FIRE AND BLOOD: A History of Mexico

by T. R. Fehrenbach ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 21, 1973

The lesson is that men endure, and, enduring, may yet hope to prevail."" Fehrenbach's conclusion can serve as epigraph for his study of Mexican history. Built on Amerindian labor, led by various class and caste elites, sucked dry by European creditors, pockmarked by failed mass upheavals, by 1650 Mexican history Fehrenbach claims ""had taken on the pattern it would hold for centuries."" By then Amerindian agriculture was destroyed, their population decimated, and the exploitation of agricultural and mineral wealth was underway. European mining interests ""continually floated bonds and drew foreign capital freely into the Mexican financial sinkhole."" Fehrenbach contends that ""In 1900, when the Mexican population was probably what it had been in Motechuzoma's [Montezuma's] empire, Mexico produced far less foodstuffs than the country had four centuries earlier."" With this predicate, the seemingly endless upheavals of the leperos, the city lumpens, the pelados, the peasant masses (""skinned ones""), the civil wars and foreign invasions, the grinding cynicism that pervaded every social strata, the perfervid delusions that encompassed all, and the failure of a native capitalist class to mature into power are set into clear perspective. Fehrenbach avoids finding easy villains, treating the militarists as well as the church as rooted in the debilitating rigidities of Mexican life. The book effectively ends with the 1940 expropriation of foreign oil interests. An aggressively rich book powered by a fine sense of thematic development.

Pub Date: May 21, 1973

ISBN: 0000058009

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION