Interpreting U.S.-Mexico Relations: The Unchallenged Legacy of American Progressivism and the First Historians of the Mexican Revolution

• In Event: New Narratives of United States-Mexico Relations: the Border, the Revolution, and Remittances

Abstract

There is narrative of United States-Mexico Relations after the 1910 Mexican Revolution that has passed as commonsensical. Supposedly, U.S-Mexico relations were defined by constant conflict as a result of U.S. efforts to undermine Mexican revolutionary nationalism. This has been, for decades, the standard interpretation of U.S.-Mexico relations over the course of the Revolution. In this paper, I challenge this narrative by discussing its origins and legacy.

I argue that the narrative has its origins in the writings of U.S. progressive anti-imperialists who were deeply embedded in U.S.-Mexico relations. Concerned about U.S. imperialism in Mexico and with sustaining Mexican nationalism, Frank Tannenbaum, Ernest Gruening, Carleton Beals, amongst others, examined the conflicting aspects in the relationship. Historians have written about them as transnational actors, but have not interpreted their overwhelming influence on how we think about U.S-Mexico history. The first historians’ desire to see the Revolution free from U.S. imperialism led them to focus their writings on the abuses of U.S. power but while actively participating in diplomacy and developing cooperative relationships with Mexican officials. Thus, the narrative of conflict that they produced and that has been enriched over the past decades, was only possible as a result of a deeply collaborative environment. This begins to explain a contradiction: U.S.-Mexico relations have produced a historiography focused on conflict despite a rich history of shared interests.

To this day, the narrative of constant conflict remains the most common narrative of U.S.-Mexico relations. This paper thus concludes that interpretations of U.S.-Mexico relations have remained largely a-historical and contingent on the political motives of the first historians of Mexico: that the U.S. and Mexico ought to possess fundamentally different interests.

Author

• Jose L Ramos, Valparaiso University