During the early 1880s, a wave of peasant unrest swept the mountainous Huasteca region of northeastern Mexico. The rebels demanded political autonomy for their pueblos, protection for their churches, and restoration of the land, water, and foraging rights that were a part of their heritage--issues with nationwide implications that foreshadowed the revolution of 1910. This account traces the material and ideological roots of the rebellion to nineteenth-century liberal policies of land privatization and to the growth of a radical anarchocommunist agrarian consciousness.

Elite landholders...