Life In Mexico Research Articles

Empowerment and Physical Violence Throughout Women's Reproductive Life In Mexico

This article analyzes intimate partner violence (IPV) against women aged 15 to 21, 30 to 34, and 45 to 49, based on the 2003 National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relationships (in Spanish, ENDIREH) in Mexico. The authors examined the degree of women's empowerment and autonomy in relation to their partners. Logit regression analyses showed that variables significantly associated with physical violence varied between the three age groups, suggesting that women followed specific trajectories throughout their reproductive lives. Some dimensions of empowerment reduced the risk of violence (women's ability to decide whether to work, when to have sexual relations, and the extent of their partners' participation in household chores). Other dimensions (women's decision making regarding reproductive matters) increased such risk. Thus, access to resources meant to empower women did not automatically decrease the risk of violence. The authors recommend specific interventions tailored to each age group, aimed at breaking the cycle of violence.

Thickening Civil Society: Explaining the Development of Associational Life in Mexico

Scholarship has demonstrated the important role that associational life has played in democratic transitions, democratic consolidation, and making democracy work. Unfortunately, however, many countries that have recently completed the transition to democracy lack a strong history of autonomous associations. Given their importance, this research seeks to understand how nonprofit organizations emerge in current-day Mexico, a recent transition country with a traditionally weak associational life, historically controlled by the state. Through a comparison of four Mexican cities this research finds that a transition from one-party rule to competitive elections was necessary to break the incentives for clientelism. Even following the transition, however, the persistence of informal rules from the old regime operating in both government and society restricts the opportunities available to potential ‘public entrepreneurs’. As a result, such entrepreneurs are highly dependent on already existing social infrastructure to obtain necessary human, organizational, and financial resources.

Mexican Justice: Codified Law, Patronage, and the Regulation of Social Affairs in Guerrero, Mexico

Social life in Mexico has long been regulated not by codified jural rules and the institutions of the state but by means of hierarchically structured patronage networks. This article illustrates the pervasiveness of patronage relationships by looking at the activities of a human rights advocacy organization operating in Chilapa, Guerrero. Though ostensibly committed to working through the jural rules and the institutions of the state, practical reality commonly intrudes and forces the organization to activate patronage ties in order to assist their clients. The article also explores the implications of patronage relationships for ongoing debates about the presumed irreconcilability of the state's codified law and the customary law of indigenous communities.

Amores perros and racialised masculinities in contemporary Mexico

This article explores the textualisation of masculinity and race in the Mexican film Amores perros. The central argument is that the film displays Mexican masculinities in both a transgressive and conventional fashion. Transgression is articulated with narratives about life in Mexico City that challenge traditional Mexican masculinities, particularly as these relate to brown masculinities. These traditional masculinities are proven obsolete and futureless. Masculinities that are more progressive are textualised through reference to symbolic elements of manliness codified through whiteness and wealth. These are deemed promising, capable of development and oriented toward the future. However, in representing brownness as obsolete and whiteness as progressive, the film reproduces conventional ideas about masculinities, which are often given value through class and race. The film lays bare race, class and gender tensions in the modern Mexican state, exposing the ways in which ideas of progress and modernity can too easily reconstitute racial and class disenfranchisement.

Democracy in Latin America, 1760-1900. vol. 1, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru

