Visions of the Emerald City by Mark Overmyer-Velázquez explores the contested meanings of modernity in Oaxaca City, Mexico, during the late nineteenth century. Elite notions of modernity in Mexico were defined by the industrializing Western world and tied to the technological advances of industrial capitalism and the process of successful nation building. That caused national elites to look outside Mexico for direction and example. They began importing from Western Europe and the United States everything from models of economic growth to designs for urban space. Leaders in a “peripheral” city such as Oaxaca took many of their cues about modernity from Mexico City. At the same time, however, “commoners” in Oaxaca City, drawing on more concrete local historical experience, defended established traditions that were being threatened by both economic change and elite efforts at social engineering. Although they had to adapt, they also put forth their own visions of a...

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