Review by Choice Review
New York Times reporters Preston and Dillon contribute to the growing discussion about democratization in Mexico by examining how divergent events, peoples, and institutions have contributed to the process. In this important work, the authors argue that the 1968 massacre of student protestors marks the beginning of widespread efforts by different actors who had grown frustrated with the dominance of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The transforming nature of the 1968 student massacre is not a new argument. However, Preston and Dillon detail the process of change that occurred after 1968, concluding that multiple and diverse events--such as the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, fraudulent voting practices in Chihuahua, the 1995 police massacre at Aguas Blancas in Guerrero, and the role of President Ernesto Zedillo beginning in 1994--coerced Mexico to implement more open democratic practices, culminating in the ascendancy of Vicente Fox and the defeat of the PRI in 2000. How well Mexico will make the transition from the "perfect dictatorship" to genuine democracy remains to be seen. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. J. B. Kirkwood University of Evansville
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Two reporters lately posted in Mexico by the New York Times review the county's recent political history in this hefty narrative. The authors structure their story line around the relinquishment of presidential power, which was held without interruption for the preceding 70 years by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (known as the PRI), in the 2000 election. They develop the PRI's increasingly blatant rigging of elections over the course of the 1980s and 1990s and the types of opposition the chicanery provoked. They describe the protests and appraise the motivations of election monitors, intellectuals, candidates, Mexican journalists, and leaders of a rebellion in Chiapas. As for the PRI's response to discontent with its rule, the authors recount the ascent of figures such as Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo and their differences in handling the severe crises (assassinations, the collapse of the currency, the wave of hypercriminality) that wracked Mexico during their terms. With a concluding and diffident portrayal of current president Vicente Fox, Preston and Dillon have compiled a crowded, comprehensive survey for watchers of contemporary Mexican politics. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2004 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Preston and Dillon, former Mexico bureau chiefs for the New York Times, combine personal experience and journalistic accounts in this thoughtful report on the trials of Mexico's turbulent first taste of democracy after decades of authoritarian rule. With grace and candor, the authors capture this transitional period, which has been characterized by a slow and tense crumbling of Mexico's main political party, the PRI (a victim of its own incompetence and hubris), and a rapid increase in civic fervor. This is a portrait of historical change of seismic proportion, told from individual perspectives, depicting an intriguing web of heroic Mexicans struggling to bring about cultural change while others tend toward corruption. As a result, this book is as bleak as it is insightful. Hopeful victories in this "imperfect democracy" are few and far between. The authors detail government negligence and deception during the devastating earthquake of 1985, cunning reporters and renowned intellectuals attempting to pierce the regime's stronghold on the media, and the ongoing low-intensity warfare against deeply divided indigenous communities in the southern state of Chiapas. Also featured here is the controversial investigation of Mexico's narcotics underworld that implicates two high-level PRI officials as "associates" of Mexico's most notorious drug trafficker, Carillo Fuentes. This type of coverage earned the authors strong criticism from the authorities in Mexico and a Pulitzer Prize-the latter well deserved. B&w photos. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
New York Times reporters Preston and Dillon present an overview of the decline and fall of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) during the last three decades of the 20th century. Rising out of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, the PRI dominated all aspects of government, economics, and society. By the 1960s the party had grown corrupt, with members enriching themselves at the country's expense and using fraud and intimidation to retain power. At the end of the 1990s, President Ernesto Zedillo instituted major changes in Mexico's political and electoral systems, which led to the election of the National Action Party's Vicente Fox as president in 2000 and thus the removal of the PRI from power. Preston and Dillon tell the stories of the numerous reformers and activists who worked for 30 years to change Mexican politics. They also highlight the PRI's efforts to retain power, with a detailed study of the governments of the disgraced presidents Carlos Salina and Zedillo. Richly detailed and excellently written, this work complements such recent works as Patricia Huesca-Dorantes's The Emergence of Multiparty Competition in Mexican Politics. Recommended for all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/03.]-Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ., Parkersburg (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Superb from-the-barricades portrait of Mexico's second revolution, which is still unfolding. New York Times reporters Preston and Dillon offer a vivid account of matters that would have been common knowledge to American readers had newspapers or newsmagazines showed interest in our southern neighbor's affairs: the complex transformation of a one-party system, the longest-ruling in the world, into a pluralistic democracy. In fairness to American readers, Preston and Dillon observe, the momentous process, known to Mexicans as el cambio--the change--caught many Mexicans unaware, too: "Mexico's second revolution was accomplished so efficiently and peacefully that not many Mexicans, and even fewer outsiders, really grasped the historic dimensions of the event." Whatever the case, the Mexican electorate ended more than 70 years of one-party rule in July 2000, turning out the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in favor of newcomer Vicente Fox's National Action Party (PAN). The change had many agents: labor activists, the disaffected urban poor, supporters of the Zapatista rebel movement, middle-class intellectuals, ordinary citizens shocked by corruption and the brutality of the police and military. It also had an unlikely ally in PRI president and party leader Ernesto Zedillo, who, like Mikhail Gorbachev (to whom he has been likened), bowed to the inevitable and accepted the will of the people--even if many party stalwarts, and their American hireling James Carville, did not. Though Fox, who won 43 percent of the vote in a three-way race, has been a disappointment--so Preston and Dillon conclude--the awakening has made all the difference: "It soon became obvious that [Fox's] victory would not bring prosperity, equality, and justice overnight. . . . But nobody seriously questioned the essential vigor of the democracy Mexicans had constructed, and the country's peaceful transition remained a source of pride." As good a look at Mexico as has been written by outsiders since Alan Riding's Distant Neighbors (1984), and essential for students of Latin American affairs. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
