Mexican independence was, in a sense, an economic event. Through economic concerns, elites created a common ground with non-elites in their demands against foreign domination, and independence was imagined by the lettered men of Mexico as a feat that would nationalize a rich and productive economic apparatus. Mexico, Interrupted investigates these economic hopes during the difficult decades between 1821, the year of the country’s definite separation from Spain, and 1852, a period of political polarization after the US-Mexico War that led the country to the brink of another armed conflict. Drawing on political and popular media, this book studies the Mexican intelligentsia’s obsession with labor and idleness in their attempts to create a wealthy, independent nation. Focusing on figures of work and its opposites, Mexico, Interrupted reconstructs these decades’ “economic imaginaries of independence”: the political and cultural discourses that structured understandings, beliefs, and fantasies of the relationship between “the economy” and the life of an independent polity. By bringing together intellectual history, critical theory, and cultural studies, Gutiérrez Negrón offers a new account of the Mexican nineteenth century and complicates the history of the “spirit of capitalism” in the Americas.

In 2000, Mexico's long invincible Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lost the presidential election to Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN). The ensuing changeover--after 71 years of PRI dominance--was hailed as the beginning of a new era of hope for Mexico. Yet the promises of the PAN victory were not consolidated. In this vivid account of Mexico's recent history, a journalist with extensive reporting experience investigates the nation's young democracy, its shortcomings and achievements, and why the PRI is favored to retake the presidency in 2012.Jo Tuckman reports on the murky, terrifying world of Mexico's drug wars, the counterproductive government strategy, and the impact of U.S. policies. She describes the reluctance and inability of politicians to seriously tackle rampant corruption, environmental degradation, pervasive poverty, and acute inequality. To make matters worse, the influence of non-elected interest groups has grown and public trust in almost all institutions--including the Catholic church--is fading. The pressure valve once presented by emigration is also closing. Even so, there are positive signs: the critical media cannot be easily controlled, and small but determined citizen groups notch up significant, if partial, victories for accountability. While Mexico faces complex challenges that can often seem insurmountable, Tuckman concludes, the unflagging vitality and imagination of many in Mexico inspire hope for a better future.

A widely respected French novelist with a long history of interest in pre-Columbian Mexico, Le Clezio imagined how the thought of early Indian civilizations might have evolved if not for the interruption of European conquest. A powerful evocation of the imaginings that made and unmade an ancient culture. Map.

In Power Interrupted, Sylvanna M. Falcón redirects the conversation about UN-based feminist activism toward UN forums on racism. Her analysis of UN antiracism spaces, in particular the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, considers how a race and gender intersectionality approach broadened opportunities for feminist organizing at the global level. The Durban conference gave feminist activists a pivotal opportunity to expand the debate about the ongoing challenges of global racism, which had largely privileged men’s experiences with racial injustice. When including the activist engagements and experiential knowledge of these antiracist feminist communities, the political significance of human rights becomes evident. Using a combination of interviews, participant observation, and extensive archival data, Sylvanna M. Falcón situates contemporary antiracist feminist organizing from the Americas—specifically the activism of feminists of color from the United States and Canada, and feminists from Mexico and Peru—alongside a critical historical reading of the UN and its agenda against racism.

One of Time Magazine’s Sixteen Best True Crime Books of All Time A crusading Mexican-American journalist searches for justice and hope in an increasingly violent Mexico In the last decade, more than 100,000 people have been killed or disappeared in the Mexican drug war, and drug trafficking there is a multibillion-dollar business. In a country where the powerful are rarely scrutinized, noted Mexican-American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juárez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. One night, Corchado received a tip that he could be the next target of the Zetas, a violent paramilitary group—and that he had twenty-four hours to find out if the threat was true. Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man’s quest to report the truth of his country—as he races to save his own life.

An early 20th century American journalist's articles on Mexico before the Revolution.

When the poet Luis Cernuda flees Spain in February of 1938, he has no idea that he will never again set foot on his native land. In exile in England, his former lover finds him a disheartening job that only intensifies his feelings of bitterness and despair: caring for 3,800 refugee children who have also fled to England after the city of Bilbao fell to Franco's army. Seventy years later, a young Mexican filmmaker living in New York receives a mysterious email that throws his life into complete disarray and forever links him to the famous Spanish poet. The Family Interrupted (the title of Cernuda's only play, which had gone missing for fifty years until Octavio Paz found it in a shoe box in his mother's house) is, as Jorge Volpi once said, "A beautiful example of two decanting narratives constructed with the precision and accuracy of a watchmaker. From the opening lines, the characters' destiny seems--almost--preordained."