Contains papers from several 1992 conferences, directed toward a general audience wanting to learn more about the complexities of the US-Mexico relationship. Contributors concentrate less on technical details and more on explanations of events and individual and national motives. They focus on the Mexican experience, dissecting political, social, and economic differences between the countries and tracing the relationship from its beginnings to the present day. Subjects include the loss of Texas from a Mexican perspective, the US government versus the 1910-1917 Mexican Revolution, and Mexican immigration. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Examines the Mexican-American War from both sides, discussing its impact on both countries at the time and generations later, as well as how it has shaped U.S.-Mexico relations.
In early 1914, Clemente Vergara discovered several of his horses missing and reported the theft to local authorities. The Webb County sheriff arranged for the South Texas rancher to meet with Mexican soldiers near Hidalgo to discuss compensation for his loss. Vergara crossed the Rio Grande, soon succumbed to a vicious physical assault, and was jailed. Days after incarceration in Hidalgo, his body was found hanging from a tree. The murder of Clemente Vergara contributed to events that put the United States and Mexico on the brink of war and opened the door for expanded American involvement in Mexico. Texas governor Oscar B. Colquitt seized upon the incident to challenge President Woodrow Wilson—a fellow Democrat—to intervene and even threatened retaliation by the Texas Rangers. Meanwhile, the White House played a larger strategic game with competing factions in the midst of the Mexican Revolution. Wilson’s apparent inaction heightened Colquitt’s demands to guarantee the safety of Americans and their property in the Texas borderlands, and the Vergara affair’s extensive media coverage convinced many Americans that intervention in Mexico was necessary. Author John A. Adams Jr. shows how an otherwise commonplace horse theft and murder revealed a tangled web of international relations, powerful business interests, and intrigue on both sides of the border. Readers will be captivated by Murder and Intrigue on the Mexican Border and the continuing legacy that border events leave on Texas history.
A comprehensive view of the remarkable transformation of Mexico's political system to a democratic model. The contributors to this volume assess the most influential institutions, actors, policies and issues in the country's current evolution toward democratic consolidation.
The History of Mexico: From Pre-Conquest to Present traces the last 500 years of Mexican history, from the indigenous empires that were devastated by the Spanish conquest through the election of 2006 and its aftermath. The book offers a straightforward chronological survey of Mexican history from the pre-colonial times to the present, and includes a glossary as well as numerous tables and images for comprehensive study. In lively and engaging prose, Philip Russell guides readers through major themes that still resonate today including: The role of women in society Environmental change The evolving status of Mexico’s indigenous people African slavery and the role of race Government economic policy Foreign relations with the United States and others The companion website provides many useful student tools including multiple choice questions, extra book chapters, and links to online resources, as well as digital copies of the maps from the book. For additional information and classroom resources please visit The History of Mexico companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/russell.
This innovative volume traces Brazil's singular character, exploring both the remarkable richness and cohesion of the national culture and the contradictions and tensions that have developed over time. What shared experiences give its citizens their sense of being Brazilian? What memories bind them together? What metaphors and stereotypes of identity have emerged? Which groups are privileged over others in idealized representations of the nation? The contributors—a multidisciplinary group of U.S. and Brazilian scholars—offer a fresh look at questions that have been asked since the early nineteenth century and that continue to drive nationalist discourse today. Their chapters explore Brazilian identity through an innovative framework that brings in seldom-considered aspects of art, music, and visual images, offering a compelling analysis of how nationalism functions as a social, political, and cultural construction in Latin America. Contributions by: Cristina Antunes, Dain Borges, Valéria Costa e Silva, James Green, Efrain Kristal, Ludwig Lauerhass Jr., Cristina Magaldi, Elizabeth A. Marchant, José Mindlin, Carmen Nava, José Luis Passos, Robert Stam, and Valéria Torres
