The first Texas-based writer to gain national attention, J. Frank Dobie proved that authentic writing springs easily from the native soil of Texas and the Southwest. In best-selling books such as Tales of Old-Time Texas, Coronado's Children, and The Longhorns, Dobie captured the Southwest's folk history, which was quickly disappearing as the United States became ever more urbanized and industrial. Renowned as "Mr. Texas," Dobie paradoxically has almost disappeared from view—a casualty of changing tastes in literature and shifts in social and political attitudes since the 1960s.
In this lively biography, Steven L. Davis takes a fresh look at a J. Frank Dobie whose "liberated mind" set him on an intellectual journey that culminated in Dobie becoming a political liberal who fought for labor, free speech, and civil rights well before these causes became acceptable to most Anglo Texans. Tracing the full arc of Dobie's life (1888–1964), Davis shows how Dobie's insistence on "free-range thinking" led him to such radical actions as calling for the complete integration of the University of Texas during the 1940s, as well as taking on governors, senators, and the FBI (which secretly investigated him) as Texas's leading dissenter during the McCarthy era.
Gabriel Barrios Cabrera, leader of the Brigada Serrana, rose from rural obscurity in the tiny village of Cuacuila to a position of unprecedented military strength during the Revolution, and throughout the 1920s he and his brother Demetrio came to enjoy the confidence of the nation's presidents. This work provides an in-depth look at how a local political boss held on to power. Keith Brewster reveals how the story of the Sierra is inextricably linked to that of the Barrios Cabrera family, and he investigates the ways in which this interconnection developed.
Brewster argues that Barrios owed his long prominence to his sensitivity to the region's culture, but also shows that the extent of his power was exaggerated by both contemporaries and historians. Barrios was able to develop a working relationship with the federal government by endorsing its objectives and convincing them of his own indispensability, but his authority depended on the weakness of the federal government and on infighting within the Puebla state government; once both governments stabilized, Barrios quickly lost his grip on power.
Masterfully blending archival sources and oral history, Brewster captures life in the Sierra during the 1920s and examines the decision-making processes that determined how communities responded to new pressures, such as requests for soldiers or support for development projects. He shows that subaltern groups were able to shape and even resist state reforms, mustering evidence that the Sierra's indigenous communities drove hard bargains over issues affecting their everyday lives. Although many communities used Barrios as an intermediary, Brewster reveals that they did not universally accept his legitimacy but simply used his connections to pursue their own local agendas.
Brewster depicts the Sierra de Puebla of the 1920s as a scene of shifting balances of power where political, economic, social, and ethnic factors combined to produce the temporary ascendancy of different interest groups beyond and within the region. His study forces us to question assumptions about how power was exercised at the local and regional levels in postrevolutionary Mexico and will be of lasting interest to all concerned with the dynamics of caciquismo and the evolution of the Mexican political system.