14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential to Understanding "Los Años Olvidados", February 27, 2008
This review is from: Santa Anna of Mexico (Hardcover)
At long last, a dispassionate, balanced biography of Antonio López de Santa Anna is available that is informed by the last thirty years of historiographical advances in nineteenth century Mexican history. Santa Anna of Mexico, written by Will Fowler, one of the leading Anglophone interpreters of nineteenth century Mexico, provides the reader with a new perspective that chips away at the barnacles of the Black Legend that for over 150 years have encrusted the "leader all Mexicans (and Texans) love to hate."
Faced with internal division as a result of provinces not yet fully integrated and external adversaries that lusted after territory and markets, Mexico's journey toward forging nation would be prolonged, painful and problematic. In Fowler's hands, Santa Anna emerges as a man of his time when Mexico was making this painful journey of trying to define herself as a nation and create a hegemonic state that could govern and at the same time defend its territorial integrity. Consequently, it was a time of experimentation or as Fowler states a time for varying proposals. During this "Age of Proposals", (for a detailed look at this era, see Fowler's Mexico in the Age of Proposals) Santa Anna was one of many struggling to find ways of assimilating heterogeneous cultures and integrating legitimate claims from Mexico's far-flung provinces under a suitable governing framework before they could construct a hegemonic state, construct (imagine) a unified social identity and truly forge a nation-state.
According to Fowler, Santa Anna was "not the power-crazed megalomaniac his critics made him out to be" and did not aspire to having absolute power. Instead, he was consistent in his popular nationalism with an anti-politics and anti-party stance, in which he tried to play the role of an arbitrator between the ever-disputing political elite. Santa Anna also emerges as a patriotic, courageous, albeit impetuous military man who loved his country and whose "personal corruption and alleged lack of principle differed little from that of many other successful generals and politicians."
A professor of Texas history once lectured that one cannot understand Texas history without understanding Mexican history. For those Texas historians who want to understand the events of the 1834 closure of congress, a congress that only had six days left in its legislative calendar, Fowler states that "[a]lthough Santa Anna was the elected president (1833-1836), he did not actually serve as president for more than a few months, making a mockery of the accusations that he was a tyrant or that he was personally responsible for the eventual change to centralism." What Santa Anna did do after the closure of congress was take emergency powers to dismantle the radical anti-clerical reforms that were adversely agitating the republic. But, Vicente Guerrero had already set a precedence of taking emergency powers during his presidency. Historians of Texas should heed that advice and enrich their understanding of the events of 1832-1836 by incorporating this excellent study as well as other recent works written by Mexican scholars into their studies instead of resorting to the dictator-tyrant typology that up to the present so many have done.
Fowler's judgment in the end is that Santa Anna "does not deserve to carry the full blame for everything that went wrong in Mexico following independence. His story, with all the contradictions, confusion, and pain that it entailed was one that reflected the traumas Mexico had to endure during the early national period to become a modern nation-state."
Combining a seventeen-year long research into the politics of independent Mexico and primary materials from municipal, state, regional and national (including the heretofore difficult to access military) archives, Fowler presents an excellent, scholarly yet accessible one-volume study of this much disparaged Mexican. This book is one of the essential studies to understanding what eminent Mexican historian, Josefina Vásquez, has termed, "los años olividados."
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book, November 5, 2011
This is a great biography about a controversial character. In fact, I can recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning about the time period in witch Santa Anna lived.
The author makes some claims that can be considered as controversial by Santa Anna haters, but they are all backed by clear argumentation and references to other books and often contemporary sources.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply Outstanding!, March 8, 2010
I have meant to set down my thoughts of this scholarly work since it was first published and I'd the pleasure of its reading, but somehow time and opportunity slipped by. And yet, after studying the history of Mexico and Nuevo Mexico for these past 15 years or so, attempting to comprehend US History from the vantage of south heading north, this volume stands out, distinct and unforgotten from the rest, and most deserving of high praise.
For a Gringo attempting to comprehend Mexican history, of what became of our one-half and the resulting remainder, Santa Anna is the preeminent figure, and yet slandered, misunderstood, relegated to backwaters and blamed for all vanished glory. Mr. Fowler portrays him as the man of his times, an opportunist, great and tragic at once, and explains his life and times role in a manner that no other author I've read has achieved. Other figures who move out and in through Mexico's transmogrifying soul play their oft-changing roles, too, and IT, the history of that great nation, at last made sense. And through Mr. Fowler's study, which is more of a novel in holding one's interest, but pure history at its finest, ends with Santa Anna's death on the year of the US Centennial, one comes to comprehend what has occurred since with our Neighbor to the South.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
