In this beautifully written work, Marjorie Becker reconstructs the cultural encounters which led to Mexico's post-revolutionary government. She sets aside the mythology surrounding president Lázaro Cárdenas to reveal his dilemma: until he and his followers understood peasant culture, they could not govern.

This dilemma is vividly illustrated in Michoacán. There, peasants were passionately engaged in a Catholic culture focusing on the Virgin Mary. The Cardenistas, inspired by revolutionary ideas of equality and modernity, were oblivious to the peasants' spirituality and determined to transform them. A series of dramatic conflicts forced Cárdenas to develop a government that embodied some of the peasants' complex culture.

Becker brilliantly combines concerns with culture and power and a deep historical empathy to bring to life the men and women of her story. She shows how Mexico's government today owes much of its subtlety to the peasants of Michoacán.

Marjorie Becker is Associate Professor of History at the University of Southern California.

"Presents a realistic view of the complex role Michoacán campesinos played in slowing down Lázaro Cárdenas’ reforms, especially in religious matters. . . . The author penetrates numerous rural and agrarian aspects of the Mexican Revolution that to date have been slighted."—Hispanic American Historical Review

"One of the first books in what promises to be a wave of studies examining Cardenista state-building through the prism of culture, this is an important and provocative work. The research upon which it is based—most notable are the more than forty interviews Becker conducted between 1984 and 1990—is impressive. . . . Becker’s account is admirable in not shying away from the differences, disagreements, and conflicts among its peasant subjects, and in demonstrating how gender, class, and ethnicity shaped diverse campesino attitudes and actions."—The Americas

"Becker’s cultural history argues that the revolutionary political elites did not understand religious peasants and were unable to turn them into anticlerical agraristas. In this she is obviously correct and her efforts to penetrate and portray campesino cultures are very interesting and innovative."—American Historical Review

"Becker offers some arresting examples, anecdotes and recollections, drawn from archival sources, and above all, oral interviews. The book sheds light on rural politics, the role of gender, revolutionary anticlericalism and popular Catholicism."—Times Literary Supplement

"A major work in the field of Mexican revolutionary and gender studies. Becker is an indefatigable fieldworker; the array and richness of her archival and oral sources is simply astonishing."—Gilbert M. Joseph, author of Revolution from Without