Mexico: Biogaphy of Power

The concentration of power in the caudillo (leader) is as much a formative element of Mexican culture and politics as the historical legacy of the Aztec emperors, Cortez, the Spanish Crown, the Mother Church and the mixing of the Spanish and Indian population into a mestizo culture. Krauze shows how history becomes biography during the century of caudillos from the insurgent priests in 1810 to Porfirio and the Revolution in 1910. The Revolutionary era, ending in 1940, was dominated by the lives of seven presidents -- Madero, Zapata, Villa, Carranza, Obregon, Calles and Cardenas. Since 1940, the dominant power of the presidency has continued through years of boom and bust and crisis. A major question for the modern state, with today's president Zedillo, is whether that power can be decentralized, to end the cycles of history as biographies of power.

• Fire & Blood: A History of Mexico
• The Oxford History of Mexico
• Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans
• A New Hope For Mexico: Saying No to Corruption, Violence, and Trump's Wall
• Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America
• History of the Conquest of Mexico
• Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter's Journey Through a Country's Descent into Darkness
• Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico
• A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the "Mexican Drug War"
• THE MEXICAN MIND! - Understanding & Appreciating Mexican Culture!