Marxism, peasants and moral economy in mexican historiography

Abstract

This text explores the implications of the gradual transformation of Mexican historiography around studies about the peasantry and their forms of resistance to the capitalist onslaught. It is argued that from a Marxist history (economist) it was passed to one of more culturalist type (social history and later to subaltern history). However, these new historiographic trends were applied very late in the Mexican environment. In general, still towards the end of the eighties, the strong resistance to the paradigm shift imposed by orthodox Marxism was evident, which made it difficult to incorporate social theory for the study of the subordinate classes, whose most important representatives were E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Lawrence Stone, among others. The research complements the historiographic balances that have been elaborated on the subject in recent years. Mainly, the works of Eric van Young, Leticia Reina, Mary Kay Vaughan and Peter Guardino stand out, who have privileged in their analysis the works prepared by historians and have forgotten of the social theorists who dedicated themselves to the peasant subject from anthropological perspectives, such as Roger Bartra, Arturo Warman, among others.