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Recurriendo al concepto de patrimonio, analizo cómo es que las personas clasifican ciertos bienes como inalienables en escenarios de controversia sobre la apropiación de recursos. Aunque esta perspectiva es pertinente para analizar una variedad de casos, la investigación se centra en cómo los habitantes de la Sierra de Catorce, San Luis Potosí, México —un territorio ubicado al norte del estado potosino que atrae a peregrinos católicos, indígenas huicholes, turistas y empresas mineras— buscan mantener el control sobre sus recursos a través de la creación de organizaciones políticas que vinculan la identidad regional con el trabajo minero.

In this paper, we explore the fiscal space of Mexican state governments: it evaluates the effects of decentralization on subnational public accounts and supports recommendations for fiscal sustainability for the states. Fiscal space is defined as a measure of the availability of resources that allows the adjustment of fiscal policy through financing or public spending. Through the operationalization of three variables, like primary balance, fiscal fatigue and debt limits, the fiscal space with which the states have faced their economic responsibilities during the 2003-2018 period is analyzed. The results show two situations: the first is that the fiscal space of the Mexican state governments is reduced or even required, that is, the data show narrowness in terms of the primary balance sheets, and the second is that, at the same time, these governments still have room for access to debt obligations.

BackgroundMexican state governments’ actions are essential to control the COVID-19 pandemic within the country. However, the type, rigor and pace of implementation of public policies have varied considerably between states. Little is known about the subnational (state) variation policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico.Material and methodsWe collected daily information on public policies designed to inform the public, as well as to promote distancing, and mask use. The policies analyzed were: School Closure, Workplace Closure, Cancellation of Public Events, Restrictions on Gatherings, Stay at Home Order, Public Transit Suspensions, Information Campaigns, Internal Travel Controls, International Travel Controls, Use of Face Masks We use these data to create a composite index to evaluate the adoption of these policies in the 32 states. We then assess the timeliness and rigor of the policies across the country, from the date of the first case, February 27, 2020.ResultsThe national average in the index during the 143 days of the pandemic was 41.1 out of a possible 100 points on our index. Nuevo León achieved the highest performance (50.4); San Luis Potosí the lowest (34.1). The differential between the highest versus the lowest performance was 47.4%.ConclusionsThe study identifies variability and heterogeneity in how and when Mexican states implemented policies to contain COVID-19. We demonstrate the absence of a uniform national response and widely varying stringency of state responses. We also show how these responses are not based on testing and do not reflect the local burden of disease. National health system stewardship and a coordinated, timely, rigorous response to the pandemic did not occur in Mexico but is desirable to contain COVID-19.

Social movement analysts have long recognized that it is not easy to assess outcomes of social activism since direct causality between activism and social, cultural, political, or legal changes is often difficult to trace. This article analyzes the complexities in evaluating the tangled relations between migrant rights activism and migration policy-making by drawing on insights from social movement theories and particularly the concepts of cognitive resonance and political opportunities. The case of Mexico’s civil society advocacy for the rights of Central American migrants and its impact on legal and administrative reforms provides an illustration of such a complex relationship. While admitting that civil society organizations contributed to certain migration reforms in Mexico, we suggest additional explanations for the Mexican state’s seeming openness to the demands advanced by pro-migrant civil society organizations. Furthermore, we argue that the Mexican state’s recent intensification of migration control, despite civil societies’ persistent criticisms, illustrates that, in fact, civil society organizations do not have much sway in shaping migration policies in this country.

This article reconstructs and analyzes the role of the Knights of Columbus in Mexico’s Cristero War. Founded in Connecticut in 1882, the Order quickly expanded into Mexico, establishing its first chapters there in 1905. Within two decades, the Mexican Caballeros de Colón had become one of the country’s most prominent and politically active Catholic lay organizations. During the Cristero War (1926–1929), the Mexican and U.S. Knights collaborated in order to resist the anticlerical Mexican state. In the process, the organization connected and politicized Catholics who supported the Cristero cause. By tracing the expansion of the Knights of Columbus from the United States into Mexico, and then following the Mexican Knights back into exile in the United States, this article demonstrates how transnational political activism shaped the lives of Catholics on both sides of the border. Este artículo reconstruye y analiza el papel que jugó la orden llamada Knights of Columbus en la Guerra Cristera de México. Fundada en Connecticut en 1882, dicha orden se expandió rápidamente a México y estableció sus primeros capítulos ahí en 1905. En el lapso de dos décadas, los “Caballeros de Colón” mexicanos se convirtieron en una de las organizaciones católicas laicas más prominentes y con mayor actividad política del país. Durante la Guerra Cristera (1926–1929), los Caballeros mexicanos y estadounidenses colaboraron con el fin de resistir al Estado mexicano anticlerical. En este proceso, la organización conectó y politizó a los católicos que apoyaban la causa cristera. Al rastrear la expansión de los Caballeros de Colón de los Estados Unidos a México y al seguir sus pasos de regreso al exilio en Estados Unidos, este artículo demuestra cómo el activismo político transnacional conformó las vidas de los católicos a ambos lados de la frontera.

