Bulletin

Issue: March 2005

Books

All you've ever wanted to know about Modern Mexico

Want to know something about contemporary Mexico? When Drs Barry Carr and Stephen Niblo of La Trobe University’s Institute of Latin American Studies have finished their current ARC research, there will be excellent local multi-media sources of information.

These will comprise a book, CDs, plus an interactive website containing information about a wide range of Mexican topics.

Both Associate Professors in La Trobe’s History program, Drs Carr and Niblo have received an ARC Discovery Grant of $117,000 over three years to produce the book and the website which will prove extremely valuable for scholars, journalists, businesses, governments, international agencies and others.

‘In Australia, many people tend to ignore Mexico, not realising that with a population of 105 million it is the second largest country of Latin America, after Brazil,’ Dr Carr said.

Dr Carr, who has visited Mexico more than 30 times in the last three decades, said that many issues that Australia has faced, Mexico has also encountered. These include its relations with the global economy and especially with that of the USA, immigration, national security, debt, defence, immigration, and cultural identity.

He said the book will focus mainly on three areas, national development, relations between Mexico and the USA, and the views of those Mexicans who were often not heard in national histories – often dissidents. Such people include students, trade unionists, peasant leaders, dissident writers and others.

The book will cover Mexico from World War II until the present, dealing with both national and local development.

Chapters will include regional snapshots, for example the re-invention of the sleepy fishing port of Acapulco into an international holiday resort in the 1940’s and 1950s; development of Maquiladoras – border duty-free manufacturing zones – which attracted millions of workers in the 1960s and 1970s; and the Zapatista peasant rebellion in the Chiapas region in the 1990s and 2000s.

Dr Carr said the rebellion transformed Mexican politics. While the nation presented a facade of prosperity to the outside world, the rebellion revealed the blatant social and economic injustice suffered by some of the nation’s poorest citizens.

The CDs will contain collections of documents, photographs too voluminous to include in the printed work, plus music and other material.

Work on the website is well underway, initially financed by a 2003 La Trobe University Central Grant. It will be a comprehensive guide to modern Mexico, containing texts about many aspects of Mexican life The site will be updated regularly with contributions from people Drs Carr and Niblo invite to describe new developments.

Dr Carr said the project reflects La Trobe’s long association with Mexican studies, in which there is a minor boom with a number of postgraduate students from several countries studying under the auspices of the University’s Institute for Latin American Studies.