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JOHN S. D. EISENHOWER, Intervention! The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1917 (New York: WW. Norton, 1993), 393 pp. $27.50 (ISBN 0-39303573-5).
In the past few years the debate over NAFTA, the events and controversies surrounding the presidential election in Mexico, the collapse of the peso, and Mexico's conflict with the Zapatista rebels have made Americans more conscious of relations with our neighbor who share a two thousand-mile border. It is difficult, though, even as the twentieth century comes to an end, to understand Mexico without knowledge of the "tremendous upheaval" caused by the Mexican Revolution in the early years of the century. An estimated one million people were killed and during that period "the United States could not resist a temptation to meddle" diplomatically and, twice, militarily. As John Eisenhower emphasizes in this timely and readable study, Intervention!, those American actions "left a legacy of resentment," and he addresses the reasons for those interventions and what happened. Eisenhower, the author of So Far,from God, an account of the U.S.-Mexican War, 1846-1848, poignantly adds: "The Mexicans . . . have not forgotten the role that the United...