Waking the Dictator: Veracruz, the Struggle for Federalism and the Mexican Revolution, 1870-1927 is a study of federalism in late-nineteenth-century Veracruz State. It is also a politico-military analysis and an evaluation of social-revolutionary relations in the epoch of the Porfiriato and the Mexican Revolution. Koth interprets the Mexican Revolution across two axes: one is the heightened struggle for federalism, i.e., the conflict between the state of Veracruz and the central government; and the other is the class struggle that was brought into sharp relief by the violent social and military upheaval. Koth illustrates why and how, in 1927, President Plutarco Elías Calles crushed federalism, suppressed the aspirations of working classes, and co-opted a re-emergent Veracruz bourgeoisie. In Koth's view, the initial promises of the Mexican Revolution were never fulfilled. The old rancor born of elite control and the loss of federalism still brews not far beneath the surface of contemporary Mexican politics.

This study is the first modern, comprehensive, and analytical history of the Porfiriato and Mexican Revolution in Veracruz.

A researcher of Mexican history for over twenty years, Karl B. Koth has published extensively in the field. His travels and scholarly research have taken him throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America. He has taught history in Jamaica, Mexico, and Canada. He teaches in the history department at the University of Manitoba.

Karl B. Koth's profile page

Koth's study is the first political and military history to trace the centralist-federalist struggle from the mid-nineteenth century through the Mexican Revolution in Veracruz . . . It should be placed alongside other well-known regional histories of the revolutionary era concerned with the centralist-federalist paradigm, the struggle for local autonomy, and peasant/worker rebellions fighting for social justice.

?Heather Fowler-Salamini, Hispanic American Historical Review