Legitimation is a fraught process for private security companies operating in Mexico and other countries in the Global South where the police have a poor reputation. Mexican private security companies have an ambivalent relationship with the police, which causes firms to engage in two seemingly contradictory practices. Companies attempt to gain legitimacy by aligning with the image of the police to earn a sense of “symbolic stateness” while simultaneously distancing themselves from Mexico's actual police forces so as to disassociate from the institution's poor reputation. Consequently, collaboration between public and private security is limited, despite official attempts by the Mexican state to foster positive contact between them. Overall, this study contributes to the growing literature on private security by providing novel insights into the strategies private security firms utilize to navigate within states possessing delegitimated security forces, and the resulting lucrative political economy landscape.

Esta investigación reflexiona sobre la inversión que el estado mexicano ha realizado desde 2008 hasta 2013 en seguridad pública. Explica los programas federales encaminados a la reforma de los aparatos policiales de los estados y municipios mexicanos. Hace un aporte a la discusión publicando la cantidad de recursos federales destinados a estos programas, y destaca la inversión por estados y municipios cuestionando la efectividad del uso de los mismos. La política de transformación policial está consensuada por los diferentes partidos políticos y los gobernadores, y sin embargo se encuentran diferentes respuestas en la voluntad política de impulso de la reforma en algunas entidades federativas y municipales. El presidente Enrique Peña Nieto y los gobernadores mexicanos confirmaron la voluntad de continuidad de esta política en la reunión de la Conferencia Nacional de Gobernadores (CONAGO) celebrada en Chihuahua en febrero del 2013, así como en otros documentos oficiales publicados por la administración mexicana.

We present a new record of rattlesnake Crotalus scutulatus collected in the county of La Paz, Mexico, that confirms the presence of the species for the Mexican state of Mexico. There is a dubious prior record of a specimen collected on 1967. Either way this species has not been collected again until now.

Resumen Basado en entrevistas con funcionarios de desarrollo y analisis de evidencias historicas, sostengo que, en lugar de estar dirigida a romper el ciclo intergeneracional de reproduccion de la pobreza, los programas de transferencias monetarias de Mexico Procampo (1994) y Progresa-Oportunidades (1997–2002–2014) se implementaron para facilitar un ajuste estructural de largo plazo, mantener una constante migracion de zonas rurales a zonas urbanas, “convertir” a ninos campesinos a nuevas actividades economicas, monetizar la economia rural, incentivar nuevas formas de liderazgo politico y abolir el “caciquismo tradicional”. Validado no solo a traves de estadisticas y de analisis cualitativo, sino tambien por los “metodos experimentales de evaluacion de impacto,” Progresa-Oportunidades se justifica en una dimension “contrafactual” de (pseudo) Casos Controlados Aleatoriamente. Por lo tanto, concluyo que la prueba “contrafactual” de las transferencias monetarias asocia progreso y desarrollo a causalidades redundantes de formas de vida urbana, en vez de demostrar el alcance de objetivos.

Los estudios sobre la política subnacional destacan el amplio poder de los gobernadores y la debilidad de los congresos locales, aspectos que persisten en la política de gasto. Sin embargo, consideramos que es preciso mostrar evidencia sobre la actividad de los congresos para tener una imagen más exacta de esta relación. Con base en el estudio de caso de Jalisco, los objetivos de esta investigación son: a) mostrar evidencia empírica sobre el ejercicio de la función presupuestaria; b) explorar si el estatus del gobierno afecta la conducta del Congreso y su relación con el Ejecutivo; y c) conocer el impacto de las enmiendas sobre el contenido del presupuesto de egresos.

From the model proposed by Johan Galtung, approached from the perspective of gender, the types of violence exerted on women who decide to file complaints of abuse in the Mexican state of Campeche are discussed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a non-random sample, Using categories with emerged from the interviews, we did a descriptive analysis using coding units, drawing conclusions based on frequency and relevance in the texts. The results highlight the importance of analyzing structural and cultural violence from a gender perspective; they also suggest that there are not mechanisms to disentangle the ways in which types of violence are interconnected. In addition, there are gender-based inhibitors on women to report.

