Perspectivas para la Historia de la Administración de Justicia

46 Nuevas Orientaciones de la Investigación Histórica sobre Méjico Contemporáneo

47 Mexican Historiography Revisited

AFTERWORD

48 The Congresses in Perspective

APPENDIX

Index

INTRODUCTION

1

The Congresses

JAMES W. WILKIE, MICHAEL C. MEYER, and EDNA MONZÓN de WILKIE

This volume contains the interdisciplinary papers presented at the IV International Congress of Mexican History, held in Santa Monica, California, October 17-21, 1973. Focusing on twentieth-century Mexico, the distinguished authors of these studies set out to develop a multifaceted view of Mexican history from the perspectives of anthropology, economics, education, geography, history, international relations, literature, political science, philosophy, psychology, and sociology.

By examining patterns in Mexican developments since about 1900 from different scholarly vantage points, we hope in this work to have accomplished several goals: to provide students of Mexico’s history with timely statements about themes reflected in the rapidly expanding research interests of scholars as they prepare to enter the final quarter of the twentieth century; to offer new interpretations and some réévaluations of earlier views; to provide a single, comprehensive, up-to-date summary of the latest thinking about Mexican history; and, finally, in showing the wide scope of scholarly investigation on historical problems, to illustrate that scholars have entered a new era in Mexican studies.

In contrast, the I and II Congresses (1949 and 1958) tended to examine Mexican history in comparative context with the United States. Papers delivered at those meetings reveal interests during those years.

The First Congress which was held in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1949 and called Congress of Historians from Mexico and the United States, had the following agenda:1

In contrast with the first two Congresses, the III Congress (1969) shifted dramatically and concentrated solely on Mexico, marking the fact that investigation of Mexican history had come of age. That twentieth-century Mexican history need not necessarily be linked to U.S. history not only reflected the coming of age for Mexicanists in the United States but also

showed the increasing specialization of scholars interested in the complexity of many Mexicos. Although one might have expected the field of contemporary Mexican history to flourish on its own coincidentally with the rise of Mexican nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s, intensive research on Mexico was not yet possible for several reasons: in Mexico the political climate was not ready for critical analysis of the political, economic, and social system so recently established. Too, the explosion of graduate research was yet several decades away in both countries. Even as late as the 1950s Howard F. Cline’s approach to Mexican history through the focus of The United States and Mexico seemed to some to be the only way to interest U.S. publics in the complicated recent history of Mexico,3 U.S. books on Mexico by Frank Tannenbaum and Ernest Gruening notwithstanding. During the 1940s Mexico and the United States were caught up in a spirit of good neighborly hemispheric unity, a spirit that died during the 1950s as U.S. Cold War policy became ever more heavyhanded. Finally, Mexican intellectual currents had not yet finished wrestling with the concept of México y lo mexicano. By the mid-1960s, however, Mexico’s internal struggle with what Samuel Ramos termed its inferiority complex was no longer a dominant theme.

The Third Congress, then, was able to examine a large body of scholarship that had not yet emerged at the Congresses but was now free to be analyzed in its own right. Titles of the papers presented in 1969 revealed the new face of research by Mexicanists. Held in Oaxtepec, Morelos, in 1969 and called the Meeting of Mexican and United States Historians, the III Congress had as its agenda:4

If the focus on Mexican studies which finally surfaced at the III Congress seemed logical, the Mexican press generally remained suspicious. Why were foreigners interested in Mexico if they were not representing the national interests of their own country? To quell suspicion, Daniel Cosío Villegas wrote the following introductory remarks to the published proceedings of the III Congress:

Being held in Mexico’s Monterrey and in Texas’ Austin, the works of the first two Congresses remained confined to the auditorium where they were presented, therefore properly speaking they had no public repercussion. The case of the III Congress was different because even though the sessions were held outside Mexico City in the quiet village of Oaxtepec, Morelos, the daily press, the radio, and even television reported on the preparations and the principal vicissitudes of the meetings. Thus, the members of the Organizing Committees,6 North American and Mexican, and even some of the participants, were obliged to explain to the public why Mexicans invited and welcomed a group of foreigners to treat the history of Mexico. No doubt some Mexicans thought that the Congress involved a new invasion, an invasion in the sacred place of national history where only Mexicans can enter and only by leaving outside their noisy walking shoes in order to pray in the innermost recesses of the temple.

It is to be hoped that one benefit of this volume … is that it shows the reader how, in effect, Mexican history is, can, and should be of international interest.7

Cosio’s words were opportune, especially given the continuing concern of some Mexican commentators that scholars from the United States still write almost singlehandedly the national history of twentieth-century Mexico. One Mexican observer of Mexico’s political scene went as far as to claim that foreigners who conduct research in oral history are CIA agents,8 implying that only Mexicans can be interested in or genuinely understand the reality of Mexico.

