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In this groundbreaking study, Paul Friedrich looks closely at the strong men of the Tarascan Indian village of Naranja: their leadership, friendship, kinship, and violent local politics (over a time depth of one generation), and ways to understand such phenomena. What emerges is an acutely observed portrait of the men who form the very basis of the grass-roots power structure in Mexico today.

Of interest to historians, sociologists, and political scientists, as well as Latin Americanists and anthropologists, The Princes of Naranja is a sequel to Friedrich's now classic Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village. It begins with biographical character studies of seven leaders—peasant gunmen, judges, politicos; here the book will grip the reader and provoke strong emotional response, from laughter to horror. A middle section places these "princes" in relation to each other, and to the contexts of village society and the larger entities of which it forms a part. Friedrich's synthesis of anthropology, local (mainly oral) history, macrohistory, microsociology, psychology, and literature gives new insight into the structure of Mexican politics from the local level up, and provides a model for other scholars doing analogous work in other parts of the world, especially in the developing world. The concluding section raises vital questions about the dynamic relations between the fieldworker, fieldwork, field notes, the villagers, the writing of a fieldwork-based book, and, implicitly, the audience for such books.

2008 — ALLA Prize for Best Book on Latina/o Anthropology

The Pico Gardens housing development in East Los Angeles has a high percentage of resident families with a history of persistent poverty, gang involvement, and crime. In some families, members of three generations have belonged to gangs. Many other Pico Gardens families, however, have managed to avoid the cycle of gang involvement.

In this work, Vigil adds to the tradition of poverty research and elaborates on the association of family dynamics and gang membership. The main objective of his research was to discover what factors make some families more vulnerable to gang membership, and why gang resistance was evidenced in similarly situated non-gang-involved families. Providing rich, in-depth interviews and observations, Vigil examines the wide variations in income and social capital that exist among the ostensibly poor, mostly Mexican American residents. Vigil documents how families connect and interact with social agencies in greater East Los Angeles to help chart the routines and rhythms of the lives of public housing residents. He presents family life histories to augment and provide texture to the quantitative information.

By studying life in Pico Gardens, Vigil feels we can better understand how human agency interacts with structural factors to produce the reality that families living in all public housing developments must contend with daily.

The Rain Gods’ Rebellion examines Nahua oral narratives to illuminate the cultural basis of the 1977–1984 rebellion against the local Hispanic elite in Huitzilan de Serdán, Mexico. Drawing from forty years of fieldwork in the region, James M. Taggart traces the sociopolitical role of Nahua rain gods—who took both human and divine forms—back hundreds of years and sheds new light on the connections between social experiences and the Nahua understanding of water and weather in stories. As Taggart shows, Nahua tales of the rain gods’ rebellion anticipated the actual 1977 land invasion in Huitzilan, in which some 200–300 Nahua were killed.

Providing a rare longitudinal look at the cultural basis of this grassroots insurgency, The Rain Gods’ Rebellion offers rare insight into the significance of oral history in forming Nahua collective memory and, by extension, culture. It will be of significance to scholars of Indigenous studies, anthropology, oral history, and violence studies, as well as linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists.

Protestant evangelicalism has spread rapidly in Latin America at the same time that foreign corporations have taken hold of economies there. These concurrent developments have led some observers to view this religious movement as a means of melding converts into a disciplined work force for foreign capitalists rather than as a reflection of conscious individual choices made for a variety of personal, as well as economic, reasons.

In this pioneering study, Elizabeth Brusco challenges such assumptions and explores the intra-household motivations for evangelical conversion in Colombia. She shows how the asceticism required of evangelicals (no drinking, smoking, or extramarital sexual relations are allowed) redirects male income back into the household, thereby raising the living standard of women and children. This benefit helps explain the appeal of evangelicalism for women and questions the traditional assumption that organized religion always disadvantages women.

Brusco also demonstrates how evangelicalism appeals to men by offering an alternative to the more dysfunctional aspects of machismo. Case studies add a fascinating human dimension to her findings.

