Sons of the Mexican Revolution: Miguel Alem�n and His Generation by Ryan M Alexander

Author:Ryan M Alexander [Alexander, Ryan M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mexico, Public Affairs & Administration, Latin America, Political Science, History
ISBN: 9780826357403
Google: BjkpDQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 33916562
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2016-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

The rural and urban construction projects of the Alemán years stand as monuments to an era of great optimism. If the symbols of the prior era had been rural schoolhouses and revolutionary murals, then Mexico’s post–World War II existence conveyed a sense of something altogether more grand. Yet the outward expressions of national success—from the expansive University City to the innovative multifamiliares, the powerful hydraulic installations of the Papaloapan River to the glittering beachfront promenade of Acapulco—masked harder realities. The alemanista agenda, which moved the nation definitively away from its revolutionary days, was of course not formulated as an attack on those from the ranks of the poor. After all, the mid-1940s represented the beginning of the nation’s economic “miracle”—a period of ambition and promise. Yet for those who did not share in the bounty produced by the multi-decade economic agenda established by Alemán and continued by his successors, it must have felt that way.

Alemán and the men of his generation did not consider themselves revolutionaries, at least not in the way that the term had come to be understood by Mexicans after 1910. But even if the term does not apply in the strictest sense, the changes at mid-century were no less transformational than the ones the revolutionaries brought in 1910. The combination of the post–World War II and early Cold War context in which they governed and the consequential decisions that they made within that context led to a fundamental and long-lasting shift that had political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions. The juridical component of this change is most readily identifiable in the Alemán administration’s revisions to the 1917 Constitution, while its economic dimensions are most apparent in the replacement of expenditure on social programs with public investment in industry. Yet despite how telling these indicators are, they also reduce such significant changes to a handful of abstract numbers. The most visible legacy of the Alemán era resides in the enormous construction projects funded by the administration. Those projects provide a visual record of the ambitious but only partially realized vision that Alemán and his like-minded collaborators had for their nation.

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