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AbstractThis essay comments on the "new cultural history" of Mexico and the debate recently conducted between critics and protagonists of the genre in the Hispanic American Historical Review. After a scene-setting preamble, the essay consists of three substantive parts. First, in considering what the new cultural history is and what degree of novelty it might claim, the essay identifies and critiques seven features of the genre: its concern for subalterns, agency, political engagement, the reinsertion of politics, mentalities, texts, and interdisciplinary influences. Second, the essay addresses the style and semantics of the new cultural history, in particular its penchant for buzzwords and jargon. Third, the article turns to the major critic of the genre, Stephen Haber, and considers his preferred alternative (so-called scientific history). The essay argues that while Haber's critique is often persuasive, it is also in places misconceived, perhaps exaggerated, and tending toward a narrow positivism. Historiography, the essay unoriginally concludes, need not be falsely polarized between narrow positivism and fashionable postmodernism.

This article seeks to identify and explain the historical links between democracy and revolution in Latin America. It first defines and analyses 'democratic' and 'revolutionary' traditions in the continent. It notes the precocity of nineteenth‐century Latin American liberalism which, stimulated by the independence struggles, carried implications for the subsequent onset of democracy in the twentieth century. It then presents a typology of five twentieth‐century political permutations (social democracy, revolutionary populism, statist populism, socialist revolution, and authoritarian reaction), seeking to tease out the corresponding relationships between the two 'traditions'. It concludes (inter alia) that the current triumph of liberal democracy in Latin America, while in part attributable to historical precedent, is also significantly contingent, and dependent on the apparent exhaustion of the revolutionary tradition.

'In all matters of importance, style and not content
is the
important thing': Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.Populism is a concept which, despite repeated critiques, refuses to

disappear from Latin American studies. This article reviews some of the

literature, suggesting that populism is best defined in terms of a
particular
political style, characteristically involving a proclaimed
rapport with 'the people',
a 'them-and-us' mentality, and (often, though not necessarily)
a period of crisis
and mobilisation; none of which makes it exceptional, abnormal, 'unmediated'

or irrational. Mexican – among other – examples are invoked.
The article
questions some received opinions: that populism is typically urban, relates
to
particular historical stages of development, or distinctively derives from
either
multi-class alliances or elite manipulation. It also queries the fashionable
notion
of 'economic populism'. Finally, the article notes the recent
phenomenon of
'neo-populism', embodied by Salinas, Menem, Fujimori, etc.,
which a suitably
loose ('stylistic') definition can usefully accommodate,
thus suggesting the
continued, if limited, utility of the concept.

Examines populism as a political style involving rapport with "the people", focusing on the Mexican experience and the phenomenon of neo-populism embodied by President Salinas of Mexico, President Menem of Argentina, and President Fujimori of Peru, among others.