ABSTRACT
Mexico's countryside has been one of its most explosive political sectors in the twentieth century. In 1910, Mexico was convulsed by the century's first major revolution, and then, in the century's waning years, the uprising of the Ejercito Zap atista de Liberacion National on New Year's eve of 1994 reaffirmed the volatility of rural Mexico. With Mexico's 1910 revolution having prolonged the existence of the peasantry for several decades, a heated polemic has arisen since the 1970s concerning agrarian structure, peasant differentiation, and the character of struggles in the countryside. The empirical puzzle that ignited the Mexican polemic consists of the following: in some regions rural workers seem to behave like peasants, while in others peasants seem to behave like workers. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
