The cultural production of Mexico

I recently reviewed Jennifer Jolly's (2018) Creating Pátzcuaro, Creating Mexico: Art, Tourism, and Nation Building under Lázaro Cárdenas for Monthly Review. Overall, I found the book very interesting, and learned much about the study and interpretation of art, as well as how Pátzcuaro was turned into a historical monument to a particular notion of Mexican culture, and the important role of internal tourism in reproducing this national identity. Some of the minor details were a inconsistent with my own study of Mexican history, and the neglect of politico-economic factors sometimes resulted in incomplete explanations, but overall it is a compelling and worthwhile book.

The full review is available at Monthly Review: https://monthlyreview.org/2020/01/01/interrogating-the-cultural-production-of-mexico/

Geographic rift in the urban periphery

The preprint of our article in the Journal of Latin American Geography describing work on the use of the concept of geographic rift---i.e., a metabolic rift referring to the spatio-geographical antagonisms associated with the disjuncture between material and value flows through the landscape---to examine the drivers and processes of land change in Morelia's urban periphery was just released. It can be accessed through Project Muse: https://doi.org/10.1353/lag.0.0106

Solidarity rises up to greet the caravan in Mexico

Afsaneh Moradian, Bea Abbott, Héctor A. Rivera and Brian Napoletano report from Mexico and the U.S. on the progress of the migrant caravan through Mexico — and on the inspiring displays of solidarity at every stop that set an example for activists in the U.S. — for Socialist Worker.

Members of the caravan in Mapastepec, Chiapas on October 25. Photo by José Manuel Mojica Vélez.

The founding of Science for the People-Mexico

I recently had the honor of helping to translate the declaration announcing the founding of Science for the People-Mexico, which was just published today in Socialist Worker. Two key issues that the Mexico branch of SftP formed around are concerns regarding the way science has been bent to the service of ongoing capital accumulation and the attacks and inaction on climate science.

Mexico’s students today and the spirit of ’68

Together with Héctor Agredano Rivera, I translated an analysis by Edgard Sánchez Ramírez of the Partido Revolucionario de Trabajadores on the student mobilizations that emerged in response to a recent incident on the UNAM campus in Mexico City that was just published by Socialist Worker.

The crisis of the Mexican regime and the 2018 elections

A statement of the Partido Revolucionario de Trabajadores (Revolutionary Workers' Party) on the Mexican elections of 1 July 2018 that I translated into English together with Héctor Agredano River and Fernando Estañol Tecuatl  was just published by MRonline. The article outlines a revolutionary perspective on these historic elections and what they mean for the Mexican Left.