Disaster: Student Massacre, 1968 to Earthquake, 1985

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ageeth Sluis
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Great Change ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
Railroad Workers ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Mexican Society ◽  
Resistance Forces

The 1968 Tlatelolco Student Massacre and the 1985 Mexico City Earthquake—two catastrophic, “watershed” events—are generally thought to have defined recent Mexican history in leading to great change, especially sociopolitical democratization. In the historiography of modern Mexico, 1968 and 1985 have become gigantic milestones in fomenting demands for social–political transformation. As recent scholarship has demonstrated, however, this interpretation neglects formative precursors of the struggles prior to 1968 and significant developments after 1985. Strikes and protests by railroad workers, doctors, and teachers in the cities as well as the resistance forces in the campo pointed to the underbelly of the Miracle long before 1968. And, after the sismo, it would take another long and contentious fifteen years to bring the PRI’s seventy-year rule to an end.Drawing on this scholarship, “disaster” is used as a guiding framework to chronicle the major sociopolitical changes in Mexican society without privileging a linear-progressive, teleological model. Instead, it offers an analysis centered on trauma and popular memory to gauge the transformative power of these disasters. The trauma produced by disaster—whether man-made or natural—can give rise to palpable contestations and negotiations in which people draw on memory to challenge official histories. Hence, 1968 and 1985 (and their consolidation into powerful discourses) can be understood as rallying points, rather than stand-alone dates in history. Framed by the narrative arc of disaster, the period spanning the end of the student movement and the start of urban grass-roots organizing proves crucial in contemporary Mexico because of the power of memory.

Order, Progress, and the Black Market

2018 ◽  
pp. 144-170
Author(s):  
Andrew Konove
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
Black Market ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Porfirio Diaz ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter examines the Baratillo’s relationship with Porfirian Mexico City, when the country’s autocratic president Porfirio Díaz sought to modernize the nation and its capital city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It focuses on the events that led to the Baratillo’s relocation to the neighborhood of Tepito, in 1902. Facing the threat of the market’s closure, baratilleros bargained with the municipal government, reaching a compromise to move to Tepito—a location the vendors proposed themselves. The chapter contributes to recent scholarship that revises earlier depictions of the Porfiriato as a monolithic dictatorship, emphasizing instead the multiple ways that Mexico’s government and citizens maintained a tense and unequal peace for more than thirty years.

New airport will boost Mexico City's economy

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Infrastructure Investment ◽  
Environmental Standards ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
Content Type ◽  
International Airport ◽  
Public Figures

Subject The new Mexico City international airport project. Significance While the need for a new airport has been discussed for decades, plans are finally being put into action. In September 2014 President Enrique Pena Nieto announced the construction of a new international airport in Mexico City (NIAMC). The project has been broadly welcomed by political analysts, public figures and the wider public, and is a major undertaking, representing perhaps the most significant infrastructure investment in modern Mexican history. Impacts If the project is implemented well, it will attract investment and significantly boost Mexico City's economy. The airport's construction will generate nearly 160,000 jobs. The design's ambitious environmental standards may provide a model for similar projects elsewhere.

Imagining Mexico in 1921: Visions of the Revolutionary State and Society in the Centennial Celebration in Mexico City

2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Gonzales
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Social Programs ◽  
Sporting Events ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
State And Society ◽  
The Government

In September of 1921, the government of Alvaro Obregóón organized a lavish commemoration of the centennial of Agustíín de Iturbide's ouster of Spanish authority and the creation of Mexico. The occasion gave the administration the opportunity to present its image of the revolutionary state and society within the context of historical memory and public policy. The official program promoted economic and social programs rooted in nineteenth-century liberalism, as well as a new cultural vision that portrayed contemporary indigenous culture as integral to Mexican national identity. The occasion also gave conservatives the opportunity to present a counternarrative of Mexican history in newspaper articles and editorials that championed Iturbide, the Catholic Church, and Mexico's Spanish heritage. The organization of cultural and sporting events also showcased traditional and popular culture. En Septiembre de 1921, el gobierno de Alvaro Obregóón organizóó una celebracióón para conmemorar el centenario de la expulsióón de la monarquíía españñola por parte de Agustíín de Iturbide y del nacimiento del Estado mexicano. La ocasióón permitióó al réégimen presentar su imagen como Estado revolucionario dentro del contexto de la memoria históórica y políítica púública. La agenda oficial promovíía programas econóómicos y sociales basados en el liberalismo del siglo diecinueve, y en una políítica nueva que presentaba a las culturas indíígenas contemporááneas como parte integral de la identidad mexicana. La celebracióón tambiéén dio a los conservadores la oportunidad de presentar una interpretacióón de la historia mexicana que iba en contra de la oficial. ÉÉsta fue presentada en artíículos y editoriales de perióódicos que celebraban a Iturbide, la iglesia catóólica y la herencia españñola en Mééxico. La organizacióón de eventos culturales y deportivos tambiéén revelóó aspectos centrales de la cultura tradicional y popular.

