Historiographical Debate Into the Effects of Santa Anna\'s Reign in Mexico
In his self-described revisionist biography Santa Anna of Mexico (2007), Will Fowler has courageously taken up the defense of the Mexico caudillo, fully aware that he is all but universally reviled in the historiography of the United States and Mexico. From the beginning, he made his intention clear to vindicate the reputation of a dictator whose "vilification has been so thorough and effective that the process of deconstructing the numerous lies that have been told and retold" is almost impossible. He is the tyrant that "all Mexicans (and Texans) love to hate", blamed for losing the Mexican War for a "fistful of dollars" and selling another large part of it for personal gain with the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. Timothy J. Henderson asserted that "Mexicans ever since have blamed him for many, if not most, of the misfortunes their country suffered." He had a great talent for exploiting and manipulating political divisions but none for governing a country. In U.S. history and popular culture, he has always been portrayed as a corrupt megalomaniac, the ‘Napoleon of the West', responsible for the massacres at the Alamo and Goliad. As John Chasteen and James Wood put it, even his autobiography was an "extraordinary work of self-dramatization" by a dictator who put on a show of being a "vulnerable, introspective protagonist" but was in reality a power-hungry tyrant with "unmitigated vanity" and "obvious self-absorption."
Bernard Malamud, a Natural Writer Bernard Malamud,
Bernard Malamud, was the oldest son of an immigrant grocer. His parents, Max and Bertha, were Russian-Jewish immigrants and would frequently work late, and Bernard would spend many hours in the Gravesend section of…