Few fields have been revisited so thoroughly as that of political and civic life in nineteenth-century Latin America. Ideas concerning citizenship, elections, representation, participation, political groups and parties, communitarism, and civic patterns have undergone considerable revision and are the subject of ongoing research. Renewed theoretical and practical concerns have led historians and social scientists to reorient their quests, to reinterpret old data, and — most important of all — to track down repositories and information sources that have not been previously tapped. This turn has challenged long-standing views and has launched a lively re-examination of political and civic practices in the nineteenth century. The resulting debate — encompassing a broad range of scholars in the Americas and Europe — is not merely academic; indeed, it sheds light (and certain shadows) on more recent political concerns.Carlos Foment’s analysis makes a substantial and often passionate contribution to this revisionist trend. The book revisits the emergence and scope of democratic life in Latin America, understanding the “sovereignty of the people” as the horizontal capacity to generate social power rather than as a structural by-product of state building, economic development, and “modernization” (p. 29). To that end, he projects on the region the Tocquevillian perspective based on “civic life” that enlightened our understanding of North American society more than 150 years ago. Diving into a vast array of documentary sources — pamphlets, tabloids, travelogues, private letters, journals, and so on — the author offers a striking panorama of associational life in nineteenth-century Latin America. He challenges the idea that civic life and the performance of democratic principles are linked to a unique pattern of democratic practices. His research spans Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Cuba, and although the present volume focuses only on the first two, it is evident that this multisided research project influenced the complexity of his analytical vision.Tocqueville’s nineteenth-century account of North American civic life inspired this revision of civic association in Latin America; historians and social scientists should be grateful for this enriching panorama that had hardly been glimpsed previously. However, by employing Tocqueville’s model, Foment restricts and minimizes the very scope of his analysis, imposing an externally crafted and lopsided pattern that obscures the complexities and interconnections of Latin American civic and political processes. This is related to the fact that although Foment’s analysis forms part of the revisionist trend discussed above, he does not demonstrate familiarity with the historiographical debates at the core of that trend. Though conversant with an interesting amount of theoretical literature, he tends to ignore certain recent historiographical productions relevant to his question. Attending to this growing body of literature would have helped him avoid commonplace perspectives that oversimplify, and even discredit, some parts of his analysisI shall give three examples. Foment’s documentary evidence, however rich, does not support the idea that postcolonial life was “radically lopsided, with citizens inclined to practice democracy in civil society more than in any other terrain,” and “radically bifurcated, with citizens depositing their sovereignty on each other rather than in government institutions.” In fact, the underlying idea that civic life developed in Latin America within an everlasting authoritarian context ignores the complexity, as well as the diversity, of political processes in Latin America during the long period covered by the analysis. Also, the notion that subaltern groups were totally segregated from civic and political life has been disavowed by a wide literature that shows the political participation and civic life of indigenous, mulatto, and mestizo populations, at different levels and through changing, nonlinear patterns across the century. Finally, the perspective of a political vocabulary based exclusively “on Civic Catholic notions of selfhood” entails biased implications that ignore the weight of the theological discussion in the political developments of the Western world — not just in the Catholic parts of the same — and disregards the considerable influence gained by the secularist trend in some Latin American countries during the nineteenth century (such as the Leyes de Reforma in Mexico or the laws on education and civil marriage in Argentina).Although these criticisms do not negate the pathbreaking character of Foment’s proposal, his perspective would have been strengthened if more contrasting historiographical information had been taken into account. Perhaps this aspect will be addressed in the second volume on Argentina and Cuba.

Carlos A. Forment Democracy in Latin America, 1760-1900, I, Civic selfhood and public life in Mexico and Peru Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2003, XXIII-454 p.

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A Brave Boy and a Good Soldier: John C. C. Hill and the Texas Expedition to Mier (review)

