Dr James W WIlkie - Jim: A Questionnaire

Dr James W. Wilkie’s Biography

Dr Olga M. Lazin’s Project, UCLA

Mexico and the WorldVol 7, No. 3 (Summer

2002) http://www.profmex.org/mexicoandtheworld/volume7/3summer02/prefacio_volumenI.

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Preface    This project is about Dr James Wilkie, the founder of Program on Mexico, at UCLA. Dr Wilkie

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has been a History Professor at UCLA Since 1963. I will delineate the questionnaire that will be the backbone for a Biography, that is the Biography of James W Wilkie.As the editor of Statistics of Latin America, Dr Wilkie has published 37 volumes of statistics at UCLA.This book is the first in a series of four in the Autonomous Metropolitan University published oral history interviews James W. Wilkie and Edna Monzón Wilkie made during the decade of the '60s

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to seventeen characters in Mexican politics. The generic title of the series is the face of the Mexican Revolution , 17 players in the construction stage , and individual volume is the following I. Intellectuals , II. Ideologues , III. Political leaders and iv. Candidates and President . The plan of the book presents the names of the respondents who appear in the three remaining volumes and can be seen on page # #. The distribution of

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interviews in four short titles is an editorial convention: a greater or lesser extent, seventeen people were intellectuals, ideologues and political leaders, the only distinctive feature is the fourth name, which brings together those who aspired to the Presidency of the Republic . Ten of these interviews have remained unreleased for three decades, the other seven were released in mid-1969, Mexico saw in the twentieth century, oral history interviews , a unique 770-page

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tome whose appearance was unusual for several reasons: Mexico had not been published before a series of oral history interviews of prominent persons in public life, first interviews achieve this level of breadth and depth, any previous edition had gathered first-hand material on seven characters of such importance, and never before a group of foreign researchers had gained the trust of people as the country considered most respondents, who also represented different positions

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and in some cases, antagonistic to each other. Today, these accounts are added to the that document and extend the growing political consciousness of Mexican society with knowledge of our history, and modes of operation of the State and some aspects of the logic that governs them, but we must weigh the effect of a book such in 1969 when there was no space for civil society of our day unfolds concerns were common and the desire of the

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truth of the press and statements of those involved honestly or had been involved in politics. The country was a repressive climate, and in those months after the Tlatelolco massacre, the regime kept a tight grip on the media.The Book of Wilkie and The Children of Sanchez 's testimony appeared anthropological early Oscar Lewis the same six years, contributed to the practice of calling back bread bread and wine to wine in the printed literature of the country, a

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value that characterized the literature of the nineteenth century and early decades of this, but that was canceled gradually as were imposed, on the released versions of the facts and government rhetoric to refer to all public matter. A reaction akin to official encouragement to the form of stories of Wilkie and his interviewees expressed the BIP, Bureau of Political Research , editing a newsletter that was circulated by subscription and journalist Horacio Quiñones. Here are

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the first paragraphs of the edition of July 21, 1969:  

  Disgusting, slimy, crooked, stupid, disgusting, devious, sickening, stupid, worthless, watermelon, stupid, vile,

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ignorant and a liar all that and more, is the book that has just appeared in bookstores (100 pesos) entitled Mexico Seen in the twentieth century , the product of reckless daring as insidious as a marriage gringo, and what a shame, when suddenly emerged malinchismo nothing less than the following:

  Don Ramon Beteta  Don Marte R. Gomez  Manuel Gomez Morin  Don Vicente Lombardo

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Toledano  Don Miguel Palomar y Vizcarra  Emilio Portes Gil Jesús Silva Herzog. 

Mr. James W. Wilkie and his wife, Mrs. Edna Monzón de Wilkie saw a day, with astonishment, the bestseller that was having a sly "sociologist" with an infamous American pastiche allegedly armed with "recording" on tape, and got an great idea: why not go to interview, not

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the dregs of Mexican society, but their "best" level or layer? Why not use the Mexican intellectuals to "burn" and make them a fortune? (They will, no doubt). What else can serve the mexicans , if not to "material" of American sociology, determined to thoroughly investigate primitive societies? If you were registered with the filth of "Children of Sanchez", why not delve into the "the parents of Sanchez"?

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  ...

