The research for this study was supported by a fellowship from the Inter-American Foundation and was partially funded also by the History Department of Yale University. The author would like to thank Steven Wilf for his careful and perceptive critique of an earlier version. She would also like to thank Jean Meyer, James C. Scott, and Emilia Viotti da Costa for their generous support of the work. Findings and views expressed in the article are, of course, solely those of the author.

¹ See Meyer, Jean, La Cristiada, Camino, Aurelio Garzón del, trans., 3 vols., 7th ed. (Mexico D.F.: Siglo veintiuno editores, 1980)Google Scholar.

² Mead, Margaret, Blackberry Winter (New York: William Morrow, 1972), 247Google Scholar.

³ I discovered this resistance during the fifteen months of research for my dissertation, “Láxzaro Cárdenas and the Mexican Counter-Revolution: The Struggle over Culture in Michoacán, 1934–1940,” to be presented to the Department of History, Yale UniversityGoogle Scholar. The research was conducted from January 1984 through January 1985 and from June 1985 through September 1985.

The documentary basis for this research in Mexico included population and agrarian censuses, inspectors' evaluations of the education program implemented in Michoacán villages, cardenista plans for rural transformation, textbooks and education journals, cardenista speeches and memoirs, government documents on social banditry and reports on assassinations, transcripts of judicial proceedings, descriptions of rural political networks, campesino petitions and written complaints, campesino requests for land, and descriptions of the ensuing contests and judgments.

These documents are housed in the Archivo General de la Nación (cited herein as AGN), the Archivos Históricos de la Secretaría de Educatión Pública (cited herein as AHSEP), the agrarian reform archives in Michoácan and Mexico City, the Hemeroteca of the Ciudad Universitaria, municipal and local archives in Michoacán, private archives of a Michoacán agrarian leader, the Centro de Estudios de la Revolutión Mexicana Lázaro Cardenas, A. C, and in the libraries of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia y Historia, the Colegio de Mexico, the Colegio de Michoacán, and the Centra de Estudios Históricos del Agrarismo en Mexico. I also conducted interviews with former cardenistas, socialist teachers, and Michoacán campesinos.

⁴ See, for example, the work of Raby, David, Educatión y revolutión social en Mexico, 1921–1940 (Mexico D.F.: Sepsetentas, 1974)Google Scholar; and Lerner, Victoria, La educatión socialista, Vol. VI, no. 17 of Historia de la revolutión mexicana, González, Luis, ed., 23 vols. (Mexico D.F.: El Colegio de Mexico, 1979)Google Scholar. On the other hand, chapter 8 of Scott, James C.'s Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar, constitutes a powerful and persuasive rendition of the existence of campesino ideology in the Kedah area of Malaysia. I share with Scott the intuition that campesinos with one foot in the communal past possess the expertise for constructing a more egalitarian future at least as surely as the proletarianized workers, who have never experienced such forms of communal ownership.

⁵ I based these calculations on information found in Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Secretaria de la Economia Nacional, Dirección General de Estadíxstica, Quinto censo de población 15 de mayo de 1930, estado de Michoacan, 11; and Miramontes, Fernando Foglio, Geografia económica agrícola de estado de Michoacán, 3 vols. (Mexico D.F.: Imprenta de la camara de diputados, 1936)Google Scholar.

⁶ Meyer, La Cristiada.

⁷ Cárdenas, Lázaro, Palabras y documentos de Lázaro Cárdenas: Mensajes, discursos, declaraciones, entrevistas, y otros documentos, 1928–1940, 3 vols. (Mexico D.F.: Siglo veintiuno editores, 1978), I, 169Google Scholar. (This and all subsequent translations are, of course, my own.) See also L. Carranco Cardosa, 23 August 1933, Departamento de enseñanza agrícola y normal rural, Instituto de acción social, La Huerta, Michoacán, Caja 259, AHSEP, Mexico, D.F.: Francisco Frías, Profesor inspector federal Michoacán, “Informe que rinde el inspector de la 17/a zona escolar en el estado de Michoacán de la labor desarrollado en las escuelas de su dependencia durante el tercer trimestre del año escolar de 1936,” Caja 412, AHSEP, Mexico, D.F.: J. Socorro Vázquez, Profesor inspector federal Michoacán, 15 November 1935, “Informe anual,” Caja 412, AHSEP, Mexico, D.F.; and Teodoro Mendoza, Profesor inspector federal Michoacán, January–February 1936, Caja 412, AHSEP, Mexico, D.F.

