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This book documents Mexico's gradual transition to democracy, written from a perspective which pits opposition activists' post-electoral conflicts against their usage of regime-constructed electoral courts at the centre of the democratization process. It addresses the puzzle of why, during key moments of Mexico's 27-year democratic transition, opposition parties failed to use autonomous electoral courts established to mitigate the country's often violent post-electoral disputes, despite formal guarantees of court independence from the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI), Mexico's ruling party for 71 years (preceeding the watershed 2000 presidential elections). Drawing on hundreds of author interviews throughout Mexico over a three-year period and extensive archival research, the author explores choices by the rightist National Action Party (PAN) and the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) between post-electoral conflict resolution via electoral courts and via traditional routes - mobilization and bargaining with the PRI-state.
Beginning with volume 41 (1979), the University of Texas Press became the publisher of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, the most comprehensive annual bibliography in the field. Compiled by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress and annotated by a corps of more than 130 specialists in various disciplines, the Handbook alternates from year to year between social sciences and humanities. The Handbook annotates works on Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and the Guianas, Spanish South America, and Brazil, as well as materials covering Latin America as a whole. Most of the subsections are preceded by introductory essays that serve as biannual evaluations of the literature and...
Kelly Donahue-Wallace surveys the art and architecture created in the Spanish Viceroyalties of New Spain, Peru, New Granada, and La Plata from the time of the conquest to the independence era. Emphasizing the viceregal capitals and their social, economic, religious, and political contexts, the author offers a chronological review of the major objects and monuments of the colonial era. In order to present fundamental differences between the early and later colonial periods, works are offered chronologically and separated by medium - painting, urban planning, religious architecture, and secular art - so the aspects of production, purpose, and response associated with each work are given full attention. Primary documents, including wills, diaries, and guild records are placed throughout the text to provide a deeper appreciation of the contexts in which the objects were made.
This book examines the medieval legacy that influences life in Spanish-speaking North America to the present day. Focusing on the period from 1517?the expedition of Hernandez de Cordoba?to the middle of the seventeenth century, Weckmann describes how explorers, administrators, judges, and clergy introduced to the New World a culture that was essentially medieval. That the transplanted culture differentiated itself from that of Spain is due to the resistance of the indigenous cultures of Mexico.
From monumental cathedrals to simple parish churches, perhaps as many as 100,000 churches and civic buildings were constructed in Mexico during the viceregal or colonial period (1535-1821). Many of these structures remain today as witnesses to the fruitful blending of Old and New World forms and styles that created an architecture of enduring vitality. In this profusely illustrated book, Robert J. Mullen provides a much-needed overview of Mexican colonial architecture and its attendant sculpture. Writing with just the right level of detail for students and general readers, he places the architecture in its social and economic context. He shows how buildings in the larger cities remained closer to European designs, while buildings in the pueblos often included prehispanic indigenous elements. This book grew out of the author's twenty-five-year exploration of Mexico's architectural and sculptural heritage. Combining an enthusiast's love for the subject with a scholar's care for accuracy, it is the perfect introduction to the full range of Mexico's colonial architecture.
The plaza has been a defining feature of Mexican urban architecture and culture for at least 4,000 years. Ancient Mesoamericans conducted most of their communal life in outdoor public spaces, and today the plaza is still the public living room in every Mexican neighborhood, town, and city—the place where friends meet, news is shared, and personal and communal rituals and celebrations happen. The site of a community’s most important architecture—church, government buildings, and marketplace—the plaza is both sacred and secular space and thus the very heart of the community. This extensively illustrated book traces the evolution of the Mexican plaza from Mesoamerican sacred space to mo...
This book addresses the causes, effects, and dynamics of political corruption in Mexico. Systematic analysis of corruption is critical to a better understanding of the politics of Mexico, and despite the many conceptual and methodological obstacles, the importance of the subject matter demands treatment. Morris's work should therefore be seen not as definitive, but as an initial step in understanding a central dimension of Mexican politics. Corruption, as a topic of research, invites certain misunderstandings, as it is a broad concept conveying a variety of moral connotations. This inquiry into political corruption is not intended to depict the Mexican people or society as any less or more m...
Historians are concerned today that the Spaniards' early accounts of their first experiences with the Indians in the Americas should be balanced with accounts from the Indian perspective. We People Here reflects that concern, bringing together important and revealing documents written in the Nahuatl language in sixteenth-century Mexico. James Lockhart's superior translation combines contemporary English with the most up-to-date, nuanced understanding of Nahuatl grammar and meaning. The foremost Nahuatl conquest account is Book Twelve of the Florentine Codex. In this monumental work, Fray Bernardino de Sahag�n commissioned Nahuas to collect and record in their own language accounts of the conquest of Mexico; he then added a parallel Spanish account that is part summary, part elaboration of the Nahuatl. Now, for the first time, the Nahuatl and Spanish texts are together in one volume with en face English translations and reproductions of the copious illustrations from the Codex. Also included are five other Nahua conquest texts. Lockhart's introduction discusses each one individually, placing the narratives in context.
A Guide to Mexican Art, a survey of more than twenty centuries of art, has a double purpose. It provides an ample version of one of the great national arts by a leading art historian, and it serves simultaneously as a practical guide to the art's outstanding masterpieces. The Guide will thus be of value to specialists and students of Latin American art and to sightseers as an introduction and guide to the art and architecture of Mexico. To facilitate its use for the latter purpose, Professor Fernández has based his exposition on the sensitive analysis of works to be found almost exclusive in museums and public buildings accessible to the tourist. The book was originally published in Spanish in 1958 and revised in 1961. This English translation, from the second edition has been brought up to date by the author and translator.
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