Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru

by Florencia E. Mallon

Peasant and Nation offers a major new statement on the making of national politics. Comparing the popular political cultures and discourses of postcolonial Mexico and Peru, Florencia Mallon provides a groundbreaking analysis of their effect on the evolution of these nation states. As political history from a variety of subaltern perspectives, the book takes seriously the history of peasant thought and action and the complexity of community politics. It reveals the hierarchy and the heroism, the solidarity and the surveillance, the exploitation and the reciprocity, that coexist in popular political struggle.

With this book Mallon not only forges a new path for Latin American history but challenges the very concept of nationalism. Placing it squarely within the struggles for power between colonized and colonizing peoples, she argues that nationalism must be seen not as an integrated ideology that puts the interest of the nation above all other loyalties, but as a project for collective identity over which many political groups and coalitions have struggled. Ambitious and bold, Peasant and Nation both draws on monumental archival research in two countries and enters into spirited dialogue with the literatures of post-colonial studies, gender studies, and peasant studies.

Genres: History, Latin American History, Race, Nonfiction

496 pages, Paperback

First published December 18, 1994

Reviews

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was difficult and exhausting. There was just an overwhelming amount of names and dates and changing political affiliations. Maybe also because this book is now 20 years old I found a lot of the arguments that academics need to pay attention to peasants, and indigenous people, and women and in-group divisions to just be self-evident.

I read this for a grad school class where we ended up challenging the applicability of military documents as a primary source for a book on peasant nationalism.

[Valencia W · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful comparative history but ultimately a hard book to follow with the statements and claims.

[eliane ♡ᵕ̈ · Rating 3 out of 5]

peasant nationalism? more like mestizo-led clientelism