Note: This is hardly an exhaustive list. It contains some “classic” ethnographies from the 1960s and 1970s, some of my own favorites from the 1970s through 1990s, and some of the more recent ethnographies from the 2000s, not all of which I have seen yet. They are listed by date (I am trying to figure out how to make the table sortable). For an earlier version of this list, in alphabetical order by author, see my “classic Mexican ethnographies” page.
| Author | Title | Press | Date | Notes |
| Redfield, Robert | Tepoztlan, a Mexican Village: A Study of Folk Life | U Chicago Press | 1931 | One of the first ethnographies of peasant life—in Mexico, or anywhere, for that matter. Not particularly good, but important because it was a pioneering work. Oscar Lewis’s first ethnography was a “restudy” of Tepoztlán, Morelos, that delved deeply into the history of the town and corrected many of Redfield’s mistakes |
| Redfield, Robert, and Alfonso Villa R | Chan Kom: A Maya Village | Carnegie Institution of Washington | 1934 | A pioneering work of a different kind: one of the first collaborations between anthropologists from the US (Redfield) and from Mexico (Villa R.). In some ways much better than the better-known Tepoztlan… perhaps because of Villa’s contributions |
| Lewis, Oscar | Life in a Mexican Village: Tepoztlán Restudied | U Illinois Press | 1951 | A “restudy” of Robert Redfield’s pioneering Tepoztlan (1931); not as well remembered as Lewis’s life histories, but important as one of the first ethnographies to incorporate actual historical data in the analysis of social structures |
| Redfield, Robert | A Village That Chose Progress: Chan Kom Revisited | U Chicago Press | 1959 | Redfield’s own “restudy” of Chan Kom, framed within his theory of rural-urban progress |
| Lewis, Oscar | Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty | Basic Books | 1959 | After the surprising commercial success of this well-written collective life history of families in Mexico City, Lewis turned exclusively to the writing of life histories |
| Lewis, Oscar | The Children of Sánchez: Autobiography of a Mexican Family | Vintage | 1961 | Now a major motion picture, starring Anthony Quinn as Sanchez! Oscar nomination for best song (1978)! |
| Cancian, Frank | Economics and Prestige in a Maya Community: The Religious Cargo System in Zinacantan | Stanford UP | 1965 | See Evon Vogt for more products of the Harvard Chiapas Project |
| Lewis, Oscar | A Death in the Sánchez Family | Random House | 1969 | A very short book, and in some ways the best of the series |
| Vogt, Evon | The Zinacantecos of Mexico: A Modern Maya Way of Life | Holt, Rinehart and Winston | 1970 | |
| Nash, June | In the Eyes of the Ancestors: Belief and Behavior in a Mayan Community | Yale UP | 1970 | |
| Paredes, Américo, ed. and trans | Folktales of Mexico | U Chicago Press | 1970 | |
| Friedrich, Paul | Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village | Prentice-Hall | 1970 | A classic ethnography that combines politics, political economy, and life history |
| Kearney, Michael | The Winds of Ixtepeji: World View and Society in a Zapotec Town | Holt, Rinehart and Winston | 1972 | |
| Chiñas, Beverly | The Isthmus Zapotecs: Women’s Roles in Cultural Context | Holt, Rinehart and Winston | 1973 | |
| Gossen, Gary | Chamulas in the World of the Sun: Time and Space in a Maya Oral Tradition | Harvard UP | 1974 | A classic of symbolic anthropology |
| Myerhoff, Barbara | Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians | Cornell UP | 1974 | Another classic of symbolic anthropology |
| Friedlander, Judith | Being Indian in Hueyapan: A Study of Forced Identity in Contemporary Mexico | St. Martin’s Press | 1975 | I don’t agree with parts of her argument, but this is a carefully researched and forcefully presented take-down of indigenismo |
| Vogt, Evon | Tortillas for the Gods: A Symbolic Analysis of Zinacanteco Rituals | Harvard UP | 1976 | |
