A Companion to Mexican History and Culture features 40 essays contributed by international scholars that incorporate ethnic, gender, environmental, and cultural studies to reveal a richer portrait of the Mexican experience, from the earliest peoples to the present.
* Features the latest scholarship on Mexican history and culture by an array of international scholars
* Essays are separated into sections on the four major chronological eras
* Discusses recent historical interpretations with critical historiographical sources, and is enriched by cultural analysis, ethnic and gender studies, and visual evidence
* The first volume to incorporate a discussion of popular music in political analysis

List of Figures xi

Notes on Contributors xv

Introduction: The Dimensions of the Mexican Experience 1

Part I: The Mexican Experience 11

1. Living the Vida Local: Contours of Everyday Life 13
William E. French

2. On the Street Corner where Stereotypes are Born: Mexico City, 1940-1968 34
Ricardo Pérez Montfort

3. Consumption and Material Culture from Pre-Contact through the Porfiriato 54
Steven B. Bunker and Víctor M. Macías-González

4. Consumption and Material Culture in the Twentieth Century 83
Steven B. Bunker and Víctor M. Macías-González

5. Geographic Regionalism and Natural Diversity 119
Christopher R. Boyer

6. The Cactus Metaphor 131
David Yetman

Part II: The Indigenous World Before the Europeans 143

7. The Gods Depart: Riddles of the Rise, Fall, and Regeneration of Mesoamerica's Indigenous Societies 145
Susan Kellogg

8. Painting History, Reading Painted Histories: Ethnoliteracy in Prehispanic Oaxaca and Colonial Central Mexico 163
Elizabeth Bakewell and Byron Ellsworth Hamann

Part III: The Silver Heart of the Spanish Empire: Colonial Experiences 193

9. The Gods Return: Conquest and Conquest Society (1502-1610) 195
Matthew Restall and Robert Schwaller

10. The Kingdom of New Spain in the Seventeenth Century 209
Linda A. Curcio-Nagy

11. The Enlightened Colony 230
Susan M. Deeds

Part IV: Two Centuries of Independence: The Republican Century 249

12. Independence and the Generation of the Generals, 1810-1848 251
Christon I. Archer

13. The U.S. Intervention in Mexico, 1846-1848 262
Linda Arnold

14. Republicans and Monarchists, 1848-1867 273
Erika Pani

15. The Civilian and the General, 1867-1911 288
Paul Garner

Special Themes

16. The Penal Code of 1871: From Religious to Civil Control of Everyday Life 302
Kathryn A. Sloan

17. Conquering the Environment and Surviving Natural Disasters 316
James A. Garza

18. Indigenism in General and the Maya in Particular in the Nineteenth Century 328
Terry Rugeley and Michele M. Stephens

19. A Brief History of the Historia moderna de México 339
Servando Ortoll and Pablo Piccato

20. The House at Sadi Carnot 33: Amateur Photography and Domestic Architecture in Porfirian Culture 361
Patricia Massé

21. Disorder and Control: Crime, Justice and Punishment in Porfirian and Revolutionary Society 371
Elisa Speckman Guerra

22. Military and Nation in Mexico, 1821-1916 390
Stephen Neufeld

Part V: Two Centuries of Independence: The Revolutionary Century 405

23. The Sonoran Dynasty and the Reconstruction of the Mexican State 407
Jürgen Buchenau

24. Creating a Revolutionary Culture: Vasconcelos, Indians, Anthropologists, and Calendar Girls 420
William H. Beezley

25. Counter Revolutionary Programs: Social Catholicism and the Cristeros 439
Daniel Newcomer

26. The Apogee of Revolution, 1934-1946 453
Susie Porter

27. The Revolution's Second Generation: The Miracle, 1946-1982 and Collapse of the PRI, 1982-2000 468
Roderic Ai. Camp

Special Themes

28. Photographing Indian Peoples: Ethnography as Kaleidoscope 480
Deborah Dorotinsky

29. Challenges, Political Opposition, Economic Disaster, Natural Disaster and Democratization, 1968 to 2000 493
Ariel Rodríguez Kuri

30. Fighting Bacteria, the Bible, and the Bottle: Projects to Create New Men, Women, and Children, 1910-1940 505
Gretchen Pierce

31. Environment and Environmentalism 518
Emily Wakild

32. Peculiarities of Mexican Diplomacy 538
Monica Rankin and Dina Berger

33. Science and Public Health in the Century of Revolution 561
Gabriela Soto Laveaga and Claudia Agostoni

34. A Century of Childhood: Growing up in Twentieth-Century Mexico 575
Elena Jackson Albarrán

35. ¡De Pie y en Lucha! Indigenous Mobilizations After 1940 589
María L. Olin Muñoz

36. Mexican Immigration to the United States 604
Timothy J. Henderson

37. Sex, Death and Structuralism: Alternative Views of the Twentieth Century 616
Paul Gillingham

38. For Further Research: Space, Sense, and Sensibility 633
Ageeth Sluis

Index 654

William H. Beezley is Professor of History at the University of Arizona, co-Director of the Oaxaca Cultural Institute, and Visiting Distinguished Professor at El Colegio de Mexico. He is the author or editor of 20 volumes on Mexico and Latin America, including Judas at the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico, second edition (2004), Mexican National Identity: Memory, Insinuation, and Popular Culture (2008), and Mexicans in Revolution, 1910-1946 (2008).