“[A] groundbreaking study combining psychoanalytical and anthropological methods to analyse the impact of industrialization on ‘peasants.’” —Booknews The renowned psychoanalyst Erich Fromm analyzed more than just general society and societal processes. Together with Michael Maccoby, he completed a study of Mexican villagers to empirically illustrate how historical, economic, and social requirements determine behavior. Social Character in a Mexican Village does much more than introduce a new approach to the analysis of social phenomena. It throws new light on one of the world’s most pressing problems, the impact of the industrialized world on the traditional character of the laboring class. Unanimously, the book is an outstanding introduction to Fromm’s concept of social character. “Fromm and Maccoby have written a study of crucial importance.” —Richard J. Barnet, Institute for Policy Studies

This is a collection of ten absorbing stories, rich in setting, tense in action, and warm in their sympathy with the human comedy. The main interest in all the stories is the comedy or tragedy in the lives of the people, but each story has its own enveloping action of excitement and color. Pervading the whole is an authentic folk life--Christian and pagan marvelously mixed. Originally published in 1945. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

In this study, the authors examine why residents of a Tarascan Indian village, in the highlands of Central Mexico, use Western medicine as well as native curing processes.

Wendy Call visited the Isthmus of Tehuantepec?the lush sliver of land connecting the Yucatan Peninsula to the rest of Mexico?for the first time in 1997. She found herself in the midst of a storied land, a place Mexicans call their country'sø?little waist,? a place long known for its strong women, spirited marketplaces, and deep sense of independence. She also landed in the middle of a ferocious battle over plans to industrialize the region, where most people still fish, farm, and work in the forests. In the decade that followed her first visit, Call witnessed farmland being paved for new highways, oil spilling into rivers, and forests burning down. Through it all, local people fought to protect their lands and their livelihoods?and their very lives.ø ø Call?s story, No Word for Welcome, invites readers into the homes, classrooms, storefronts, and fishing boats of the isthmus, as well as the mahogany-paneled high-rise offices of those striving to control the region. With timely and invaluable insights into the development battle, Call shows that the people who have suffered most from economic globalization have some of the clearest ideas about how we can all survive it.

Born in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico in 1910, Josefina María Niggli was one of the first Latina writers to have her work published in the United States—and thus one of the first to introduce American audiences to the culture and people flourishing along the U.S.–Mexico border. Well ahead of what is now called Chicano literature, her writings—spanning a broad range of genres, subjects, and styles—offer an insider's view of the everyday lives little known or noted outside of their native milieu. In Niggli's plays, for instance, these often invisible working class Mexicans were literally elevated to the public stage, their hidden reality given expression. A long-overdue gathering of Niggli's work, this volume showcases the writer's remarkable literary versatility, as well as the groundbreaking nature of her writing, which in many ways established a blueprint for future generations of writers and readers of Chicano literature. This collection includes Niggli's most famous and influential work, Mexican Village—a literary chronicle of Hidalgo, Mexico, which explores the distinct nature and tensions of Mexican life—along with her novel Step Down, Elder Brother, and five of her most well-known plays.

The people of Mexquitic, a town in the state of San Luis Potosí in rural northeastern Mexico, have redefined their sense of identity from "Indian" to "Mexican" over the last two centuries. In this ethnographic and historical study of Mexquitic, David Frye explores why and how this transformation occurred, thereby increasing our understanding of the cultural creation of "Indianness" throughout the Americas. Frye focuses on the local embodiments of national and regional processes that have transformed rural "Indians" into modern "Mexicans": parish priests, who always arrive with personal agendas in addition to their common ideological baggage; local haciendas; and local and regional representatives of royal and later of national power and control. He looks especially at the people of Mexquitic themselves, letting their own words describe the struggles they have endured while constructing their particular corner of Mexican national identity. This ethnography, the first for any town in northeastern Mexico, adds substantially to our knowledge of the forces that have rendered "Indians" almost invisible to European-origin peoples from the fifteenth century up to today. It will be important reading for a wide audience not only in anthropology and Latin American studies but also among the growing body of general readers interested in the multicultural heritage of the Americas.