Kategoria BISAC: History >> Latin America - Mexico

As journalist Sam Quinones convincingly demonstrates, much of Mexico was already changing before the July 2000 presidential elections which ousted the PRI and presented the world with President-elect Vincente Fox. Fox's victory marked the triumph of another Mexico, a vital, energetic, and creative Mexico tracked by Quinones for over six years.

"This side of Mexico gets very little press. . . . yet it is the best of the country. . . . people who have the spunk to imagine something else and instinctively flee the enfeebling embrace of PRI paternalism. . . . newly realistic...

This rich anthology provides a glimpse of modern Mexico through the eyes of foreign observers. Some of these selections are by well-known authors (Alexander von Humboldt, John Reed, B. Traven, Evelyn Waugh). Some are unpublished pieces by little-known writers, and six are available here for the first time in English.

The writings fall into four periods: the transitions to independence and Mexico's first decades as a sovereign country (1800-1867), the era of Liberal modernization (1867-1910), the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940), and the post-World War II era. Four major topics show up...

This abridged edition of Boyer's award-winning examination of bigamy in colonial Mexico reveals the lives, routines, and networks of ordinary people caught in extraordinary historical circumstances. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the Inquisition held the power to investigate breaches of the law on monogamy and to recommend punishment for violators. The pursuit of bigamists provides a fascinating picture of both Catholicism and the colonial state.

The author, drawing from his close reading of Inquisition files, includes extensive testimony of defendants, plaintiffs,...

This innovative work of cultural history examines the function of public rituals in colonial Mexico City. Festivals were a defining characteristic of life in the capital. For most of the colonial period, inhabitants could witness as many as 100 religious and civil celebrations in a year. The largest of these events, both civil and religious, were sponsored by the authorities and were crucial means to embody political and social concepts.

The first European public rituals were introduced immediately after the conquest of the Aztec capital. Spanish priests seeking to evangelize the...

The ten essays in "Local Religion in Colonial Mexico" provide information about the religious culture in colonial Mexico. Carlos Eire's essay begins the study with the meaning of "popular religion" in colonial Mexico. Antonio Rubial Garcia looks at the use of icons.

Martin Austin Nesvig's essay discusses Tlatelolco, a city near Tenochtitlan and the site of Mexico's college for Indian education where the Indians studied classical Latin, Spanish grammar, and Catholic theology in preparation for the priesthood. William Taylor's writing uses an eighteenth-century Franciscan friar to...

Charles Harris III and Louis Sadler shed new light on this turbulent period by uncovering the clandestine role of Mexican President Venustiano Carranza in the border violence. They document two virtually unknown invasions of Texas by Mexican Army troops acting under Carranza's orders. Harris and Sadler suggest the...

The government-sanctioned killing of student protesters in Mexico City on October 2, 1968, continues to haunt the city and the nation. Elaine Carey's "Plaza of Sacrifices" is the first English-language book-length study to situate this watershed event in an analytic framework. She provides a gendered analysis of the protest movement that culminated in the killing of as many as 700 students (estimates are still disputed) and looks at the movement's ongoing effects on relations between the state and the individual, between parents and children, and between men and women in Mexico.

Carey...

By focusing on the creation of the rural working class in Morelos, "Bitter Harvest" argues that developments there reflected a broader pattern shared with other parts of Mexico that erupted in...

These "Afro-Mexicans" encompassed a great variety of individuals and experiences whose ritual lives differed as much as their backgrounds. Some were Christians who took communion, confessed, and celebrated Mass. Some...

In one of the first English-language studies to examine relationships in a trilateral context, Christopher White portrays a broad-based history of this...