New Books in Mexican Studies
Interviews with scholars of Mexico about their new book
MartĂn Alberto Gonzalez, "Why You Always So Political?: The Experiences and Resiliencies of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx Students in Higher Education" (Viva Oxnard, 2023)
As of 2018, only about one in ten Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) students graduate with a college degree. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observations, pláticas, document analyses, and literature on race, space, and racism in higher education, Why you always so political?: The Experiences and Resiliencies of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx Students in Higher Education (Viva Oxnard, 2024) by Dr. MartĂn Alberto Gonzalez documents the narratives of 20 MMAX undergraduate students at a private, historically and predominantly white university in the Northeast United States. Utilizing counterstorytelling as a research method, MartĂn Alberto Gonzalez argues that the racially hostile campu...
Andrew Laird, "Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Andrew Laird, of Brown University, discusses Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2024). In 1536, only fifteen years after the fall of the Aztec empire, Franciscan missionaries began teaching Latin, classical rhetoric, and Aristotelian philosophy to native youths in central Mexico. The remarkable linguistic and cultural exchanges that would result from that initiative are the subject of this book. Aztec Latin highlights the importance of Renaissance humanist education for early colonial indigenous history, showing how practices central to humanism — the cultivation of eloquence, the training of leaders, scholarly translation, and antiquarian research — were transfo...
Victor M. Valle, "The Poetics of Fire: Metaphors of Chile Eating in the Borderlands" (U New Mexico Press, 2023)
Chile is more than just spice, writes Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and Cal Poly Ethnic Studies professor Victor Valle in The Poetics of Fire: Metaphors of Chile Eating in the Borderlands (U New Mexico Press, 2023). By tracing the meaning of chile as a plant and chile eating as an act. Valle shows how Indigenous cultivation and culinary practices troubled colonizers, sustained cultures, and fostered exchange. The Poetics of Fire calls for decolonization of chile cultivation and a renewed embrace of Indigenous ideals toward land and nourishment, arguing that chiles serve as a connection point between pre-colonization Indigenous societies and twentieth centur...
Robert Wright, "Indigenous Autonomy at La Junta de Los Rios: Traders, Allies, and Migrants on New Spain's Northern Frontier" (Texas Tech UP, 2023)
Today I talked to Robert Wright about Indigenous Autonomy at La Junta de Los Rios: Traders, Allies, and Migrants on New Spain's Northern Frontier (Texas Tech UP, 2023).
The Indigenous nations of the valley of the Rio Grande that is now centered upon Ojinaga, Chihuahua, and Presidio, Texas―the La Junta valley in colonial times―had a long and unique history with Hispanics during the colonial period.
Their valley was the initial route to New Mexico and West Texas explored by Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s. In the mid-1600s, the Juntans began engaging in long-distance migrant...
Benjamin T. Smith, "The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade" (W. W. Norton, 2021)
For over a century Mexico has been embroiled in a drug war dictated by the demands of their neighbor to the north. In The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade (W. W. Norton, 2021), Benjamin T. Smith offers a history of the trade and its effects upon the people of Mexico. As he reveals, at the start of the 20th century drugs such as marijuana and opium were largely on the margins of Mexican society, used mainly by soldiers, prisoners, and immigrants. The association of marijuana with a bohemian subculture in the early 1920s prompted the first pun...
Elyse Ona Singer, "Lawful Sins: Abortion Rights and Reproductive Governance in Mexico" (Stanford UP, 2022)
Mexico is at the center of the global battle over abortion. In 2007, a watershed reform legalized the procedure in the national capital, making it one of just three places across Latin America where it was permitted at the time. Abortion care is now available on demand and free of cost through a pioneering program of the Mexico City Ministry of Health, which has served hundreds of thousands of women. At the same time, abortion laws have grown harsher in several states outside the capital as part of a coordinated national backlash.
In Lawful Sins: Abortion Rights and R...
Maria Angela Diaz, "A Continuous State of War: Empire Building and Race Making in the Civil War–Era Gulf South" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
From 1845 to 1865 the Gulf of Mexico was at the center of American expansion and southern imperialism. A Continuous State of War: Empire Building and Race Making in the Civil War–Era Gulf South (University of Georgia Press, 2024) by Dr. Maria Angela Diaz tells the story of several communities, such as Galveston, New Orleans, and Pensacola, as well as countries such as Mexico and Cuba, to uncover the way that wars within the upper rim of the Gulf of Mexico facilitated American and southern attempts to conquer Latin American nations. In the push for westward expansion that preceded the Civil War...
Without Parents or Papers: A Discussion with Stephanie L. Canizales
Today’s book is: Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States (U California Press, 2024), a which explores how each year, thousands of youth endure harrowing unaccompanied and undocumented migrations across Central America and Mexico to the United States in pursuit of a better future. Drawing on the firsthand narratives of migrant youth in Los Angeles, California, Dr. Stephanie L. Canizales shows that while a lucky few do find reprieve, many are met by resource-impoverished relatives who are unable to support them, exploitative jobs that are no match for the high cost of livin...
Michael J. Alarid, "Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny, 1837-1860" (U New Mexico Press, 2022)
In Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny, 1837-1860 (University of New Mexico Press, 2023), historian Dr. Michael J. Alarid examines New Mexico's transition from Spanish to Mexican to US control during the nineteenth century and illuminates how emerging class differences played a crucial role in the regime change.
After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, trade between Mexico and the United States attracted wealthy Hispanos into a new market economy and increased trade along El Camino Real, turning it into a burgeoning exchange route. As landowning Hispanos benefited from the Santa Fe trade, tr...
Reunited: Family Separation and Central American Youth Migration
Today’s book is: Reunited: Family Separation and Central American Youth Migration (Russell Sage Foundation, 2024), by Dr. Ernesto Castañeda and Daniel Jenks, which explains the reasons for Central American youth migration, describes the journey, and documents how minors experienced separation from their families and their subsequent reunification. Castañeda and Jenks find that these minors migrate on their own for three main reasons: gang violence, lack of educational and economic opportunity, and a longing for family reunification.Â
The authors recount these young migrants’ journey to the U.S. border, detailing the difficulties passing through Mexico, their encounters...