The term "mestizaje" is generally translated as race mixture, with races typically understood as groups differentiated by skin color or other physical characteristics. Yet such understandings seem contradicted by contemporary understandings of race as a cultural construct, or idea, rather than as a biological entity. How might one then approach mestizaje in a way that is not definitionally predicated on ‘race,’ or at least, on a modernist formulation of race as phenotypically expressed bio...

The concept of “indigenous” has been entwined with notions of exoticism and alterity throughout Mexico’s history. In Beyond Alterity, authors from across disciplines question the persistent association between indigenous people and radical difference, and demonstrate that alterity is often the product of specific political contexts.Although previous studies have usually focused on the most visible aspects of differences—cosmovision, language, customs, resistance—the contri...

The essays in this collection illuminate both the processes of change and the negative reactions that they frequently elicitedYucatan has been called “a world apart”—cut off from the rest of Mexico by geography and culture. Yet, despite its peripheral location, the region experienced substantial change in the decades after independence. As elsewhere in Mexico, apostles of modernization introduced policies intended to remold Yucatan in the image of the advanced nati...

In this unprecedented and chilling monologue, a repentant Mexican hitman tells the unvarnished truth about the war on drugs on the American. El Sicario is the hidden face of America's war on drugs. He is a contract killer who functioned as a commandante in the Chihuahuan State police, who was trained in the US by the FBI, and who for twenty years kidnapped, tortured and murdered people for the drug industry at the behest of Mexican drug cartels. He is a hit man who came off the killing fie...

The #1 New York Times –bestselling author of The Miracle of Dunkirk tells the story of the Texans who fought Santa Anna's troops at the Battle of the Alamo."Probably the best of all Alamo accounts . . . a history which should last." — The New York Times Book ReviewLooking out over the walls of the whitewashed Alamo, sweltering ...

The Oxford History of Mexico is a narrative history of the events, institutions and characters that have shaped Mexican history from the reign of the Aztecs through the twenty-first century. When the hardcover edition released in 2000, it was praised for both its breadth and depth--all aspects of Mexican history, from religion to technology, ethnicity, ecology and mass media, are analyzed with insight and clarity. Available for the first time in paperback, the History covers every era in t...

Oak Island Unearthed! --book description- back cover.John O’Brien first learned about Oak Island in 1958 at the age of twelve, listening intently as his pharmacist father and a Saint Mary’s University professor debated, for an entire winter, the merits of existing theories of Oak Island and the mysterious lost treasures of the world.After fifty-five years of research and puzzling over this mystery, many visits to the island, tens of thousands of mi...

The epic story of the forgotten Irish men and women who changed the face of Latin America forever.In the early nineteenth century, thousands of volunteers left Ireland behind to join the fight for South American independence. Lured by the promise of adventure, fortune and the opportunity to take a stand against colonialism, they braved the treacherous Atlantic crossing to join the ranks of the Liberator, Símon Bolívar, and became instrumental in helping oust the Spanish from Colombia, Pana...

The Mixtec peoples were among the major original developers of Mesoamerican civilization. Centuries before the Spanish Conquest, they formed literate urban states and maintained a uniquely innovative technology and a flourishing economy. Today, thousands of Mixtecs still live in Oaxaca, in present-day southern Mexico, and thousands more have migrated to locations throughout Mexico, the United States, and Canada. In this comprehensive survey, Ronald Spores and Andrew K. Balkansky—both preem...

MEXICOBySUSAN HALELondon T. Fisher Unwin Paternoster Square New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons MDCCCXCIEntered at Stationers' Hall By T. Fisher Unwin

For many years, scholars of the conquest worked to shift focus away from the Spanish perspective and bring attention to the often-ignored voices and viewpoints of the Indians. But recent work that highlights the “Indian conquistadors” has forced scholars to reexamine the simple categories of conqueror and subject and to acknowledge the seemingly contradictory roles assumed by native peoples who chose to fight alongside the Spaniards against other native groups. The Native Conquistador

Trying to understand the conquest of the Aztec Empire entails penetrating one of the most fabulous and sad episodes of the history of mankind. It is well known that the Spaniards, led by Hernan Cortes, conquered the Aztecs; the most powerful civilization of Mesoamerica. However, there are many questions regarding the actual events. For instance: how did Hernan Cortes communicate with the Aztecs? Was Moctezuma responsible for the conquest? Was Hernan Cortes a hero or a villain? The Conquest...