This innovative social and cultural history explores the daily lives of the lowest echelons in president Porfirio Diaz's army through the decades leading up to the 1910 Revolution. The author shows how life in the barracks--not just combat and drill but also leisure, vice, and intimacy--reveals the basic power relations that made Mexico into a modern society. The Porfirian regime sought to control and direct violence, to impose scientific hygiene and patriotic zeal, and to build an army to rival that of the European powers. The barracks community enacted these objectives in times of war or...

This innovative social and cultural history explores the daily lives of the lowest echelons in president Porfirio Diaz's army through the decades leading up to the 1910 Revolution. The author shows how life in the barracks--not just combat and drill but also leisure, vice, and intimacy--reveals the basic power relations that made Mexico into a modern society. The Porfirian regime sought to control and direct violence, to impose scientific hygiene and patriotic zeal, and to build an army to rival that of the European powers. The barracks community enacted these objectives in times of war or...