Communities Making Histories. A Review of Paul K. Eiss’ <em>In the Name of El Pueblo: Place, Community, and the Politics of History in Yucatán</em> (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.)

Abstract

Paul Eiss has produced a probing history of communities and debates about community in the Hunucmá region of northwest Yucatán. In revealing episodes, the study extends from the mid-nineteenth century to contemporary times. The analysis is innovative in important ways, notably by revealing communities’ often conflictive participations in key local and regional developments and by exploring their often contested constructions of their own historical understandings. Within that project, Eiss pays particular attention to exploring the contested meanings of the idea of El Pueblo—which in Spanish blends notions of the people and the community in ways that makes it a common referent, often debated, and always changing.