¿Cuál es la propuesta de una gestión por resultados (GPR) promovida por el gobierno federal mexicano y cómo se ha aplicado? Este artículo presenta la teoría de una gestión por y para resultados con impactos en la competitividad y bienestar. Se plantea un análisis de los elementos conceptuales del modelo y los procesos de integración conceptual y operativa de dicho modelo en el caso de Brasil y en el gobierno federal mexicano, particularmente en el estado de Baja California. Obteniendo como principal hallazgo la necesidad de fortalecer competencias institucionales en materia de GPR y con ello incidir en los procesos de competitividad y bienestar en el ámbito estatal, para interiorizar una visión de cambio estratégico, la atención al cambio cultural en términos de una eficaz transparencia, rendición de cuentas y controles anticorrupción, su implementación eficiente y con un enfoque transversal, basado en los elementos de gestión.

El artículo que se presenta tiene como objetivo exponer el caso concreto del pueblo indígena nahua afectado por la construcción de una presa hidroeléctrica en Zongolica, Veracruz. El caso muestra cómo, una vez más, el estado mexicano realiza este tipo de obras sin cumplir con los debidos procesos de consulta y participación de la población afectada. Más aún, sin tomar en cuenta los perjuicios de la obra en el territorio y la cultura de los indígenas de la zona. La metodología utilizada en la investigación del caso es inductiva, basada en el método etnográfico y en la observación participante. Se recupera información de entrevistas realizadas en el trabajo de campo y se utilizan fuentes hemerográficas. Los resultados de la investigación muestran que una constante en este tipo de obras es la violación a los derechos de los pueblos indígenas; así como las irregularidades cometidas reiteradamente por las instituciones de gobierno que se hacen cargo de estos procesos de consulta, indemnización y reacomodo de las poblaciones. La investigación documenta el proceso seguido por el gobierno mexicano en la afectación de los indígenas nahuas de Veracruz y la forma en que se está alterando y será modificado su modo de vida y su cultura. A lo largo del texto se abordan preguntas como ¿cuáles son los efectos (sociales, culturales y territoriales) de estas grandes obras en la vida de los pueblos indígenas? ¿Por qué estas obras no toman en cuenta los derechos de los pueblos indígenas ya consagrados en la legislación nacional e internacional? y ¿cómo pueden los pueblos indígenas obligar al estado mexicano a respetar sus derechos?

El objetivo principal del artículo es mostrar algunas de las técnicas usadas por el Estado mexicano durante una protesta social, no sólo para controlar al grupo que realiza dicha acción colectiva, sino para establecer mecanismos de autocontrol y vigilancia hacia las distintas organizaciones y niveles del propio Estado. En este sentido, el trabajo analiza el papel central que tiene el conocimiento para la operación de los mecanismos de poder. Concretamente analizaremos el papel que desempeñó la Dirección Federal de Seguridad como una herramienta fundamental para la construcción y consolidación del moderno Estado mexicano. El trabajo analiza los informes de la Dirección Federal de Seguridad sobre la protesta social conocida como el Pacto Ribereño en Tabasco, México.

‘We will always find ourselves reterritorialized again.’ Guilles Deleuze and Felix GuattariIn 1536, in the northern part of today’s Mexican state of Sinaloa, a group of slave-hunting Spanish soldie...

In recent years, violence related to the so-called Mexican Drug War has escalated to unprecedented levels. As cartels seek to undermine the sovereignty of the Mexican State, they convey their message of social control to the public through various means, including corpse messaging, or leaving threatening and signatory messages on or around the bodies of their victims. Cartels use intimidation and brutality to scare the public into complicity, paralyzing its will to act by making violence a pertinent presence in quotidian Mexican life. This ever-present threat makes for an interesting relationship between the cartels and Mexican citizens. While self-defense militias have formed recently, many citizens seem to revere their social captors, or at least view them as the better of two evils, recognizing the criminal organizations as more legitimate authoritative figures than the Mexican officials, and the propaganda of the narcoculture industry perpetuates this reverence. This paper frames cartels as a ‘counter...

