Buffington, Robert M.: "A Sentimental Education for the Working Man: The Mexico City Penny Press, 1900-1910."(Book review)

AuthorRothera, Evan C.

Buffington, Robert M. A Sentimental Education for the Working Man: The Mexico City Penny Press, 1900-1910. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.

Robert M. Buffington, Professor of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, has written extensively on Mexican history. Buffington published a monograph: Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico (University of Nebraska Press, 2000), as well as several articles, and edited a volume with Pablo Piccato entitled True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, 2009). As such, he is an acknowledged authority on Mexican history. The author utilizes twenty-seven Mexico City penny press newspapers to illustrate how the editors of these papers produced a sentimental education for working-class men that was "less patronizing, less coercive, more realistic, and more comprehensive than anything produced by the authorities" (5).

The first two chapters explore efforts by the penny press to construct popular alternatives to official stories and discuss how editors attempted to forge bonds of affection between popular figures like Miguel Hidalgo and Benito Juarez and the working class. In essence, penny press editors plucked liberal icons from official histories, reinterpreted them as working-class heroes, and used them to criticize Porfirio Diaz's regime. Mexican Independence leader Hidalgo's courage in the face of betrayals by his countrymen who colluded with imperialist Spaniards resonated with penny press criticisms that an unholy alliance between Diaz and foreigners impoverished Mexico. Similarly, penny press canonization of Juarez, the hero of the War of the Reform and the French Intervention, proved an excellent way to subvert official patriotic discourse because Juarez and Diaz had a tumultuous relationship. Penny press editors skillfully employed Juarez to make sarcastic references to Diaz. When Francisco Bulnes, a friend and favorite of Diaz, issued a blistering anti-Juarez polemic, the penny press savaged him as a traitor to the country. Editors assumed Bulnes spoke for Diaz and deplored Don Porfirio's seeming attempt to denigrate their Juarez, a martyr and a working-class hero. Ultimately, the penny press helped forge a new national identity in which working-class men were "the true patriots whose hard work and steadfast devotion would one day realize the nation's destiny and redeem the noble sacrifice of its immortal champions" (97). In disseminating this...

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