"A landmark study of rural Mexican society. Essential."—Choice
“This remarkable book provides us, for the first time, with a study of the roots of Mexican Catholicism and its links to political conservatism over the past two centuries. By exploring an important region which was often out of step with or militantly opposed to Mexico’s ruling Liberal and secularizing consensus, and by engaging with all the most current historical debates, this book beats any general account for a student starting on Mexican history.”—Guy Thomson, author of The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain: Democracy, Association and Revolution, 1854–75
“Benjamin T. Smith enters this historiographic arena conscientiously and critically, offering a tour through the history of a complex rural society (including peasants, Indians, and rancheros) in a region of south-central Mexico (the Mixteca Baja) that spans two centuries (1750–1962). . . . The book offers novel arguments regarding the history of popular conservatism.”—Hispanic American Historical Review
“Benjamin Smith’s ambitious new book seeks to explain how and why peasants in the Mixteca Baja of Oaxaca and elsewhere rose up as Catholics in defense of their religious practices and communities in alliance with their village priests during the sea changes experienced in Mexico during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is an unusually deep and original case study of religion and politics in Mexican history—beautifully researched in parish, diocesan, state, and private archives; and rich in challenging ideas, episodes, and actors that are situated in their salient, ever-changing political, economic, and social contexts. Here is a fully realized, often eloquent, truly historical study. It is a book of lasting importance.”—William Taylor, author of Marvels and Miracles in Late Colonial Mexico