Objective: characterize and compare the intellectual capital in Mexican universities.Methodology / Approach: The study was based on a semi structured survey applied to 102 professors-researchers in four Mexican state universities of the business and administration area.Originality / Relevance: Universities are a source of knowledge; therefore their competitive advantage lies in the configuration of this element to encourage their performance. Thus, the issue of intellectual capital tends to have greater relevance in order to understand this dynamic in the different productive actors and users of knowledge such as universities.Main results: The results show that there are six relevant sub-dimensions of intellectual capital from which levels of intellectual capital are characterized in each university.Theoretical / methodological contributions: intellectual capital refers to the knowledge in organizations enabling them to generate value.Intellectual capital studies are approached from the perspective of companies, however there are few done from the perspective of universities.Keywords: Intellectual Capital; Measurement; Public Mexican Universities; Scientific Knowledge; Professor, El capital intelectual alude al conocimiento en las organizaciones que les permite generar valor. Los estudios sobre capital intelectual son abordados desde la perspectiva de las empresas, pero existen pocos que lo hayan realizado desde la perspectiva de las universidades.Esta investigación tiene por objetivo caracterizar y comparar el capital intelectual en las universidades mexicanas. El estudio se basó en una encuesta semiestructurada aplicada a 102 profesores-investigadores en cuatro universidades estatales mexicanas del área de negocios y administración. Los resultados muestran que existen seis subdimensiones relevantes del capital intelectual, a partir de las cuales se caracterizan los niveles de capital intelectual en cada universidad. Las principales conclusiones son que el capital intelectual universitario es una forma de medir el desempeño de estas organizaciones, a partir del cual identificamos un desempeño diferenciado que es liderado por la Universidad Autónom de Tamaulipas (UAT) debido a indicadores más altos en su capital humano, estructural y relacional.

La influencia de la tecnología en la administración pública ha marcado una nueva etapa para los gobiernos del mundo. La estrategia conocida como Gobierno Electrónico, ha impactado en distinta medida la forma de organizar las oficinas públicas, la relación con los ciudadanos y la estructura de la administración pública en sus distintos niveles. Sin embargo, este impacto no se ha medido suficientemente y existe escasa evidencia a este respecto. Uno de los elementos más innovadores en esta transformación del gobierno es el uso de redes sociales. El impacto de estas plataformas – como Twitter y Facebook– en la comunicación y operaciones del gobierno ha dado un giro en la manera en que las Tecnologías de Información y Comunicación han modificado la relación ciudadano-gobierno. El objetivo de este artículo es entender qué tanto se utilizan dichas plataformas en los 32 portales estatales mexicanos y observar de qué forma ha evolucionado su uso entre 2010 y 2011.

The historiographic gap regarding the Chiapanecan nineteenth century, which is a period that was fundamental for the definition of this territory’s future within the new Mexican State, has begun to be bridged in recent times with new research based on primary sources that contribute first-hand knowledge devoted to revisiting statements that have been repeated as fixed truths. For this reason, the publication of two books that deal with the annexation of Chiapas as Mexican territory is a historiographic milestone that will revitalize the readers’ understanding of a key period in the past.

This text raises a discussion about the lack of vehicular images of the historical memory of the 1968 massacre at Tlatelolco. Fifty years after the massacre occurring on October 2, 1968 in Mexico City, there have been no reconstructions of identity-shaping visuals around this event, considered a turning point for the modern Mexican State. This is in contrast to the abundant imagery created around the Mexican Revolution, the founding event of Modern Mexico, or the splendor of modernization, handily characterized by the film industry during the Miguel Aleman presidency. Using as a case study the film Rojo Amanecer by Jorge Fons, written by Xavier Robles and Guadalupe Ortega, we can problematize this visual language as well as contextualize it as a fiction that, eventually, would contribute to the referential images of the event, while at once recognizing the images’ symbolic weight does not refer to immediate memory nor do they form part of a visual discourse of that October night. We believe this absence is due to the breakdown of the memory of the third generation after the event, a phenomenon that Marianne Hirsch has called postmemory, an analytical concept used to explain the intra- and transgenerational processes and barriers.

En el marco de la frustración transicional, este trabajo versa sobre el proceso de construcción que el Estado registra en esta entidad federativa, a partir de los desafíos que enfrenta la burocracia gubernamental para resolver la descomposición de la sociedad pospetróleo, la expansión anómica por la inseguridad y las distintas manifestaciones de las violencias por la acción del crimen organizado y los intersticios que abre para la reproducción de la delincuencia desorganizada. La delimitación de la región Centro-Chontalpa permite mostrar la conformación de un territorio ilegal o región difusa sostenida por una economía subterránea donde el Estado tiene una presencia ominosa frente al crecimiento de la delincuencia y donde subyace la construcción de acciones ciudadanas que experimentan nuevas formas de organización para enfrentar la inseguridad.

Analizo la frontera y el trasegar de los personajes en esta en 2666 (2009a) y Los detectives salvajes (2004) de Roberto Bolaño. Es importante observar la coincidencia paradójica de que el auge de los feminicidios en las ciudades fronterizas se da a la par de la implementación del tratado de libre comercio que atrajo a la frontera muchas maquiladoras. La coexistencia de la violencia de los aparatos militares y policiales mexicanos y del poder narco ejemplifica la falla fundamental en el estado mexicano: sus profundas ausencias democráticas. Otro fenómeno que incide en las fronteras es la enorme migración de individuos hacia los países desarrollados. Los detectives salvajes y 2666 y otros textos de Bolaño operan como herramientas que amplifican -desde una perspectiva literaria, sociológica y política- la compleja realidad de la frontera, donde seres trashumantes que han perdido su centro moral son centrifugados por una modernidad deshumanizadora.