  Our personal experience over 25 years as professional journalists, you authorize us to say that ever a Mexican range of the above has agreed to make the wording of the statements that have agreed to record ...   It is true that some of those found in this book we have made similar statements to us and even worse than those

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presented here, but this has been the invariable warning: "I told the friend, the journalist" . But do not think that the warning was, even, necessary. Mexican journalist to reproduce everything you say, did not last in office less than a week, it shut all the doors ... [1]

  The length of the book forced Mr. Quiñones to read it more than a week, so I dealt with the second part in the next edition of BIP [2]. Among the

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added comments are those where we complete the vision of the effect produced by Mexico in the twentieth century saw with elements that do not hide ingredients such suspicion and paranoia that hung over that environment:

  As we mentioned last week, still can and must think that marriage Wilkie, director of the sensational today and transcribed taped interviews to the press, is a "tim" agents

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provocateurs of the CIA. Reading the second portion of the large volume only confirms that impression. It is all over him, very interesting to achieve a goal, namely to find out what may have cracks in our social organism.... 

Psychological and sociological laboratories of the CIA should already be working for some time with the material that was (sic) provided by Wilkie,

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including some not published in this issue, and some other unpublished anywhere. But we lack the same complete information so cleverly stolen by adventurers recorder disguised as "sociologists" competent, and the appropriate technical instruments for analysis will have to settle with some of the most basic view of the displayed by Wilkie.  stubbornness is obvious and incivility that abounds in a review such as this, illustrative

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of the social climate of a stage which, fortunately, we have overcome. Among its many claims free, the BIP suggests that the work of Wilkie was that of opportunists interested in doing business.The truth is that the interest of James W. Wilkie oral history comes from his teenage years in the mountains of Idaho, where his parents took the family to spend the summer at a cabin in the woods in a region where snow prevented access the remaining eight or nine months year, and only the old

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mules and miners lived, who had cleared the way for gold and skin or meat of various animals. "Highlanders lived there as pioneers, who around 1900, eight mules were on mine mine. This activity declined in importance after that happened, in 1910, the boom of the search for gold in Idaho and came forestry development, but these elders were living there and had almost no contact with anyone. My brother, my cousin and I were riding for months of years 1945 to 1952

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to see the mountains and we enjoyed hearing the stories of what had happened there. "Well ... I was up there, air'n fresh Blue Lake, Blue Point Lake, and I saw a shot it'n deer'n I got two deer at once But I Fell Into the hill down a creek and I laid About three days There. 'Thought I Was Dead . "I had always been interested in making recordings. I was the first among youth in high school in Idaho to have-wire recorder in those days, and was the program director of radio

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school. And with that experience you have recorded so many people talking about what living in the mountains and such stories, recordings made under my direction and presented in the program. "As I was too young to participate in the Korean War, in the Recruiting Office I was given permission not to go to the army because they took the decision of who should go or not necessarily, believed that in a plural state, and there were so few people at the University of Idaho someone

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should study, for I was lucky that one of the few in Idaho who did not have to go to the army. "At the time of McCarthyism I wanted to leave Idaho and escape from the mentality of the people, who were very conservative, many thought that 'intellectual' was the equivalent of 'communist'. I wanted to leave and find something new, but it was not feasible at that time. My parents were frightened when I talked about going to Mexico. Then I went to the University of Southern

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California with the idea of becoming a filmmaker, but soon left to study History of Cinema, following my interest in continuing to interview people who had unique experiences in the recent past. And after a year from the smog and the high cost of living in Los Angeles, my parents realized it was not such a bad idea to go to Mexico. "I came to Mexico in 1955 to pursue my degree in Social Sciences in Mexico City College. Mexico City in the fifties was different now, was a

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world without cars. If you go to Havana, Cuba today, there have an idea of what was Mexico in the fifties, where the air was very clear. He had chosen the Mexico City College, now University of the Americas, because it was the only place outside the United States approved by an accrediting association of college. Thus, in 1958 I could study and travel to Central America while I lived in Costa Rica. "I went to Berkeley in '58 to get the mastery. My masters thesis I wrote about

