The last two decades have seen dramatic changes to Mexico's socio-political landscape. A former president fleeing into exile, political assassinations, a rebellion in Chiapas, and the eruption of the so-called war on drugs provide key examples of critical events shaping the nation. This book examines Mexican cinema's representations of, and responses to, these socio-political moments. Beginning with the definitive year 1994, which saw the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN) declare war on the Mexican government, the early chapters in this book discuss the outcome of these...

Riven with unresolved traumas and appropriated by successive governments, the past haunts spaces in Mexican film and visual culture. These events, without consensus or a singular/unifying narrative, act like spectres haunting the present. To comprehend how they manifest, Legacies of the Past considers how filmmakers and visual artists have found ways of understanding these haunted spaces. With case studies of films like El atentado (2010), Flor en Otomi (2012) and the photography of Dulce Pinzon, this collection analyses the audio-visual representations of several heightened events in Mexican...