Landscaping Indigenous Mexico

"Juátarhu, one of the oldest, continuously inhabited regions of what today is the northern edge of Michoacán, is inhabited by the Purépecha-one of the largest Indigenous groups to live in the hilly woodlands-and have largely lived on subsistence farming. While these communities were devastated by violent incursions by Spanish and European diseases, they managed to persevere by living on the edges of more developed Spanish colonial centers. The end of Spanish rule in the early nineteenth century made it possible for the Purépecha to use the hilly, wooded areas as a basis for growing maize, orchards, and vegetable gardens that were not as affected as other areas of Mexico by political conflict and changing economies. The lengthy presidency of Porfirio Díaz (the Porfiriato) created new challenges. As centralized government combined with commercial and industrial capitalism-which were accelerated by railway systems and widespread logging industries-it seemed that the Purépecha were destined for a similar fate as other Indigenous communities. However, as Pérez Montesinos uncovers, the disruption of the Mexican Revolution upended capitalist interests and government oversight of the region as they were forced to turn towards dealing with revolutionaries in the North and South. The particulars of the landscape in this area made it possible to shift power and environmental control back to these Indigenous communities. By examining the unusual facets of this landscape, Pérez Montesinos uncovers not just a history of environmental change to the land, but an unusual story of how local peoples were able to retain their own livelihoods and culture largely intact during a time of upheaval"--