The Triangular Revolt in Mexico and the Fall of Anastasio Bustamante, August–October 1841

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Costeloe
Keyword(s):  
Vice President ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
Porfirio Diaz ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Full Control ◽  
Mexican Society ◽  
Political Expediency ◽  
Economic Control ◽  
Scant Attention

Anastasio Bustamante is one of the forgotten men of early nineteenth-century Mexican history. Like many of his contemporaries during the so-called age of Santa Anna – José Maria Tornel, Gabriel Valencia, Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga, to name only a few – he has attracted scant attention of biographers and little serious study has been made of his long and eventful career. Yet Bustamante was in full control of the presidency, as president or vice-president, for a longer period in total than any president before Porfirio Díaz and he presided over crucial stages in the nation's development from colony to sovereign republic. By ideological conviction or political expediency – it is still not clear which – he came to be the figurehead of the conservative, traditionalist forces in Mexican society which struggled to preserve not only their economic control but also their religious, social and moral values against what they considered to be the destructive onslaught of increasingly fashionable and radical liberal ideas. Born in 1780 at Jiquilpan (Michoacán), son of Spanish parents, trained as a doctor, Bustamante fought for the royalist cause in the war of independence until he joined with Iturbide in the plan of Iguala (1821). Various important political posts followed and he first rose to supreme power in 1829 when, as vice-president, he successfully led a rebellion against president Vicente Guerrero.

scholarly journals Of Lady-killers and ‘Men Dressed As Women’: Soap Opera, Scapegoats and the Mexico City Police Department

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vek Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Elderly Women ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Soap Opera ◽  
Serial Killer ◽  
Public Prosecutor ◽  
Television Channel ◽  
Female Victims ◽  
Mexican Society ◽  
Male To Female

Over two days in October 2005, police in Mexico City conducted a series of raids on male-to-female transgender (travesti) prostitutes working in the streets. The motive of the investigation was not related to sex work at all, but rather, the hunt for a serial killer responsible for the deaths of elderly women between 2003 and 2005. With few leads apart from reports by a couple of eyewitnesses that they had seen ‘a man dressed as a woman’ enter the houses of the victims, the Chief Public Prosecutor announced that the killer could be a travesti. On January 25, 2006, the ‘lady-killer’ was finally discovered to be neither a ‘man dressed as a woman’, nor a travesti. The suspect, a female former lucha libre wrestler, Juana Barraza, was taken into custody. In the period leading up to the October raids, Mexico’s chief television channel, Televisa, finished up the season of its popular soap, La Madrastra, with a plot line that features a man who dresses as a woman to disguise his usual male identity and kill his female victims. This paper examines the case, looking at the influence of the soap opera narrative in the profiling of travestis as suspect ‘men dressed as women’. It draws on studies of soap opera and mass media forms in Mexican society, as well as the work of transgender theory in understanding how crossgender identities are circumscribed by discourse.

The Bakhtiyâri Khans, The Government of Iran, and the British, 1846–1915

1972 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gene R. Garthwaite
Keyword(s):  
Economic Importance ◽  
Oil Fields ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Strategic Factors ◽  
The Government ◽  
Pasture Area

Great power rivalry in nineteenth and early twentieth century Iran and the Qajar dynasty's dependence upon British and Russian support have long attracted the attention of western scholars. Recent scholarship also has begun tocus on internal power shifts in response to these conditions. An important element in these processes, but one which has been relatively unstudied, is political change within the great tribal confederations, especially the Bakhtiyâri. A number of elements contributed to the political transformation of the Bakhtiyâri. To begin with, the heightening of political activity in the tribe coincided with a decline of central power and authority and the growth of Anglo-Russian rivalry in Iran. Also significant was the concentration of powerand wealth within one princely family of the Bakhtiyâri. In addition a number of economic and strategic factors played a role in creating a new alignment of power among the Bakhtiyâri and Tehran and Great Britain. Chief among these elements were the increasing strategic and economic importance of the Bakhtiyâri winter pasture area in Khuzistan following the discovery of the oil fields there and the new national political role played by the Bakhtiyâri following the Persian Revolution.

Jesuit Contributions to the Ideology of Spanish Empire in Mexico Part I

1973 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy K. Liss
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
General Point ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
Mexican Society ◽  
Satisfactory Account

No satisfactory account exists of how Jesuits functioned in Mexican society; nor has any assessment been made of their Jesuits importance to the Spanish crown; nor has anything been written evaluating the extent of the Jesuits' role in molding and maintaining, throughout most of the colonial period Mexican adhesion to Spanish culture, civilization, and political arrangements. Previous writing has, in fact, tended to obfuscate the Order's attitudes and activities in Mexico by stressing special aspects of them, notably missionary activity, and slighting others, particularly formal education—paying little attention to its effects on Mexican society. Moreover, while many specialists in sixteenth-century Mexican history acknowledge that of course Jesuits in New Spain supported the empire, none have explained and substantiated just how they did so. In addition, historians of the same period in Europe, unacquainted with the special situations in Spain and colonial Mexico, would argue from a more general point of view that the assertion that Jesuits may be thought to have contributed at all to loyalty to any monarchy other than the papacy needs strong evidence to support it.