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the ideological conflict at the time that Cardenas was governor of Michoacán, and how he became president. I tried to show that Cardenas was always independent and would not be manipulated by Calles. That's when I read, for example, the books of Chávez Orozco and his experience in Michoacan, and the practice of irreligious education of Liszt Arzubide Germain. And then to get my master's in Berkeley, in 1959 I returned to my plan to continue living in Mexico City. "With a grant under the

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Treaty of Rio de Janeiro to facilitate the exchange of students from the Americas, it is now the Fulbright - I lived in Mexico in '60 and '61 trying to follow the tracks of Cardenas. It turned a very frustrating experience, because with files and papers was very poorly organized. It was very difficult to understand these years. "Amid all this, I had read books by Oscar Lewis. Five families [3] published in 1959, and the book about the family of Sanchez, who was one of the

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five families appeared in 1961. So impressed by Oscar Lewis, returning to Berkeley in '62 to present doctoral exams before coming to Mexico to continue my research, I began to think again in Oral History. Lewis's methodology would be useful to record memories, just that instead of the Sanchez family, the family would be revolutionary and his opponents, if I recorded the testimonies of the elders, who otherwise were going to lose. "The fact that was I the only one of my generation who

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had experience in Latin America in Berkeley, facilitated my research on the history of contemporary Mexico. So it was very easy to access all levels of faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. I did not take many courses, studying in independent courses to travel to Mexico and go constantly. "My idea of using oral history as a methodology to record the memories of the men of the Revolution and its opposition was backed by George Hammond and James

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F. King, my teachers. Hammond and King were teachers of prestige. George Hammond, who was also the director of Bancroft Library, recognized and gave a great boost to my project because I was aware that HubertHowe Bancroft, the founder of the famous Bancroft Library, was an oral historian in the nineteenth century. (Bancroft had recorded the history of the western United States, but with no recorder but took notes. And he had written

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books with testimonies of participants in the occupation of the land and the opening of California, state-building, especially after 1848.) Hammond gave us the funds to make transcripts of oral history. "It also helped me with suggestions for making these interviews Professor Woodrow Borah. Borah was a historian, but as a world as troubled as Berkeley could not be a history teacher, it was discourse analysis in a separate department that no longer exists, where he studied the

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speeches of world leaders, to see how they built their ideas . I never took its course, but I traveled through Mexico with him and always talked about the focus of my research on Cardenas and his presidency. "I came to Mexico in '62 to write my thesis. During the summer of that year, when I resided in the Fifth Zipecua-the home of General Francisco J. Mugica the shores of Lake Patzcuaro, for research in the Archives Cardenas Mugica, I found a reason for using oral

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history. "Cardenas had a reputation-and custom-not to write anything. The file had many communications Múgica like this, Lazaro Cardenas, Francisco Mugica: "Dear Francisco: this note comes a voice message that will have Captain So and So, please answer, not in writing" .  "I tried interviewing Cárdenas in '62. I hoped I helped Frank Tannenbaum, the famous friend of Cardenas, a historian at Columbia University, who wrote several books on Mexico in the twenties and

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thirties. "Frank Tannenbaum always stayed at the Hotel Regis. (All the historians had their favorite hotel. Woodrow Borah, for example, arrived at The Emporium, Stanley Ross, the Hotel de Mexico, Howard F. Cline and I, years later, Prado hotel, being close to the wall Diego Rivera.) "I went to Mexico City to try to convince Tannenbaum without success. I called the hotel, I spoke about the project and asked if I could help convince Cardenas to grant me an interview, or do it together,

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and said, 'Only God can help, I can not do anything. I do not talk about history with Cardenas. He and I are riding through the countryside, we talked about today and not touch any controversial issue. "The truth is that friends do not talk about history. Friends know only pieces of the biography of another, but not consistently speak about their lives. Not only have the time, but to do so would have to find a place where they could talk quietly, away from the phone and

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meeting pending. Nor can conduct interviews in some depth when a person is in power because they have time and the pressures they are subject are many. "When I was living with family in Patzcuaro Mugica, by Cuauhtémoc got an interview with General Cardenas, but he would not make a recording. He said, 'I can not say anything because my words have an impact too serious, all my words read something else, what they want. Then I have to speak carefully and also I can never

