Preface. Toward a new history of death
Introduction. Mexico's national totem ; Death and the postimperial condition ; Purgatorius ; Intimacy with death ; Mexico's third totem ; Genealogies of Mexican death ; The organization of this book
Pt. 1. Death and the origin of the state. Laying down the law. The origin of the modern state ; Scale of the dying ; Division along ethnic lines ; Powers over life ; Powers over death ; Conclusion
Purgatory and ancestor worship in the early, apocalyptic state. Introduction ; Purgatory on the eve of the new world conquests ; Days of the Dead in the early postconquest period ; Ambivalence toward Purgatory as an instrument of evangelization ; Conclusion
Suffrages for the dead among Spaniards and Indians. The sins of conquest ; Spaniards of subsequent generations ; Indigenization of the Days of the Dead ; Attitudes toward death among the Spaniards ; Attitudes toward death among the Indians ; Body and soul ; The meaning of death ; Burial practices
Death, counter-reformation, and the spirit of colonial capitalism. The counter-reformation and the spirit of capitalism ; Death, revivalism, and the transition to a colonial order ; Indian revivalism ; Idolatry, sovereignty, and orderly spectacles of physical punishment ; The clericalization of the Indians' dead ; Death, property, and colonial subjecthood ; Individuation and the promotion of Purgatory ; Conclusion : death and the biography of the nation


Pt. 2. Death and the origin of popular culture. The domestication of mortuary ritual and the origins of popular culture, 1595-1790. Purgatory, Miserables, and the formation of an ideal of organic solidarity ; Death ritual and class identity in the Baroque era ; Death ritual, food offerings, and familial solidarity ; Popular confraternities and the consolidation of the corporate structure ; Mortuary ritual and intervillage competition ; Popular culture and the reciprocal connections between the living and the dead ; Conclusion
Modern and macabre : the explosion of death imagery in the public sphere, 1790-1880. Death and the Mexican enlightenment ; Historicizing the "popular versus elite" distinction ; Tensions in Baroque representations of death ; Modernization and the macabre ; Market forces
Elite cohabitation with the popular fiesta in the nineteenth century. Why the urban fiesta continued to grow in the nineteenth century ; Evolution of the Paseo de Todos los Santos ; National reconciliation and progress : Zenith and decline of the Paseo de las Ánimas ; Conclusion : death and the origin of popular culture


Pt. 3. Death and the biography of the nation. Body politics and popular politics. Nationalization of the dead ; Death and popular opinion ; Independence and the body politic ; The Caudillo's remains in the transition from the colonial to the national period ; Rise of popular politics ; The spectral revolution ; National relics in the classical age of Caudillismo ; Community appropriations of the dead
Death and the Mexican revolution. The resistance of the souls during the Porfiriato ; Revolutionary violence ; Death, social contract, and the cultural revolution ; Death, revolution, and negative reciprocity ; Death and revolutionary hegemony, 1920-60
The political travails of the skeleton, 1923-85. Death and the invention of Mexican modern art ; The decline of the dead in the public sphere, 1920-60s ; Repression, democracy, and the rebirth of the Days of the Dead in the public sphere, 1968-82 ; The decline of "Posada imagery" as political critique ;- The depreciation of life in Mexico's transition into "the crisis," 1982-86
Death in the contemporary ethnoscape. Dos de Noviembre No Se Olvida ; Incorporation and integration of Halloween ; Mexican death in contemporary ideascapes ; Death and healing in contemporary Mexico ; Natural death, massified death
Conclusion. The untamable one.