Recovering and Explaining Indigenous Roles in the Mexican Revolution Morris, Nathaniel. Soldiers, Saints, and Shamans: Indigenous Communities and the Revolutionary State in Mexico’s Gran Nayar, 1910–1940. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2020, 371 pages

For obvious reasons, historians—and social scientists in general—like to big up the topic they research, stressing its critical importance or claiming to rescue it from the “enormous condescension of posterity” (Thompson, 1963, 12). Nat Morris focuses on the Gran Nayar, which embraces chunks of four Mexican states (Nayarit, Jalisco, Durango and Zacatecas): a sizeable (20,000 km²), but sparsely populated region (the Indigenous population, around 1910, was rather less than 5,000). In terms of its role in modern Mexican history, the region was largely peripheral, subject to mounting external challenges—political, military, economic and cultural—which its inhabitants did not initiate and to which they responded with a range of responses, including covert resistance, armed rebellion, opportunistic collusion and tactical retreat (literally into the fastnesses of the Sierra). In short, all the evasive weapons of the weak and, at times, the confrontational weapons of the strong. So, while the story of the Gran Nayar was peripheral to—it did not substantially affect—the grand national epic of the Revolution (compare, say, the roles of Morelos or Sonora), it was a story of agency, albeit reactive agency. (Of course, “reactive” agency is often the most common kind.) One obvious conclusion is that the “tropes” of Indigenous inertia—which, as Morris shows, came thick and fast in these years—were based on prejudice rather than fact. No doubt because of its peripherality, combined with the practical obstacles to research in the region, the Gran Nayar has been neglected, if not by anthropologists, then at least by historians (Beatriz Rojas’s work on the Huicholes/Wixátari [1993] being a rare exception). As for today’s political scientists—who claim to study Mexico—I doubt that many could locate the Gran Nayar on a map. Therefore, the familiar authorial claim that this is a pioneering work that fills a gap is, for once, entirely valid (4). Morris sensibly blends the narrative of the period, which is at times very dense and detailed, with a lucid analysis of the region’s geography, ethnic make-up, politics, economy and religious cultures. The narrative focuses on major episodes: the Revolution (1910–20), the educational policies of the new revolutionary state (1920–25), the two Cristero Wars (1926–29 and 1931–35), Indigenous education (1929–34), and finally, the reformist administration of President Cárdenas (1934–40). The story unfolds at several interlocking levels, from the national state in the making, through the four relevant state governments, the three main ethnic regions, the many constituent municipalities, down to the individual communities, each endowed with its own characteristics and history. The result is sometimes labyrinthine. But the author rightly assumes that without telling what happened, when, where and why, it is impossible to draw any broader conclusions about the historical trajectory of the Gran Nayar. Thus, the sometimes bewildering sequence of local conflicts, cacical careers, recurrent battles, and sudden seizures of power followed by hubristic downfalls, is essential. This approach, I would argue, is reminiscent of the similarly complex micro-history of the French Revolution, in that it is local and bottom-up, skeptical of bland mono-causality, sensitive to regional and local idiosyncrasies, and replete with graphic, often violent vignettes (cf. Cobb 1970). But in addition—and vitally—Morris makes a brave and successful effort to order the chaos (171–175), teasing out the principal factors that explain the motives and modus operandi of his cast of thousands, and occasionally taking issue—politely but cogently—with some received opinions. Thus, while recognizing the centrality of religious (perhaps “ideational”?) loyalties—Catholic as well as syncretic or “costumbrista”—Morris links these loyalties to broader issues of community integrity and identity, symbolized by local patron saints, threatened by the loosely allied forces of state power and mestizo immigration. Hence the …