Can scholarly investigation of views on a spectrum of political opinion be attributed only to the work of the CIA? Can only Mexicans write the right kind of history, offering valid interpretations? No, Cosío would say. Positive responses to these questions would deny the scholar’s need to seek knowledge everywhere — it being necessary to study the history of mankind in all its ramifications regardless of national boundaries, if knowledge is to have any validity. And the increasing sophistication of research in twentieth-century Mexican studies, shown in the contents of this volume, supports his view. The number of serious, young scholars now tackling the delicate problem of understanding contemporary Mexico has increased markedly, particularly as a new generation of Mexican researchers has come of age in the 1970s. Maneuvering in a political system that monopolizes funds for research, they have nevertheless successfully begun to examine problems that impinge upon their government’s maintenance of one-party Institutionalized Revolution.9

Given the increasing pool of scholars available to specialize in an expanding number of topics, as evidenced in the wide variety of research examined in 1969 at the III Congress, Cosío noted in his introduction to the proceedings of the III Congress that the time for the grand allencompassing meeting had passed. Hence the focus of the IV Congress on contemporary Mexico.

By narrowing the time span of the IV Congress to the twentieth century, the scope of discussion was automatically increased in a new way: more than ever the interdisciplinary approach to historical problems had to be taken into account. What had been a meeting of historians from and concerned with the United States and Mexico in Congresses I and II became an international meeting of Mexican studies in Congress III. And the subsequent conference was entitled IV Congress of Mexican Studies, but the Organizing Committees of the IV and V Congresses, meeting jointly at Santa Monica in 1973, selected the title International Congress of Mexican History to serve for all future Congresses. It appears for the first time on this volume. Thus United States was dropped from the title along with the term Studies, for which History has been substituted to reflect the belief of the organizers that Mexican reality is best understood in the context of the sweep of time.10 Hopefully this resolves the problem of stabilizing the name of the Congresses and will facilitate consultation by younger researchers, students of Mexico, and bibliographers.

In planning the Congress, the organizing committee divided the meeting so that each session covered a different aspect of Mexican history and called on the ponentes invited for each session to prepare a work synthesizing their original research or reflecting upon their past research. The III Congress emphasized presentations by distinguished younger scholars with comment by mature scholars; the IV Congress reversed the process.

With revised papers in hand, we have reorganized the sequence for purposes of publication. Part I provides an analytic background, with pre-Hispanic, Colonial, and nineteenth-century themes discussed in relation to twentieth-century Mexico. Part II examines the context of population, space, and migration wherein conditions of human geography are seen as interacting with human affairs. Part III treats the roles of leaders and followers. Part IV deals with land reform, but the impact of this theme on aspects of Mexican life causes it to overlap with other parts of the volume, in the case of migration, for example, in Part II. In Part V we see the roles of the Church and the military, particularly with relation to political order, a topic discussed separately in Part VI on politics. In Part VII transition follows logically from discussion of Mexico’s political economy to analysis of the economic situation. Part VIII considers Mexican and United States relations, with perceptions of the Chicano movement from both sides of the border set forth in Part IX. Mexican culture and education is analyzed in Part X, political periods in Part XI, and historiographical matters in Part XII, the concluding section.

Meriting comment is an exchange of views that occurred during the closing session of the IV Congress.11 José Lopez Portillo, Mexico’s Minister of Finance, informally addressed the assembly and offered an official’s perspective of contemporary Mexican history. He characterized Mexico as stable because of the government’s capacity to meet changing conditions by breaking with historically consecrated traditions. In responding with a North American’s view, Clark W. Reynolds referred to his paper (see chapter 24), delivered the preceding day on Mexico and Brazil as models for leadership in Latin America, to suggest that Mexico’s stability may be only illusory owing to an increasingly skewed distribution of income in favor of the rich at the expense of the poor. Afterward, López Portillo lamented that a finance minister does not have the luxury of the scholar’s time for reflection about problems, reflection that is necessary if problems are to be solved. Taking advantage of having heard the response presented by Reynolds, the minister invited him to present his scholarly paper and particular analysis of income distribution strategies in person to his advisors in Mexico City. If the lag between the scholar’s thesis and the policy-maker’s consideration of that thesis was telescoped, all to the good. The purpose of the International Congresses, however, has not been to affect policy directly but to reveal the state of the art and thus to affect policy indirectly. The benefits of scholarly research on Mexico do not depend upon capturing the attention of the government; rather, they are linked to our progressive understanding of the Mexican milieu throughout that country’s long history.

In sum, we believe that the papers herein illustrate the state of our knowledge about a wide variety of topics, topics that lend themselves to further research. This book offers a challenge to expand our research horizon for contemporary Mexican Studies.

2

The Congresses in

Retrospect

LEWIS HANKE

President, American Historical Association 1974-1975

Watchman, tell us of the night.

Slightly over half a century ago, during my initiation ceremony as a university freshmen into a social fraternity, there occurred this phrase which has stuck in my head ever since: Watchman, tell us of the night! Perhaps these words remained fresh in my memory, when many of the events and impressions of those far-off years have faded away, because I must have sung them many times as a boy in the church that my parents took me to in the small towns in which I grew up. For just recently I found in The Methodist Hymnal the song from which this magic phrase comes:

Watchman, tell us of the night What its signs of promise are. Traveller, o’er yon mountain height See that glory — beaming star.

Watchman, doth its beauteous ray Aught of joy or hope foretell?

Exactly what meaning my fraternity brothers intended by the use of this phrase in the initiation ritual I was not sure then, or now, but its sonorous, not to say portentous, words seemed to provide an opportunity to examine one’s past with an eye to future developments. Let us at any rate take it in this sense, and have a look at this unique and exhilarating congress which has brought together now for the fourth time historians and others concerned with Mexico. Has anything like it ever been seen on land or sea or in the air?

