Mexico, la patria! Propaganda and Production during World War II

NATION BUILDING & NATIONALISM Mexico, la patria! Propaganda and Production during World War II. By Monica A. Rankin. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Pp. Xiii, 366. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $ 30.00 paper.

Now that archivists in Washington, D. C. are too young to contribute research tips based on their personal experience of World War II, Monica Rankin offers a reminder from a new generation that much remains to be examined about Latin America and World War II. Rankin discovered and analyzed a distinct national melody of the Mexican revolutionary state forming in the midst of the global propaganda cacophony between 1933 and 1946. Even better, she presents new definitions and uses them as a point of departure to ask deeper questions about the foundations of the Mexican Miracle that followed World War II. The years between 1933 and 1946 were used to develop and put into place the essential shared conceptual foundations that infused many policies of the subsequent Mexican miracle period.

After a splendid introduction, the book's last four chapters provide new, cutting...