Small Numbers, Great Impact: Mexico and Its Immigrants, 1821–1973
JÜRGEN
BUCHENAU
"Mexico, mother of foreigners and stepmother of Mexicans"
Mexican saying from the Porfirian period (1876–1911)
ON 2 JULY 2000, the son of Irish and Spanish immigrants stunned the world
by winning election to the presidency of Mexico. This election ended the
71-year rule of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), a party
that—in its powerful hold on state institutions and an official revolutionary
mythology—had once seemed as invincible as the mighty Communist party
of the former Soviet Union. Accompanied by a genuine cowboy grin, Vicente
Fox Quesada's triumph appeared to show that Mexico, like Argentina, Brazil,
and the United States, was a nation of immigrants.
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