Pedro Ángel Palou’s Mestizo Failure(s): Race, Film And Literature in Twentieth Century Mexico is perhaps the most comprehensive and detailed study on the ways in which literature and film provided a cultural backdrop for the post-revolutionary Mexican state’s new social contract based on mestizaje.

In a number of key case studies that range from Agustín Yánez’s quintessential novel Al filo del agua (1947) to Alejandro Gonzáles Iñarritu’s film Amores Perros (2001), Palou argues persuasively that the powerful Mexican film and literary production industries enabled the notion of mestizaje to be embraced by the population, which allowed the newly founded Mexican nation-state to appear and develop for almost 70 years until its demise at the hands of contemporary neoliberalism. 

A must-read volume for anyone interested in the intricacies between race and cultural production in Latin America and in the western hemisphere.