The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 54, July 1950 - April, 1951 Page: 249

Book Reviews

is by no means blind to its deficiencies. For example, he strongly
asserts that a moral failure of the Revolution has been the decline
in personal integrity in the government. He says, "In so far as
the Mexican Revolution has failed to instill a sufficient sense of
responsibility in the new generation it can be said to have en-
crusted it with a moral disease that may prove its ruin" (p. 8o).
Also in his chapter, "Politics and Government," Dr. Tannen-
baum strongly insists, quite correctly, that "the government of
Mexico is the President" (p. 83). The principle of the separation
of the powers, provided by the Constitution, does not exist in
fact. The President of Mexico, he says, "has either all power or
no power; there is no middle ground. The constitutional formula
for a division of powers between the legislative, judicial, and
executive is merely a formula. It may represent an aspiration for
the future, but it has no immediate reality. This is so because
aside from the army there is really no effective body politic upon
which the government can rest" (pp. 84-85). Party government,
in the democratic sense of that term, does not yet exist in Mexico.
Thus, although Mexico has advanced far, since g91o, along the
roads of material and spiritual development, that country is not
yet to be inscribed on the role of democratic states.
J. LLOYD MECHAM
The University of Texas
The Epic of the Chaco: Marshal Estigarribia's Memoirs of the
Chaco War, 1932-1935. Edited by Pablo Max Insfran. The
University of Texas Institute of Latin-American Studies,
VIII, Austin (The University of Texas Press), 1950. Pp.
viii+2 21; maps and illustrations.
With this publication of the Memoirs of the Paraguayan com-
mander-in-chief in the Chaco war, the Institute of Latin-Ameri-
can Studies has made available a historical source of primary
importance. The volume is based not only upon the records and
maps of the Paraguayan General Headquarters, supplemented by
official correspondence with the government in Asunci6n and the
reports of army commanders, but also upon the Marshal's per-
sonal memory of the events he directed and upon his own war
diary. The Memoirs, therefore, are no mere record of events;

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