The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 94, July 1990 - April, 1991 Page: 138

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Southwestern Huztorical Quarterly

major factor of the revolution" (p. xviii). The author reduces the Mexi-
can upheaval to little more than an outlet for the energies of this dy-
namic macho man.
With this said, it is not surprising that no attempt is made to explain
or define the logic of Villa's participation in the revolution. Instead Ma-
chado narrates the life of Villa from his boyhood to his death at the
hands of assassins in 1923, concentrating on his role as revolutionary
soldier and governor. The author's emphasis on personality traits is
particularly clear in his discussion of Villa's feelings toward Madero,
Carranza, and the United States. Lust for revenge, stubborn loyalty, ir-
rational impulsiveness dictated Villa's actions. This is a rather narrow
base for studying the revolution in northern Mexico. Machado does
not address key issues such as the nature of Villa's power base or ide-
ology-he asserts that the Chihuahuan revolutionary had no ideol-
ogy-but prefers to concentrate on the Villa he loves most: the hero of
popular culture, the "Mexican Ubermensch" (p. 178).
Scholars expecting an exhaustive reappraisal of Villa's historical role
may want to wait for Friedrich Katz's long anticipated study of villismo
and the revolution in Chihuahua. For a more general public, Ma-
chado's book offers a colorful account of Villa's heroism during the
Mexican Revolution.
University of Texas at Austin ADRIAN BANTJES
The San Antonio Missions and Their System of Land Tenure. By F6lix D. Al-
mariz, Jr. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989. Pp. xvii+ oo00.
Preface, acknowledgments, illustrations, maps, appendices, notes,
bibliography, index. $12.95.)
This thin but interesting volume is based on a report the author pre-
pared for the National Park Service in connection with the establish-
ment of the San Antonio Mission National Park. The question of the
kind of tenure that applied to mission lands is important because it
was consistently misunderstood by nineteenth-century officials. Mission
lands were held communally by the Indians working them, under the
friars' supervision in loco parentis. The missions themselves could not,
under Spanish colonial practice, own land. They were to hold it in a
kind of trusteeship for twenty years, after which the mission was to be
"secularized," that is, pass into the jurisdiction of diocesan clergy and
civil administration.
In San Antonio as elsewhere, however, secularization proved to be a
drawn-out procedure. Although begun in 1793, it was not completed
until 1824, under Mexican rule. Needless to say, the Indian "owners"
were the prey of rapacious speculators throughout. Concern to main-

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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 94, July 1990 - April, 1991, periodical, 1991; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101214/m1/162/ocr/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.

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