From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca : The View from the South, Mexico 1867-1911

From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca aims at finally setting Mexican history free of stereotypes about the southern state of Oaxaca, long portrayed as a traditional and backward society resistant to the forces of modernization and marginal to the Revolution.

Chassen-Lopez challenges this view of Oaxaca as a negative mirror image of modern Mexico, presenting in its place a much more complex reality.

Her analysis of the confrontations between Mexican liberals' modernizing projects and Oaxacn society, especially indigenous communal villages, reveals not only conflicts but also growing linkages and dependencies. cess of contestation, negotiation, and compromise. The book is organized into three parts. The first examines Oaxaca's infrastructure and economy, addressing whether its native sons, Presidents Benito Juarez and Porfirio Diaz, neglected their own state in the drive toward Mexico's modernization.

The second part looks at the society, studying the dynamic interplay of class, ethnicity, and gender and critically examining claims that the indigenous people of Oaxaca acted as an obstacle to progress.