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give a recorded interview to a Mexican historian because it would be anti-nationalist. What I can do is to answer written questions and we can travel together on a tour of Michoacán. "And so we did." In 1962, James Wilkie and Edna Monzón met at university, a year before the project will be held Oral History of Contemporary Mexico.She studied French Literature. "I considered myself a person interested in Languages, said Edna, and I've always been interested in history, but I

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never thought I would dedicate himself to do oral history interviews. I met Jim when he was preparing for his doctorate, he was making contact in Michoacán and found the whole idea fascinating. It was when I started reading all the books with him in Mexico. " James Wilkie: "Edna and I arrived in Mexico in September 1963, to better understand Cardenas, all around how did Cardenas and the importance of time Cardenas. That was the main focus. And still in the early

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sixties, doing interviews, Cardenas was the hub, the most important man, the moral force of Mexico. It was, but said nothing, his National Liberation Movement, or when he tried to travel to Cuba to be with Fidel and was prevented President Lopez Mateos. " The memory of Edna Monzón data provides some circumstances: "When we here newlyweds, we had a grant from Jim and we had very little money, I think it was two thousand dollars for the year. The weight was twelve fifty one and I

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remember when I was a hundred dollars in hand could do a lot with this ticket. We lived very modestly in a small apartment. " Referring to the advantages that favored the project, and the reserves had to overcome, say: James Wilkie: "The fact we came out gave us in obtaining interviews, and the interviewee did not have to think, "Well, what group they represent?" It would have been very difficult for a Mexican to obtain the same opening as the idea at the

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time, and persists throughout Latin America, is that every person represents a sector of society, to a group. "What intellectual or political group you belong to?" While foreigners are seen as outside those internal prejudices. That's the idea. Although there were those who suspected the CIA , it does not matter today, the CIA -is known, has no intelligence or ability to do anything. Edna, my wife made the initial contacts by telephone. It was great for

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that. " Edna Monzón "In the beginning was not easy, had to make an initial contact. It was I who called by phone to get the appointment. This initial contact was important to do so precisely because being American I knew how to raise the issue. He boldly set out a little, because he said we were from Berkeley with an oral history project and we wanted to include them, we did not want his testimony was missing in our series. "In the beginning were always a bit dubious, but finally gave us

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the quote . Really helped that was nothing but a gringo who was also a Guatemalan. We came both inspired some confidence. Culturally Guatemalans have much in common with the Mexicans, I felt very comfortable here in Mexico, so that helped me feel very comfortable in the culture. As foreign students, our participation was a little threatening, as we had no connection whatsoever with any political or intellectual Mexican. " James Wilkie: "We were always ready to interview

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the character at any time to grant us an interview. For example, Edna Lombardo called and said, 'We are Wilkie, University of California, Berkeley, we are conducting an oral history project for the Bancroft Library, recording the memories of Mexican leaders and archive your voice. Can we talk to you in your home or office? , And finally we granted the first interview. " The Wilkie have reason to remember his jalopy, and then used the tape recorder. Edna remembers: "Every day we went to our car,

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Ford was a fifty-four of canary yellow. I remember I had water trapped in the body that could be heard every time I booted swirl or stopped. And in that car going all over Mexico with a huge tape recorder with time back Jim ruined because it was an incredible weight. " James Wilkie, in turn, states: "I had brought Mexico a great writer - this time there were no portable recorders, the size of a suitcase. We recorded everything on tape very long four-channel, because as we were poor students did not

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have much tape was very expensive. So what we did not make use of stereo sound on every channel and we recorded a different person, so on the same tape we had the voices of Lombardo, Padilla Gomez Morin. "The plan was to start with Muñoz Cota, who liked the idea of leaving something in writing because he was the great orator of Mexico and had achieved much success in the gallery. At that time the speech-like Manolete Aguilar Zinser said now was Muñoz Muñoz Ledo-

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Cota, who still had his disciples around him, practicing to make your speech, because that earned fame in those days. That could give the best speech of all, won the oratorical contest. Rhetoric, did not always have something to say about politics or the economy of Mexico, but what counted was the way to express poetically, with gestures and so on. "I remember at first, Lombardo was very suspicious. Think: - Ah, people in the CIA ! And they want to make recordings

