In 2006, the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca became an object of international attention when a mass movement emerged in support of a statewide teachers’ strike. Responding to violent repression, a broad-based coalition of social movements soon took control of Oaxaca City and demanded the governor’s resignation.

In a new book, historian A. S. Dillingham narrates the prehistory of that explosive moment, focusing on the role of bilingual indigenous teachers in the Oaxacan teachers’ union throughout the twentieth century. Oaxaca Resurgent: Indigeneity, Development, and Inequality in Twentieth Century Mexico reveals the rich tradition of indigenous militancy and trade union struggle in Oaxaca.

Oaxaca Resurgent is the culmination of more than a decade of research, and Dillingham’s sources range from oral histories shared by trade union militants to secret documents produced by the Mexican security state. Against commonplace narratives of political acquiescence in Oaxaca, it reveals “a different history, a history in which questions of cultural liberation and social transformation were intimately linked,” as Dillingham writes in the book’s introduction.