In the turbulent decades following the Mexican Revolution, Mexico City saw a drastic influx of female migrants seeking escape and protection from the ravages of war in the countryside. While some settled in slums and tenements, where the informal economy often provided the only means of survival, the revolution, in the absence of men, also prompted women to take up traditionally male roles, created new jobs in the public sphere open to women, and carved out new social spaces in which women...

This enthralling study which examines the impact of the Spaniards upon the Aztec and Inca worlds is dominated by the personalities involved, in particular Cortes and Montezuma. Their confrontation in the Aztec lake-city of Tenochtitlan is a moving drama of human conflict revealing the dilemma and the enigma of the Indians. It is a story of battles and voyages, full of strange episodes – Cortes burning his ships, Pizarro drawing a line with his sword, saying "Gentlemen, this line represents...

A massive uprising against the Mexican state of Oaxaca began with the emergence of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) in June 2006. A coalition of more than 300 organizations, APPO disrupted the functions of Oaxaca's government for six months. It began to develop an inclusive and participatory political vision for the state. Testimonials were broadcast on radio and television stations appropriated by APPO, shared at public demonstrations, debated in homes and in the stree...

A concise yet comprehensive social history of the Mexican–American War as it was experienced by the people of Mexico.The war that was fought between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 was a major event in the history of both countries: it cost Mexico half of its national territory, opened western North America to US expansion, and magnified tensions that led to civil wars in both countries. Among generations of Latin Americans, it helped to cement the im...

Winner of the Bolton-Johnson PrizeWinner of the Utley PrizeWinner of the Distinguished Book Award, Society for Military History“The Dead March incorporates the work of Mexican historians…in a story that involves far more than military strategy, diplomatic maneuvering, and American political intrigue…Studded with arresting insights and convincing observations.”—James Oakes, New York Review of Books“Superb…A remarkable a...

Franciscan missionary friar Junípero Serra (1713–1784), one of the most widely known and influential inhabitants of early California, embodied many of the ideas and practices that animated the Spanish presence in the Americas. In this definitive biography, translators and historians Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz bring this complex figure to life and illuminate the Spanish period of California and the American Southwest.In Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the ...

At the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1920, Mexico’s large, rebellious army dominated national politics. By the 1940s, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was led by a civilian president and claimed to have depoliticized the army and achieved the bloodless pacification of the Mexican countryside through land reform, schooling, and indigenismo. However, historian Thomas Rath argues, Mexico’s celebrated demilitarization was more protracted, conflict-ridden, and incomp...

The intimate story of a teenager’s murder of his family, from an award-winning Mexican journalistSixteen-year-old Vicente and two of his high school friends murdered his mother, his father, and his little sister in cold blood. Through a Capote-like reconstruction of this seemingly inexplicable triple murder, Sandra Rodríguez Nieto paints a haunting and unforgettable portrait of the most violent city on Earth, with an in-depth investigation into the thought process ...

Following the 1917 Mexican Revolution inhabitants of the states of Chihuahua and Michoacán received vast tracts of prime timberland as part of Mexico's land redistribution program. Although locals gained possession of the forests, the federal government retained management rights, which created conflict over subsequent decades among rural, often indigenous villages; government; and private timber companies about how best to manage the forests. Christopher R. Boyer examines this history in ...

The Cold War in Latin America spawned numerous authoritarian and military regimes in response to the ostensible threat of communism in the Western Hemisphere, and with that, a rigid national security doctrine was exported to Latin America by the United States. Between 1964 and 1985, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uraguay experienced a period of state-sponsored terrorism commonly referred to as the "dirty wars." Thousands of leftists, students, intellectuals, workers, peasa...

Published in Cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.The U.S.-Mexico borderlands have long supported a web of relationships that transcend the U.S. and Mexican nations. Yet national histories usually overlook these complex connections. Continental Crossroads rediscovers this forgotten terrain, laying the foundations for a new borderlands history at the crossroads of Chicano/a, Latin American, and U.S. history. Dr...

The relationship between business and politics is crucial to understanding Mexican history, and Pesos and Politics explores this relationship from the mid-nineteenth century dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz through the Mexican Revolution (1876–1940). Historian Mark Wasserman argues that throughout this era, over the course of successive regimes, there was an evolving enterprise system that had to balance the interests of the Mexican national elite, state and local governments, large ...