Reviewed by: A Brave Boy and a Good Soldier: John C. C. Hill and the Texas Expedition to Mier Bob Cavendish A Brave Boy and a Good Soldier: John C. C. Hill and the Texas Expedition to Mier. By Mary Margaret McAllen Amberson (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2006. Pp. 94. Author's notes, illustrations, maps, timeline, bibliography, index. ISBN 0876112149. $24.95, cloth. ISBN 0876112300. $12.95, paper.) In the thirteenth century, thirty thousand French children led by Stephen of Cloyes embarked on a crusade to reclaim the Holy Lands. Other than its being a disaster, historians know almost nothing of the crusade or the fate of the thirty thousand young crusaders. Six hundred years later, a young Texas farmboy, John C. C. Hill, joined family and neighbors bound on a frontier crusade. Unlike the French children's fate, however, Hill's adventure has not languished but instead lives in a skillfully written short history of Hill, his fellow Texans, and the Mier raid. In 1842, fourteen-year-old John C. C. Hill convinced his father, Asa, to allow young John to accompany him and others on a reprisal expedition against Mexico's incursion at San Antonio. The expedition to Mier culminated in the infamous black bean incident that cost seventeen Texans their lives. Hill's courageous fighting at Mier earned him the respect of his adversaries, one of whom sent Hill to Mexico City, where he lived as a quasi-adopted son of Santa Anna. Educated at the Colegio de Minería, Hill became a successful engineer, respected by Mexicans and Texans but an object of curiosity and some suspicion for his biculturalism. Hill's surviving the Mier expedition and his successful career in his enemy's backyard earned John Hill a unique niche in Texas lore. Amberson's impressive research enables Brave Boy to tell its own story. Through memoirs and letters, Hill and others recall, explain, describe, and otherwise take you back into their uncertain, anxious world from frontier Texas to sophisticated Mexico City. Hill's youthful naiveté evolves into a more worldly awareness and, on [End Page 410] occasion, cunning that rescues an old benefactor's brother. Despite the hostilities that eventually brought Hill into the world of his Mexican enemy, Hill bore no contempt for this new society. By all accounts from him, his brother, and those who met Hill, he became a universal citizen bearing an affection and respect for his adopted culture as well as his native Texas. A combination of several photographs, period drawings, and two maps illustrate Amberson's biography. Of interest to the reader with limited exposure to Texas history is a timeline beginning with March 6, 1836 (the Alamo's fall) to May 8–9, 1846 (the battles at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma). The timeline provides a sense of perspective as the reader follows young Hill from Texas into his new life in Mexico. Also of interest is the list of characters who appear throughout the biography. Longer histories preclude tools such as these but for the casual reader, such aids are welcome. While Brave Boy is a simply written history, aimed toward a younger reader, it must not be dismissed as a "children's book." If this is junior high literature, this is how it ought to be done. Amberson skillfully weaves dialogue and well-researched fact showing respect for both her craft and her reader. Brave Boy stands on forty-two primary sources and forty-one secondary sources, the effect of which provides compelling drama of battle and personal triumph. Throughout the book, Hill remains the center of the narrative with emphasis on the Mier expedition and its aftermath with Hill. The Mier expedition put Hill on a course toward a broader world than that which his rustic life at Fayetteville, Texas, would have provided. Amberson's epilogue about Hill's graduation from Mexico's prestigious Colegio de Minería provides an upbeat conclusion that destiny is, at the end, a consequence of one's own making. From combatant to captive and finally to renowned engineer, John Hill's life reminds us that neighboring cultures can, and have, produced together extraordinary people even...

Adjectives, Asterisks and Qualifications, or How to Address Democracy in Contemporary Latin America

