The history of Mexican anthropology is closely associated with the building of the Mexican national state in the twentieth century. Particularly, anthropology was the discipline in charge of the knowledge and diffusion of the Mexican archaeological past and of contributing to the “mestizo” identity of Mexico through the knowledge and solution of the so-called indigenous problem, that is, the integration of indigenous cultures into the Mexican nation. However, starting in the 1960s, new generations of anthropologists severely questioned the relationship between anthropology and the Mexican state and advocated aligning the discipline with indigenous and popular struggles. This critical review temporarily coincided with a process of “academization” of Mexican anthropology, that is, a greater presence and visibility of the discipline in university spaces and research institutions, with a consequent theoretical and thematic diversification of the research carried out by Mexican anthropologists. In the last three decades, social movements such as the uprising of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (in 1994), the growing socioeconomic inequality and the increase in the levels of violence in the country, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, have inspired new proposals to practise the profession with a public commitment to the recognition of diversity.