Community, citizenship and the maligned state in modernising Mexico

The fashion for 'subaltern studies' has taken reseachers back to the archiv e and field in search of social agents both marginalised and forgotten. In Mexico this has entailed an exacting task of reconstructing the lives of In dians and peasants on the remote frontiers of state influence. The books re viewed here are worthy examples of this project. They offer illuminating gl impses of the ways in which such semi-autonomous societies experienced the extension of state rule as modern Mexico emerged painfully as a nation. If they are to be faulted it is in the emphasis they place on 'the People's' r esistance to assimilation, implicitly heroic, whilst casting a rather conte mporary light, often explicitly pejorative, on to the efforts of those othe r agents whose efforts were directed at the creation of a unifom citizenshi p.