Reading Smith’s intricate history of Oaxaca from the 1930s to the early 1950s, one inevitably makes the connection to the apparently extraordinary state of current affairs in that southern Mexican state. However, then as now, the contradictory, fragmented, and geographically rugged state, characterized furthermore by complex multiethnic and local relations, is an integral part of the nation.
Smith proposes to move away from overarching models of state formation, but on close inspection the models that he rejects do not differ in any fundamental way from his own proposal of seeking to examine locally specific visions that view state formation through the analysis of interactions between regional elites, popular groups, and the state. Indeed, today no scholar of postrevolutionary Mexican history would disagree with Smith’s assertion that the heart of Mexico’s state formation after the 1910 – 20 epic revolution was carried out by reaching “into differing local power relationships based...