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of a man like me. 'But seeing so young in that brand new car so that the agents of the CIA did not use, and also interviews began with questions on topics such as family, the birthplace and the origin and history of the parents or how life was then, without touching issues of the day, it was obvious we were not the CIA . "The purpose of the methodology used in these interviews was to enable the exchange of ideas between characters who were or had been communicated maybe

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twenty years, asking them questions about these events, which saw everyone (say, Juan Andreu Almazan and Luis L. Leon) from their own point of view. "This being walked, sometimes implicitly, an intellectual debate among many people who had not spoken to each other for years. We we raised a question to an interviewee, comparing it with the ideas presented by an opponent. The different interpretations of the same event, we illustrated the fact

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that there is no absolute truth in history. There is nothing more certain levels of knowledge and was soon obvious that the truths depended, as in the family of The Children of Sanchez , from the viewpoint of each character. We found that in general the leaders do not study the past to see what historians have said about his performance. Leaders will hold its own way of thinking and resist changes in interpretation have not made them their own.Sometimes

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they make changes in their interpretations, but generally do to protect your self-image. "On Monday we were with Abascal, on Wednesday we were with Luis Chavez Orozco and between those days looking for statistics. Isolated and with each of our respondents, focusing on Calles and Cardenas and the agenda for the nation, covering the period of construction of twenty or thirty decades and how to build the country's Streets and his group, and Cardenas and

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his group but without speaking directly with the subject of Calles and Cardenas and Cardenas's role in history, but rather entering the subject through biographical history of political actors. "With Almazán talk about his rivalry with Cardenas and Rodriguez and Amaro many years before, talking about the campaign of forty, who was to be secretary of defense if I had reached the Presidency, and so on. But we also talked about their campaigns in the twenties and how he became a general and

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be incorporated into the army, just as the government right now is trying to incorporate the Zapatista Army: give them power in the region, gave Almazán in northwestern Mexico; general do now and then know how many troops had, giving them the ability and responsibility to maintain order and to contact the central government. The same strategy. It is a tradition in Mexico. "With Chávez Orozco and Arzubide List, for example, talked about the time of the governorship of Cardenas in

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Michoacan, the confrontation had come. Luis Chavez Orozco gave us his entire collection of newspaper clippings which Calles and Cárdenas revealed that they were going to crash. "We had the support of Jesus Silva Herzog that captured the importance of the project and knowing the value of the work of Oscar Lewis, helped us to get dates. Don Jesus contacted, for example, Marte R. Gomez, the greatest economist from twenty to fifty, who had been Minister of Economy of

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Cardenas and Avila Camacho. "Most of the interviews we did in '64 and early '65. Then we are dedicated to making the transcripts and sent from the United States for corrections. " Guarding and classification of the tapes, which are proper and original oral history and the process of transcribing and editing interviews to increase ability to impart are issues whose importance deserves exposure beyond the scope of this preface, however, is eloquent testimony of Edna

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Monzón on the details that occurred with the material on which it is this series of books: "The tapes Mexico, deposited in the Bancroft Library at the University of California. At that time he began to do many of the transcripts in Berkeley was Trudy Monzón Titus, my sister. "Oral History Center came when we finished the first phase of the interviews of the two years since we returned in subsequent years several countries interview many characters, especially in

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South America. When Jim got his first job at Ohio State University professor, suggested the means to grant him an oral history program in Columbus and Ohio State administration supported us. But we dared not trust the tapes to anyone. All this material was highly sensitive, we did not have permission from everyone interviewed for the publication and did not know when they would get. "In addition to material on Mexico gathered in interviews with other characters like Victor Paz

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Estenssoro South America and José Figueres. His memoirs are ready, but not published because they have always said, 'postpone publication until after the next election or the next presidential term, and have always respected that. Then the material is very delicate. "In the year of 1966 we moved from Berkeley to Ohio State University Oral History program us. We needed a person we trust to take over the program while we continued our investigation. Welcome to my

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father, Jorge E. Monzon, who still lived in Berkeley, to arrive to conduct the entire operation of the program take care of the tapes containing sensitive material and direct the process of transcription in Columbus. Later, Trudy Monzón, my sister, joined our efforts, helping also to the transcript of the interviews. The interference of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States (CIA) was a latent suspicion that weighed on the minds of America America against any

