Railroad Radicals in Cold War Mexico

Gender, Class, and Memory

Robert F. Alegre

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781496209641
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Mexican History
• Index: History

Despite the Mexican government's projected image of prosperity and modernity in the years following World War II, workers who felt that Mexico's progress had come at their expense became increasingly discontented. From 1948 to 1958, unelected and often corrupt officials of STFRM, the railroad workers' union, collaborated with the ruling Institutionalized Revolutionary Party (PRI) to freeze wages for the rank and file. In response, members of STFRM staged a series of labor strikes in 1958 and 1959 that inspired a nationwide working-class movement. The Mexican army crushed the last strike on March 26, 1959, and union members discovered that in the context of the Cold War, exercising their constitutional right to organize and strike appeared radical, even subversive.

Railroad Radicals in Cold War Mexico examines a pivotal moment in post–World War II Mexican history. The railroad movement reflected the contested process of postwar modernization, which began with workers demanding higher wages at the end of World War II and culminated in the railway strikes of the 1950s, a bold challenge to PRI rule. In addition, Robert F. Alegre gives the wives of the railroad workers a narrative place in this history by incorporating issues of gender identity in his analysis.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword by Elena Poniatowska
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Map of Mexico
• Introduction: The Working Class in Cold War Mexico
• 1. “The Mexican Revolution Was Made on the Rails”: Revolutionary Nationalism, Class Formation, and the Early Impact of the Cold War
• 2. “Born into the Railway”: Patriarchy, Community, and Underground Activism in the 1950s
• 3. “Who Is Mr. Nobody?”: The Rise of Democratic Unionism
• 4. The “War of Position”: The Making of a Strike
• 5. Railroaded: The Cold War Idiom in Practice
• Conclusion: Rethinking Postwar Working-Class History
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index