Analyzes why landowners in Chiapas with a long history of violently suppressing peasant mobilizations responded to a massive wave of land reform in 1994-1998 with quiescence

Intimate Enemies is the first book to explore conflicts in Chiapas from the perspective of the landed elites, crucial but almost entirely unexamined actors in the state’s violent history. Scholarly discussion of agrarian politics has typically cast landed elites as “bad guys” with predetermined interests and obvious motives. Aaron Bobrow-Strain takes the landowners of Chiapas seriously, asking why coffee planters and cattle ranchers with a long and storied history of violent responses to agrarian conflict reacted to land invasions triggered by the Zapatista Rebellion of 1994 with quiescence and resignation rather than thugs and guns. In the process, he offers a unique ethnographic and historical glimpse into conflicts that have been understood almost exclusively through studies of indigenous people and movements.

Weaving together ethnography, archival research, and cultural history, Bobrow-Strain argues that prior to the upheavals of 1994 landowners were already squeezed between increasingly organized indigenous activism and declining political and economic support from the Mexican state. He demonstrates that indigenous mobilizations that began in 1994 challenged not just the economy of estate agriculture but also landowners’ understandings of progress, masculinity, ethnicity, and indigenous docility. By scrutinizing the elites’ responses to land invasions in relation to the cultural politics of race, class, and gender, Bobrow-Strain provides timely insights into policy debates surrounding the recent global resurgence of peasant land reform movements. At the same time, he rethinks key theoretical frameworks that have long guided the study of agrarian politics by engaging political economy and critical human geography’s insights into the production of space. Describing how a carefully defended world of racial privilege, political dominance, and landed monopoly came unglued, Intimate Enemies is a remarkable account of how power works in the countryside.

"“Intimate Enemies is a fascinating interdisciplinary book that will be valuable to social scientists interested in questions of land reform, landed production, state-society relations, and indigenous politics. . . . Bobrow-Strain has written a nuanced thick description deeply informed by the literature on landed production and hegemony. I recommend this book highly.”" - Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

"“Intimate Enemies is one of the few ethnographies that focus instead on the elite and ask how do events (some global, others local) affect and perhaps marginalize this population as well. The strength of Bobrow-Strain’s work comes in his ability to effectively capture the ambivalent world of the landowners.”" - Ethnohistory

"“A a fascinating ethnography and cultural history of the landed elites of Chilón in the northern zone of Mexico’s southernmost state of Chiapas. . . . The lesson of Bobrow-Strain’s excellent book is that not only peasants but also landowners respond to shifting circumstances in ways not predetermined by a generic class label.”" - Journal of Latin American Studies

"“This is an important book that, in a logical and convincing manner, explains how landowners responded to the various pressures and tensions of their positions as local elites in an isolated area of Chiapas and why they ultimately accepted the loss of the land that had provided them with status and almost unassailable power. . . . Bobrow-Strain is to be commended for his facility in using oral and archival sources to provide what had been one of the missing pieces in the Chiapas puzzle.”" - American Historical Review

"“Bobrow-Strain makes a subtle and sympathetic contribution to understanding how landowning elites respond to agrarian conflict. An unexpected bonus is that the sensitivity and integrity of his insights is matched by the quality of his writing, making the book not only highly informative but a positive delight to read. . . . [Intimate Enemies] deserves to be read by anyone wishing to understand how complex power relations play out in the warp and weave of agrarian politics.”" - Development in Practice

"“The book is lyrically written, theoretically rich, and very interesting. It tells a story that has not been told before, and it challenges some deeply held conceptions of the history of land in Chiapas. For those who study Chiapas, it will immediately become an indispensable text. For those who study land, peasants, and agriculture—anywhere—this book makes clear that the other side of the story is part of the story itself.”" - Comparative Politics

"“This recent book by Aaron Bobrow-Strain is one of the most interesting, original, and important books about Chiapas (and, I think, about rural Latin America) that has been published in the last 20 years. . . . There are very interesting discoveries, arguments, and conclusions in this book that should be left to the reader to find, ponder, and enjoy.”" - Hispanic American Historical Review

"“Updating Marx’s argument that we take seriously the different historical surroundings of landed production, Bobrow-Strain focuses on the cultural politics of rural social relations. In doing so, he is able to paint a vivid picture, complete with colourful fieldwork anecdotes, of how individual landowners view their past, present and future. . . . Intimate Enemies is not only a valuable addition to the literature on rural politics in Chiapas, but also an important contribution to the broader comparative study of agrarian change.”" - Journal of Agrarian Change