Tepoztl N And The Transformation Of The Mexican State

During the 1980s and ’90s, Mexico weathered an economic crisis, witnessed electoral upheaval, and saw the dismantling of state subsidies to farmers and the privatization of nationally owned industries. This book considers how popular movements found fresh footing in this new political-economic landscape as villagers in Tepoztlán fought to keep communal lands out of the hands of outsiders, the state, and—increasingly—global capitalists. Examining social movement politics from the margins rather than the center, JoAnn Martin revisits the famous Redfield-Lewis debate on Tepoztlán to argue that the gossip seen by Oscar Lewis as undermining community coherence is really a form of political practice. During more than fifteen years of research, she observed the metamorphosis of a movement founded as a revolutionary popular struggle into what she terms a “politics of loose connections,” in which temporary alliances, flexible identities, and shifting rhetoric are adapted to the demands of the moment. Martin examines contemporary land struggles with an emphasis on the Comité para la Defensa de Tierra and its attempts to weave together strands of an invented tradition, contemporary agrarian reform law, and revolutionary ideology. She shows how Tepoztecan politics borrows discourses from the Mexican state; she then tells how this process shaped local politics in the midst of the contested 1988 national presidential election when local actors elaborated a discourse of democracy as a technique for disciplining gossip, and in 1991 when Tepoztecans began to draw on the support of international environmental NGOs. Throughout her analysis, Martin explores how Tepoztecan politics unfolds in the climate of mistrust first nurtured by the role of the state in local politics and later by the demands of working with U.S. and Western European environmentalists. Martin shows that the politics of loose connections is above all else a style of political participation that has proved adaptive in the contemporary political landscape, and that understandings of politics have been dogged by a conception of connections that may well be obsolete in the contemporary world. Her study is a balanced re-evaluation of Tepoztlán that reveals how politics succeeds through loose connections, a strategy that may be instructive for others seeking to survive in either local or global coalitions.

Sheppard explores Mexico’s profound political, social, and economic changes through the lens of the persistent political power of Mexican revolutionary nationalism. By examining the major events and transformations in Mexico since 1968, he shows how historical myths such as the Mexican Revolution, Benito Juárez, and Emiliano Zapata as well as Catholic nationalism emerged during historical-commemoration ceremonies, in popular social and anti-neoliberal protest movements, and in debates between commentators, politicians, and intellectuals. Sheppard provides a new understanding of developments in Mexico since 1968 by placing these events in their historical context. The work further contributes to understandings of nationalism more generally by showing how revolutionary nationalism in Mexico functioned during a process of state dismantling rather than state building, and it shows how nationalism could serve as a powerful tool for non-elites to challenge the actions of those in power or to justify new citizenship rights as well as for elites seeking to ensure political stability.

In this political history of twentieth-century Mexico, Gladys McCormick argues that the key to understanding the immense power of the long-ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) is to be found in the countryside. Using newly available sources, including declassified secret police files and oral histories, McCormick looks at large-scale sugar cooperatives in Morelos and Puebla, two major agricultural regions that serve as microcosms of events across the nation. She argues that Mexico's rural peoples, despite shouldering much of the financial burden of modernization policies, formed the PRI regime's most fervent base of support. McCormick demonstrates how the PRI exploited this support, using key parts of the countryside to test and refine instruments of control--including the regulation of protest, manipulation of collective memories of rural communities, and selective application of violence against critics--that it later employed in other areas, both rural and urban. With three peasant leaders, brothers named Ruben, Porfirio, and Antonio Jaramillo, at the heart of her story, McCormick draws a capacious picture of peasant activism, disillusion, and compromise in state formation, revealing the basis for an enduring political culture dominated by the PRI. On a broader level, McCormick demonstrates the connections among modern state building in Latin America, the consolidation of new forms of authoritarian rule, and the deployment of violence on all sides.

When the PRI fell from power in the elections of 2000, scholars looked for an explanation. Some focused on international pressures, while others pointed to recent electoral reforms. In contrast, Dolores Trevizo argues that a more complete explanation takes much earlier democratizing changes in civil society into account. Her book explores how largely rural protest movements laid the groundwork for liberalization of the electoral arena and the consolidation of support for two opposition parties, the PAN on the right and the PRD on the left, that eventually mounted a serious challenge to the PRI. She shows how youth radicalized by the 1968 showdown between the state and students in Mexico City joined forces with peasant militants in nonviolent rural protest to help bring about needed reform in the political system. In response to this political effervescence in the countryside, agribusinessmen organized in peak associations that functioned like a radical social movement. Their countermovement formulated the ideology of neoliberalism, and they were ultimately successful in mobilizing support for the PAN. Together, social movements and the opposition parties nurtured by them contributed to Mexico&’s transformation from a one-party state into a real electoral democracy nearly a hundred years after the Revolution.

This innovative, interactive ethnography employs a range of media to explore the lives of the residents of a village set in the rugged mountains overlooking Mexico City, focusing on how these villagers react and adapt to a rapidly globalized world. Students can view the evolving life of San Jerónimo Amanalco and its region over the past four decades through print, web-embedded, and e-reader enabled resources. This book-offers a multimedia approach, including archival images and documents, original photographs, audio recordings, and extensive video;-incorporates ethnographic information gathered during the author’s four decades of research in the region;-includes community members’ responses to the author’s research through social media, email, and video-taped comments.

How can the seeds of accountability ever grow in authoritarian environments? This book explores the how civil society "thickens" by comparing two decades of rural citizens' struggles to hold the Mexican state accountable, exploring both change and continuity before, during and after national electoral turning points.

Women of Tepoztlán were among the first New Spain labor forces to have their continuum of paid and unpaid work processes globally feminized. Focusing on the transformational 1990 to 2000 period, this book moves across time, space, and organizational changes to make explicit mu...

Women today are being instructed on how they can raise their self-esteem, love their inner child, survive their toxic families, overcome codependency, and experience a revolution from within. By holding up the ideal of a pure and happy inner core, psychotherapists refuse to acknowledge that a certain degree of unhappiness or dissatisfaction is a routine part of life and not necessarily a cause for therapy. Lesbians specifically are now guided to define themselves according to their frailties, inadequacies, and insecurities. An incisive critique of contemporary feminist psychology and therapy, Changing our Minds argues not just that the current practice of psychology is flawed, but that the whole idea of psychology runs counter to many tenets of lesbian feminist politics. Recognizing that many lesbians do feel unhappy and experience a range of problems that detract from their well-being, Changing Our Minds makes positive, prescriptive suggestions for non-psychological ways of understanding and dealing with emotional distress. Written in a lively and engaging style, Changing our Minds is required reading for anyone who has ever been in therapy or is close to someone who has, and for lesbians, feminists, psychologists, psychotherapists, students of psychology and women's studies, and anyone with an interest in the development of lesbian feminist theory, ethics, and practice.