Adjectives, Asterisks and Qualifications, or How to Address Democracy in Contemporary Latin America Anthony Peter Spanakos (bio) Learning Democracy: Civic Engagement and Electoral Choice in Nicaragua, 1990–2001. By Leslie E. Anderson and Lawrence C. Dodd . (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Pp. 336. $65.00 cloth, $24.00 paper.) The Dubious Link: Civic Engagement and Democratization. By Ariel C. Armony . (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp. 312. $57.95 cloth.) Undoing Democracy: the Politics of Electoral Caudillismo. Edited by David Close and Kalowatie Deonandan . (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004. Pp. 228. $70.00 cloth.) Democracy in Latin America 1760–1900: Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru. By Carlos A. Forment . (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Pp. 488. $39.00 cloth.) The Democracy Makers: Human Rights and International Order. By Nicolas Guilhot . (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Pp. 288. $45.00 cloth.) The Quality of Democracy: Theory and Applications. Edited by Guillermo O’Donnell, Jorge Vargas Cullell, and Osvaldo M. Iazzetta . (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. Pp. 288. $55.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.) Democracy in Latin America: Political Change in Comparative Perspective. By Peter H. Smith . (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 400. $69.00 cloth, $26.95 paper.) Dilemmas of Democracy in Latin America: Crises and Opportunity. By Howard J. Wiarda with the assistance of Esther M. Skelley . (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005. Pp. 256. $75.00 cloth, $27.95 paper.) In 1997, David Collier and Steven Levitsky wrote an important article on conceptual innovation and the proliferation of adjectives in front of the word 'democracy', second-guessing the utility and motivation for the hyphenated terms that were being conceived at breakneck speed (Collier and Levitsky, 1997). Nearly a decade later, research continues to modify the word democracy or redefine it altogether. The books included in this review make an argument that this trend is likely to continue so long as the gap between Latin American reality and democratic modeling continues. After reviewing eight different books focusing on diverse subjects, it is evident that the field of democratization must reconsider how it defines democracy, when such a democracy is consolidated, and how to identify regimes that are not quite democratic. In the end, the issue may best be resolved by identifying a small number of basic types of electoral government, for the sake of quantitative and large n- comparative studies, and then modifying these particular types with whatever adjectives are appropriate in more qualitative and case study approaches. In Dilemmas of Democracy in Latin America: Crisis and Opportunity, Howard J. Wiarda (with Esther Skelley) presents a collection of updated and new articles containing a resounding criticism of democratization literature and foreign policy from one of the earliest critics of developmentalism and the ideas of democracy that it included (Wiarda, 1981, 1985). Unlike so many scholars in recent generations, Wiarda's book deals with theory and grand theory and he remains convinced after four decades of globe-trotting that the U.S. government, Latin Americanists, and even Latin Americans do not really 'get' Latin America. The tendency has been, and remains, for Latin America to be seen either as more 'undeveloped' or 'developed' than it is. The reality, as Wiarda sees it, is that Latin America is far more democratic than critics think, but Latin Americanists must be willing to understand non-democratic adventures in a non-Manichean way. The metaphor that Wiarda resorts to throughout the essays in the book is that Latin American socio-political reality is like a 'crazy-quilt' with multiple levels and influences. There is a presence of what he considers the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, Liberal, Jeffersonian, Madisonian democracy, which is the fundamental model that scholars use to understand Latin America. But there is also a Bolivarian, Rousseauian, Roman Catholic, Organicist tradition that is more important historically and is still very influential. Latin American democracy, Wiarda asserts provocatively, is a synthesis of these influences and though there does seem to be a genuine preference for democracy, the desire for a democracy with a strong president is equally genuine, whether one looks at nineteenth century constitutions or...

Democracy in Latin America, 1760-1900. Volume 1, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru

Democracy in Latin America, 1760-1900. Volume 1, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru

Democracy in Latin America, 1760-1900: Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru. By Carlos A. Forment (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003. xxix plus 454 pp.)

Democracy in Latin America, 1760-1900: Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru. By Carlos A. Forment (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003. xxix plus 454 pp.)

Democracy in Latin America 1760–1900. Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru – Carlos Forment

Democracy in Latin America 1760–1900. Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru – Carlos Forment

Democracy in Latin America 1760-1900, Volume 1: Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru. By Carlos A. Forment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Pp. 453. Illustrations. Notes. Index. $39.00 cloth.

Democracy in Latin America 1760-1900, Volume 1: Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru. By Carlos A. Forment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Pp. 453. Illustrations. Notes. Index. $39.00 cloth.

Forment, Carlos A. Democracy in Latin America. 1760-1900. Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003, 454 pp.

La reseña no presenta resumen.

Democracy in Latin America, 1760-1900. Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru. CARLOS A. FORMENT, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.

