Over the years, locating the roots of Mexican radicalism has become a bit of a cottage industry. For early commentators like John Womack, the roots of this radicalism (and its demise) were in the sugar plantations of the Morelos lowlands and the Zapatista uprising that sought to distribute them among the peasants. For others, like Alan Knight and Friedrich Katz, they lay in the small villages and mining towns of the Mexican sierras where charismatic strongmen like Pancho Villa shaped a distinct serrano ideology out of a blend of political autonomy, workers' rights, and limited land reform. For more recent historians, they lay in the rich, rural lowlands of the center-west where politicians, reformers, teachers, and peasants hashed out a distinctly localized brand of land reform and socialist education.
Now, in this excellent book, Sarah Osten has found these roots in a place often left out of discussions of Mexico's...
