Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan Peasants and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution
by: Marjorie Becker

Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 188 pages. Marjorie Becker reconstructs the cultural encounters which led to Mexico's post-revolutionary government. She sets aside the mythology surrounding president Lazaro Cardenas to reveal his dilemma: until he and his followers understood peasant culture, they could not govern. This dilemma is vividly illustrated in Michoacan. 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 Cardenas to develop a government that embodied some of the peasants' complex culture. Clean copy