Due in large part to sensationalist representations in contemporary media and politics, the U.S.-Mexico border is popularly understood as a space of illegal activity defined by threats of foreign intrusion including: undocumented migration,

Since September 2014, much of Mexico has been gripped by the story of the Ayotzinapa kidnappings – the mass abduction of 43 rural schoolteachers in Iguala in the state of Guerrero. The tragic disappearance of the students has raised questions about the...

Caterina Pizzigoni’s book The Life Within: Local Indigenous Society in Mexico’s Toluca Valley, 1650-1800 (Stanford University Press, 2012) provides a close examination of indigenous society in central Mexico.

Historically speaking, who you were depended on who your rulers were and the ethnic identity (including language, religion, and folkways) of “your” people. In the era of nation-states–that is, our era–these two characteristics have, for most people,

In Americans in the Treasure House: Travel to Porfirian Mexico and the Cultural Politics of Empire (University of Texas Press, 2014), Jason Ruiz explores the role of a distinct group of actors in the relationship between the United States and Mexico: A...

Americans talk a lot about the flow of Mexican immigrants across their southern border. To some that flow is seen as patently illegal and dangerous. To others it’s seen as unstoppable and essential for the functioning of the U.S. economy.

Videography is a powerful tool for recording and representing aspects of human society and culture, and anthropologists have long used – and debated the use of – video as a tool to study indigenous and traditional peoples.

Guadalupe San Miguel Jr. is the author of Chicana/o Struggles for Education: Activism in the Community (Texas AM Press 2013). He is professor of history at the University of Houston and previously published three books by Texas AM Press on education an...

Michael Innis-Jimenez is the author of Steel Bario: The Great Mexican Migration to South Chicago, 1915-1940 (New York University Press, 2013). Innis-Jimenez is assistant professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Alabama.

Today I spoke to Ioan Grillo about his book El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency (Bloomsbury, 2012). This book is an excellent introduction to the state of conflict between drug cartels themselves, the government and the Mexican community.

The violence in Mexico is receiving a lot of media attention internationally. Paul Rexton Kan has produced a book that provides us with a comprehensive and comprehendible introduction to the background to the conflict and its effects.

Isaac Campos is the author of Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs (University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Campos is an assistant professor of history at the University of Cincinnati.

In my work with pre-Hispanic and colonial Mexican pictorial texts, I often wish I could talk with the people who authored them. In the academic setting, sometimes we forget that these documents represent conversations about what was happening in the li...

It’s shocking and embarrassing how little I, as an American, know about Mexican history. Mexico shares a 2,000 mile long border with the United States. Mexico is America’s third largest trading partner (behind Canada–about which I also know nothing–and...

There was a time when “history” was the history of powerful people. Shakespeare captures this notion of history in the prologue to Henry V: O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage,

The question of how we come to understand who we are–nationality-wise–is a thorny one. In a widely-read book, Benedict Anderson said we got nationality, inter alia, by reading about it in books. William Beezley‘s got a different, though complementary,