| Warman, Arturo | We Come to Object: The Peasants of Morelos and the National State | Johns Hopkins UP | 1980 | One of the best ethnographies by the young Mexican anthropologists who revolutionized the field in the 1970s. The translation is not great, but gives the general idea |
| De la Peña, Guillermo | A Legacy of Promises: Agriculture, Politics, and Ritual in the Morelos Highlands of Mexico | U Texas Press | 1981 | |
| Greenburg, James | Santiago’s Sword: Chatino Peasant Religion and Economics | U California Press | 1981 | |
| Fernández-Kelly, María Patricia | For We Are Sold, I and My People: Women and Industry in Mexico’s Frontier | SUNY Press | 1983 | |
| Logan, Kathleen | Haciendo Pueblo: The Development of a Guadalajara Suburb | U Alabama Press | 1984 | |
| Finkler, Kaja | Spiritualist Healers in Mexico: Successes and Failures of Alternative Therapeutics | Praeger | 1985 | |
| Friedrich, Paul | The Princes of Naranja: An Essay in Anthrohistorical Method | U Texas Press | 1986 | Follow-up to Agrarian Revolt |
| Hill, Jane, and Kenneth C | Hill, Speaking Mexicano: Dynamics of Language in Central Mexico | U Arizona Press | 1986 | A classic and important sociolinguistic study |
| Romanucci-Ross, Lola | Conflict, Violence, and Morality in a Mexican Village | U Chicago Press | 1986 | |
| Ingham, John M | Mary, Michael, and Lucifer: Folk Catholicism in Central Mexico | U Texas Press | 1986 | |
| Dennis, Philip A | Intervillage Conflict in Oaxaca | Rutgers UP | 1987 | |
| Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo | México profundo: Una civilización negada | SEP | 1987 | |
| Anzaldúa, Gloria | Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza | Aunt Lute Press | 1987 | Poems, essays, reflections about life on the border by a Tejana thinker. Second edition, 1999 |
| Conover, Ted | Coyotes: A Journey through the Secret World of America’s Illegal Aliens | Vintage | 1987 | By a journalist, not an anthropologist, but he did genuine fieldwork (smuggling himself across the border and across the US to find migrant labor). An engaging read |
| Merrill, William | Rarámuri Souls: Knowledge and Social Process in Northern Mexico | Smithsonian Press | 1988 | A very interesting look at a highly marginalized and very interesting culture in the mountains of Northwestern Mexico |
| Nutini, Hugo | Todos Santos in Rural Tlaxcala: A Syncretic, Expressive, and Symbolic Analysis of the Cult of the Dead | Princeton UP | 1988 | |
| Brandes, Stanley | Power and Persuasion: Fiestas and Social Control in Rural Mexico | U Pennsylvania Press | 1988 | |
| Greenburg, James | Blood Ties: Life and Violence in Rural Mexico | U Arizona Press | 1989 | |
| Sullivan, Paul | Unfinished Conversations: Mayas and Foreigners Between Two Wars | Knopf | 1989 | A fascinating historical ethnography of the relations between Mayas of Quintana Roo, the Mexican state, and foreign powers (notably the British, whom the Mayas asked to intervene on their behalf in the aftermath of the “Caste War of Yucatán”) |
| Herrera-Sobek, María | The Mexican Corrido: A Feminist Analysis | Indiana UP | 1990 | One of the few, and one of the best, books about this important Mexican song form |
| Stephen, Lynn | Zapotec Women | U Texas Press | 1991 | |
| Lomnitz-Adler, Claudio | Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in the Mexican National Space | U California Press | 1992 | First book by one of the most influential young anthropologists from Mexico (now a professor in the US) |
| Slade, Doren | Making the World Safe for Existence: Celebration of the Saints among the Sierra Nahuat of Chignaulta, Mexico | U Michigan Press | 1992 | |
| García Canclini, Néstor | Transforming Modernity: Popular Culture in Mexico | U Texas Press | 1993 | Trans. by Lidia Lozano of Las culturas populares en el capitalismo (Mexico, 1982). One of several influential books (the most influential probably being Hybrid Cultures) by the Argentine-born Mexican anthropologist, whose work helped shape “post-modern, post-structural” anthropology |