Sistema Huautla, the second deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere, is located in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is among the 10 deepest caves in the world, and one of the longest of the world's deep caves. The exploration of the Huautla caves is still ongoing, over 50 years since cavers first discovered them. The stories connected to the exploration are well documented in magazines, books, caving publications, photography, maps, and film. Sistema Huautla was the first cave outside of Europe to be explored deeper than 1000 m.

Foreign direct investment (FDI)flows to Mexico are substantial and play an important role in the Mexican economy since the mid-1990s. These investments reflect the activities of multinational firms that shape to some extent the economic landscape and sectoral structure in this host country. We illustrate that there is considerable variation in the amounts of FDI and structural change within the country and across time. Based on this, the papers main purpose is to analyze whether there is a significant impact of FDI on structural change. We conduct an empirical analysis covering the period 2006-2016. We use the fixed-effects estimator where the unit of observation is a Mexican state for which we calculate structural change from the reallocation of labor between sectors. The results suggest that (if any) there is a positive effect from FDI on growth-enhancing structural change. This effect depends critically on the lag structure of FDI. Moreover, there is some evidence that the positive effect (i) arises from FDI flows in the industry sector and (ii) is present for medium- and low-skilled labor reallocation.

We provide a quantitative assessment of both the aggregate and the distributional effects of revoking NAFTA using a multi-country, multi-sector, multi-factor model of world production and trade with global input–output linkages. Revoking NAFTA would reduce US welfare by about 0.2%, and Canadian and Mexican welfare by about 2%. The distributional impacts of revoking NAFTA across workers in different sectors are an order of magnitude larger in all three countries, ranging from − 2.7 to 2.23% in the USA. We combine the quantitative results with information on the geographic distribution of sectoral employment, and compute average real wage changes in each US congressional district, Mexican state, and Canadian province. We then examine the political correlates of the economic effects. Congressional district-level real wage changes are negatively correlated with the Trump vote share in 2016: districts that voted more for Trump would on average experience greater real wage reductions if NAFTA is revoked.

Resumen El trabajo pretende hacer un analisis sobre las multiples reformas a la Constitucion mexicana que refleja una excesiva actividad reformista de los legisladores, asi como el gran aumento del contenido de la Constitucion desde su aprobacion en el ano de 1917. El aumento enorme de sus contenidos asi como la constante reforma de la Constitucion no se ha reflejado en una cultura de legalidad, al contrario, en la actualidad existe un desconocimiento general del texto constitucional mexicano, ademas de que existen serios problemas en el pais que plantean una crisis del Estado, la Constitucion y los derechos humanos. Esta breve aportacion pretende mostrar que el reformismo y el aumento desmedido de los contenidos de la Constitucion mexicana no son el camino adecuado para consolidar al Estado de Derecho mexicano. Palabras clave: Reformismo, constitucion mexicana, cultura constitucional, estado de derecho, rigidez constitucional. Abstract The paper intends to analyze the multiple reforms to the Mexican Constitution that reflect an excessive reformist activity of the legislators, as well as the great increase of the content of the Constitution since its approval in the year 1917. The enormous increase of its contents as well as the constant reform of the Constitution has not been reflected in a culture of legality, on the contrary, at present there is a general ignorance of the Mexican constitutional text, in addition to serious problems in the country that pose a crisis of the State, the Constitution and human rights. This brief contribution aims to show that reformism and the excessive increase of the contents of the Mexican Constitution are not the proper way to consolidate the Mexican State of Law. Keywords: Reformism, Mexican constitution, constitutional culture, rule of law, constitutional rigidity.

Heroin consumption in Mexico is low compared with its use in the United States; however, this practice is more common in the northern region of Mexico than in the rest of the country, being documented only in cities that are located exactly at the Mexico-U.S. border. The Mexican legal framework is focused on rehabilitation, but its effects on the lives of users are unknown. The objective of this research was to analyze how the regulatory Mexican framework is conceptualized and practiced in the daily life of a group of heroin users from a northern city, where consumption has recently spread and has not been documented. We collected the official registered data from users and conducted a qualitative study in Hermosillo, Sonora. A research on the legal framework was conducted, as well as on the city’s context. Data on heroin users can be found at HIV health center, as there is no other source of such records. The Mexican legal framework aims at rehabilitation and at avoiding criminalization; however, the daily life of users drives them towards crime circuits: people commit crimes to stay in prison, where they can control the addiction and get heroin, in case of abstinence. The Mexican State has no empirical information to improve its programs and laws related to the use of heroin. The daily practices of users become not only epidemiological but social risks to the community and to the users themselves. Also, the lack of access due to stigmatization, criminalization and violence, increases the inequities, creating a cycle that reproduces poverty and suffering as part of a social structure. Therefore, changes are needed in the justice system.

