Introduction: The Double Bind of Indigenismo
1. Modernizing the Mixteca: Regional Approaches to
Underdevelopment
2. "Was It God or the Devil?": Bilingual Radio Schools and Cold War
Catholicism
3. Mixtec Land and Labor: Migration and State-Sponsored
Resettlement on the Costa Chica
4. Indigenismo in the Age of Three Worlds: Oaxacan Youth and
Mexico's Democratic Opening
5. Bilingual Teachers at the Front: The Rise of Dissident Trade
Unionism and the Neoliberal Order
6. Anticolonialism in the Classroom: The Institutionalization of
Multiculturalism
Conclusion: The Entangled Histories of Recognition and Resurgence
A. S. Dillingham is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and Assistant Professor of History at Arizona State University.
"Thoroughly researched and wonderfully written, Oaxaca Resurgent
vividly portrays how bilingual teachers and other indigenista
brokers managed to resist, selectively accept, and reshape
developmentalist policies and multicultural state projects
throughout the 20th century. Based on surveillance documents from
Mexican Intelligence Services as well as oral interviews he
conducted in Spanish and Mixtec, a language he learned as his
intellectual and personal life became increasingly intertwined with
the destiny of Oaxaca, Dillingham works with care and empathy,
persuasively arguing that Oaxaca's gift for our contemporary world
resides in the indomitable energy and plurality of vision of its
many indigenous communities."—Cristina Rivera Garza, author of The
Restless Dead: Necrowriting and Disappropriation
"Oaxaca Resurgent provides a wide-ranging analysis of the tug of
war between Mexico's developmentalist policy and historic
strategies of indigenous resistance. With careful attention to
state projects and grassroots initiatives, Dillingham offers a
compelling picture of the institutions, actors and ideologies that
shaped the politics of indigeneity in the complex and dynamic
terrain of Oaxaca."—Tanalís Padilla, author of Rural Resistance in
the Land of Zapata
"A. S. Dillingham's meticulous archival and oral reconstruction
places Mixtec intellectuals and activists at the center of
indigenista thinking and development schemes: authoring,
appropriating, retooling, and transforming every aspect of
indigenismo for their own purposes, from the postrevolutionary
period to the neoliberal present. Dillingham brings to life three
generations of activists who came to political maturity under that
mantle of indigenismo, transforming its meaning from the inside
out, and tracing how these Mixtec actors contributed to the
resurgence of indigenous anticolonial and autonomy movements that
swept the hemisphere in the second half of the 20th century. A must
read for hemispheric Native American and indigenous
scholars."—María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, author of Indian Given:
Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States
"Those of us who have conducted archival research on indigenista
development and education sometimes struggle to highlight the
indigenous brokers who were trained and paid to carry out these
programs. In this book, Dillingham supplements his archival work
with a healthy dose of interviews to shine a light on these
critical actors. Indigenous men (and, later, women) used the crisis
of Mexican indigenismo, Echeverría's 'opening' and his
Third-Worldist discourse, and the politics of the New Left to push
for multicultural state development and education programs.
Dillingham restores agency to these people, which may be this fine
book's greatest contribution."—Stephen Lewis, H-LatAm
"Dillingham's use of local archives and oral histories reconstructs
how teachers and activists pursued their own goals within state and
party institutions, undermining many of these institutions in the
long run... Oaxaca Resurgent undoubtedly adds a regional
perspective and original evidence to the ongoing debate about the
nature of Mexico's postrevolutionary state."– Emilio de Antuñano,
Hispanic American Historical Review
"Oaxaca Resurgent brings together two important conversations in
Mexican Indigenous history: the ongoing colonialism of national
development and the longstanding Indigenous resistance. Using
twentieth-century Oaxaca both as case study and as exemplar,
Dillingham offers an illuminating window into Indigenous political
activism in the face of postrevolutionary state appropriation of
Indigenous culture and history. Examining what he calls the 'double
bind of indigenismo,' a space for Indigenous resurgence that
emerges from the tension between state constructions of Indigeneity
and the strategic deployment of those constructions by Native
peoples from the state of Oaxaca, Dillingham carefully reconstructs
how Indigenous individuals and communities forwarded—and continue
to forward—their own anticolonial projects by leveraging and
undermining nationalistic invocations of Indigeneity. The book
draws on an impressive range of sources, including declassified
surveillance documents and oral histories, and it is beautifully
written. This innovative work will resonate broadly with Indigenous
activists and scholars alike."—American Society for
Ethnohistory
"In the face of more than a century of scholarship that has made
Oaxaca and its peoples an object of inquiry—in archaeology,
anthropology, sociology, and other fields—this wide-ranging study
instead demonstrates the many ways that Oaxacans have made
themselves the subjects of their own history. ...Dillingham's
argument is the assertion that this multiculturalism was not merely
an identity based strategy of the state to incorporate Indigenous
Mexicans into an increasingly austere, neoliberal economy. He shows
instead that the struggle for multicultural recognition maintained
its class character, serving as a source of organizing power
especially for the dissident teachers-union movement that
flourished in Oaxaca and directly challenged the hegemony of the
ruling party."—Christy Thornton, Journal of Interdisciplinary
History
"A.S. Dillingham weaves together a powerful story of resistance in
one of Latin America's most culturally rich regions... The value
this important study brings to the field is that it uncovers the
long history of indigenous activism that survived and even thrived
despite the oppressive nature of one of the longest-lived political
regimes of the Western Hemisphere, a testament to the will of
Oaxaca's communities."—James A. Garza, The Americas
"Oaxaca Resurgent is an outstanding book. Dillingham's analysis is
sharp and conclusive but measured.... By embedding his analysis in
layers of context, Dillingham tells a universal story, moved by the
ebbs and flows of global intellectual sea change, yet never loses
sight of the small group of Indigenous bilingual teachers from
Oaxaca who drive his story, who are here not relegated to dancing
for the approbation of the state."—Colby Ristow, Latin American
Politics and Society
"Much of the literature on neoliberalism and multiculturalism has
conceptualized official multiculturalism as a consolation in lieu
of socio-economic reform. Dillingham instead shows how indigenous
activists, empowered by state indigenismo, crafted the
multiculturalism that the state would later embrace. They may not
have always gotten what they demanded, but they were never merely
victims of forces beyond their control."—Eben Levey, The Latin
Americanist
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