⁸ Profesor Celso Flores Zamora, “Circular IV,” 7 March 1936, “Colección de circulares giradas por la directión general de enseñanza en los estados y territorios,” Caja 557, AHSEP, Mexico, D.F.

⁹ Policarpo L. Sánchez, Profesor inspector federal Michoacán, 12 February 1936, Caja 412, AHSEP, Mexico, D.F.

¹⁰ Among the many examples, see expediente 547.4/462, ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, 2 May 1940, AGN, Mexico, D.F., on the Ario de Rayon church; expediente 547.4/220, ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, 18 January 1936, AGN, Mexico, D.F., on the Purépero church; expediente 547.3/85, ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, 30 September 1935, AGN, Mexico, D.F., on the Tarjero church; expediente 547/56, ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, 8 February 1938, AGN, Mexico, D.F., on the Cherán church; expediente 547.4/133, ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, 18 August 1939, AGN, Mexico, D.F., on a Pátzcuaro church; expediente 547.4/133, ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, AGN, Mexico, D.F., on a Uruapan region church.

¹¹ Personal interview with Roberto Villasefior Espinosa, 1 March 1984, Mexico, D.F.

¹² Ramón Reynosa G., Profesor inspector federal Michoacán, 29 April 1936, Caja 413, AHSEP, Mexico, D.F.

¹³ “Las mujeres rojas de Michoacán,” El maestro rural (Mexico D.F.), 15 12 1934, p. 22.Google ScholarPubMed

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Caja 259, AHSEP, Mexico, D.F.

¹⁶ Francisco Frías, Profesor inspector federal Michoacán, 10 March 1936, Caja 412, AHSEP, Mexico, D.F. See also idem, “Informe de los trabajos desarrollados durante el primer trimestre—enero, febrero, y marzo de 1936 por la inspectión de la 17/a zona y escuelas dependientes de la misma en el estado de Michoacán,” 31 March 1936, Caja 412, AHSEP, Mexico, D.F.

¹⁷ Sáenz, Moisés, Carapan, 3d ed. (Morelia, Michoacán: Talleres linotipográficos del gobierno del estado, 1969), 12Google Scholar, My interview with Jesús Múgica Martínez on 4 December 1984 in Morelia provided additional corroborating material regarding Cárdenas's widespread utilization of rural caciques to control the population.

¹⁸ Sáenz, , Carapan, 163Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Ibid., 6.

²⁰ Ibid., 164.

²¹ Expediente 547.4/133, ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, AGN, Mexico, D.F.

²² Callista educators clearly intended to transform rather than ignore community life, but the Cristero civil war brought their efforts to a standstill in many parts of Michoacán.

²³ Expediente 547.4/133, ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, AGN, Mexico, D.F.; and Carrasco, Pedro, Tarascan Folk Religion: An Analysis of Economic, Social, and Religious Interactions (New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute, The Tulane University of Louisiana, 1952), 11, 21Google Scholar.

²⁴ Nuñez, Lucio Mendieta y, ed., Los Tarascos (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1940), 161Google Scholar.

²⁵ Personal interview with Jervacio Lopez, 31 August 1985, Jarácuaro, Michoacán; personal interview with Celerino Ramírez, 2 September 1985, Jarácuaro, Michoacán; Carrasco, , Tarascan Folk Religion, 11, 21Google Scholar.

²⁶ Interview with Lopez; personal interview with Eulario Capilla, 2 September 1985, Járacuaro, Michoacán; expediente 547.4/133, ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, AGN, Mexico, D.F.

²⁷ Policarpo L. Sánchez, Profesor inspector federal Michoacán, 11 May 1936, Caja 412, AHSEP, Mexico, D.F.; Interviews with Lopez, Capilla, and Ramírez.

²⁸ Expediente 547.4/133, ramo Lázaro Cárdenas, AGN, Mexico, D.F.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Ibid.

³² Carrasco, , Tarascan Folk Religion, 18Google Scholar.