So far as I know, the scholars of no other two nations in the Americas have organized such gatherings. Brazil in 1922 and Argentina in 1936 sponsored large all-American meetings made possible because they were commemorative occasions; but these were handsomely supported by their respective governments as official, one-time affairs and thus may be considered as comets that flashed across the skies once and then disappeared forever. Certainly they represented no continuity of effort to understand the history of America or of any part of the New World continent. Nor has the Pan American Institute of History and Geography, which approves and recommends the organization of binational meetings, had much influence toward this desirable end. It would, in fact, be extremely difficult to get nations together on this basis because of historical or boundary problems. For example, historians in Ecuador and Peru, Peru and Chile, Argentina and Brazil, to name only a few, would encounter much resistance to the idea. Let us hope that this resistance will be overcome in the future, for I maintain the conviction that historians particularly in countries that have had friction and misunderstandings need to have such meetings. My experience with Mexican and U.S. historical sessions encouraged me to contemplate a reunion of Cuban and U.S. historians. On my last visit to Havana, in 1958, I found Cuban historians of widely differing political views eager for a meeting. Alas, events overtook us before the necessary arrangements could be made.

The American Historical Association has convened twice in Toronto, and a generation ago the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace funded a number of conferences and investigations by Canadian and U.S. scholars. Although the Carnegie Endowment published a small shelf of useful monographs produced by this collaboration, no ongoing discussions were stimulated or made possible. Neither sessions of the American Historical Association in Canada nor the Carnegie project deposited any sediment in which the tender plant of international discussion could grow.

Has any effort similar to the meetings of Mexican and North American historians been carried on outside the Americas? Probably the Scandinavian nations have done something, and an informal conference of Anglo-American historians has been held in London for some years, but one wonders whether any two nations with the kind of historical relations experienced by Mexico and the United States have developed such fairly regular meetings, at least during the uneasy and tumultuous years since the end of World War II. Decisions on the place and nature of each session have been made on a joint basis, the proceedings of each meeting have been published and thus made available to those not fortunate enough to have attended the sessions, and a healthy combination of young and old, men and women, from both Mexico and the United States have attended in increasing numbers as have our colleagues from other countries. All this has come to pass without the existence of a constitution, bylaws, officers, dues, or any other apparatus of organized professional groups with which we are familiar. Nor do we pass resolutions deploring this or that, or hasten to set up committees to investigate the horrors that are thought to exist here and there, and thus far what James Lockhart has described as the moral outrage of the develop- mentalists has not gripped us.12

Without our being united by an emotional commitment to immediate action or by a deep desire for change, these four congresses have been possible simply because the participants have been interested in the programs devised for discussion. To quote Lockhart again, they have been motivated by the same force that moved the social historians he was talking about: a positive fascination with their subject.13 Indeed, we seem to be witnessing a kind of folk happening, which we ordinarily associate with the gatherings of rock music enthusiasts at such famous places as Woodstock and Watkins Glen. Mexicanists, wherever they may live, increasingly are attracted to our meetings and like lemmings swarm over land and through water to be present when our reunions are held. So noteworthy have these movements been that it is likely that future historians of mass migrations will consider these meetings as among the most interesting and colorful in the story of international conferences of our times.

What has been the basis for this success? For a resounding success the reunions have been; let us not forget this fundamental fact. Each one of the sessions since the pioneer one in Monterrey in 1949 has been a mini-miracle. Some of the success has been undoubtedly attributable to the places selected for the sessions. How could a conference fail in Monterrey, Austin, Oaxtepec, or Santa Monica?

Even more important has been the special competence displayed by the principal organizer of each of the four sessions. As one who was close to Silvio Zavala in the establishment of the first conference I can testify to the impressive administrative talents of this scholar who also contributed notably to the institutional and legal history of Spain in America. For the Austin meeting in 1958 we all benefited from the wide-ranging intellectual interests of a medievalist, Archibald R. Lewis, whose spirit was ecumenical enough to permit a deep concern with Latin America.

Those who were privileged to be at Oaxtepec in 1969 need no words of mine to emphasize the influence there of Daniel Cosío Villegas. One cannot

attempt to confine the manifold and remarkable activities of Don Daniel by referring to him simply as a historian, although I am tempted to do so for the distinction it may give to the rest of us who cultivate this field. Our present session of course could not have been brought off without the unusual gifts of that quantitatively oriented historian James W. Wilkie, who has been fortunate enough to double his own strength by the help of his wife Edna Monzón de Wilkie. Many other competent and devoted scholars have powerfully helped to make possible these four mini-miracles.

Attractive location and inspired direction by the unusually gifted academic entrepreneurs who organized the four conferences were thus of basic importance in assuring the continuity of the dialogue on the history of Mexico. But there were other perhaps not so obvious but certainly as significant forces: the variety of the topics discussed and the independent spirit with which they were treated. Each conference has had a somewhat different focus and the result has been a fresh and healthy variety of approaches to the main topic — Mexico — whose varied culture of course has been responsible for making possible such an orientation to our meetings.

