We Are the Face of Oaxaca is a magnificent book. A model of engaged scholarship and the best work yet by Lynn Stephen, it is an original analysis of the massive popular rebellion in Oaxaca, Mexico, during 2006-07. Given her deep, long-term ties to Oaxacans in both Mexico and the United States, Stephen is uniquely positioned to analyze the social movement and the significance of participants' testimonials in its production and reception.-Patricia Zavella, author of I'm Neither Here nor There: Mexicans' Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty
Given the new visibility of protest, Lynn Stephen's fascinating book offers a valuable opportunity to understand how protest movements work at the grass roots. This ethnography of the Oaxacan protest of 2006 focuses on testimony: the performed, embodied act of telling a story. Protesters' courageous testimonies broadcast over the radio made a difference. The book and its website with recordings provide a wonderful opportunity to hear the testimonies of those with courage to speak.-Sally Engle Merry, author of Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice
We Are the Face of Oaxaca is well suited for upper- or graduate-level courses, and is supported by the web site contents which are a welcome additions for interactive teaching. The work is unique in that the author has a personally informed view of the area of study and was able to capture testimonies and events on video and tape to create the book's accompanying web site. . . . We are the Face of Oaxaca is an engaged ethnography that represents what the struggle was about, the voice of the people. -- Paulette F. Steeves * North American Dialogue *
The analysis of testimony and human rights is valuable well beyond the case of Oaxaca. Woven throughout the text are segments of testimonies from the activists involved in the APPO, and links to a bilingual website containing video clips, maps, and photos, which will be particularly useful for university classes. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. -- C. M. Kovic * Choice *
Readers who are familiar with conditions in Oaxaca as well as those who were unaware of recent events will appreciate Stephen's masterful weaving of scholarship in English and Spanish to provide a concise yet probing summary of 50 years of social unrest across a diverse state. -- Jayne Howell * Journal of Anthropological Research *
This work will be of upmost interest to the numerous anthropologists and other researchers who work in Oaxaca, from senior scholars to aspiring graduate students. It will also appeal to scholars of social movements, human rights, and testimony. Nevertheless, others seeking critical perspectives on the political terrain and social unrest that constantly threaten to destabilize the multicultural tourist fantasyland promoted by the Oaxacan state will also benefit from this well-written ethnography. -- Ronda Brulotte * American Anthropologist *
Through the lens of oral history, Stephen offers a new way of looking at how the state engages with native peoples. . . . [T]his rich and innovative book offers an incredible contribution to social movement literature. It will be of interest to activists and scholars alike. -- Kathleen M. McIntyre * The Latin Americanist *
While Oaxacan journalists and scholars have published articles and anthologies about the 2006 movement, We Are the Face of Oaxaca is the most important English language study on the movement to date. The pages of this book are seeped with the insights of a distinguished scholar with years of fieldwork and personal ties to Oaxacan transnational communities. -- Luis Sanchez-Lopez * Biography *
[A] good book is one that provokes thought, new questions, and new research. Lynn Stephen's book chronicles one of the most important contemporary Latin American social movements and raises many questions key to their analysis. For that she is deserving of much praise and a wide readership. -- Howard Campbell * The Americas *
This book contains a new and important analysis of social movements, emphasizing the way contemporary heterogeneous movements are organized and what their impact can be, especially bringing those on the margins to the center and creating multiple political subjects. This book is a model of the kind of engaged anthropology that is the future of our discipline. -- Louise Lamphere * North American Dialogue *
[Stephen] presents many of the testimonials in relatively unvarnished form so as to allow activists to speak for themselves and to come alive to an enlarged audience.... It is this kind of innovative ethnographic approach and politically engaged scholarship that marks this book as an important work that will be of interest to scholars studying social movements within Mexico and around the world. -- Rick Lopez * Hispanic American Historical Review *
Few scholars are better qualified than is Stephen to write about the arc of social protest that led to the formation of APPO, and its eventual unraveling. -- Marc Becker * Latin American Research Review *
