Search results for ""author david g. lafrance""

This carefully researched and richly detailed case study explores the most violent phase of the Mexican Revolution in the key state of Puebla. This book explains the tension between the forces that represented the modernizing centralized state and those who revolted and chose local autonomy. Because of its industry, resources, transportation, and large population during the Revolution, Puebla provides an excellent measuring stick for the rest of the nation during this conflict. This diverse region is perhaps as closely representative as any Mexican state because of its indigenous, mestizo, and criollo peoples, its industrial, commercial, and subsistence workers, its urban and rural populations, and both strong Catholic and zealous anti-clerical groups. David G. LaFrance examines politics, warfare, and state building within the context of autonomy, as well as the military, political, and economic changes that occurred in the name of the Revolution. LaFrance also links events at the state level to those of the nation and localities. Puebla's residents opposed the changes imposed from the outside by the armies of Venustiano Carranza. The concept of autonomy and the degree of resistance of the many groups in Puebla varied, thus leading to limited accommodation with the Carrancistas. LaFrance explains that this compromise provided the means by which the Carrancistas eventually won the wars in Puebla and began the process of creating a new political culture and governing mechanism. Revolution in Mexico's Heartland is an authoritative text on the Revolution in Puebla until 1920. This book is an invaluable source for readers interested in the history of Mexico and the Mexican Revolution.

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Sport in Latin America and the Caribbean is the most comprehensive overview to date of the development of modern sports in Latin America. This new book illustrates how and why sport has become a central part of the political, economic, and social life of the region and the repercussions of its role. This highly readable volume is composed of articles on a wide variety of sports-basketball, baseball, volleyball, cricket, soccer, and equestrian events-in countries and regions throughout Latin America, including Mexico, the Caribbean, Costa Rica, Peru, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. Broad in scope, this volume explores the definition of modern sport; whether sport is enslaving, liberating, or neutral; if sport reflects or challenges dominant culture; the attributes and drawbacks of professional versus amateur sport; and the difference between sport in capitalist and socialist nations. Other subjects that are addressed as they pertain to modern sport include: diffusion and globalization/internationalization; hegemony, dependency, and nationalism; politics and the state; culture, ethnicity, and race; economic class; gender; commercialization, modernization, and professionalization; health, morality, crime and vice; economics and labor productivity; and the media.

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This detailed local study of state formation in nineteenth-century Mexico focuses on the life of Juan Francisco Lucas, the principal Indian leader of the Puebla Sierra between 1854 and 1917. The book illustrates how, over seventy years, the Indian communities of the Puebla Sierra, through the leadership of Lucas, compelled their political leaders to execute the mandates of the liberal state on terms that were locally acceptable. The text also provides a detailed look at the patriotism, politics, and popular liberalism which flourished during this period in Mexican history. This is the first in-depth study to examine the great nineteenth-century divisions between liberals and conservatives and radical and moderate liberals over an extended time period and in a rural, multi-ethnic setting. The text also explores how these divisions reemerged during the Mexican Revolution. The volume shows the rise of Mexican nationalism and what rights and responsibilities it extended to individual Mexicans and independent communities. Through close attention to the political and human geography of the Puebla Sierra, Professor Thomson observes the continuities between the Sierra's colonial past and the present, and the interactions between key political individuals and a complex physical environment.

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