At the Crossroads: Diego Rivera and His Patrons at MoMA, Rockefeller Center, and the Palace of Fine Arts by Catha Paquette (review)
Brittsan’s monograph is therefore welcome, as it considers “the multifaceted yet converging histories of Manuel Lozada’s life, peasant rebellion, political boundaries, contraband trade, property disputes, and religion in order to disinter the story of how residents in Jalisco’s seventh canton engaged the national political process on their own terms” (12). This is an altogether challenging task. Lozada himself was not formally educated, and his recorded statements and those of his followers are few. And although Brittsan has mined archives in Guadalajara and Mexico City, along with a few other sources, to recreate the political culture of Lozada and his peasant supporters, they remain distant to the twenty-first century reader. Once a hacienda worker, then an outlaw and bandit, by late 1855 Lozada had begun to assert a stronger and more politicized presence in his native region. He was as an opponent of Liberals and a champion of local interests, including, at times, those of Barron y Forbes (26–34).