One may wonder why more attention has not been given to the study of women’s role in Mexico, the history of medicine and public health, or the history of films,14 but of course no meeting or even series of meetings can cover all possible topics. A special effort needs to be made, though, to diminish the usual emphasis on the political approach. And certainly an exclusively social science orientation is not satisfactory.

One favorable circumstance of all our sessions thus far has been the fact that there has been no desire to soften or avoid debate on critical issues. As Rafael Garcia Granados stated at Monterrey, we must not teach a spineless history in a misguided attempt to preserve thereby international harmony. And he illustrated this remark in this way: En un Congreso Internacional del que no quisiera acordarme, diplomáticos disfrazados de historiadores comenzaron sus peroraciones sosteniendo la conveniencia de la dulcificación de la Historia, para terminar disputando sobre los agravios mutuos recibidos por sus países.15 There has usually prevailed in our discussions a certain civilized discourse, which I believe was set for all of us by the presence and words of that great Mexican humanist Alfonso Reyes at the first meeting in Monterrey.

For Don Alfonso honest and informal discussion was the objective, and whatever disagreements have occurred in our sessions usually result from our different perspectives on matters of substance. I well remember the lively meetings in Austin when Walter Prescott Webb, the grand old man of Texas history and of frontier theory, discovered that some of the other distinguished participants there simply did not support his thesis. For Webb such discussions with his peers who marched to a different drum merely enhanced the pleasure that this salty and independent Texan derived from the reunion.

Nor has this spirit of independence been limited to conferences. Readers of Historia Mexicana and the Hispanic American Historical Review will be able to testify that historians of Mexico and the United States feel free to speak frankly to each other in between sessions of our conferences. And there are some who may suspect that individuals such as Edmundo O’Gorman and I have made a special effort to exhibit this spirit of independent historical interpretation over the years in our different approaches to the life and thought of Bartolomé de Las Casas, whose 5OOth birthday was commemorated in 1974.

But enough of the past! It is time to attempt to answer the question posed by that phrase: Watchman, tell us of the night, What its signs of promise are?

I have been stimulated in this direction by noticing that the last session on our program at Santa Monica focuses on Present and Future Projects and on Analysis of and Lacunae in the Congress. With a warm appreciation of the extraordinary efforts of many institutions, of scholars from Mexico, the United States, and other countries in making possible the four sessions of our unique conferences, let me set down my tentative thoughts on possible subjects for future consideration. These proposals I have formulated myself. No committee has been at work to guide my hand, and the suggestions are set forth in the knowledge that they will be examined by others in an independent spirit. I have been led to examine this question with a special interest because as vice-president of the American Historical Association I have come to see that the international affairs of our members, now more than 16,000 strong, need much more attention than they have received. It is true that the Council of the AHA unanimously voted in December, 1948, to serve as one of the sponsors of the Monterrey Congress, which was the first time I believe, and perhaps the last, that the AHA took a direct interest in an international meeting of this kind. The first Soviet-American historians’ colloquium took place in Moscow in October, 1972, under the sponsorship of the AHA, but this was a small and modest effort in which only a handful of scholars participated. There is much more that should and could be done by the American Historical Association in this international field. If elected president in December, one of my principal preoccupations in 1974 will be to improve the international relations of the AHA. The experiences that Mexican and North American historians have had during the last quarter of a century is a unique experience, which will be a valuable record to keep in mind as the AHA attempts to improve its relations with historians in other countries. (The XIV International Congress of Historical Sciences will bring together several thousand historians in San Francisco, August 22-29, 1975, for the first such meeting in the Western Hemisphere, but there are other ways, too, to bring about greater understanding among historians and we must explore all possible avenues.)

Now let us turn to a few specific points on the future of our own conferences, based on the meetings held since 1949 in Monterrey. First of all I am beginning to believe that we may soon experience collectively what the psychologists call an identity crisis. We started out as meetings of Historians from Mexico and the United States and after three sessions under this banner we are now an International Congress on Mexican Studies. This new, large, canopy is a perfectly logical one to construct, and may be the best one under which to operate. It has sometimes seemed to me that the only sure way to bring scholars together in a really useful professional spirit will be to organize meetings on various kinds of studies on an international basis. If this pattern prevails, there might then be an International Congress on Mexican Studies in Europe, from time to time, organized perhaps in cooperation with the vigorous and growing group of Mexicanists in Europe.

But if you transform the meetings from sessions of Historians from Mexico and the United States to an International Congress of Mexicanists, note that you have thus eliminated in any formal way at least participation by specialists on North America, to say nothing of historians of the United States. Now I am not unmindful of the faults of historians, in fact at Monterrey in 1949 I was allowed to give a luncheon talk on The Professional Diseases of Historians, which fortunately for the development of friendly relations with my colleagues was not printed in the Proceedings. But the strongest support for Mexican studies in the United States will probably always be provided by the Conference on Latin American History of the American Historical Association, and it is to this body of some one thousand members which we must look for continued interest. May I observe, in what I hope will be looked upon as an objective statement by nonhistorians, that historians in both Mexico and the United States interpret history in a flexible way so that representatives of other disciplines are usually present at conferences organized by historians. Moreover, Woodrow Borah, Charles Gibson, and the late Jose Miranda, for example, have been as likely to be found at anthropological meetings as at conferences of historians.