| Nugent, Daniel | Spent Cartridges of Revolution: An Anthropological History of Namiquipa, Chihuahua | U Chicago Press | 1993 | |
| Vogt, Evon | Fieldwork among the Maya: Reflections on the Harvard Chiapas Project | U New Mexico Press | 1994 | |
| Behar, Ruth | Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story | Beacon Press | 1994 | Second edition with new preface, 2003 |
| Alonso, Ana María | Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico’s Northern Frontier | U Arizona Press | 1995 | |
| García Canclini, Néstor | Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity | U Minnesota Press | 1995 | Trans. by Christopher Chiappari and Silvia López from Culturas híbridas: Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad (Mexico, 1990) |
| Hellman, Judith Adler | Mexican Lives | New Press | 1995 | |
| Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo | México Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization, English translation | U Texas Press | 1996 | |
| Frye, David | Indians into Mexicans: History and Identity in a Mexican Town | U Texas Press | 1996 | |
| Gutmann, Matthew | The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City | U California Press | 1996 | Second edition with new preface, 2006 |
| Rubin, Jeffrey | Decentering the Regime: Ethnicity, Radicalism and Democracy in Juchitán, Mexico | Duke UP | 1997 | |
| Garciagodoy, Juanita | Digging the Days of the Dead: A Reading of Mexico’s Dias De Muertos | UP of Colorado | 1998 | |
| Grimes, Kimberly M | Crossing Borders: Changing Social Identities in Southern Mexico | U Arizona Press | 1998 | |
| Pilcher, Jeffrey | Que Vivan los Tamales!: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity | U New Mexico Press | 1998 | |
| Yetman, David | Scattered Round Stones: A Mayo Village in Sonora, Mexico | U New Mexico Press | 1998 | |
| Cohen, Jeffrey | Cooperation and Community: Economy and Society in Oaxaca | U Texas Press | 1999 | |
| Fletcher, Peri L | La Casa de Mis Sueños: Dreams of Home in a Transnational Mexican Community | Westview Press | 1999 | |
| Gossen, Gary | Telling Maya Tales: Tzotzil Identities in Modern Mexico | Routledge | 1999 | (See also Gossen’s 1974 “classic ethnography” above.) |
| Otero, Gerardo | Farewell to The Peasantry? Political Class Formation in Rural Mexico | Westview Press | 1999 | |
| Zolov, Eric | Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture | U California Press | 1999 | |
| Clarke, Colin G | Class, Ethnicity, and Community in Southern Mexico: Oaxaca’s Peasantries | Oxford UP | 2000 | |
| Eber, Christine Engla | Women and Alcohol in a Highland Maya Town: Water of Hope, Water of Sorrow | U Texas Press | 2000 | |
| Higgins, Michael James, and Tanya L. Coen | Streets, Bedrooms and Patios: The Ordinariness of Diversity in Urban Oaxaca: Ethnographic Portraits of the Urban Poor, Transvestites, Discapacitados, and Other Popular Cultures | U Texas Press | 2000 | |
| Rovira, Guiomar | Women of Maize: Indigenous Women and the Zapatista Rebellion, Translated by Anna Keene | Latin American Bureau | 2000 | |
| Vila, Pablo | Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders: Social Categories, Metaphors, and Narrative Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier | U Texas Press | 2000 | On El Paso/Ciudad Juarez |
| Campbell, Howard | Mexican Memoir: A Personal Account of Anthropology and Radical Politics in Oaxaca | Bergin & Garvey | 2001 | |
| Carrillo, Héctor | The Night Is Young: Sexuality in Mexico in the Time of AIDS | U Chicago Press | 2001 | |
| Coyle, Philip E | From Flowers to Ash: Nayari History, Politics, and Violence | U Arizona Press | 2001 | |
| Dow, James W. and Alan R. Sandstrom | Holy Saints and Fiery Preachers: The Anthropology of Protestantism in Mexico and Central America | Praeger | 2001 | Collection of essays |
