Deference and Defiance in Monterrey: Workers, Paternalism, and Revolution in Mexico, 1890-1950.

Deference and Defiance in Monterrey: Workers, Paternalism, and Revolution in Mexico, 1890-1950. By Michael Snodgrass (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xii plus 321 pages).

In this excellent monograph, Michael Snodgrass follows the course of labor history in what became the industrial powerhouse of the Mexican nation, Monterrey, from the years leading up to Mexico's Revolution (1910-1920), through that turbulent period, and then beyond into the major years of political institutionalization. That city, located in the North close to the U.S. border, was spared much of the violence of the Revolution, and even the labor movement itself was relatively peaceful compared to the rest of the country. However, Snodgrass shows clearly that the Revolution precipitated significant social change and that labor militancy was a part of the picture, despite the paternalism and sometimes retaliation on the part of Monterrey industrialists.

This study is a good example of the post-revisionist historiography of the Mexican Revolution, which views the outcome of that movement as neither an entirely positive transformation of the social order nor as a period of state formation in which the popular movement was betrayed by a coercive central government. Rather, Snodgrass asserts that "both company paternalism and revolutionary unionism were historical outcomes forged in the struggles between industrialists, the working class, and the revolutionary government." (Page 283). While thoroughly conversant with the theoretical and conceptual issues involved, Snodgrass lets the empirical evidence drive his complicated story. The three-way negotiations (some of them strongly and violently contested) that would ultimately shape working-class circumstances were not dominated by any one of the actors here indicated. The government was not securely aligned on either side, but, on balance, was more often supportive of workers in their struggles for better conditions, salaries, and dignity than not. In fact, even local, state, and national governments were by no means always closely aligned. Circumstances and personalities changed; surrounding national, binational, and global conditions had their own effects; and ideologies, while not as important as more pragmatic evaluations by actors on all sides, developed and to some extent influenced the course of these negotiations.

One of the great values of this fine book is that Snodgrass shows the way in which conditions and actors intersected and interacted over time. He shows why employer paternalism worked well in the immediate post-revolutionary period when the government, industrialists, and workers were all eager for national reconstruction, increasing industrial output, and a more stable polity and economy. As the 1920s began, however, workers in the metallurgical industries (dominated by the U.S. firm ASARCO) and the steel mill, which had thrived from the demand driven by World War I, fell on hard times, leading to layoffs on the one hand and hyperinflation on the other. In 1920, the workers in these plants struck together, leading to significant wage hikes, medical benefits, and worker-organized shop-floor grievance committees. Nevertheless, as a result of changing conditions in the labor market and the strategies of the two sets of industrialists, these two groups would not make common cause again until the 1930s. At this point, the revolutionary government itself, by no means firmly established--there would be further factional fighting before the future political course of Mexico would be set--was repressive of the continuing insurgency. Yet by 1922, with President Alvaro Obregon now in office, the Department of Labor sent in officials to investigate a strike in the steel mill which led to extensive government intervention on behalf of the union.

In the ensuing years, the struggle between the company-dominated and the autonomous unions continued, yet, as Snodgrass makes clear, workers always understood their own interests. In the Cuahtemoc Brewery, reasonable wages, good working conditions, hiring policies in which preference was given to family members of current workers, and benefits such as scholarships and pensions led to strong worker--loyalty and support for the company union. In the more dangerous steel industry, the drive for autonomous unions developed early and continued throughout the years in question, consolidating gains during the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940).

In fact, the workers of Monterrey were neither co-opted nor betrayed. In the postrevolutionary period, whether represented by independent and militant unions or through cooperation with their employers, they made the best arrangements for themselves that circumstances permitted. Though the record is mixed, the revolutionary State often aided their struggles positively, and an important watershed was that of the Cardenas period mentioned above. By that time, the government that had emerged from the Revolution was relatively secure, and social gains could be consolidated without major economic disruption. Indeed, a failure on the part of the State to support the working-class movement in this period, particularly in the steel industry, could have led to economic difficulties in a time of opportunity, given the war in Europe. Rather, an activist government took steps to induce owners and employers to meet the union's demand for higher wages and better conditions and thus to prevent strikes and to keep production levels high. The union members Snodgrass interviewed themselves remembered the Cardenas period as one which significantly strengthened organized labor.

Unfortunately, Snodgrass does not always keep the national picture quite as clearly in front of the reader as he does for the years of the Cardenas presidency. The book would therefore be difficult to use as a text for those unfamiliar with the course of revolutionary and post-revolutionary Mexican history at the national level. Nevertheless, for historians of 20th-century Mexico, it provides the best study to date of the course of the Mexican labor movement in this very important industrial region, privileging empiricism over theory and making clear that workers were actors in their own behalf, pawns of neither industrialists nor the centralizing State.

Linda B. Hall

The University of New Mexico