On 2 July 2000, in a presidential election that was one of the cleanest in Mexican history, Mexicans voted in favour of the right-wing opposition candidate Vicente Fox. Thus ended the 71-year rule of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI), the party that had dominated Mexican politics since its inception in 1929. In Rural Protest and the Making of Democracy in Mexico, Dolores Trevizo offers an interesting perspective on this move towards apparent democracy by exploring the dynamics between the city and countryside, seeking to understand how the PRI's traditional strongholds were eroded. More specifically, the book ‘tells the story of how some of the unarmed rural movements undermined the PRI's hegemony among one of its most important clients, the peasantry’ (p. 13). She identifies the student movement of 1968 as pivotal to this process, arguing that the politicisation of some of those who took part in the protests led to their future involvement with social movements. Although Trevizo somewhat overstates the argument that after 1968 there was a ‘general ideological shift to the left among youth’ (p. 73), certainly few would contest her later assertion that ‘the political repression of 1968 radicalized many students’ (p. 123).

As its title indicates, this book is also an analysis of the forces that led to the birth of Mexico's ‘fragile democracy’ (p. 153). Trevizo convincingly links ‘the making of Mexican democracy’ to the aftermath of the 1968 student movement. She reveals the impact of international affairs (Cold War politics and the global economy) on rural communities, and how Mexican civil society was gradually strengthened as a result of state concessions and, paradoxically, the state's use of repression against social movements. Particular focus is given to the presidency of Luis Echeverría (1970–6): his attitude towards peasant communities, his ‘dirty war’ against guerrillas, non-guerrillas and Communists, and his involvement in the repression of Mexican students in 1968 and 1971 that would lead to him being charged with genocide in 2005. The case against the aging Echeverría was subsequently dropped because the statute of limitations had expired.

While never ceasing to retain the connection with rural protest, Trevizo's introduction also clearly outlines Mexico's ‘peculiar’ political system. Further chapters provide an insight into the role of the Partido Comunista Mexicano (Mexican Communist Party, PCM), as well as the evolution of the Partido de Acción Nacional (National Action Party, PAN) and its growth to such a position that in 2000 it was able to evoke sufficient voter confidence to bring a peaceful end to the PRI's monopoly of power. Trevizo also charts the emergence and trajectory of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution, PRD), underlining ‘the rural forces [that contributed] to the PRD's resiliency’ (p. 154). These same forces, she maintains, are rooted in the leftist social movements that emerged in the 1970s, particularly in the rural south.

Trevizo's research reveals how those on the political left worked closely with peasant organisations in an atmosphere that fostered a degree of mutual respect. This, she underlines, can be seen in the strong support for the leftist Frente Democrático Nacional (National Democratic Front, FDN) and the PRD in the 1988 and 2006 presidential elections. Although the Left was ultimately unsuccessful in the final count of both these elections, Trevizo points out that ‘the PRD's electoral resiliency has contributed to democratization … The PRD has blocked the road to a two-party system at the national level, and viable three-way elections have ensured that policy options do not regress toward the center.’ Her evidence, she argues, ‘strongly suggests that its [the PRD's] resiliency reflects a legacy of left activism, including that in the countryside’ (p. 186).

The tables, figures and appendices give an indication of the extent of the solid research on which Trevizo has based her book. She also includes valuable ‘added extras’ that will benefit students of Mexico and other academics alike, including her diagrams of the organisational structure of the PRI (p. 7) and movement and counter-movement dynamics within Mexican democratisation (p. 20), the rationale for her research techniques and the classification of her data. There appears to be an error on p. 59 (‘former president Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ should be Lázaro Cárdenas), the blend of terminology (‘Indians’, ‘indigenous’ and ‘Native Americans’) can be rather confusing, and the lengthy discussions of the data may be difficult for non-political scientists to digest, but this does not diminish the overall value of this study.

The 2012 presidential elections saw the PRI returned to power. Yet, as Trevizo states in her conclusion, ‘Voting in presidential elections is no longer a measure of successful PRI patronage, corporatist mobilization, or voter intimidation. Instead it increasingly represents individual choice about policy … Mexican citizens are now freer than before to discern and express their political views and elect their rulers' (p. 192). She underlines the important contribution of social movements to this process. The repression against the student protesters in 1968 may have crushed their movement, but by the 1970s it had ‘radicalized and then dispersed activists across different geographic locations and/or across opposition movements' (p. 199). Detailed and meticulously researched, this book offers an important contribution to the scholarship of Mexican politics and social sciences.