| García Canclini, Néstor | Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts | U Minnesota Press | 2001 | Trans. by George Yúdice |
| González, Roberto J | Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca | U Texas Press | 2001 | |
| Hernández Castillo, R. Aída | Histories and Stories from Chiapas: Border Identities in Southern Mexico | U Texas Press | 2001 | |
| Levinson, Bradley A | We Are All Equal: Student Culture and Identity at a Mexican Secondary School, 1988-1998 | Duke UP | 2001 | |
| Lomnitz-Adler, Claudio | Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico : An Anthropology of Nationalism | U Minnesota Press | 2001 | |
| Nash, June | Mayan Visions: The Quest for Autonomy in an Age of Globalization | Routledge | 2001 | |
| Quiñones, Sam | True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx | U New Mexico Press | 2001 | Ethnographic-style journalism |
| Quiñones, Sam | Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration | U New Mexico Press | 2001 | Ethnographic-style journalism |
| Martínez, Rubén | Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail | Metropolitan Books | 2001 | |
| Bartra, Roger | Blood, Ink, and Culture: Miseries and Splendors of the Post-Mexican Condition | Duke UP | 2002 | Trans by Mark Alan Healey. By Mexican anthropologist who has tried to take up Octavio Paz’s mission of explaining Mexicans to themselves |
| Gutmann, Matthew | The Romance of Democracy: Compliant Defiance in Contemporary Mexico | U California Press | 2002 | |
| Stephen, Lynn | Zapata lives! Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico | U California Press | 2002 | |
| Cisneros, Sandra | Caramelo, or, Pure Cuento: A Novel | Knopf | 2002 | A moving cross-border family and personal history in novel form |
| Cahn, Peter S | All Religions Are Good in Tzintzuntzan: Evangelicals in Catholic Mexico | U Texas Press | 2003 | |
| Rus, Jan, Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo and Shannan L. Mattiace, eds | Mayan Lives, Mayan Utopias: The Indigenous Peoples of Chiapas and the Zapatista Rebellion | Rowman & Littlefield | 2003 | |
| Irwin, Robert McKee | Mexican Masculinities | U Minnesota Press | 2003 | Cultural history of Mexico from roughly the 1870s to the 1950s |
| Ariel de Vidas, Anath | Thunder Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: The Culture of Marginality among the Teeneks of Tantoyuca. Trans by Teresa Fagan | U Press of Colorado | 2004 | |
| Cohen, Jeffrey | The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico | U Texas Press | 2004 | |
| Cruz-Torres, María Luz | Lives of Dust and Water: An Anthropology of Change and Resistance in Northwestern Mexico | Arizona UP | 2004 | Two ejidos on the coast of southern Sinaloa confront global economic forces, shrimp farming, and ecological decline |
| Fox, Jonathan, and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, eds | Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States | Center for US-Mexican Studies, UCSD | 2004 | |
| Otero, Gerardo, ed | Mexico in Transition: Neoliberal Globalism, the State and Civil Society | Fernwood | 2004 | |
| Bacon, David | The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border | U California Press | 2004 | Ethnographic-style journalism |
| Anderson, E.N | et al., Political Ecology in a Yucatec Maya Community | U Arizona Press | 2005 | |
| Gagnier Mendoza, Mary Jane | Oaxaca Celebrations: Family, Food, and Fiestas in Teotitlán | Museum of New Mexico Press | 2005 | |
| Lomnitz-Adler, Claudio | Death and the Idea of Mexico | Zone Books | 2005 | |
| Martin, JoAnn | Tepoztlán and the Transformation of the Mexican State: The Politics of Loose Connections | U Arizona Press | 2005 | |
| Stephen, Lynn | Second edition, Zapotec Women: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Globalized Oaxaca | Duke UP | 2005 | One of the first feminists ethnographies of Mexico |
| Wright, Angus | The Death of Ramón González: The Modern Agricultural Dilemma | U Texas Press, 2nd ed. | 2005 | An important, well-written, and engaging book by a prominent natural resources scientist |
