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PODCAST

New Books in Mexican Studies

New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

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00:21:31

Bernardo de Gálvez: Spanish Hero of the American...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/10/04

Although Spain was never a formal ally of the United States during the American Revolution, its entry into the war definitively tipped the balance against Britain. Led by Bernardo de Gálvez, supreme commander of the Spanish forces in North America, their military campaigns against British settlements on the Mississippi River—and later against Mobile and Pensacola—were crucial in preventing Britain from concentrating all its North American military and naval forces on the fight against George

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00:53:28

The Quake That Drained the Desert with Mary Elizabeth...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/09/30

On May 3, 1887, an earthquake struck near the U.S.-Mexico border. Forty-three people died in Bavispe, Mexico; sixty miles north in Arizona, buildings swayed and a few collapsed, but no one was killed. Today, every person in southern Arizona lives with the underground aftermath of this earthquake: a drained aquifer.The estimated 7.4 magnitude earthquake created a sixty-two-mile rupture, the longest known surface rupture by a normal fault.The Quake That Drained the Desert (University of Nebraska

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45:01

Ulices Piña, "Rebellious Citizens: Social Upheaval...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/09/13

In Rebellious Citizens: Social Upheaval and Democracy in Revolutionary Mexico (University of Nebraska Press, 2026), Ulices Piña shows that democracy in Mexico has never been the exclusive domain of elites, nor confined to the ballot box. Focusing on the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution of 1910–20, Piña explores how citizens forged a substantive democratic culture in the crucible of three successive social upheavals that shook the established social order in the central western state of Jalisco

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38:00

Tatiana Seijas, "American Metropolis: The Making of...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/08/23

Mexico City was America's largest city in the seventeenth century – a genuine metropolis. InAmerican Metropolis: The Making of Mexico City(Cambridge University Press, 2026), Dr. Tatiana Seijas reveals a rich tapestry of stories about essential workers who remade and transformed the city during this period. Her narrative style carries readers to a unique place and time with residents from around the world who sold food, facilitated transportation, provided care, and valued the city's silver. Free and

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67:25

Gabriella Soto, "Border Afterlives: Migrant Deaths,...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/07/19

Border Afterlives:Migrant Deaths, Forensic Investigations, and the Politics of Haunting(University of Arizona Press, 2026)beginswith the undocumented individuals who die crossing the U.S.-Mexico border—deaths that are both preventable and politically produced.Moving between the practical and the philosophical, forensic anthropologist and author GabriellaSoto asks what it means to care for the dead and what society owes to those who die in its name. Through the lens of haunting, she explores

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53:59

Mary E. Mendoza, "Deadly Divide: How Insects,...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/07/11

As many as ten thousand people attempt to illegally cross the border between the US and Mexico each month, braving deserts, rivers, and other environmental hazards in the process. But the very illegality of that crossing has an environmental history, writes Penn State University assistant professor Mary Mendoza inDeadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border (University of North Carolina Press, 2026). It was diseases, microbes, insects, and animals which, in

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59:28

Rachel Grace Newman, "The Future in Their Hands:...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/05/10

The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite (U California Press, 2026), by Dr. Rachel Grace Newman is a deep history of the politics of foreign education in Mexico, where many influential figures have degrees from European or US institutions. Reconstructing the history of student mobility from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, Dr. Newman unveils the social hierarchies, political languages, and institutional mechanisms that created Mexico’s foreign-educated

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48:51

Richard Ivan Jobs and Steven Van Wolputte, "In the...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/05/02

In the mid-1930s the amateur French ethnographer and filmmaker Bernard de Colmont ventured into the mountainous state of Chiapas to study the Lacandón people and broadcast their way of life to a curious European public. Considered a “lost tribe,” the Lacandón were thought to be the closest living relatives of the ancient Maya.De Colmont became a celebrity explorer whose adventures generated considerable attention. The Lacandón themselves, however, were silenced in his tale. Nearly a century later,

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60:40

David-James Gonzales, "Breaking Down the Walls of...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/04/14

On March 2, 1945, five Mexican American families and their Jewish American lawyer filed a class-action lawsuit against four school districts in Orange County, California, to end the segregation of ethnic Mexican children. In a shocking decision, the court ruled in favor of plaintiffs, setting a legal and historical precedent in Mendez, et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County that shook the foundations of Jim Crow America and led to the end of de jure school segregation across the

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80:34

Ruth Mandujano López, "Steamships Across the Pacific:...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/04/09

How did the movement of people, goods, and ships reshape connections between Latin America and Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?In Steamships Across the Pacific: Maritime Journeys between Mexico, China, and Japan, 1867–1914 (U Hong Kong Press, 2025), Ruth Mandujano López examines this question through the lens of maritime travel. Focusing on Mexico’s participation in emerging steamship networks linking it to China and Japan, the book traces how these routes facilitated new