This chapter explores the paradigmatic case of Michoacan, Mexico, a model transnational state with intense social and economic interconnections with the United States suffering very high levels of violence. It investigates how insecurity resulting from criminal-related activities and the concomitant reaction on the part of the Mexican state and self-defense groups has forcibly displaced thousands of people, critically reshaping the state’s migration patterns, such as with the rise of internal displacement. Relying on interviews with migrant authorities and representatives of civil society both in Mexico and the United States, this chapter traces the effect that violence is having on traditional migration patterns showing how an important number of uprooted Michoacanos have attempted to migrate north using existing transnational migration networks. The analysis thus underscores the complex intermestic dimension that human mobility is attaining in the North American corridor.

This chapter analyzes and compares the labor incorporation of expatriates and other skilled workers in Mexico, using 50 semi-structured interviews with Spanish immigrants working for private companies. By comparing these two groups, the chapter explores four aspects that have been marginal in the literature on expatriates. First, it addresses the role of Mexico as permanent destination for these professionals, in a context of increasing globalization and economic crisis. Second, it traces the role of the Mexican state in migration and the recent changes in its policy, in order to understand current migration flows. Third, the chapter exposes the variety in working and hiring conditions for skilled Spanish immigrants in Mexico, suggesting a more complex view of their labor incorporation. Finally, it tackles labor conflicts between immigrants and nationals, a relatively less frequently explored aspect in the literature. These conflicts could be considered minor, but they are of the utmost importance for some professionals who expressed their intention to go back to Spain because they do not feel integrated in Mexico’s labor culture.

I analyze the alternative tactics and logics of Las Fuertes, a feminist organization that has taken an "alegal" approach to realizing the human right to abortion in the conservative Mexican state of Guanajuato. Since a series of United Nations agreements throughout the 1990s enshrined reproductive rights as universal human rights, Mexican feminists have adopted the human rights platform as a lobbying tool to pressure the government to reform restrictive abortion laws. This strategy bore fruit in Mexico City, with passage of the historic 2007 abortion legalization. Las Fuertes has leveraged the human rights strategy differently - to justify the direct provision of local abortion accompaniment in a context of near-total abortion criminalization. By directly seizing abortion rights, rather than seeking to implement them through legalistic channels, Las Fuertes has effectively challenged Mexican reproductive governance in an adversarial political environment.

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar cómo a mediados del siglo XX las políticas nacionales mexicanas y estadounidenses alteraron la dinámica regional transfronteriza de la ganadería del norte de Coahuila. El estudio se centra en las tensiones políticas y económicas generadas por el cierre de la frontera a raíz de la crisis sanitaria de 1947, para explicar que el repliegue territorial de la ganadería coahuilense, en un contexto ambiental poco favorable, produjo las condiciones que frenaron su dinamismo en los siguientes años. El artículo cierra alrededor de 1982, cuando el Estado mexicano comenzó a disminuir las regulaciones económicas que dieron pie a políticas de libre comercio.

Despite being citizens, naturalised Mexicans are subjected to large restrictions in their political, civic, and even labour rights. Why such discriminatory regime is applied to such a reduced group of citizens, in a country that officially prides itself as open, tolerant, and having an intrinsically ‘mixed’ national origin? My hypothesis is that the roots of such differentiated treatment are the ideological legacy of the ‘Revolutionary Nationalism’ doctrine, which was promoted by the Mexican state during most of the 20th century, and is still expressed in laws and policies.

San Miguel Coatlinchan, a town 35 miles east of Mexico City, became famous following an episode of state-perpetrated dispossession. In 1964, the Mexican state enforced its legal claim to pre-Hispanic material culture as national property by removing a colossal pre-Hispanic monolith from its lands and transporting it to the capital’s National Anthropology Museum. Ever since, the stone sculpture that represents an ancient rain deity has stood at the entrance of the museum as an emblem of Mexico’s ancestral indigenous heritage or patrimonio. For the residents of Coatlinchan, however, the monolith’s removal brought about ecological and social disruptions: drought and other forms of scarcity which profoundly altered their town and its surrounding landscape. In this article, I draw on an ecological framework to explore the productive effects of dispossession and absence in Coatlinchan. Rather than analyzing its residents’ loss as that of a bounded artifact, I argue that material traces from the pre-Hispanic past are embedded within and integral to webs of environmental, material, and social relations that are essential for the production and reproduction of life itself.