Posada, José Guadalupe (1852–1913)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessi DiTilio
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Diego Rivera ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Day Of The Dead ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Mexican Society ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Monetary Success ◽  
Jose Clemente Orozco

A seminal printmaker of Mexico City at the turn of the twentieth century, José Guadalupe Posada is most recognizable for his calaveras, images of skulls and skeletons that satirized politicians, aristocrats, and corruption in Mexican society. Though he received little acclaim or monetary success during his lifetime, Posada’s work was rediscovered by the Mexican avant-garde in the early 1920s, including Jean Charlot, Dr. Atl, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco. For these artists, Posada represented an artistic precedent outside of the European tradition, and a link between the images of Pre-Columbian art and their own. The most famous of the calaveras is a character Posada called La Catrina, whose image is ubiquitous in pop-cultural imagery produced for the Day of the Dead.

Mexico’s Centennial Celebration of Independence in 1910

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Gonzales
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Department Stores ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
The Government

Porfirio Díaz’s liberal dictatorship used the centenary of independence to promote material progress, political stability, and the mestizo nation, all of which have remained important characteristics of the Mexican state. The centennial program lionized José Maria Morelos as a mestizo hero of independence and Benito Juárez as an architect of La Reforma and savior of the nation. Besides his remarkable political career, Juárez symbolized the cultural transformation of an Indian into a mestizo through education and secularization, a process advocated by Porfirian social engineers as essential to Mexico’s modernization. Porfirians also viewed Mexico’s pre-Columbian heritage as a source of national pride and identity. For the Centenary, the government expanded the national ethnographic museum, reconstructed Teotihuacán, and sponsored the International Congress of Americanists where scholars presented papers on precolonial cultures. Porfirians’ appreciation for the pre-Columbians, however, did not extend to contemporary Indians, who were considered to be a drag on modernization and an embarrassment. Mexico’s modernization was symbolized by the transformation of Mexico City, the principal venue for the Centennial programs. The capital had been remodeled along Parisian lines with grand boulevards, roundabouts (glorietas), and green space. Electric tramways also connected neighborhoods with downtown, new fashionable suburbs displayed mansions with modern conveniences, and high-end department stores sold merchandise imported from Paris and London. During the Centenary, the Paseo de la Reforma and downtown avenues accommodated parades with patriotic and commercial themes, and central plazas provided space for industrial and cultural exhibitions similar to those found at international fairs. The Desfile Histórico depicted scenes from the conquest, colonial, and independence periods that outlined a liberal version of Mexican history. The program also featured openings of primary schools, a public university, an insane asylum, and water works, all indicative of Porfirian notions of modernization. The Centennial’s audience included Mexico City residents, visitors from the provinces, and delegates from the United States, Europe, and Asia. International and liberal newspapers characterized events as festive and patriotic, while the conservative press protested the lack of attention given to Agustín de Iturbide, the conservative independence leader, and to the Catholic Church. During the celebration, supporters of Francisco I. Madero, the reformer imprisoned by Díaz, organized two protests that interrupted events and foreshadowed troubles ahead. Following Madero’s escape from prison, his call to revolution was answered by peasants, provincial elites, and local strongmen whose movements forced Díaz to resign the following year. Revolutionary governments subsequently used Independence Day celebrations, including another centennial in 1921, to promote their political and cultural agendas, including anti-clericalism and indigenous culture as national culture.

scholarly journals Dark tourism consumption in Mexico City: a new perspective of the thanatological experience

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-168
Author(s):  
Mark Speakman
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Contemporary Theory ◽  
Dark Tourism ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Mexican Society ◽  
The Common ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Geographical Locations

Purpose The Euro-centric nature of dark tourism research is limiting the perspective and restricting the scope of contemporary theory. Hence, this paper aims to explore how dark tourism consumption differs in a society apart from the Anglo/Eurosphere. This is done by testing Stone and Sharpley’s (2008) thanatological framework in Mexico, a country whose residents are renown for having a unique perspective on death, to assess whether Mexican dark tourism consumers undergo a similar, or different, thanatological experience to that proposed in the framework. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a qualitative approach in the form of a case study. The opinions of Mexican dark tourism consumers were gained by using the technique of semi-structured interviewing in four separate dark tourism sites within Mexico City, with coding serving as the form of analysis. Findings The findings show that due to the non-existence of an absent/present death paradox in Mexican society, the research participants experienced a thanatological process that contrasts with those from Western societies, which indicates that the thanatological framework is unsuitable in the context of Mexican dark tourism. At the same time, the study contests the common perception that Mexicans have a jovial familiarity with death, and demonstrates that in this case the thanatological process confirmed an acceptance of death, rather than any kind of intimacy. Originality/value The research is valuable in that it is a response to recent calls for research in geographical locations not previously considered in a dark tourism/thanatology context.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document