| Brandes, Stanley | Skulls to the Living, Bread to the Dead: Celebrations of Death in Mexico and Beyond | Blackwell | 2006 | |
| Furst, Peter | Rock Crystals and Peyote Dreams: Explorations in the Huichol Universe | U Utah Press | 2006 | |
| Norget, Kristin | Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca | Columbia UP | 2006 | |
| Abel, Jessica La Perdida | Fantagraphic Books | 2001; republished, Pantheon | 2006 | Graphic novel. A young Mexican-American woman moves to Mexico City |
| Chávez, Denise | A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food, and Culture | Rio Nuevo | 2006 | A fun book by a novelist, with some profound contemplations on identity (plus recipes!) |
| DeMott, Tom | Into the Hearts of the Amazons: In Search of a Modern Matriarchy | Terrace Books | 2006 | About Isthmus Zapotec women, by a travel writer |
| Gutmann, Matthew | Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control, and AIDS in Mexico | U California Press | 2007 | |
| Chorba, Carrie | Mexico, from Mestizo to Multicultural: National Identity and Recent Representations of the Conquest | Vanderbilt UP | 2007 | |
| Irwin, Robert McKee | Bandits, Captives, Heroines, and Saints: Cultural Icons of Mexico’s Northwest Borderlands | U Minnesota Press | 2007 | Cultural history of Mexico from roughly the 1870s to the 1950s |
| Christie, Maria Elisa | Kitchenspace: Women, Fiestas, and Everyday Life in Central Mexico | U Texas Press | 2008 | Women, food, gender relations in three communities just south of Mexico City |
| Clemente, Angeles, and Michael J. Higgins | Performing English with a Postcolonial Accent: Ethnographic Narratives from Mexico | Tufnell Press | 2008 | |
| Hall, Raymond | An Ethnographic Study of Afro-Mexicans in Mexico’s Gulf Coast: Fishing, Festivals, and Foodways | Edwin Mellen Press | 2008 | |
| Levi, Heather | The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity | Duke UP | 2008 | |
| Lugo, Alejandro | Fragmented Lives, Assembled Parts : Culture, Capitalism, and Conquest at the U.S.-Mexico Border | U Texas Press | 2008 | |
| Lida, David | First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century | Riverhead Books | 2008 | Entertaining and informative, by a journalist |
| Pérez, Domino Renee | There Was a Woman: La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture | U Texas Press | 2008 | |
| Lastra, Yolanda, Dina Sherzer, and Joel Sherzer | Adoring the Saints : Fiestas in Central Mexico | U Texas Press | 2009 | |
| Shorter, David Delgado | We Will Dance our Truth : Yaqui History in Yoeme Performances | U Nebraska Press | 2009 | |
| Shlossberg, Pavel | Crafting Identity: Transnational Indian Arts and the Politics of Race in Central Mexico | U Arizona Press | 2015 | Nationalism, production of indigeneity, and “arte popular,” an ethnographic exploration of mask making in central Mexico |
| Roth-Seneff, Andrew; Robert V. Kemper; and Julie Adkins, eds. | From Tribute to Communal Sovereignty: The Tarascan and Caxcan Territories in Transition | U Arizona Press | 2015 | Continuity and change since 1500 for the indigenous peoples of Central Western Mexico |
| Galván, Ruth Trinidad | Women Who Stay Behind: Pedagogies of Survival in Rural Transmigrant Mexico | U Arizona Press | 2015 | The social, educational, and cultural resources rural Mexican women employ to creatively survive the conditions created by the migration of loved ones |
| Cook, Scott | Land, Livelihood, and Civility in Southern Mexico: Oaxaca Valley Communities in History | U Texas Press | 2014 | Ethnographic historical account of the struggle to maintain landholding, livelihood, and civil-religious society in the peasant-artisan communities of Oaxaca from colonial times to the present |
| Nutini, Hugo, and Jean Nutini | Native Evangelism in Central Mexico | U Texas Press | 2014 | Study of two evangelical churches founded in Mexico |
