Carmen MartÍnez Novo is a professor in the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville. She is the editor of the Latin American Research Review journal.

Virtually all of the scholarship on identity sees it as something that comes from the bottom-up. Martinez Novo recognizes the popular side of identity formation, but also looks at the process from the top down. How do more powerful actors-state institutions, intellectuals, elites, NGOs, etc.-try, in an imperfect and messy way, to mold collective identities? Martinez Novo not only poses this rather interesting problem, but investigates it with an innovative methodology and supports it with sound scholarship.-Steve Striffler, author of in the Shadows of State and Capital

• Contents; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction; 2 Mixtec Communities at the Mexican Border. 3 The Making of Vulnerabilities: Indigenous Day Laborers in Mexico's Neoliberal Agriculture; 4 ""We Are Against the Government, Although We Are the Government."" State Institutions and Indigenous Migrants in Baja California in the 1990s; 5 Representations of Indigenous Women Street Vendors in Tijuana; 6 Race, Maternalism, and Community Development; 7 Conclusion: Cultural Difference and Democracy; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Carmen MartÍnez Novo is a professor in the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville. She is the editor of the Latin American Research Review journal.

Virtually all of the scholarship on identity sees it as something that comes from the bottom-up. Martinez Novo recognizes the popular side of identity formation, but also looks at the process from the top down. How do more powerful actors-state institutions, intellectuals, elites, NGOs, etc.-try, in an imperfect and messy way, to mold collective identities? Martinez Novo not only poses this rather interesting problem, but investigates it with an innovative methodology and supports it with sound scholarship.-Steve Striffler, author of in the Shadows of State and Capital

• Contents; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction; 2 Mixtec Communities at the Mexican Border. 3 The Making of Vulnerabilities: Indigenous Day Laborers in Mexico's Neoliberal Agriculture; 4 ""We Are Against the Government, Although We Are the Government."" State Institutions and Indigenous Migrants in Baja California in the 1990s; 5 Representations of Indigenous Women Street Vendors in Tijuana; 6 Race, Maternalism, and Community Development; 7 Conclusion: Cultural Difference and Democracy; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Carmen MartÍnez Novo is a professor in the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville. She is the editor of the Latin American Research Review journal.

Virtually all of the scholarship on identity sees it as something that comes from the bottom-up. Martinez Novo recognizes the popular side of identity formation, but also looks at the process from the top down. How do more powerful actors-state institutions, intellectuals, elites, NGOs, etc.-try, in an imperfect and messy way, to mold collective identities? Martinez Novo not only poses this rather interesting problem, but investigates it with an innovative methodology and supports it with sound scholarship.-Steve Striffler, author of in the Shadows of State and Capital

• Contents; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction; 2 Mixtec Communities at the Mexican Border. 3 The Making of Vulnerabilities: Indigenous Day Laborers in Mexico's Neoliberal Agriculture; 4 ""We Are Against the Government, Although We Are the Government."" State Institutions and Indigenous Migrants in Baja California in the 1990s; 5 Representations of Indigenous Women Street Vendors in Tijuana; 6 Race, Maternalism, and Community Development; 7 Conclusion: Cultural Difference and Democracy; Notes; Bibliography; Index.