Reviews: Review Essays O Poder da Cultura e a Cultura no Poder: A Disputa Simbólica da Herança Cultural Negra no Brasil. dos Santos Jocélio Teles 2005 . 261 pp

leaning opposition party (PAN) in the 2000 elections. Through his own analysis of election statistics, Gilbert demonstrates the significance of the middle class’ role in the PRI’s defeat in 2000. He argues convincingly that, more than a change in the middle class’ approach to politics, which was always active and critical, this shift in loyalties reflects a response to the PRI’s errors. However, his argument that this active political culture distinguishes the middle class from its popular counterpart is less convincing. The popular class may not have had as much success bringing about political change, but this is not for lack of effort. During the contested elections of 1988 and 2006, popular actors attempted to bring about change by supporting the left-leaning PRD, even if this party’s candidates did not take office. Gilbert comes to the somewhat unexpected conclusion that instead of disappearing under neoliberalism, the Mexican middle class is now ‘‘bigger, better educated and more affluent’’ (99). He adds, however, that in contrast to the atmosphere of hope during the economic miracle years, the recent crises have stripped its members of the belief that they share their first world counterparts’ security and permanence. In an epilogue about the 2006 elections, the author notes the fact that many middle class Mexicans, especially in the central and southern regions, voted for the left-leaning PRD instead of the PAN. This fact confirms his earlier position that the middle class vote in the previous elections was against the PRI and not necessarily ideological. I would add that the clear division between voters in the North versus those in the Center and South also suggests the need for regionally sensitive research on other aspects of middle class life, such

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as, for example, visions of the nation and its relationship to the United States. Overall, the book is clearly written and argued. It provides a good general introduction to Mexico’s economic and political history over the last 30 years. Further, as the first book-length, English-language study of the middle class, it is an important addition to the academic literature on contemporary Mexico. It should, I hope, stimulate further examinations of this understudied topic.

O Poder da Cultura e a Cultura no Poder: A Disputa Simbo´lica da Heranc¸a Cultural Negra no Brasil. Joce´lio Teles dos Santos, Salvador: EDUFBA, 2005. 261 pp. Vagner Gonc¸alves da Silva University of Sa˜o Paulo Over the last five decades Brazil has gone through significant transformations. It experienced a dictatorship beginning in 1964, a re-democratization in 1985, and in 2002 the election of a president from the ranks of industrial workers and the leftist labor movement. In what way, in these contexts, did public policies directed at Brazil’s black population, the demands of black movements, and the manipulation of identity around Afro-Brazilian culture take form? These questions motivated Joce´lio Teles dos Santos to produce this book, whose title might be translated as The Power of Culture and the Culture of Power: The Symbolic Dispute Over Black Cultural Inheritance in Brazil. Originally presented as a doctoral thesis at the University of Sa˜o Paulo, O poder da cultura is based on research in newspapers, official documents from public insti-

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tutions, and interviews with members of the black movement from the northeastern state of Bahia, a region recognized today as Brazil’s African ‘‘core.’’ Over the course of the introduction, four main chapters, and a conclusion, the analysis of cultural policy and the politics of blackness in Bahia during the second half of the 20th century moves smoothly between historical and anthropological perspectives. It emphasizes the standpoints of those interviewed and this generates an ongoing critique of the journalistic, as well as oral history, accounts on which it is based. O poder da cultura is an investigation of the implications of Brazil’s well known myth of racial hybridity, or what is usually called ‘‘racial democracy.’’ But it is not an attempt to deny racial democracy’s existence. In fact, this ideology’s existence is the book’s starting point: The author reminds the reader at the outset that in 1996 Brazil’s president, the well-known sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso, needed to recognize officially the existence of prejudice in Brazil. This was a landmark in a nation where it has so often been denied in favor of claims about mixture. And Cardoso’s effort pushed social scientists to develop research programs to examine the political role of black cultural groups and cultural expressions in black movements and in political administrations and state structures. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Brazil’s black movements faced their first major crossroads as they moved from reiteration of the Brazil’s official anti-racialist position to attempts to negate this so-called racial democracy. At about the same time, Brazil’s diplomatic attempts to move closer to African nations in the non-aligned

movement led to the Brazilian state’s enunciation of positions that supported African independence and challenged apartheid. And this gave rise to a certain reiteration of, and crisis in, then-hegemonic values related to Brazil’s African heritage. In other words, contact with Africa led to a greater interest internally in the ways that Brazilians of different races supposedly lived harmoniously in a putative fusion of African, Portuguese, and Native Brazilian customs and bloods. Nonetheless, Santos argues that the existence of the 1951 Afonso Arinos law, which made the practice of racism illegal, together with publicly reported incidents of discrimination against black cultural symbols, pointed to the suspect nature of such claims about a lack of prejudice. The case of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble´ in the 1950s and 1960s is an excellent example of this contradictory and shifting racial picture: Even as temples needed police authorization in order to function (despite the fact that constitutional provisions guaranteed freedom of religion), there were a number of cases in which their ritual events were blessed by the presence of government officials. Seizing on such contradictions, Santos details how, over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, the Bahian press shifted from condescension to celebration of Candomble´, today a key symbol of Bahianness and Brazilianness. One of the book’s richest sections is its focus on the State of Bahia’s cultural policies. The author shows how articulations between artistic and cultural heritage policies, tourism, and business interests were in many ways responsible for the establishment of the state capital of Salvador as a center for negotiating the significance of

