Every year during the second half of the eighteenth century, as river levels dropped, an average of 1,500 Indian crewmen departed nearly 50 villages for the remote interior forests and waterways of the Amazonian sertão. During the next six to eight months, as they searched for cacao, sarsaparilla, nuts, or turde eggs, the crewmen might experience all manner of hardships—epidemics, tribal attacks, famine, mutinies, or the loss of the village canoe and its cargo, to name just a few. Then, upon arriving home, they might find their families reduced to utter poverty or sickness, their wives taken in by other men, or their crops abandoned and devoured by pests. Yet despite the arduousness of the state-sponsored collecting expeditions and the hardships imposed upon those left behind, the trips offered a range of opportunities that other kinds of compulsory labor did not. Some of those who were not required to participate, such as the native officials, even did so voluntarily.

In the spring of 1925, Santa Anita's Festival of Flowers seemed to follow its tranquil trend of previous years. The large displays of flowers, the selection of indias bonitas (as the contestants of beauty pageants organized in an attempt to stimulate indigenism were known) and the boat-rides on the Viga Canal, all communicated what residents of neighboring Mexico City had come to expect of the small pueblo in the Federal District since the Porfiriato: the respite of a peaceful pastoral, the link to a colorful past, and the promise that mexicanidad was alive and well in the campo. Unfortunately, wrote Manuel Rámirez Cárdenas of El Globo, “the modern newspaper,” the next day, this idyllic tradition was rudely interrupted by a group of audacious, scantily clad women. The culprits were actresses of Mexico City's Lirico theater, who walked around Santa Anita's streets in “picaresque clothing”—stage outfits that left little to the imagination, particularly in broad daylight—and upset visitors and campesinos alike. According to Cardenas, abuelitas and mamas were shocked by the display, averting their eyes from the female spectacle in fear of “elpecado mortal.” Thankfully, for the mothers and grandmothers in the audience, the festival continued in predictable fashion after the initial uproar. Organizers continued with the traditional dances, and judges selected an india bonita from a pool of young, decente mestizo girls to represent the pueblo and the festival.

With his television blaring in the corner, Don Isidro Durán spoke of the men whom his neighbors had once chosen as leaders, men those neighbors labeled “colonels.” As Don Isidro described the indigenous political mobilization that rocked his rural Ayacucho community back in 1923, he explained that these colonels led their supporters in military exercises and proclaimed that President Augusto B. Leguía was “bad for the Pueblo.” Although the elderly Durán spoke with the authority of an eyewitness and the eloquence of a local intellectual, the indigenous leaders he described are essentially absent from the extensive literature on indigenous politics during Peru's 1920s. That absence is surprising, for reports of various popularly appointed colonels fill Ayacucho's archival records during Leguia's oncenio (his 1919-1930 presidency). These Ayacuchano civilian colonels were typically literate, indigenous men witxiout formal standing in the Peruvian armed forces. During the first years of the 1920s, Ayacucho peasants embraced rliese indigenous men as leaders because of their profound anger at official government authorities and their agents.

In the hours before dawn on September 15, 1961, various groups of men armed with machetes, pistols and rifles attempted to take over military posts, police stations and municipal offices throughout Mexico, proclaiming “justice for the poor.” The uprising of the so-called Federacionistas Leales was part of a strategy coordinated by an old revolutionary general, Celestino Gasca Villaseñor, who planned to take power in order to carry out a new agrarian program to benefit the campesinos of Mexico.