Próspero Cahuantzi was the longest-serving governor appointed by the dictator Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911) in Mexico. Some of the strategies Cahuantzi used to rule—patronage, electoral corruption, direct suppression of dissent—echo countless histories that have been told about the caudillos, caciques, and coroneis who dominated the political landscape of post-independent Latin America. But while Cahuantzi was a strongman appointed by the national dictator, he was also decidedly pragmatic. He used political tools that were available to him as one of the few governors who had recognizably Indigenous heritage and was native to the state he ruled. Because of his background, Cahuantzi realized that, for both he and Díaz to remain in power, he had to occasionally conciliate, rather than repress, dissent. The Introduction presents the main arguments of the book as well as a chapter outline.

In Chapter one I situate Cahuantzi within the panoply of Díaz's governors. Cahuantzi's background as an Indigenous Tlaxcalan differentiated him from most other gubernatorial appointees. There were 71 Porfirian governors in total, excluding dozens of interim governors. For most of these, reputational, economic, or sociocultural privilege shored up their claims to power. And yet Díaz chose Próspero Cahuantzi—a landless, undereducated, and recognizably Indigenous person—as his main ally in Tlaxcala and longest-serving state representative overall. Díaz chose Cahuantzi not despite but rather because of his distinct background. Thus, I argue that neither their privilege nor loyalty to Díaz were exclusive paths to Porfirian governors' political longevity.

In Chapter two I explain the role that Cahuantzi played in nation-builders' efforts to create a national patrimony, and how and why the governor turned his identity as a Tlaxcalan into political power. Cahuantzi embraced his indigenous ancestry and promoted Tlaxcala's pre-Hispanic legacy to bolster his political station and to ingratiate himself to Díaz and other nation-builders. The governor fed nation-builders' obsession with the pre-Hispanic past and consecrated himself as the modern forebearer of Tlaxcala's ancient legacy. He donated local artifacts to World's Fairs, presented in Nahuatl at nation-building forums, and endorsed chronicles that foregrounded Tlaxcala's role in making the Mexican nation. Yet Cahuantzi also distanced himself and his region from Mexico's "primitive" Indians. Thus, while the governor promoted Tlaxcala, he concurrently reinforced anti-Indigenous discrimination.

In Chapter three I examine the different political strategies that Cahuantzi pursued to establish his regime in Tlaxcala. Some of these strategies—administrative centralization, patronage, electoral fraud—mirrored those used by Díaz and by caciques and caudillos throughout Latin America, as well as in any place where bosses subjugated democratic rule. Others, however, required Cahuantzi to have extensive local knowledge. Chapter three explains how Cahuantzi used his local acumen, especially about his region's past, to create a cohesive, sovereign state, secure state borders, and forge a sense of what it meant to be Tlaxcalan in the modern era, even if not all Tlaxcalans agreed with these meanings.

In Chapters four and five I explain why water management was important for Cahuantzi's political longevity. Water—whether too little, or more often, too much—had been a problem for centuries in Tlaxcala. With the 1888 Federal Waters Law (Ley sobre vías generales de comunicación), the nation's first federal law regulating water usage, the federal government hoped to overcome the nation's modernization challenges by facilitating large landowners' access to water. Where water had been the purview of municipalities since colonial times, the 1888 Federal Waters Law federalized Mexico's navigable waterways and waterways that comprised state borders. By enacting the 1888 Waters Law, Porfirian administrators aimed to diminish local actors' influence over waterways and expedite development. However, as I explain in Chapter four, Cahuantzi found ways to keep water management in state, rather than in federal or municipal, hands, both before and after the 1888 Waters Law was passed.

In Chapter five I examine the effects of land privatization and disentailment on water rights in Tlaxcala, and how Cahuantzi brokered between unclear federal resource laws and local customary resource practices to adjudicate residents' water disputes. Federal resource laws—the Ley Lerdo of 1856 (Ley de Desamortización de Bienes de la Iglesia Ley Lerdo de Tejada) and the Federal Waters Law of 1888—aimed to increase developers' access to land and water. Yet the laws failed to treat land and water as part of a symbiotic whole and their terms contradicted significantly. Cahuantzi exploited these contradictions and fashioned water into a political tool through which he mediated between Tlaxcala's socioeconomically diverse residents. Tlaxcala's small landholding and village majority also used the ambiguities embedded in federal resource laws to press federal, state, and local officials to protect their customary water rights.

In Chapter six I trace how Cahuantzi attempted to modernize his state through public works and infrastructural improvements. From bridges and roads to lighting and potable water to schools and administrative buildings, the governor leveraged public works and infrastructure as physical manifestations of his power and worthiness of enduring rule. Locals, too, saw value in these projects. Tlaxcalans of all stripes pressured the governor to consider how these projects could and should improve their daily lives. Through these projects, Cahuantzi conciliated and negotiated between the diverse demands of the national dictator and his residents. The fiscal challenges the governor faced while trying to make these improvements happen, however, and the demands of time, money, and labor he imposed on municipalities and individuals to carry out his vision of modernity, were pivotal to the regime's demise.

By way of conclusion, I discuss the different actors and interests that shaped the coming of the Mexican Revolution to Tlaxcala. The actors who participated in the Revolution were a diverse lot with diverse interests, making it difficult for Tlaxcalans to form a coherent revolutionary movement. But it was precisely their differences that had allowed Cahuantzi to selectively placate residents' demands and to remain in power for twenty-six years. In the conclusion I emphasize the need to examine the Porfiriato on its own terms—not merely as a precursory period that preceded the Mexican Revolution—so as not to obfuscate the local origins of Porfirian stability or the challenges that Tlaxcalans continued to face in its wake.