Note, too, that we have shifted from reunions of historians to meetings on The New World Looks at Its History, the subject at Austin in 1958, on Investigaciones Contemporáneas Sobre Historia de México at Oaxtepec in 1969, and now to Contemporary Mexico. There has been a steady narrowing of focus, as far as the subject is concerned, although there has been a notable and welcome development in participation by non-Mexicans and non-North Americans, except for participation from Latin America outside Mexico, which is almost nonexistent. It is exceedingly rare to find a Brazilian, an Argentine, or a Chilean, for example, making a serious investigation of any Mexican phenomenon — even of the Mexican Revolution.

Now let me pose the most sticky question of all. Must our deliberations always be focused on Mexico, whether Mexican history or Mexican studies? Why not a session on United States history, or comparative history, or at least some theme that is not exclusively Mexican? Would not this kind of topic further increase international participation and even attract scholars from other Latin American countries? One topic would surely arouse much interest among historians everywhere is Comparative Revolutions in the Americas. The United States is getting ready to commemorate the events of 1776; why could our next meeting not be devoted to this great topic with special emphasis on Cuba, Mexico, and the United States? The American Historical Association has at work under the direction of Professor Richard Morris of Columbia University a Committee on the Commemoration of the American Revolution centennial, and some joint enterprise could possibly be arranged if enough scholars are interested. Revolution would provide an excellent theme for historians in the Americas, as would Indians. As one who has spent a lot of time over the years with indigenistas, I have long wondered whether the time had not arrived to give more attention to Indians. They constitute much too significant a subject to be left entirely to the indigenistas! Any topic of course would be useful if it brought together scholars from Mexico, the United States, and other countries to discuss matters of common concern.

Such an orientation would be very valuable for our historians at least who all too often are concerned only with U.S. history and especially for our Mexicanists, who sometimes find their departmental colleagues so immersed in European or U.S. history that they have never met a Mexican historian and thus exhibit a certain provincialism. This ignorance on the part of too many members of the American Historical Association naturally impedes the development of Latin American and Mexican History in our universities. Now that Mexico City has conference facilities so excellent as to attract such groups as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, why should not the AHA meet sometime there? But would Mexican historians and Mexican historical groups be interested in discussing anything except Mexican history? Needless to say, if we could ever move the American Historical Association to hold a meeting in Mexico there would inevitably be significant sessions included on Mexican history, but these alone would not provide for sufficient meetings between Mexican historians and U.S. historians not specifically concerned with Mexican history.16

One of the obstacles to a fruitful meeting of the American Historical Association in Mexico is the scarcity of Mexican scholars who have studied U.S. history, or indeed any other field of history than their own, in a professional way. Perhaps the proposed AHA session in Mexico City would serve a double purpose in enlarging the vision of all those historians who think only in terms of the history of their own country. I am convinced that the practice and interpretation of U.S. history would be measurably improved if scholars outside the United States concerned themselves with our history and thus brought new views and possibly hitherto unused documentation.17

I have put forward this revolutionary idea of an AHA annual meeting in Mexico City with the full realization that it may find favor neither in Mexico nor in the United States. I know it will be difficult to convince the Council of the AHA, which decides such matters as far as our historians are concerned, that a Mexico City meeting would be practicable and would be approved by our membership. But such a meeting, if properly prepared, could be a milestone in the history of relations between Mexican historians and North American historians, whose first important event was the 1949 session in Monterrey. As the Irish writer Conor Cruise O’Brien has so well expressed it:

Most history is tribal history: written that is to say in terms generated by, and acceptable to, a given tribe or nation, or a group within such a tribe of nation. … Historians, like other people, tend to identify with a community — not necessarily the one into which they were born — and in the case of modern historians this identification is likely to affect, and interact with, the character of their work, their career, their geographical location, and their public. Normally they write within a convention which suggests that these conditioning factors do not exist, or can be ignored. Marxist historians, indeed, emphasize such factors, but only as limitations on bourgeois historians.18

Has not the time arrived for all of us to move away from tribal history, or at least to bring in the perspective that surely will come if historians in Mexico and the United States enlarge their focus? 19

One final suggestion. Although I recognize that the social sciences approach and especially the quantitative methods now very popular have made significant contributions, I hope that we do not forget that Mexico has produced and long been noted for her art, literature, music, and philosophy. 20 Have these humanistic contributions been given sufficient emphasis in any of our four sessions? I know that strenuous attempts have been made to do so, but could not even more be accomplished? Why could the next reunion not follow the lead of the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, which commissioned an opera by Gian Carlo Menotti for its meeting in Chicago in 1973. The resulting work, Tamu-Tamu, was given its world premier performance in Chicago. Why should not the organizing committee for our next meeting show similar pizzaz, or perhaps I mean panache, by commissioning a symphony, ballet, film, opera, or other artistic creation on perhaps some theme such as mestizaje in the Americas?

To return to my beginning remark: Watchman, tell us of the night. I hope that all of you will agree with me that a bright future for our conferences does indubitably exist, provided we maintain the variety and spirit of independence that have characterized the first four meetings, and provided the leadership that made possible those four mini-miracles continues to be available. Let me close these remarks, which some may view as too optimistic or too revolutionary, on a sober note.

