The Laboratory of the Revolution - by Carlos Martínez Assad (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book recounts the dramatic rule of Tomás Garrido Canabal, one of the strongmen empowered by Mexico's 1910 Revolution. Garrido tried to turn the backward state of Tabasco into an atheistic, puritanical utopia, all the while relying on banana exports.

Book Synopsis

Laboratory of the Revolution is the first-ever professional study of Tomás Garrido Canabal, revolutionary strongman of Tabasco state between 1922 and 1935. He dreamed of turning Tabasco--an isolated backwater and the quintessential "banana republic"--into a beacon of progress. Garrido's recipe for that progress consisted of ridding the state of religion, prohibiting alcohol and other vices, championing science, and boosting agriculture and ranching. He only fell from power when a shoot-out in Tabasco furnished the pretext for subordinating the state to President Lázaro Cárdenas's centrally governed political machine, the forerunner of Mexico's long-lived one-party system.

About the Author

Carlos Martínez Assad is Professor Emeritus of the Universidad Autónoma Nacional de México. In addition to his classic El laboratorio de la Revolución: El Tabasco garridista, he has published extensively on matters of regional and national history. A recognized authority on the Mexican Revolution as well as Mexico's extensive Lebanese community, he has garnered many awards in his career, including a John Simon Guggrenheim grant and the Universidad Nacional's award for the promotion of research.
Terry Rugeley, now retired as Professor of Mexican and Latin American History, is founder and CEO of Fountain Pen Translations LLC. His many book-length publications include The River People in Flood Time: The Civil Wars in Tabasco, Spoiler of Empires (Stanford, 2014) and Epic Mexico: A History from Earliest Times (Oklahoma, 2020).