Description: This book traces how indigenista innovation gave way to stagnation as local opposition, shifting national priorities, and waning financial support took their toll.
Brief description: Stephen E. Lewis is a professor of history at California State University, Chico. He is the author of The Ambivalent Revolution: Forging State and Nation in Chiapas, 1910-1945 and the coeditor of The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940.
Review Quotes: Steve Lewis expertly provides us with a magnificent tour-de-force of indigenista policy initiatives designed to improve the life of the Maya in Chiapas, Mexico's most backward state. This book is required reading to understand the potential and contradictions of government-centered development programs, as well as the personalities of those who design such policies.--Marc Becker, author of Pachakutik: Indigenous Movements and Electoral Politics in Ecuador