"Political Culture in Spanish America, 1500-1830 examines the nature of Spanish American political culture by reevaluating the political theory, institutions, and practices of the Hispanic world. Consisting of eight case studies with a focus on New Spain and Quito, Jaime E. Rodrguez O. demonstrates that the process of independence of Spanish America differs from previous claims. In 1188 King Alfonso IX convened the Cortes, the first congress in Europe that included the three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the towns.This heritage, along with events in the sixteenth century, including the rebellion of Castilla and the Protestant Reformation, transformed the nature of Hispanic political thought. Rodrguez O. argues that those developments, rather than the Enlightenment, were the basis of the Hispanic revolution and the Constitution of 1812. Emphasizing continuity rather than the rejection of Hispanic political culture, as well as the Atlantic perspective, Political Culture in Spanish America, 1500-1830 demonstrates the nature of the Hispanic revolution and the process of independence. Rodriguez O.'s work will encourage historians of Spanish America to reexamine the political institutions and processes of those nations from a broad perspective to gain a deeper understanding of the Spanish American countries that emerged from the breakup of the composite monarchy"--
Practically speaking, nineteenth-century American literary history really refers to writings from the East seaboard of the United States. In fact, no author from the West prior to Mark Twain has been admitted into the canon of American literature, a longstanding bias that continues to define the narrative arc of U.S. literary nationalism. Western authors are absent from the canon and classroom largely because their "regional writings" are assumed to be second-rate in comparison with the ostensibly more complex literary cultures of the eastern states. Andy Doolen's monograph reorients literary history, turning to the neglected Western writings that shaped the distinctive process of U.S. expansionism in the years following the Louisiana Purchase. As Doolen shows, these "cartographic texts" legitimated U.S. occupancy of contested border zones and justified the nation's move westward. In five chapters, Territories of Empire surveys an under-studied archive of these texts, ranging from exploration narratives, novels, oratory, and natural histories, to autobiographies, travel narratives, poetry, and periodical literature. In writings as dissimilar as protest petitions from white Louisianans, Kentucky newspaper accounts of the Burr conspiracy, the explorer Zebulon Pike's 1810 account of the upper Rio Grande, and Timothy Flint's 1826 novel about a young New Englander who fights in the Mexican independence struggle, Americans were expanding the national imagination into new continental dimensions. Ultimately, these texts show how literature reflected and fed the expansionist ideology of the U.S. by linking national greatness to the urgent necessity of territorial and commercial growth.
The environmental history of the Colorado River delta during the past century is one of the most important—and most neglected—stories of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Thanks to entrepreneurs such as William E. Smythe, the surrounding desert in Arizona, California, Sonora, and Baja California has been transformed into an agricultural oasis, but not without significant ecological, political, economic, and social consequences. Evan Ward explores the rapid development of this region, examining the ways in which regional politics and international relations created a garden in the Mexicali, Yuma, and Imperial Valleys while simultaneously threatening the life of the Colorado River. Tracing the transformation of the delta by irrigated agribusiness through the twentieth century, he draws on untapped archival resources from both sides of the border to offer a new look at one of the world's most contested landscapes. Border Oasis tells how two very different nations developed the delta into an agricultural oasis at enormous environmental cost. Focusing on the years 1940 to 1975—including the disastrous salinity crisis of the 1960s and 1970s—it combines Mexican, Native American, and U.S. perspectives to demonstrate that the political and diplomatic influences on the delta played as much a part in the region's transformation as did irrigation. Ward reveals how mistrust among political and economic participants has been fueled by conflict between national and local officials on both sides of the border, by Mexican nationalism, and by a mutual recognition that water is the critical ingredient for regional economic development. With overemphasis on development in both nations leading to an ecological breaking point, Ward demonstrates that conflicting interests have made sound binational management of the delta nearly impossible. By weaving together all of these threads that have produced the fabric of today's lower Colorado, his study shows that the environmental history of the delta must be understood as a whole, not from the standpoint of only one of many competing interests.
This book reinvigorates the debate on the Mexican Revolution, exploring what this pivotal event meant to women. The contributors offer a fresh look at women's participation in their homes and workplaces and through politics and community activism. Drawing on a variety of perspectives, the volume illuminates the ways women variously accepted, contested, used, and manipulated the revolutionary project. Recovering narratives that have been virtually written out of the historical record, this book brings us a rich and complex array of women's experiences in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary era in Mexico.
