OAXACA’S PEASANTRIES
2000
Oxford: Oxford University Press
pp. 307.
ISBN 0-19-823387-6
Available by print on demand
‘In this wide-ranging book Colin Clarke seeks to answer important questions about the relationship between class formation and ethnic identity and their interaction with local and national politics and economics. He takes a long historical look at the specific case of Oaxaca – a southern state that is one of the poorest and most indigenous in the republic of Mexico with almost 40 percent Indian-language speakers. Through an examination of urban and rural Oaxaca beginning in the colonial period and continuing through the post-independence and post-revolutionary periods, he builds on the research of several generations of Mexican, US and European scholars to illuminate economic, political and cultural change. His strongest conclusion is that Oaxaca has maintained several different kinds of peasantries that have become increasingly urbanized, educated, migratory (both nationally and transnationally) and tied to a wide range of political formations. Oaxacan peasantries remain most strongly influenced by the Mexican state through its convergence with the Institutional Revolutionary Party which governed for more than 70 years until July 2000. Class, Ethnicity and Community in Southern Mexico is admirable in the range of issues it takes on and the effort it makes to reveal the complexity of Oaxaca as a whole. It is an invaluable reference book and is a must for the library.’
– Lynn Stephen, University of Oregon
