Mexican Teachers and the State - Unintended Lessons of Revolution: Student Teachers and Political Radicalism in Twentieth-Century Mexico. By Tanalís Padilla. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021. Pp. ix, 355. Abbreviations. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $104.95 cloth; $28.95 paper

In her comprehensive analysis of an ever-evolving education policy, which she covers in impressive chronological and geographic scope, Padilla demonstrates the persistence of this contradictory dynamic, in which education policy was an instrument of “state consolidation” but also “grounded in the notion of agrarian justice” (5). [...]the book is graced with a series of images drawn from archival sources and teacher-produced public art. In the long-running debate over how to understand the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and the state it controlled, Padilla concisely summarizes the ruling party's approach: “While the PRI's tried-and-true strategy of co-optation was by definition a less violent method of suppressing dissent, its success depended on the ever-looming threat of violence—the violence of the stick or the violence of poverty” (15).