Children Crossing Borders: Latin American Migrant Childhoods ed. by Alejandra J. Josiowicz and Irasema Coronado (review)

Abstract

than enough material in the commission’s U.S. archive, other Mexican and U.S. government sources, news accounts, personal papers and letters, and memoirs. Rath even unearths the lyrics of various corridos, or folk ballads, that subverted and satirized the aftosa campaign. By the end of the book, Rath acknowledges the challenge of making sense of a story with such “bizarre” and “weird” notes (p. 219). Eager to reject master narratives, Rath’s story centers contingency over a coherent plot— which is fine, considering this is history, not a movie (although it would also make for a terrific film). Nevertheless, The Dread Plague and the Cow Killers offers many new and convincing insights. Popular protests against the aftosa campaign were at once deeply rooted in Mexican political conditions, as “localized, cross-class movements that aimed to resist intrusive, illegitimate interference from the central government” (p. 125), while also typifying contemporary “struggles over rural modernization around the world” (p. 126). The aftosa crisis demonstrated that the PRI’s corporatist grip on Mexican society was far from complete, as CMAEFA relied much more on “localized arrangements” with “caciques, cattlemen, communities, governors, generals, teachers, and, not least, priests,” to minimize conflict and carry out its work (p. 156). And rather than being steamrolled by the hegemony of U.S. techno-scientific modernization schemes, Mexican actors produced their own version of culturally acceptable modernity through dispute, negotiation, and engagement with international expertise.