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 way in which literature and film provided the cultural backdrop for the Mexican state’s new social contract after the revolution, base on -mestizaje. In a number of key case studies that range from Yánez quintessential novel Al filo del agua to Gonzáles Iñarritu’s film Amores Perros. Palou argues persuasively that it was through the powerful Mexican film industry and literary production that the notion of -mestizaje- became embraced by the population and newly founded Mexican nation-state could 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.