FQ Columnist Paul Julian Smith discusses a new cinematic phenomenon that has emerged in Mexico in the last five years: the transgender documentary. Three features have appeared so far, all by first-time directors: Morir de pie (To Die Standing Up, Jacaranda Correa, 2011), Quebranto (Disrupted, Roberto Fiesco, 2013), and Made in Bangkok (Flavio Florencio, 2015). The films are self-proclaimed stories of love, even as they testify intermittently to disruption or affliction (quebranto, from quebrar or “to break” as cited in one title). This article examines the three commonalities of these films: they address their protagonists’ activity either in the performing arts or in politics; their geographical reach extends beyond the borders of the Mexican state; and their transnational narratives break out of the barriers of subjectivity to embrace an analysis of intersubjectivity.

San Gabriel Azteca es un pequeño poblado localizado en el estado de Hidalgo que en décadas anteriores perteneció a una prolífica zona pulquera sobre la cual basó su economía. El maguey es una planta que crece naturalmente en el sitio y de la cual se obtienen múltiples productos entre ellos el pulque, por lo que el paisaje rural estuvo dominado por este cultivo. Actualmente la región presenta una evolución de este paisaje, lo que ocasiona una progresiva pérdida de esta «cultura del maguey» que daba identidad al poblado a través de diferentes usos como: los comestibles, los domésticos, la medicina tradicional, la construcción y el uso agrícola. La etnobotánica del maguey permite dar otras alternativas de desarrollo económico y con ello revalorar esta planta tan ligada a la cultura mexicana de la cual se obtienen múltiples beneficios, entre ellos la recuperación ecológica de la región que comienza a degradarse.

This article fills the gap in the critical political economy literature by acknowledging the adoption of derivatives as state policy in middle-income countries such as Mexico. The article argues that the Mexican state has turned derivatives into a policy instrument to deal with the capitalist contradictions intensified by neoliberalism. This has created a particular institutional setting that favours large firms and financial investors over working classes. The article examines the role of derivatives as policy instruments in Mexico through the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture’s use of corn futures options during the 2007–8 food crisis and Ministry of Finance's and Central Bank's adoption of hedging strategies through oil derivatives and US dollar put options to preserve the state budget and increase foreign reserves respectively during the 2007–10 global financial crisis.

In 2014, the Zapatistas (EZLN) celebrated the twentieth anniversary of their 1 January uprising in Chiapas against the Mexican state and the imposition of the North American Free Trade Agreement. T...

The interest in the potential role of community enterprises in sustaining self-managed development strategies stems from the analysis of the scarce results provided by top-down development interventions in indigenous settings. This paper reports on an ethnographic study carried out in the Mexican state of Chiapas, where 16 community enterprises managed by local indigenous communities have been analysed. The focus of the analysis was to identify the main needs of local indigenous communities and the contribution that community enterprises could give to addressing these needs. The main findings pinpoint some enabling factors for the emergence of community enterprises and some specific characteristics that explain the contribution of community enterprises in supporting alternative approaches to development, where local communities are actors of their own development processes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

El presente trabajo trata sobre la revolución cultural en el México postrevolucionario, lo cual abarca de 1930 a 1940 en el norte de Sinaloa. El primer punto abordado, se refiere a las diferentes políticas educativas que emprendió la Secretaría de Educación Pública, para incorporar al Estado nacional, extensas masas de campesinos y obreros. También se analiza el papel que jugaron los maestros de primaria en las comunidades rurales, especificamnete como pedagogos, líderes agrarios y asesores sindicales. En ese sentido, los maestros funcionaron como articuladores entre el Estado mexicano y las comunidades campesinas y otros sectores de la población.

In this essay, I complicate the standard political economic narrative of Mexico's ‘stabilizing development’ as one of successful state intervention which managed to tame capitalism. In the first section, I ask whether it is possible that years of literature on the need for strong states, developmental states, and interventionist states have not blinded us to some of the actual functions of the post-war Mexican state, namely as a sink or channel for capital accumulated in the global North, and whether the present role of the state in Mexico might be much more like its past incarnations than we have been led to believe. In the second section, through a close reading of the 2013 housing crisis in Mexico, I test whether there is anything to the assertion of a similarity between the state of Mexico's post-war ‘stabilizing development’ and the current financialized one. By way of conclusion, I press a case for a political imaginary beyond state regulation of capital.

