One persistent theme in Mexican anthropology has been that of the possibilities and consequences of major national transitions, especially within modernization paradigms. In the 1990s, on the eve of the broad “neoliberal” transitions in Mexico, both Adolfo Gilly and Arturo Warman stressed the innovative potential of historically rooted forms of Mexican rural solidarity in organizing meaningful productive collective changes from below, free of the dependency imposed from above and associated with the state. Through conceptual analysis and ethnography, this article explores this possibility in terms of subaltern culture, identity, and patrimony, and in relation to the demise of Mexican state nationalism and the rise of Purhépecha ethnicity during the past three decades. [patrimony, ethnicity, globalization, identity, Mexico]