Muñoz, María L. O. Arizona, 2016

• 261p bibl index afp, 9780816532506 $55.00, 9780816533794
• LC Call Number: F
  1219

Historian Muñoz (Susquehanna Univ.) argues for the limits of the hegemonic power of Mexico’s ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), through an examination of the 1975 First National Congress of Indigenous Peoples. She situates this event in the context of 65 regional congresses that led up to the national congress and subsequent national congresses that were not nearly as successful. Muñoz moves beyond a binary of independent or co-opted organizational processes and portrays the congresses as neither wholly independent from the government nor entirely state controlled. Organizational leaders functioned as intermediaries, and their negotiations shaped government policies. Muñoz characterizes the period from 1970 to 1982, when the populist presidents Luis Echeverría and José López Portillo were in office as a golden age of Indigenous organizations. She compares Echeverría’s pro-Indigenous policies to those of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40), who similarly did much for rural communities. In the process, Muñoz seeks to rehabilitate Echeverría’s image, which is otherwise sullied by his participation in Mexico’s “dirty war,” including as secretary of interior during the October 2, 1968, Tlatelolco massacre and the June 10, 1971, Corpus Christi massacre during his presidency.

Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

• Reviewer: M. Becker, Truman State University
• Recommendation: Recommended
• Readership Level: Upper-division Undergraduates, Graduate Students, Researchers/Faculty
• Interdisciplinary Subjects: Latin American & Latina/o Studies , Native American Studies
• Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences - History, Geography & Area Studies - Latin America & the Caribbean
• Choice Issue: oct 2016 vol. 54 no. 2
• Choice Review #: 54-0824