Reflections on the Historiography of Twentieth-Century Mexico

This article examines the recent trend to create a new periodization that concludes that the revolution ended in 1920 and therefore the decades of the 1920s and 1930s should be identified as the post revolution. The article argues that using the label post-revolutionary ignores major revolutionary social programs during the 1920s and 1930s and disregards the revolutionary achievements of Presidents Alvaro Obregón, Plutarco Calles, and Lázaro Cárdenas. The article proposes that recent studies of women during the revolution, and social programs in the cities both suggest a different periodization, but one that includes the disputed decades of the 1920s and 1930s, reaching instead to 1953, 1958, or perhaps best, 1982.