RESUMENA partir del análisis de un proyecto de desarrollo en una comunidad maya del estado de Yucatán y los discursos de sus promotores, este trabajo pretende mostrar cómo la visión de quienes buscan “ayudar” a las comunidades indígenas a alcanzar el desarrollo revela un racismo naturalizado. Sostenemos que la idea de desarrollo es un aura que enmascara una serie de relaciones de poder en los que se expresa, ejecuta y promueve un discurso en el cual el racismo se hace presente.ABSTRACTIn this paper, by analyzing a development project in a Mayan community in the Mexican state of Yucatan as well as the discourse of its promoters, we want to show how a naturalized racism appears in the visions of the promoters seeking to “help” indigenous communities achieve development. We argue that the idea of development is an aura that disguises a series of power relations that express, implement, and promote a discourse where the racism is present.

The context of terror that has resulted from the Mexican fight against organized crime since 2006 has led to the suspension of some citizens’ rights and freedoms. A re-appropriation of those rights is being engineered by social actors in different states of Mexico, demanding safety, a trust-worthy administration, and access to justice. Among the peace-building initiatives in Mexico driven by organized civil society are those emerging from social entrepreneurs in the state of Nuevo Leon, who are working at forging a new civic culture in northern Mexico. The case studies presented are the Monterrey-based organizations that constitute the Frente de Paz (Peace Front) and the successful implementation of the Crime Traffic Light in the states of Sonora and Nuevo Leon. The peace-building approach proposed includes participatory governance and a new role for the Mexican state as a partner in social development.

In an interview that an American reporter did with a Mexican politician of the 1960s, he said ‘the role Mexico played on the drug distribution was like a trampoline’. With the astuteness that chara...

It is currently accepted that state-sponsored archaeological practice in Mexico falls under the rubric of nationalist archaeology. The Mexican state supports archaeological research and displays its results, which include archaeological remains, in order to strengthen a sense of national pride and unity. Traditional narratives have held that this practice began after the Revolution (1910). Nevertheless, the institutionalization and professionalization of archaeology dates back to the period known as the Porfiriato (1879–1911). This chapter describes the process through which archaeology was institutionalized during the Porfiriato and how this nationalist archaeology contributed to constructing a Mexican national identity.

“Ruta Mixteca” is the name given to the circular migrations of indigenous farm workers between the Mexican state of Oaxaca and California long studied by Michael Kearney and his collaborators. Indigenous migrations to the United States have expanded in recent years as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement and changes in Mexico’s agrarian legislation that led to increased privatization of land and natural resources, dispossession of the traditional peasantry, and numerous local land- and resource-related conflicts. The Zapatista uprising stimulated the growth of a host of militant indigenous organizations, now also emboldened by constitutional changes that recognize the human rights of indigenous peoples according to international standards. Indigenous transnational migrations need to adapt to these changing conditions. “Ruta Mixteca” es el nombre dado a las migraciones circulares de campesinos indígenas entre el estado mexicano de Oaxaca y California que han sido estudiadas durante mucho tiempo por Michael Kearney y sus colaboradores. En años recientes aumentaron las migraciones de indígenas a Estados Unidos como resultado del Tratado de Libre Comercio de Norteamérica y los cambios en la legislación agraria en México, que han conducido a la creciente privatización de la tierra y los recursos naturales, al despojo del campesinado tradicional y a numerosos conflictos locales sobre tierras y recursos. El levantamiento zapatista generó el surgimiento de gran cantidad de organizaciones indígenas militantes, ahora también estimuladas por los cambios constitucionales que reconocen los derechos humanos de los pueblos indígenas de acuerdo con las normas internacionales. Las migraciones indígenas transnacionales necesitan adaptarse a estas condiciones cambiantes.

In this paper we describe Canthidium quercetorum new species (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), a species that inhabits dry oak forest in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, between 2100 and 2300 m above sea level. Photographs and an illustration of the habitus and a distribution map are provided. The unusual distribution and ecology of this species are discussed. An updated key for the genus in Mexico and the United States of America is also presented.

En el artículo se argumenta que el patronazgo político depende de la fuerza de negociación de la oposición en el Congreso. Esta hipótesis se pone a prueba a través del análisis del gasto público en salarios de los gobiernos estatales en México. Se combina información estadística sobre el salario del sector público por habitante para el periodo 2001-2012, con datos de la encuesta a expertos en política estatal en México, que considera la fortaleza e influencia de la oposición en las legislaturas estatales. El análisis especifica modelos jerárquicos lineales, y muestra que el nivel de patronazgo será mayor cuanto más limitado esté el Poder Ejecutivo por la oposición legislativa. Estos hallazgos contribuyen con una hipótesis original a los estudios acerca del patronazgo y de la relación entre la oposición en el Congreso y el Ejecutivo.