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black culture to national identity. In fact, since the 1930s, the Brazilian state had developed a political stake in the creation of government institutions directed at the preservation and development of archives and Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage that might be taken as national symbols. But by the 1960s this had become an important aspect of state government policy in Bahia. And in this way Candomble´, the Afro-Brazilian martial art capoeira, spicy food, roguishness, and sensuality, among other elements, have been made to stand for Bahian culture that has in turn become the official sign of a beautiful yet politically polyvalent Afro-Brazilian culture. Today this is located paradigmatically, following the neighborhood’s 1992-present state-directed restoration, in Salvador’s Pelourinho Historical Center. But in order to understand this Pelourinho, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and touchstone of black culture and Brazilian nationalism today, it is important to examine the negotiation of black cultural symbols by state institutions, business interests, and citizens of Bahia. Santos argues that in 1972, with the establishment of Bahia’s state tourist bureau, Bahiatursa, and then in 1974 with the founding of the Afro-Bahian Museum, Candomble´ became the Bahia’s pre-eminent symbol of black culture. This occurred during an early administration of Governor Antoˆnio Carlos Magalha˜es, one of late twentieth century Brazil’s most powerful politicians who has long employed signs of Afro-Bahian culture to further his populist goals. Without going into too many details of this rich ethnography, I highlight two images that describe the changes going on in Bahia in reference to black culture in the 1970s. First, Governor

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Magalha˜es and various dignitaries traveled to one of Salvador’s most important Candomble´ temples, the Terreiro de Gantois, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its leader’s assumption of the role of head priestess. Subsequently a group of Candomble´ practitioners traveled to the governor’s mansion to thank Magalha˜es for his support of Afro-Brazilian religions. This represents two important movements: The power of the state in the terreiro and the power of Candomble´ in the space of open politics. During a slightly later moment Brazil’s black movements also altered their relationship to Candomble´. Originally understood as a form of alienation, Candomble´ came to be seen as the movements’ ally. It even came to work as proof of the legitimate preservation of African roots. Candomble´s built up alliances with AfroBahian neighborhood and carnival organizations, called blocos afros and afoxe´s, in order to affirm Bahia’s ‘‘black soul.’’ And in this context Candomble´ temples associated with more syncretized versions of AfroBrazilian religion like Umbanda found themselves criticized by the priests of the now higher status, black houses. In this way Santos presents important information about a period of time which is often referred to locally as Bahia’s ‘‘re-Africanization.’’ And this is the book’s great contribution. Santos constructs, in a very Geertzian manner, a hierarchy of meanings that permits him to illustrate transfers between different spheres of significance. Moving between the metadiscursive region of federal cultural policy and on to municipalities and state-level bureaucracies so as to finally examine the micro-politics in cultural institutions like Candomble´s and

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capoeira academies, Santos presents the reader with a cross section that reveals the different levels of social action and the complex ways they are tied together through conflict and dialogue. This book will be of great interest to specialists in Brazil, Afro-Latin American religion, symbolic anthropology, and cultural policy in the Americas. It is a shame the book is not yet available in English.

Intimate Enemies: Landowners, Power, and Violence in Chiapas. Aaron BobrowStrain. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 272 pp. Shannan L. Mattiace Allegheny College There is a certain risk involved in writing a scholarly book about landowners in Chiapas, Mexico. Because landowners are generally viewed as excessively wealthy and working hand in glove with state officials, spending time with them would make many analysts wary. From the perspective of many such scholars, the Mexican Revolution never arrived in Chiapas and landowners have exercised free reign over indigenous peasants in the Chiapan countryside. In Intimate Enemies, Bobrow-Strain challenges many of these ‘‘truths’’ about landowners, as well as the perceived relationship between landowners and the state. But he does so not in an effort to provide a more ‘‘balanced’’ account of social relations in the state, or even to provide a top-down ethnography of a group of people rarely studied (in anthropological parlance, ‘‘studying-up’’). Rather, he argues that studying landowners and landed

production is crucial to understanding the complex set of territorial and ethnic claims made by myriad actors in the Chiapan countryside today. Intimate Enemies is a fascinating interdisciplinary book that will be valuable to social scientists interested in questions of land reform, landed production, statesociety relations, and indigenous politics. The author draws on a range of sources that span the period he examinesFfrom 1850 to the presentFincluding archival accounts of landowner–peasant land disputes, in-depth interviews with dozens of landowners and their families, and content analysis of local and regional newspapers. In focusing on the micro-politics of Chilo´n, a region in Chiapas’ northern highlands, Bobrow-Strain manages to tell readers much about macropolitics, namely the way the Mexican state has forged subjects and subjectivities even as it has been shaped and influenced by these subjects. At the center of Bobrow-Strain’s inquiry is the puzzle of landowner quiescence after 1994. Given landowners’ perceived economic power and political influence, why, Bobrow-Strain asks, were they relatively quiet after 1994 as their farms were being invaded en masse by indigenous peasants? Why did most landowners stand passively aside as the state essentially abandoned them to their fate? The short answer is that the state had distanced itself from their interests long before the Zapatista rebellion ushered in a wave of invasions. The more complete answer is that by the 1980s and 1990s, landed production was in crisis on a variety of fronts. Bobrow-Strain argues that landowner quiescence cannot be explained by the economic crisis of the 1980s and 1990s

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