Mexico Interrupted

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.

In this first book devoted to the genesis, failure, and lasting legacy of Ulysses S. Grant’s comprehensive American Indian policy, Mary Stockwell shows Grant as an essential bridge between Andrew Jackson’s pushing Indians out of the American experience and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s welcoming them back in. Situating Grant at the center of Indian policy development after the Civil War, Interrupted Odyssey: Ulysses S. Grant and the American Indians reveals the bravery and foresight of the eighteenth president in saying that Indians must be saved and woven into the fabric of American life. In the late 1860s, before becoming president, Grant collaborated with Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian who became his first commissioner of Indian affairs, on a plan to rescue the tribes from certain destruction. Grant hoped to save the Indians from extermination by moving them to reservations, where they would be guarded by the U.S. Army, and welcoming them into the nation as American citizens. By so doing, he would restore the executive branch’s traditional authority over Indian policy that had been upended by Jackson. In Interrupted Odyssey, Stockwell rejects the common claim in previous Grant scholarship that he handed the reservations over to Christian missionaries as part of his original policy. In part because Grant’s plan ended political patronage, Congress overturned his policy by disallowing Army officers from serving in civil posts, abandoning the treaty system, and making the new Board of Indian Commissioners the supervisors of the Indian service. Only after Congress banned Army officers from the Indian service did Grant place missionaries in charge of the reservations, and only after the board falsely accused Parker of fraud before Congress did Grant lose faith in his original policy. Stockwell explores in depth the ousting of Parker, revealing the deep-seated prejudices that fueled opposition to him, and details Grant’s stunned disappointment when the Modoc murdered his peace commissioners and several tribes—the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Sioux—rose up against his plans for them. Though his dreams were interrupted through the opposition of Congress, reformers, and the tribes themselves, Grant set his country firmly toward making Indians full participants in the national experience. In setting Grant’s contributions against the wider story of the American Indians, Stockwell’s bold, thoughtful reappraisal reverses the general dismissal of Grant’s approach to the Indians as a complete failure and highlights the courage of his policies during a time of great prejudice.

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.

This book provides an accessible and academically rigorous commentary on immigrant young adults' educational experiences. With a particular emphasis on Latino immigrants, this book is the first of its kind to present research on dropouts from this community as a unique subgroup, making it relevant to policy-makers, academics and practitioners as well as a more general audience.

Mexico has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world. Intimate Crimes outlines the history of kidnapping in Mexico City by constructing a narrative of this crime based on extensive qualitative research on gangs, policing and other crime-related policies. The book also analyses the effect of kidnapping - and crime more broadly - on how communities experience the city, as well as the strategies put in place by potential kidnapping victims to deal with the threat of being victimised by someone close to them, a common occurrence in Mexico City, including analysing the processes through which household employees are screened and selected in Mexican households. The book presents the results of over a year of fieldwork in Mexico, and creates a qualitative database of news reports for the material used in its writing. It includes material from over 70 interviews with kidnapping victims, their families, potential victims and their employees, police, prosecutors, government agents, journalists and other informants. Intimate Crimes contributes to existing criminological literature on Mexico and Latin America by making an important contribution to a subject of the outmost regional importance. The book also contributes to broader criminological topics on the rule of law, criminal gangs, policing and the impact of economic development on crime. It salso build on the existing literature on empirical work on trust and signalling, particularly as it relates to contexts of weak rule of law and low state protection.

No book until now has tied in two centuries of Mexican serial narratives—tales of glory, of fame, and of epic characters, grounded in oral folklore—with their subsequent retelling in comics, radio, and television soap operas. Wright’s multidisciplinary Serial Mexico delves into this storytelling tradition: examining the nostalgic tales reimagined in novelas, radionovelas, telenovelas and onwards, and examining the foundational figures who have been woven into society. This panorama shows the Mexican experience of storytelling from the country’s early days until now, showcasing protagonists that mock authority, make light of hierarchy, and embrace the hybridity and mestizaje of Mexico. These tales reflect on and respond to crucial cultural concerns such as family, patriarchy, gender roles, racial mixing, urbanization, modernization, and political idealism. Serial Mexico thus examines how serialized storytelling’s melodrama and sensationalism reveals key political and cultural messaging. In a detailed yet accessible style, Wright describes how these stories have continued to morph with current times’ concerns and social media. Will tropes and traditions carry on in new and reimagined serial storytelling forms? Only time will tell. Stay tuned for the next episode.

This book examines students with limited or interrupted education (SLIFE) in the context of English learners and teacher preparation courses from a cultural and social lens. The book is divided into five parts. Part I frames the conversation and contributions in this edited volume; Part II provides an overview of SLIFE, Part III focuses on teacher preparation programs, Part IV discusses the challenges faced by SLIFE in K-12 learning environments and Part V examines SLIFE in adult learning environments. This book is unique in that it offers practical instructional tools to educators, thus helping to bridge theory and practice. Moreover, it retains a special focus on K-12 and adult SLIFE and has an inclusive and international perspective, which includes a novel theoretical framework to support the mental, emotional, and instructional needs of LGBTQ+ refugee students. The book is of interest to teacher educators, in-service and pre-service teachers, English literacy educators, graduate students, tutors, facilitators, instructors, and administrators working in organizations serving SLIFE in K-12 and adult learning environments.