Can we continue to survive unless there is somewhat more continuity in our meetings? Nine years elapsed between Monterrey and Austin, and eleven years between Austin and Oaxtepec, but only four years between Oaxtepec and Santa Monica. Would it not be better to aim at meeting every five or six years so that the Happenings will be held at a fairly regular rate? This is but a detail, however, and this watchman does, to quote the religious hymn, definitely perceive both hope and joy in contemplating the future of the beaming star which has thus far guided our sessions.

1 Comments on these topics were delivered (in order of program appearance) by Arturo Arnáiz y Freg, France V. Scholes, Clarence Haring, Jose Bravo Ugarte, Bert J. Lowenberg, Miron Burgin, and Clement Motten.

2 Comments on these topics were given by Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., Phillipe Wolff, William R. Hogan, Geoffrey Barraclough, France V. Scholes, Edmundo O’Gorman, and Guillermo Céspedes del Castillo.

3 Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953. For a somewhat different view that emphasizes the need to understand supranational policy, see J. W. Wilkie, Statistics and National Policy (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1974), p. 496.

4 Comments on these topics were delivered by Miguel Leon Portilla, Donald Robertson, Charles Gibson, Carlos Martinez Marin, Bernabe Navarro, Rafael Moreno, M. S. Alperovich, Edmundo O’Gorman, Charles C. Cumberland, Wigberto Jimenez Moreno, Harry Bernstein, Arturo Arnáiz y Freg, Frank A. Knapp, Jr., Stanley J. Stein, Jan Bazant, Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, Rafael Segovia, Albert L. Michaels, Nettie Lee Benson, Woodrow Borah, Howard F. Cline, J. Ignacio Rubio Mañé, Horst Drechsler, Carlos Bosch Garcia, Lyle C. Brown, Andres Lira Gonzalez, and Jorge Alberto Manrique.

5 Owing to a printer’s omission the published proceedings of the III Congress lack the Bibliographic Appendix keyed to this paper. This Appendix can be consulted in mimeographed form in the UCLA Research Library (Call No.: F, 1224, R318i, Appendix).

6 The members of the Organizing Committees of the III Congress were (from the United States) Stanley R. Ross, Howard F. Cline, Charles Gibson, Stanley J. Stein, James W. Wilkie; and (from Mexico) Alejandra Moreno de Florescano, Romeo Flores Caballero, Luis Gonzalez, Miguel León-Portilla, and Edmundo O’Gorman.

7 Palabras Preliminares de Daniel Cosío Villegas, Presidente de Reunión, Investigaciones Contemporáneas Sobre Historia de México: Memorias de la Tercera Reunión de Historiadores Mexicanos y Norteamericanos, Oaxtepec, Morelos, 4-7 de Noviembre de 1969, México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, El Colegio de México, University of Texas at Austin, 1971, p. 5.

8 Thus in reviewing J. W. Wilkie and Edna Monzón de Wilkie, México Visto en el Siglo XX: Entrevistas de Historia Oral (México: Instituto Mexicano de Investigaciones, 1969), the Mexican political commentator Horacio Quiñones decided that the authors were CIA agents. To Quiñones, who devoted two issues of his weekly national newsletter, Buró de Investigación Política, July 21 and 28, 1969, the question was clear: Why would they conduct oral history interviews about the course of Mexico’s Permanent Revolution from diverse views (as represented by Ramon Beteta, Marte R. Gomez, Manuel Gomez Morin, Vicente Lombardo Toledano, Miguel Palomar y Vizcarra, Emilio Portes Gil, and Jesús Silva Herzog) unless it was to damage relations among Mexican leaders and among all Mexicans by dredging up old conflicts and forgotten questions. Quiñones expressed

9 his outrage at what he termed the oral historian’s Archi-supra-extra-sensational volume capturing explosive [Mexican] views that, although sincere and genuine, are intended to sow national discord. Labeling the book loathsome, foolish, clumsy, repulsive, crafty, nauseating, stupid, despicable, nonsensical, silly, infamous, ignorant, [and] lying (perhaps one of the most memorable book-review opening lines ever written), Quinones insisted that the authors brought to bear the research of CIA psychological and sociological laboratories to tape record interviews from different points of view in order to find out if the CIA can cause civil war in Mexico. (That the U.S. scholar may also fall victim to peculiar distortions is evidenced by economist David Barkin’s review of México Visto en el Siglo XX in the American Historical Review, 76 (1971), 1628-1629, a review that is bland and ahistorical even if not compared to Quiñones’ review.)

‘Perhaps it is an irony of history that as developing Mexico matures in understanding the need for basic research, the developed United States has cut funding of foreign area research in favor of action programs, the U.S. government and foundations reducing research support at the same time.

10 At Santa Monica Lewis Hanke and Nettie Lee Benson raised the matter of Congress names for a different reason: They were concerned about dropping the idea of U.S. and Mexican Historians from the title.

11 For an account of the session, see Excélsior, October 22, 1973, a report by Excélsiofs Eduardo Deschamps.

12 James Lockhart, The Social History of Colonial Spanish America: Evolution and Potential, Latin American Research Review, 7:1 (Spring, 1972), p. 8.

