This study offers a new perspective on the rise (and what Trejo sees as the post-democratisation ‘twilight’) of indigenous mobilisation in Mexico. Using evidence on temporal and spatial patterns of protest provided by a database of newspaper reports, the author rejects two conventional wisdoms: first, that the new opportunities provided by neoliberal globalisation and reaction to the counter-agrarian reform that followed Mexico's ratification of ILO Convention 169 were the initial drivers (as distinct from intensifiers) of multiplying ‘ethnic’ demands for rights, recognition and autonomy; and second, that ‘cohesive and homogeneous’ corporate communities of ‘cultural survivors’ were the leading protagonists in these developments. Using interviews and qualitative case studies to increase our confidence that the associations revealed by his statistical analysis reflect causal relationships, Trejo argues the alternative thesis that indigenous demand-making was initially stimulated, within a political environment in which the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI) maintained its monopoly on power by autocratic means, by the Catholic Church's reaction to the loss of its own monopoly position as a result of the growing success of Protestant churches in what he sees, in largely instrumentalist terms, as a ‘religious market’.

Since the Catholics could not easily win the ‘competition for souls’ on the terrain of service provision, and becoming a catechist or even a deacon did not offer the same degree of empowerment as becoming a pastor, even socially conservative bishops faced with large-scale defection to historical Protestant churches were drawn into approving a strategy that had potentially radicalising consequences (in contrast to regions where the threat came principally from Pentecostal churches and was answered by charismatic forms of Catholic worship, although Trejo does not follow this contention up systematically). Organisational capacity-building to make demands on the state, and an ‘inculturation’ of the gospel that went beyond what evangelical churches could tolerate in terms of ‘indigenising’ Christianity, produced decentralised and horizontal regional networks in which local catechists became leaders strategically situated at the intersection of different types of local organisations ranging from Bible study groups to cooperatives, accumulating enough power to challenge native Protestant pastors and established community leaders tied to the political patronage system of the PRI. Furthermore, the Catholic clergy encouraged the formation of trans-community networks, enabling some catechists to become regional leaders within a flexible, decentralised network structure that was resilient in the face of government attempts at repression.

The book's analysis of network structures, which draws inspiration from formal modelling by David Siegel, is a theoretical contribution of broader significance. In the specific case of Chiapas, which, along with Oaxaca, provides the main context for detailed testing of Trejo's hypotheses, the structure that became the basis for recruitment into the Zapatista movement differed radically from the more hierarchical regional networks that characterised leftist opposition political parties and the communist-sponsored Central Independiente de Obreros Agricolas y Campesinos (Independent Central Organisation of Agricultural Workers and Farmers, CIOAC), the major organisation fighting for land redistribution in Chiapas in the period before the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN) made itself public. These networks depended on a few key central leaders, local leaders were relatively weaker, and weaker direct ties among local communities reduced network resilience, although partial overlapping of Catholic and CIOAC networks strengthened the latter's resilience and reduced the co-optation to which CIOAC activists often succumbed. But the main line of analysis with respect to political parties charts how an opening towards electoral competition within a regime still controlled by the PRI initially encouraged left-wing parties to support indigenous demands, a posture they abandoned once they actually gained power and focused on satisfying a broader constituency in which indigenous voters would be a minority.

Trejo associates the armed rebellion of the EZLN with a new round of repression unleashed after 1988 by Governor Patrocinio González. This contrasted with the ‘carrot and stick’ approach of his predecessor and with the policy of concession to ‘ethnic’ demands as compensation for the end of agrarian reform pursued by Oaxaca's governor, Heladio Ramírez, who also promoted multiculturalism at the federal level. There is nothing very novel in contrasting Chiapas and Oaxaca in these terms, but Trejo is able to go beyond the general link that many scholars have made between the ending of land reform and the politicisation of ethnic identities as an alternative to the peasant identities that had been the primary point of reference for many groups that continued to see themselves as indigenous before 1992. He is particularly impressed by the way that the Zapatista rebellion appeared to begin as an armed peasant insurgency demanding land and democracy, only to transform itself after 1994 into a movement focusing on ethno-territorial rights, autonomy and self-determination. The contrast between the two should not be exaggerated, since many ‘indigenous’ autonomy demands involve claims on resources that are more radical than the revolutionary land reform, and the Zapatistas have repeatedly tried to insert their promotion of indigenous demands into a broader anti-capitalist movement mobilising non-indigenous Mexicans. But Trejo does make a case for seeing electoral fraud, repression and paramilitarism in Chiapas as catalysts for building a self-determination movement that could be sustained by the combination of international support and decentralised Catholic associational networks along with the moral sense of purpose that remains a significant (and religiously grounded) ideological characteristic of those who remain loyal to Zapatismo. Although EZLN loyalists became a diminishing proportion of the rural population of Chiapas, and Trejo argues that the EZLN and its ethno-territorial demands became marginalised once the PRI accepted the need to allow other parties to govern, he concludes that the country's democratisation in 2000 would simply not have taken place without the three decades of indigenous motivation that preceded it and the perceived threat of a more radical insurgency that the EZLN posed.

The fact that Manuel Velasco Coello, incoming governor of Chiapas for the Green Party–PRI–New Alliance coalition, could dedicate a moment of his inauguration speech in December 2012 to expressing his ‘respect’ for the ‘great political and cultural contributions’ of the Zapatista movement to Mexico and Chiapas might suggest that Trejo is right to talk about a post-democratisation ‘twilight’, although the silent march of 40,000 young Zapatista militants through five Chiapas municipalities two weeks later suggested that the game may not yet have run its course. Trejo's analysis closes with the ‘democratic transition’ of 2000, and does not subject that concept to any critical scrutiny. He pays more attention to the efforts made by the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution, PRD) to distance itself from the EZLN than to the EZLN's critique of the PRD, its immediate consequences in Chiapas and the longer-term consequences in terms of the rejection of party politics by other indigenous autonomy movements. Mexico's democratisation has not prevented the emergence of various other kinds of ‘parallel powers’ and potentially insurgent forces that are not simply indigenous, while radical demands continue to provoke violent responses. Oaxaca did not remain tranquil. Religious competition probably cannot tell the whole story of the pre-neoliberal emergence of political actors articulating indigenous identities, and struggles over power at community level have also reflected other processes of social change, although Trejo's emphasis on the importance of looking at if and how struggles are networked is clearly crucial. Though laudable, the brief attempt in the conclusion to explore the comparative implications of the Mexican analysis inevitably raises more questions than it can answer. In Guatemala, for example, the first-generation catechists who committed themselves to insurgency were antagonistic to the preservation of indigenous identities and culture. Nevertheless, this is a book that invites us to rethink historical processes in general terms that are also causal terms. Those who detest quantitative methods and are put off by the slightest hint of a rational actor model may conclude that this book is not for them, but they would be missing out on some thought-provoking arguments that deserve further discussion.