This perceptive history paints Mexico's 1810–1821 struggle for independence as a dark, dejected affair, tainted by massacres, famine and crippling contradictions. Auburn University historian Henderson (A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States
) explores the difficulties facing successive Mexican insurrections against Spain's heavy-handed, parasitic rule, including ill-equipped and untrained armies and a fractious, brutal, often incompetent leadership. But the main problem, he contends, was the social chasm between the white Creole elite who led the rebellion and the harshly exploited Indian and mixed-race masses who manned their armies. Revolutionaries envisioned a new liberal order, Henderson argues, but feared to stir up the social resentments of their troops, whose attachment to king and church trumped nationalist sentiment. The result was an “incoherent” revolution torn between progressive and reactionary impulses that bequeathed a tendency toward unstable or authoritarian government. Henderson's concise, lucid narrative skillfully guides readers through these confused political currents while sketching vivid portraits of leaders like the rebel priests Hidalgo and Morelos. Henderson illuminates the fault lines in the Mexican nation through this trenchant study of its founding. (Apr.)
