The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 93, July 1989 - April, 1990 Page: 430
598 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
cal sociology format and jargon about class. Putting such complaints
aside, however, McNall correctly finds that a growing class orientation
to late nineteenth-century Kansas and Populists certainly failed as a
class movement. As Jeffersonians, of course, they preferred a classless
society anyway.
Perhaps the problem is in looking at a political party in such a plu-
ralistic society as America in sociology terms of movements. If Popu-
lism was as narrow and ideologically pure as McNall wishes, it probably
would never have constituted a serious challenge to the mainstream
parties for dominance.
Southwest Missouri State University WORTH ROBERT MILLER
The People of Sonora and Yankee Capitalists. By Ram6n Eduardo Ruiz.
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988. Pp. x+326. Prologue,
introduction, notes, epilogue, bibliography, index. $35-)
The People of Sonora is a history of the important northwestern Mexi-
can state of Sonora during the regime of Porfirio Diaz (1876-1911),
which immediately preceded the Mexican revolution-or "rebellion,"
as Ruiz idiosyncratically calls it. The book is based on ample primary
and secondary sources. Ruiz has combed the state archives assiduously,
if somewhat uncritically, and he has organized his abundant and often
interesting data in thematic chapters, dealing with mining, foreign
investment, the working class (miners especially), Indians (Yaquis es-
pecially), political elites, and political opposition. Though much of the
archival data is new-and particularly informative about regional dif-
ferences, local political control, and life in the mining towns-the over-
all analysis is not original. Voss and Aguilar Camin have both written
very good histories of nineteenth-century Sonora; Ruiz supplements
rather than transcends their pioneering efforts.
In part this is because Ruiz's book is constrained by a narrow and de-
rivative perspective, a kind of crude dependency theory. It is hardly
original to assert that Sonora's development was strongly determined
by its close relationship with the U.S., and that development was a
socially disruptive process, involving costs and benefits, booms and
slumps, winners and losers, but Ruiz reiterates these commonplaces
tirelessly and polemically. The Yankees (sic) are the villains of the piece;
investors-even those who embark on major mining or agricultural
projects-are "speculators" (p. 4). They impose a "racial hegemony"
(p. 165) and, in specific companies, "global and totalitarian" (p. 83) con-
trol. (In fact, Ruiz himself gives plenty of examples of Americans who
went bust or who, as workers, were exploited rather than exploiters.)430
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 93, July 1989 - April, 1990, periodical, 1990; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101213/m1/486/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.