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effort to study from North America, but where it really was the CIA attempted to penetrate the raw materials of the field work of Wilkie: "In sixty-seven, back in Columbus, Ohio, had the tapes and transcripts were doing, 'says Edna Monzón. The book had not come to light, but as the CIA sometimes I had to do was getting everywhere. Someone must have said that there was new material on Mexican politics and perhaps revealing internal things that were not known, so they decide to

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visit. It was a surprise for us. "Two people came to the house do not know what excuse to talk to us. We were surprised that they are interested in Oral History, and told us that if we care to have a copy of this oral history, or that review. Actually, this material was not for anyone to see yet, everything was entirely forbidden. "We told the CIA categorically that we had no intention that the interviews came to light before each interviewee would have given their permission for

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publication, and in no way could see it. We explained that the interviews were of purely historical interest, and that anyway they had no right to ask us. So we stopped at the CIA, but, made the attempt. It is obvious that the agency got in everywhere and so there was some paranoia in the world to her. "transcription stage lasted for years. The recording tape remained intact. When transcribing minimal changes were made. If there was a grammatical or syntactical

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error in a sentence, corrected, because it is not the same thing to write about. Some false starts were removed. But it was giving everything said by the interviewees. It was a long process because then we had to send the transcripts to the characters that read, encouraging them to make corrections, however, made no change to alter the content. We found it amazing the few corrections that were interviewed in their stories. " For historical, sociological, methodological, geographical

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and even emotional impact, the material of Mexico seen in the twentieth century -now reissued and expanded the range front of the Mexican Revolution , 17 players in the construction stage " - is associated with the works of Oscar Lewis, in particularThe Children of Sanchez . The previous pages documenting this association from two points of view, some readers and authors , the first, illustrated by the review of Quinones, also condemned the work of Lewis [4], the second

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involves an explicit recognition of exemplary work to New York anthropologist, whose process of making through research interviews as they provided the stimulus and showed issues, approach and methodology. It should summarize the overlap in research methodology and recording of information to have turned and Edna Monzón Wilkie James, on the one hand, and Oscar and Ruth M. Lewis, on the other. In both cases, there is the concern of men are those who design the

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research project and conduct interviews. Ruth acknowledged openly that the holder of the presence capable of subjugating and motor unlimited curiosity to inquire as to the informant were the Oscar. On this point, Edna observes: "It was not as bold as him I was a little afraid of the recorder." The desire to interfere as little as possible with his voice a long monologue that the tape was recording, made Oscar facial expressions in a sort of baton to stimulate and get the

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statement. Criticized her big blue eyes with wonder unbelievers or approve an interesting topic, and as Oscar did, Jim operates his smile to win sympathy and trust of its partners, whether or not informants. Both the anthropological research of Lewis and the History Wilkie oral interview by a governing plan and lead through a basic questionnaire, with a huge degree of versatility to record the topic of interest or the flow of the stream of associations of the informant. In the case of

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oral history interview, Edna Monzón says: "... preparing together the topics to be treated, the order that we would continue when the conversation was over, where we would try to return to the thread -because we let the interviewees speak at a tangent if they wanted to, that was it. But if you leave a person speaking in a monologue without a trade, loses interest, you must always return to the thread topic. " The strategy to ask questions is another key

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aspect that sets at the same time, similarities and subtle differences between Lewis interview with marginalized characters and the Wilkie with prominent persons. Although at first by natural reason, the generality of the respondents are tense and tend to remain on guard that is in the partners of Lewis dominated a gratifying sense that mitigated the lack of attention and recognition in living . In contrast, respondents from Wilkie had a clear conscience that they had sought for his

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performance in precisely the cultural and political life.And they were only interested in Wilkie who are questioning many of them living subject to a kind of permanent siege from journalists and students of all ranks. Edna Account Monsoon: "Sometimes on the verge of an interview we were young investigators, Mexican or American, who warned us that it would be difficult to achieve the kind of interviews we wanted because they were almost impossible for that level political figures want

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answer questions from controversial character. We realized that this problem was due to the abruptly with throwing themselves to touch sensitive issues, which needed to be addressed have earned the trust of the interviewee. " In this sense the approach was particularly useful autobiographical interview for the purpose of anthropological oral history.  Dr Olga M. Lazin-Andrei UCLA – Professor of HistoryCopyrighted, Olga Lazin, 2011  

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