“[A] pathbreaking study. . . . Guardino casts new light upon regional political life in Oaxaca in both the city and in the rural villages of Villa Alta. . . . [T]his fascinating study opens new windows to explain a regional political picture that until now has been quite murky.” — Christon I. Archer, HAHR
“[A] very valuable study.” — Angela T. Thompson, History: Reviews of New Books
“[E]xhaustive…. Guardino provides an invaluable biography of Benito Juárez and his milieu in the heartland of La Reforma, and one which unravels whiggish projections of radical anti-clericalism and calls for the juridical abolition of indigenous communities back onto the 1820s and 1830s … These contributions will help to make The Time of Liberty required reading and earn its passage into the canon of nineteenth-century Mexican history.” — Everard Meade, Journal of Latin American Studies
“[G]uardino challenges the view that Oaxaca’s Indians, with their ‘traditional’ or ‘timeless’ cultures, were unaffected by transformations in national politics. His study of court records finds the new political language everywhere in apparently mundane, non-political internal village conflicts like communal service obligations. By examining not only the social and cultural aspirations of peasants. . . . Guardino is able to challenge conventional wisdom about the political lives of subalterns.” — Ronald Jay Morgan, Itinerario
“[T]his is an extremely important study of regional and national politics in Mexico. . . . By taking a broad view of politics, culture, and society during the formative period of nation-building in Mexico, Guardino offers a new perspective on peasant politics and on connections linking the village, region, and state.” — Scott Eastman, Ethnohistory
“[T]his is path-breaking history at its best.” — Andrew Grant Wood, The Latin Americanist
“His arguments are coherent and he shows a facility for summarizing debates. The Time of Liberty is a well-researched, original and thoroughly interesting piece of scholarship that contributes to our understanding of a crucial period in Latin American history.” — John Monaghan, Bulletin of Latin American Research
“Historians and graduate students will appreciate how the author constantly probes questions of historical research and historiography….” — Francie Chassen-López, American Historical Review
“Peter Guardino was one of the pioneers of the new scholarship on nineteenth-century nation and state formation, and especially the roles of subalterns in these processes, that emerged in the 1990s. His new book is an important and valuable addition to this debate…. The book will be a touchstone for studies of popular politics, not only in Mexico….” — James E. Sanders, Canadian Journal of History
“Peter Guardino’s new book reflects some of the most interesting and innovative trends in the study of Mexican political history over the last decade or so, trends of which he himself has been one of the architects.” — Eric Van Young, Journal of Social History
“What sets Guardino’s book apart, as he says himself, is its comparative and entirely empirical methodology, as well as the fact that it gives equal (or even slightly greater) attention to the rural peasants than to the urban proletariat. Guardino is able to comment upon or modify the most recent theoretical views of the subject of the transformation of political hegemonies at independence and the extent to which indigenous people comprehended and responded to the new political philosophies of republican democracy and ethnic equality. In addition, he offers solid new approaches to the old problem of explaining the postindependence political instability of Mexico.” — Timothy E. Anna, The Historian
"Guardino's book makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of nonelite politics in early independent Mexico. . . ." — Emmett Lombard, Perspectives in Political Science
“The Time of Liberty is a welcome and much needed addition to the literatures on popular political culture, indigenous politics, independence, and the first half-century of Mexico’s independent political life. It will be influential in debates on nineteenth-century Mexican history and more broadly." — Florencia E. Mallon, author of Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru
“The Time of Liberty takes on the most important issues around Mexican independence and draws fundamentally important and transforming conclusions. It is the finest analysis yet written of politics and political culture before, during, and after Mexican independence.” — John Tutino, author of From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750–1940