With the challenges this book poses to conventional wisdom about economic, gender, and religious behavior, it will be important reading for a wide audience in anthropology, women’s studies, economics, and religion. For all students of Latin America, it offers thoughtful new perspectives on a major, grass-roots agent of social change.

Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez’s latest work, The Rise of Necro/Narco Citizenship investigates the intricate and often harrowing dynamics that define the borderlands between the United States, Mexico, and beyond. This groundbreaking book provides a comprehensive cultural, economic, social, and political-ecological analysis, illustrating how various forms of violence and militarization have reshaped the daily lives and identities of the region’s inhabitants. Through meticulous ethnographic fieldwork, extensive archival research, and rigorous statistical data, Vélez-Ibáñez exposes the deeply entrenched networks of exploitation and conflict that have emerged in response to global capitalism’s pressures.

Vélez-Ibáñez builds on theorization about necrocitizenship to introduce the concept of necro/narco citizenship, which argues that pervasive violence and socioeconomic disruptions create a unique form of existence on both sides of the border. The author examines the dislocation of thousands, the persistent threat of violence, and the ways in which these forces compel individuals to navigate a reality steeped in addiction, self-destruction, and civil deterioration. This book reveals the transnational networks and the morally compromised political economies that sustain them, offering readers an unflinching look at the cost of survival in this tumultuous region.

This essential volume is not only a critical addition to the field of anthropology but also an invaluable resource for those interested in the sociopolitical landscape of the U.S.-Mexico border. Vélez-Ibáñez’s insights will resonate with scholars, students, and policymakers alike. The Rise of Necro/Narco Citizenship challenges us to rethink the narratives of violence, militarization, and resistance that define our understanding of the Southwest North American Region.

Winner, William P. Clements Prize, Best Non-Fiction Book on Southwestern America, 2004

Not quite the United States and not quite Mexico, La Junta de los Rios straddles the border between Texas and Chihuahua, occupying the basin formed by the conjunction of the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the Chihuahuan Desert, ranking in age and dignity with the Anasazi pueblos of New Mexico.

In the first comprehensive history of the region, Jefferson Morgenthaler traces the history of La Junta de los Rios from the formation of the Mexico-Texas border in the mid-19th century to the 1997 ambush shooting of teenage goatherd Esquiel Hernandez by U.S. Marines performing drug interdiction in El Polvo, Texas. "Though it is scores of miles from a major highway, I found natives, soldiers, rebels, bandidos, heroes, scoundrels, drug lords, scalp hunters, medal winners, and mystics," writes Morgenthaler. "I found love, tragedy, struggle, and stories that have never been told." In telling the turbulent history of this remote valley oasis, he examines the consequences of a national border running through a community older than the invisible line that divides it.

An original perspective on the mythologies and ecologies of water, the poetics and politics of voice, and the invocation of a communal spirit through film and other arts.

“Follow the Water Follow the Sound” is a call and response. Far removed from the associations of seduction and fear that the siren—both as mythological figure and alarm device—has inspired, it is an invitation to another perceptual attunement to our environment. Offering an original perspective, this bookengages with notions of singing, voicing, and listening that reach into a sonic pluriverse and imagine the "sirenic" as a practice oriented towards emergent futures, fabulations of becoming, and pedagogies of transformation. Through these notions, it provides the grounds for an expanded conception of cinema emerging through sound, music, and performance. Bringing together scholars, curators, and artists from across disciplines, Sirenic unfolds as a polyphonic publication. 

With contributions by Ruth Baettig, Dalida María Benfield, Elena Biserna, Mattia Capelletti, Caroline Courrioux, Alice Jasmine Crippa, Giuseppe Di Salvatore, Magali Dougoud, Burcu Dogramaci, Lidia Gasperoni, Alexandra Gelis, Tobias Gerber, Ute Holl, Roberta Ioli, Pauline Julier, Fabienne Liptay, Niccolò Moronato, Gabriel Paiuk, Dorota Sajewska, Alice Sartori, Alexandra Tsiamparta, and Matthias Wittmann.