13 Ibid.

14 How valuable and interesting would be a volume on films in Mexico comparable to Jay Leyda’s Dianying: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972).

15 Rafael Garcia Granados, La enseñanza de la historia de America en Mexico, in Proceedings of the First Congress of Historians from Mexico and the United States Assembled in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, México, September 4-9, 1949, México: Editorial Cultura 1950, p. 35.

16 Recently studies have begun to appear in which U.S. historical materials are used or comparative themes are treated but they usually focus on Mexico to some extent. Examples of this kind of work are Eugenia Meyer, Conciencia histórica norteamericana sobre la Revolución de 1910, México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1970; and Juan A. Ortega y Medina, Destino manifiesto: Sus razones históricas y su raíz teológica, México: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1972. Occasionally there appears in Historia Mexicana an article involving Mexican-U.S. relations. For an example of Latin American interest outside Mexico in Mexican history, see Torcuato S. di Telia, The Dangerous Classes in Early Nineteenth-Century Mexico, Journal of Latin American Studies, 5 (May, 1973), Part 1, pp. 79-105.

17 And I note that it has also been observed in Japan that Latin Americans are very absorbed in their own history. One Latin Americanist at Sophia University in Tokyo has pointedly inquired, in the last issue of the Latin American Research Review, after describing Latin American Studies in Japan: "This report has analyzed the state of studies on Latin America in the country which is one of the greatest economic powers of the world and which, according to the prediction of Herman Kahn, will be the country of the twenty-first century. And now let me ask, what does Latin America know about Japan? How many research centers and university departments are there which teach that Japan is no longer the land of cherry blossoms, because the fouled air of the great cities kills them, nor the land of Mount Fuji, because the smoke of the blast furnaces wipes its stylized figure from the landscape, nor the home of the geishas, because they prefer the easier road of the nightclubs? Where are the translations into Spanish of Nobel prizewinner Kawabata? If Latin Americans want the Japanese to understand the reality of Latin America, Latin Americans must also try to understand the reality of Japan (Gustavo Andrade, S. J., Latin American Studies in Japan," Latin American Research Review, 8:1 [1973), pp. 155-156).

18 Conor Cruise O’Brien, States of Ireland, New York: Pantheon, 1972, pp. 16-17.

19 An excellent example on an international basis of what has already been accomplished along these lines is the volume edited and compiled by Richard E. Greenleaf and Michael C. Meyer, Research in Mexican History: Topics, Methodology, Sources, and a Practical Guide to Field Research, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973.

20

For some amusing remarks on quantification and history, see Roland Stromberg, A Note on Quantification by a Zealous Obscurantist, AHA Newsletter, September, 1973, pp. 31-33.

PART 1

BACKGROUND OF CONTEMPORARY MEXICO

3

Legados del Pasado: Prehispánico

WIGBERTO JIMÉNEZ MORENO

Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia

Ortega y Gassett decía: Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia: la interacción entre el hombre y su ambiente ecológico y sociocultural es, pues, el proceso clave de cuya profunda o superficial comprensión depende que entendamos, o no, la biografía de una persona o la integración de un estado y una cultura como los de México.

La geografía muestra un país de fuertes contrastes donde se enfrentan llanuras y montañas, desiertos y bosques; ríos caudalosos o ausencia de ellos, regiones lluviosas u otras de sequía perpetua. Símbolos como el jaguar de la selva y el águila de la estepa se contraponen, y a la lluvia fecundante (serpiente de plumas verdes: Quetzalcoatl) se opone la sequía (serpiente de turquesa Xiuhcóatl). Las tierras fértiles del sur y del centro fueron hogar de los pueblos sedentarios y civilizados (toltecâ), mientras en el norte vagaron nómadas y bárbaros (chichimecâ). Al terror cósmico y a la noche amenazadora que el jaguar personifica, los vence el águila, emblema del día — don de esperanza, espejo de coherencia — y sobre la sequía que arrasa las civilizaciones agrícolas, triunfa la lluvia generadora de prosperidad como la vida sobrepuja a la muerte, y de manera idéntica vence al caos de la barbarie nórdica de Aridamérica el cosmos de la civilización central y meridional de Mesoamérica.

Los bárbaros de los llanos desde Calgary hasta San Luis Potosí destruirán una y otra vez las culturas al sur hasta el Río Fuerte, el Lerma y el Pánuco, pero éstas civilizarán reiteradamente a los agresores norteños. Desde los más remotos tiempos tela de Penèlope, México vivirá en perpetuo fieri — en un constante hacerse y rehacerse — y sus profundas y vigorosas raíces culturales lo harán resurgir aun de la peor catástrofe como invencible ave fénix. ¿Es, acaso, extraño que el mexicano sea paradójico, estático a veces como cuando se le imagina dormido bajo un gran sombrero, o dinámico en otras como cuando es visto como agresivo charro que dispara balazos a diestra y siniestra? Conservador y revolucionario a la vez, México, en lo esencial, permanece desde antaño fiel a sí mismo, a pesar de los cambios constantes — a veces traumáticos, como cuando la Conquista o la Reforma — y podría decirse que plus ça change, c’est la même chose. En esta dialéctica de continuidad y cambio, unos soles cosmogónicos suceden a otros tras sendas catástrofes y México se debate desde antiguo en la lucha entre el dios propio — Tezcatlipoca — y el extranjero — Quetzalcoatl — devoto nacionalista unas veces o fascinado en otras por lo exótico y así gana en una Quetzalcoatl cuando Cortés derrota a Cuauhtémoc, pero Juárez reivindica a éste — cual nuevo Tezcatlipoca — venciendo en Maximiliano a Quetzalcoatl y rompiendo, al triunfo de la Reforma, el molde hispánico que forjó Cortés.

