Popular Movements and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico: The Agraristas and Cristeros of Michoacan (review)

Popular Movements and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico: The Agraristas and Cristeros of Michoacán. By Jennie Purnell. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. Map. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. x, 271 pp. Cloth, $49.95. Paper, $17.95.

This book significantly advances the paradigm of studying state formation as "negotiation of rule," exemplified by Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent's pathbreaking collection, Everyday Forms of State Formation (1994), by demonstrating that it can help us to answer comparative questions. Purnell seeks to explain why a socially, economically, and ethnically diverse set of rural actors rebelled against the state under the banner of the cristeros in the period 1926-29, to be opposed by equally diverse agrarista peasants who backed a secularizing state, despite, in many cases, retaining personal Catholic convictions. Although the cristiada has evoked a distinguished historiography, this book provides new and more satisfying answers to the two major conundrums. Why was the rebellion concentrated in the center-west of Mexico? What determined alignment with the cristero and agrarista causes?

Purnell's insightful analysis of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century history is capped by close discussion of three sub-regions of Michoacán: the agrarista Zacapu region, made famous by Paul Friedrich's studies of Naranja, the Purépecha highlands, where Purnell focuses on San Juan Parangaricutiro and its neighbors, and the ranchero communities of San José de Gracia and Cojumatlán, in the northwestern part of the state. The analysis is wonderfully rich, both in its detail and in its use of local history to confront bigger theoretical issues. Purnell highlights the inadequacies of both orthodox and revisionist models of the revolution, and the limitations of state-centered, class-centric, and new social movements theorizing alike. Her own analysis reconnects economics and social property relations with political identities in a sophisticated way. In the case of San Juan Parangaricutiro, for example, we need to explain why this particular community actively rebelled as cristeros. San Juan was not unusual in the Meseta Purépecha for having survived the Porfiriato with its communal property intact and under the control of a still functioning cabildo, in contrast to the communities of the Zacapu region. Haciendas were not central to agrarian conflict in the Meseta, and the efforts of post-revolutionary state builders to establish agrarista client groups provoked opposition from Catholic majorities linked to communal institutions. Yet, as Purnell points out, while long-term structural conditions set the stage for conflict, which did, indeed, intensify in the period of Cárdenas's governorship and presidency, we need a conjunctural explanation for one community's precocious mobilization. She finds it, convincingly, in the threat posed by mestizos allied to revolutionary officials to San Juan's property and governmental institutions and, through their anti-clericalism, to the community's historical identity, which intersected, at this historical moment, with a longstanding dispute with neighboring Paracutín. As the latter community accepted the leadership of families that aligned with agrarismo, San Juan rose up under the banner of the cristeros.

Inspired by Steve J. Stern's work, the linking of short, conjunctural, time frames to frames spanning centuries is integral to the book's success in illuminating how historical memories and strategies shaped the goals and consciousness of rural rebels. Purnell's contribution to Mexican revolutionary history is further enriched by its analysis of Catholic lay organizations. She offers a comparative analysis of Oaxaca and Sonora to underscore the importance of this differentiating feature for explaining why anti-state movements in the center-west expressed themselves in the cristiada. The history of the more clandestine organizations, notably the "U", remains in need of further exploration. More attention might usefully have been paid to "passive" identification with the cristero cause, and I remain unconvinced that the "grotesque and gratuitous" violence of the forces mobilized by the infamous José In&eacute...