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48:24

Why Did Langston Hughes's "Troubled Lands" Go...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/03/27

Why did Langston Hughes's translations of Mexican and Cuban stories go unpublished for nearly a century?A landmark book—the first complete publication of Langston Hughes’s translations of thirty-three stories by eighteen Mexican and Cuban writers In late 1934, Langston Hughes, already established as a leading voice of literary Black America, traveled to Mexico City, where he stayed for more than five months and began translating short fiction by prominent Mexican and Cuban writers. These stories,

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28:29

Lucia Motolinia, "Unity through Particularism: How...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/03/24

Why do supposedly accountability-enhancing electoral reforms often fail in young democracies? How can legislators serve their constituents when parties control the necessary resources? Unity through Particularism: How Electoral Reforms Influence Parties and Legislative Behavior (Cambridge University Press, 2026) by Dr. Lucia Motolinia sheds light on these questions and more by explaining how parties can use personal vote-seeking incentives in order to decrease intra-party dissent. Studying a unique

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52:33

Anne W. Johnson, "Mexico in Space: From La Raza...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/03/12

From Aztec sun stones to satellite launches, from muralist visions to dark sky parks, Mexico's engagement with outer space is fundamental to its identity. Mexico in Space: From La Raza Cósmica to the Space Race (University of Arizona Press, 2026) offers a groundbreaking look at how the country has navigated the tensions between technological dependence and sovereign dreams.Anthropologist Anne W. Johnson reveals Mexico's unique relationship with outer space, describing Indigenous knowledge,

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65:09

Pablo Zavala, "Forging a Mexican People: Collective...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/03/10

Forging a Mexican People: Collective Subjectivities in Postrevolutionary Print Culture, 1917–1968 (University of Arizona Press, 2026) shows how illustrated print culture helped to construct and deconstruct versions of “a people” in postrevolutionary Mexico. Through meticulous research, Dr. Pablo Zavala uncovers the ways photographers, graphic artists, writers, and activists used print culture to challenge hegemonic conceptions of state-guided narratives and forge alternative collective

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75:33

Paul Gillingham, "Mexico: A 500-Year History"...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/03/07

Mexico is among the most unique nations in the world, writes Northwestern University historian Paul Gillingham in Mexico: A 500-Year History (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025). The country has several claims to fame in this regard - one of the first to abolish slavery, North America's first Black president, North America's only Indigenous president, and its only woman president. Gillingham explains the rich, complex, often bloody, and just as often inspiring history of this place from its early

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44:29

Allison Powers, "Arbitrating Empire: United States...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/02/23

Arbitrating Empire: United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law (Oxford UP, 2024) by Dr. Allison Powers offers a new history of the emergence of the United States as a global power-one shaped as much by attempts to insulate the US government from international legal scrutiny as it was by efforts to project influence across the globe. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States, Mexico, Panama, and the United Kingdom, the book traces how thousands of

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45:52

Samuel Holley-Kline, "In the Shadow of El Tajín: The...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/02/03

Located in the Papantla municipality of the Mexican state of Veracruz, El Tajín is a UNESCO World Heritage site but a lesser-known tourist destination and national symbol. The Indigenous Totonac residents of the region know well that the site’s relative absence from discussions of global archaeology and heritage belies a century of wide-ranging labor, extractive industries, and commodity exchange.In the Shadow of El Tajín: The Political Economy of Archaeology in Modern Mexico (U Nebraska Press,

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36:46

Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, "Taco" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2026/01/19

Taco (Bloomsbury, 2025) is a deep dive into the most iconic Mexican food from the perspective of a Mexico City native. In a narrative that moves from Mexico to the United States and back, Dr. Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado discusses the definition of the taco, the question of the tortilla and the taco shell, and the existence of the taco as a modern social touchstone that has been shaped by history and geography. Challenging the idea of centrality and authenticity, in this latest addition to

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49:56

Karma F. Frierson, "Local Color: Reckoning with...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2025/12/23

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, but not of the individual self. In Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz (University of California Press, 2025),

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53:12

Irvin Ibargüen, "Caught in the Current: Mexico's...

New Books in Mexican Studies ·

2025/12/21

Migration between the United States and Mexico is often compared to the river that runs along the border: a "flow" of immigrants, a "flood" of documented and undocumented workers, a "dam" that has broken. Scholars, journalists, and novelists often tell this story from a south-to-north perspective, emphasizing Mexican migration to the United States, and the American response to the influx of people crossing its borders. In Caught in the Current, Irvin Ibargüen offers a Mexico-centered history of

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