Landscaping Indigenous Mexico

A history of the Purepecha people's survival amid environmental and political changes.

Landscapes are more than geological formations; they are living records of human struggles. Landscaping Indigenous Mexico unearths the history of Juatarhu, an Indigenous landscape shaped and nurtured by the Purepecha-a formidable Mesoamerican people whose power once rivaled that of the Aztecs. Although cataclysmic changes came with European contact and colonization, Juatarhu's enduring agroecology continued to sustain local life through centuries of challenges.

Contesting essentialist narratives of Indigenous penury, Perez Montesinos shows how Purepechas thrived after Mexican independence in 1821, using Juatarhu's diverse agroecology to negotiate continued autonomy amid waves of national economic and political upheaval. After 1870, however, autonomy waned under the pressure of land privatization policies, state intervention, and industrial logging. On the eve of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, Purepechas stood at a critical juncture: Would the Indigenous landscape endure or succumb? Offering a fresh perspective on a seemingly well-worn subject, Perez Montesinos argues that Michoacan, long considered a peripheral revolutionary region, saw one of the era's most radical events: the destruction of the liberal order and the timber capitalism of Juatarhu.