This is a translated and edited version of a section of the author's El folklore de las luchas sociales (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1973) — a book which received mention in the 1973 Casa de las Americas awards and has been banned in several Latin American dictatorships. In his introduction, the author differentiates a Marxist approach to folklore studies from the usual bourgeois approaches. In contrast with those who view folklore as either evidence of an idealized past where the upper class was accepted as legitimate rulers by the folk or with those who view the "people's culture" as ipso facto revolutionary, Carvalho-Neto shows that folklore mirrors the class struggle and is itself an instrument of class hegemony over all culture. Folklore also reflects defense, resistance and struggle, for as long as an oppressed group is not liberated, its folklore of resistance represents primarily an adaptation to the violence of domination.