The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 82, July 1978 - April, 1979 Page: 466

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

child slayer, a priest killer" (pp. 68-69), capable of such atrocities as the
massacre of the peasants of San Pedro de la Cueva, Sonora, in 1915.
Anecdotes relating to Villa's bloodthirstiness or to his sexual exploits
abound in this book, while Braddy passes over Villa's role in the Con-
ventionist movement with scarcely a mention and ignores such revolu-
tionary episodes as the rebellion by Pascual Orozco altogether. On the
other hand, our author reveals that Villa's artillery chief, the patrician
Felipe Angeles, was a communist (pp. 8 and 55), and states categorically
that Alvaro Obreg6n, Plutarco Elias Calles, and Adolfo de la Huerta
plotted the assassination of Venustiano Carranza in 1920 (p. 56). No
documentation is provided for either of these assertions. Finally, stu-
dents of Mexican history will be enlightened to learn that "Villa out-
ranks in historical significance all other political figures of the Mexican
Revolution" (p. 9). So much for Francisco I. Madero, Carranza, Obre-
g6n, and all the other drab spear-carriers who cluttered Villa's stage.
Southwest Mission State University, DAVID ADAMS
Springfield, Missouri
Anarchism & the Mexican Working Class, 186o-r93r. By John M. Hart.
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978. Pp. vii+ 249. Preface,
bibliography, index. $14.95.)
For a long time the history of Mexican labor languished, partly be-
cause research methods were unsophisticated and partly because politi-
cal topics were given primary consideration. During the last five years,
however, this trend has been reversed with the increase in symposia and
monographs devoted to the subject by Mexican and foreign scholars. If
Hart's book fits neatly into a historiographical context, its greater sig-
nificance is derived from its focus on anarchism, the branch of labor
history that has remained the most obscure in Latin American studies.
Ever since Daniel Cosio Villegas argued that the 191 o Revolution could
only be understood in terms of the preceding Porfirian era, scholarship
has moved forwards and backwards on the chronological scale. Hart
emphasizes the roots concept.
Appropriately, he examines European anarchism in the 183os and
184os as it crystallized in defense of rural values being subverted by the
industrial revolution. Collectivism, individual liberty, and anti-intellec-
tualism were themes common to anarchists like Pierre J. Proudhon,
Mikhail A. Bakunin, and Patr A. Kropotkin. The ideas of these men
together with those of their Spanish counterparts reached a Mexico

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