A concise overview of 20th- and 21st-century Mexico, this volume explores the political, economic, social, and cultural history of the world's largest Spanish-speaking country. From NAFTA to narcotics, from immigration to energy, the ties that bind our nation and Mexico are varied and strong. Mexico uncovers the real Mexico that lies behind the stereotypes of tacos, tequila, and tourist hotels. Compiled by leading scholars of Mexican history and society, its more than 150 entries examine the nation in all its fascinating contradictions and complexity. This concise yet thorough study, covering the last 100 years of Mexican history, is the only one volume, A–Z reference work available to students, scholars, and readers curious about one of the world's most diverse and dynamic societies. What was the Mexican Revolution all about? Who are the Zapatistas? And why do Mexicans celebrate Cinco de Mayo? Mexicans are America's largest immigrant group and Mexico is America's favorite tourist destination. Yet we need to learn more and understand better our fascinating neighbor to the south. Mexico—comprehensive and accessible—is the best place to start.

The only reader currently available on criminality in Latin America, Reconstructing Criminality in Latin America reconstructs the way in which different Latin American societies have viewed, described, defined, and reacted to criminal behavior. Crime in Latin America is explored in terms of gender, race, class, and criminological theory. The highly readable essays in this book explore how Catholic notions of sin, natural law, the 'divine' rights of absolutist monarchs, liberal rights of 'man,' positivism, and social Darwinism received a sympathetic, even enthusiastic, endorsement from policy makers throughout Latin America. Reconstructing Criminality in Latin America also shows how new methodologies have given scholars deeper insight into the significance of crime in Latin American societies. The selections testify that the insights of scholars like Eric Hobsbawm and Michel Foucault are the foundations of modern histories of crime in Latin America. This book is ideal for criminal justice, sociology, and Latin American social history courses.

Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico explores elite notions of crime and criminality from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. In Mexico these notions represented contested areas of the social terrain, places where generalized ideas about criminality transcended the individual criminal act to intersect with larger issues of class, race, gender, and sexuality. It was at this intersection that modern Mexican society bared its soul. Attitudes toward race amalgamation and indios, lower-class lifestyles and läperos, women and sexual deviance, all influenced perceptions of criminality and ultimately determined the fundamental issue of citizenship: who belonged and who did not. The liberal discourse of toleration and human rights, the positivist discourse of order and progress, the revolutionary discourse of social justice and integration sought in turn to disguise the exclusions of modern Mexican society behind a veil of criminality?to proscribe as criminal those activities that criminologists, penologists, and anthropologists clearly linked to marginalized social groups. This book attempts to lift that veil and to gaze, like Josä Guadalupe Posada, at the grinning calavera that it shields.

The tenth edition of Keen's Latin American Civilization inaugurates a new era in the history of this classic anthology by dividing it into two volumes. This first volume retains most of the colonial period sources from the ninth edition but with some significant additions including two new sets of images (representations of Brazilian cannibals and “casta paintings” of mixed race families), an alternative conquest narrative, two new readings on imperial governance, and three new readings on gender and sexuality, including selections from the autobiography of a Spanish nun who took on a male persona to fight as a soldier in the American colonies. The 88 excerpts in volume one provide foundational and often riveting first-hand accounts of life in colonial Latin America. Concise introductions for chapters and excerpts provide essential context for understanding the primary sources.

Analyzing the satirical Mexico City penny press from 1900 to 1910, Robert M. Buffington argues that the press offered its working-class readers alternative masculine scripts that they could adopt to challenge social hierarchies.

Keen's Latin American Civilization introduces readers to the sweeping panorama of Latin American history through a classic collection of primary documents. More than 140 readings, organized chronologically and placed in context by insightful introductory notes and essays, provide vivid glimpses of life in Latin America from the Conquest to the colonial and republican eras to contemporary Latin America. In the ninth edition, editors Robert Buffington and Lila Caimari document dramatic recent changes in Latin America, including the resurgence of leftist governments in South and Central America, the feminization of politics from the grassroots to the presidency, the devastating effects of narco-trafficking and political corruption on law and order, and growing concerns about the environment.

In A Sentimental Education for the Working Man Robert Buffington reconstructs the complex, shifting, and contradictory ideas about working-class masculinity in early twentieth-century Mexico City. He argues that from 1900 to 1910, the capital’s satirical penny press provided working-class readers with alternative masculine scripts that were more realistic about their lives, more responsive to their concerns, and more representative of their culture than anything proposed by elite social reformers and Porfirian officials. The penny press shared elite concerns about the destructive vices of working-class men, and urged them to be devoted husbands, responsible citizens, and diligent workers; but it also used biting satire to recast negative portrayals of working-class masculinity and to overturn established social hierarchies. In this challenge to the "macho" stereotype of working-class Mexican men, Buffington shows how the penny press contributed to the formation of working-class consciousness, facilitated the imagining of a Mexican national community, and validated working-class men as modern citizens.

The tenth edition of Keen's Latin American Civilization by Robert Buffington and Lila Caimari inaugurates a new era in the history of this classic anthology by dividing it into two volumes. The first volume retains most of the colonial period sources from the ninth edition but with some significant additions including new sets of images, an alternative conquest narrative, new readings on imperial governance, gender, and sexuality. The 88 excerpts in volume one provide foundational and riveting first-hand accounts of life in colonial Latin America. Concise introductions for chapters and excerpts provide essential context for understanding the primary sources. The second volume retains most of the modern period sources from the ninth edition but with some significant additions including new readings on popular culture, ideologies of modernization, revolution and dictatorship, as well as new sources that reflect the latest events and trends. The 84 excerpts in volume two provide foundational and often riveting first-hand accounts of life in modern Latin America. Concise introductions for chapters and excerpts provide essential context for understanding the primary sources.