True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico (review)
The book works best as an anthropological history offering fascinating, beautifully researched indigenista microhistories. It also provides surprising insights into the melange of Callista educational politics at precisely the point where "nation" meant most to the regime and least to would-be citizens. Perhaps because of its rich specificity, however, the book works less well as a model of postrevolutionary state formation. The negotiated hegemony paradigm that works for altiplano villages seems less apposite for tribal enclaves that fleetingly sought SEP endorsement of their folkways and turned away when this was not forthcoming or proved counterproductive.