In this densely written monograph the author claims to have established a revisionist interpretation of Latin America’s 19thcentury. He rejects strongly the “conventional” view that by 1900 Latin America was suffering from a “colonial legacy” that prevented a smooth transition to democracy in the new century. Although Latin America is used in the title, in fact the focus is only on Spanish America. Brazil does not merit a mention.

Painting a new world: Mexican art and life, 1521-1821

Foreword (Sari Bermudez) Foreword (Lewis I. Sharp) Acknowledgments (Donna Pierce) Map of New Spain and Trade Routes Introduction: Spanish Painting and New Spanish Painting, 1550-1700 (Jonathan Brown) At the Crossroads: Cultural Confluence and Daily Life in Mexico, 1521-1821 (Donna Pierce) Unique Expressions: Painting in New Spain (Rogelio Ruiz Gomar) Originality and Invention in the Painting of New Spain (Clara Bargellini) Contributors Catalog Notes References Cited Index Photographic Credits

Beyond Benedict Anderson: Nation-Building and Popular Democracy in Latin America

Beyond Imagined Communities. Reading and Writing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Ed. by Sara Castro-Klarén and John Charles Chasteen. Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington DC; Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore [etc.] 2003. 280 pp. $45.00. (Paper: $22.95.)Boyer, Christopher Robert. Becoming Campesinos. Politics, Identity, and Agrarian Struggle in Postrevolutionary Michoacán, 1920–1935. Stanford University Press, Stanford (Cal.) 2003. xii, 320 pp. Ill. £45.95.Forment, Carlos A. Democracy in Latin America, 1760–1900. Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru. [Morality and Society Series.] University of Chicago Press, Chicago [etc.] 2003. xxix, 454 pp. Maps. $35.00; £24.50.Larson, Brooke. Trials of Nation Making. Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810–1910. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2004. xiii, 299 pp. Ill. Maps. $70.00; £45.00. (Paper: $24.99; £17.99.)Studies in the Formation of the National State in Latin America. Ed. by James Dunkerley. Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, London, 2002. 298 pp. £14.95; € 20.00; $19.95.

Childhood predictors of late‐life diabetes: The case of Mexico

We investigated the interplay between characteristics of early childhood circumstances and current socioeconomic conditions and health, focusing specifically on diabetes in mid and late life in Mexico. The analysis used data from the 2001 Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS), a large nationally representative study of Mexicans born before 1950. We analyzed the extent to which childhood conditions, such as exposure to infectious diseases, a poor socioeconomic environment, and parental education, affect the risk of diabetes in later life. Our results indicate that individuals age 50 and older who experienced serious health problems before age 10 have a higher risk of having late-life diabetes. There is a significant inverse relationship between maternal education and diabetes in late life of adult offspring. Individuals with better educated mothers have a lower risk of being diabetic after age 50. This relationship remains after controlling for other childhood and adult risk factors.

Book Review: Democracy in Latin America 1760-1900. Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru

Book Review: Democracy in Latin America 1760-1900. Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru

Democracy in Latin America, 1760‐1900: Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru

Democracy in Latin America, 1760‐1900: Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru

North of Eden: Romance and Conquest in Fanny Calderón de La Barca's Life in Mexico

This essay undertakes the analysis of a nineteenth-century woman traveller's book on Mexico. Fanny Calderón de La Barca and her husband, the Spanish Ambassador to Mexico, spent two years living there. The resulting narrative was published in 1843 as Life in Mexico and was endorsed by the historian William H. Prescott. This article analyses the question of gender and travel in this particular case study, focusing on the representation of romance and conquest in Calderón's book. The analysis situates the narrative in terms of the author's biography and the literary history of travel writing on Latin America and it reveals one of the central ambiguities of Calderón's text: on the one hand her critique of patriarchy, on the other, her apparent collusion with colonial discourses and mythologising of the Conquest. Her ethnological construction of Mexican society and her nostalgia for the figure of the outside ‘Conqueror’ prefigure the US ideology of manifest destiny that would bring about the US invasion of Mexico only a few years later.