La topografía dividirá a México y lo diversificará en regiones en gran parte incomunicadas que generarán sus peculiares estilos socioculturales, con gran riqueza imaginativa — antípoda de lo prefabricado y lo producido en masa y esa diversidad será, en ocasiones, estructurada como un mosaico de turquesa o como la configurada policromía de un kaleidoscopio. Pero cada crisis traumática alterará el diseño establecido, produciendo frecuentes mutaciones. Fuerzas centrípetas integrarán, en sucesivos imperios — desde el teotihuacano al tolteca y al mexica — la Mesoamérica Septentrional, mientras en la Meridional (y dentro de ella el Area Maya) sólo florecerán las ciudades- estados como Palenque o Copán. Desde el Valle de México y el Altiplano de Puebla-Tlaxcala — y sólo desde allí, conforme a una ley geopolítica — será posible vertebrar ese mundo disímbolo, gracias a los cauces naturales de comunicación que lograrán poner en contacto lo aislado y lo remoto, pero triunfarán a veces las fuerzas centrífugas al derrumbarse los imperios en catástrofes comparables a las que dieron fin a cada uno de los soles cosmogónicos, y al cosmos político y socio-cultural sucederá el caos, y en la anarquía imperante quedarán las regiones invertebradas y hostiles enfrentándose, hasta que de nuevo logre coordinarlas el núcleo rector desde donde se forjan los imperios, surgidos de la desmesurada expansión de una gran metrópoli, como Teotihuacan, Tula o Tenochtitlan. Si el Imperio Romano es la explosión de Roma, el de los mexicas es el de la ciudad que les dió nombre, donde el águila — símbolo del dios del sol y de la guerra — se alimenta de tunas que son corazones de víctimas sacrificadas.

La meseta central y la costa del golfo se enfrentarán reiteradamente con sus opuestas actitudes: en aquélla preponderará el estoicismo plasmado en la cabeza del caballero águila, mientras en ésta reirá la vida en las cabecitas sonrientes. ¿No es entonces comprensible que la heterogeneidad intrínseca de México produzca diversos niveles de desarrollo cultural, permitiendo la coexistencia de toda una gama de modos de vivir que van desde el primitivismo de los Seris hasta el civilizado ecumenismo de Alfonso Reyes? Es comparable México no sólo a un mosaico, sino también a un museo donde se tienen objetos de todas las épocas, unos al lado de otros, como el metate y la licuadora.

Frecuentes cambios súbitos trastornarán de continuo el ritmo vital de sus pobladores; sacudimientos sísmicos o erupciones volcánicas se tragarán al hombre y su cultura como cuando el Xictli vomitó la lava del Pedregal de San Angel, o inundaciones torrenciales, producidas por ríos habitualmente secos, arrasarán numerosas ciudades. Sufrirá de angustia el mexicano — clima congénito que refleja la literatura desde la poesía nahua hasta la de López Velarde, autor de Zozobra. La inestabilidad será en él característica y vivirá en la incertidumbre de ¿quién sabe?. Existirá de milagro como quien sobrevive si acierta en la lotería y se adaptará fácilmente a lo imprevisto y lo desconcertante, puesto que así ha subsistido por siglos y así será en él menor el impacto de sorpresas y desconciertos que entre los habitantes de países prósperos y bien reglamentados. México será impredecible y a la vez inestable y perdurable. La edad de la angustia — la nuestra — la de la poesía de Auden, la ha vivido desde tan atrás como cuando los mexicas temblaban ante un posible sucumbir del mundo cada 52 años, o como cuando funestos augurios ensombrecían los años finales del reinado de Moteczuma Xocoyotzin.

Conservar la serenidad viviendo en la incertidumbre y la zozobra, sobreponerse a la derrota y elevarse desde el abatimiento con renovada esperanza, he ahí una nota que arranca de las raíces de México y una lección para las horas crepusculares en que hoy vive la Humanidad. México es consciente de su honda raigambre, de la solidez inquebrantable de los cimientos que levantó la civilización mesoamericana que — como sugiere Miguel León-Portilla — es equiparable a la media docena de las que, surgidas en el Nilo, en Mesopotamia, en las islas y costas del Mar Egeo, en el Indo, en el Río Amarillo o en los Andes gestaron las demás que en el mundo ha habido.

El Dr. Alfonso Caso intentó un inventario de sus aportaciones de todo orden, desde alimentos como el maíz y el cacao hasta conocimientos científicos en medicina y astronomía. Esa civilización consciente de su devenir ha dejado una extraordinaria riqueza de información historiográfica sólo comparable a la del Cercano Oriente, a pesar de incendios, abandonos y saqueos. Aunque en cierto modo decapitada cuando el cataclismo de la Conquista, la herencia prehispánica sobrevive y se