By Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra Matthew Restall’s When Montezuma met Cortés delivers a blow to the basic structure of all current histories of the conquest of Mexico. Absolutely all accounts, from Cortés’ second letter to Charles V in 1520 to Inga Clendinnen’s masterful 1991 article “’Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty,’”[1] assume that the conquest of Mexico was led by […]
The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in Colonial Mexico by Alejandro Cañeque (2004)
By Marcus Golding Latin American popular culture presents two common tropes about Spanish colonial rule. One is the representation of viceroys as autocrats who ruled without any institutional constraint. This perception “explains” the authoritarian tendencies of Latin American societies in the postcolonial period. The other trope ironically undermines perceptions of authoritarian control by highlighting the […]
Satan’s Playground: Mobsters and Movie Stars at America’s Greatest Gaming Resort, By Paul J. Vanderwood (2009)
By Diego A. Godoy For Tijuanenses, the sight of the Agua Caliente entertainment complex conjures up images of two distinct things. The first: dogs. The Tijuana racetrack is home to nearly 700 galgos, Spanish greyhounds that race almost daily. Adjacent to the track is the multi-use Estadio Caliente, the home turf of Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles […]
The Public Archive: María Luisa Puga and the 1985 Mexico City Earthquake
Millions of tweets and millions of state documents. Intimate oral histories and international radio addresses. Ancient pottery and yesterday’s memes. Historians have access to this immense store of online material for doing research, but what else can we do with it? In Spring 2018, graduate students in the Public and Digital History Seminar at UT […]
Colonial Chalices: Colonial Latin America Through Objects (No. 4)
This series features five online museum exhibits created by undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin for a class titled “Colonial Latin America Through Objects.” The class assumes that Latin America was never a continent onto itself. The course also insists that objects document the nature of historical change in ways […]
The Archaeology and History of Colonial Mexico by Enrique Rodríguez Alegría (2016)
by Brittany Erwin In this study of the social significance of material culture in Mexico City and Xaltocan in the early colonial period, Rodriguez Alegría uses a variety of sources, including archaeological evidence relating to food consumption, catalogues of ceramic sherds from several dig sites in these cities, and wills, stock lists, and auction records. […]
Jerónimo Antonio Gil and the Idea of the Spanish Enlightenment, By Kelly Donahue-Wallace (2017)
By Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra How can the life of an artisan who specialized in punchcutting and engraving help us shed light on “the idea of the Spanish Enlightenment”? Donahue-Wallace offers an illuminating perspective on the Enlightenment through the biography of an expert medal caster, Jerónimo Antonio Gil, whose career took him from provincial Zamora to Madrid […]
A Texas Historian’s Perspective on Mexican State Anticlericalism
By Madeleine Olson Housed in a miscellaneous folder in the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection is an assortment of thirteen broadsides, letters, newspapers, and drafts of two articles by prominent Texas historian Herbert Gambrell (1898-1982). Gambrell had a long and prestigious academic career studying Texas history as a fixture at Southern Methodist University. These documents all […]
Dolores del Río: Beauty in Light and Shade, By Linda B. Hall (2013)
By Ann Twinam Linda Hall provides a compelling biography of one of the most famous and beautiful women of the twentieth century: actress Dolores del Río. She traces critical stages from del Río’s sheltered life as a daughter of a Mexican elite family to her early marriage and transition to Hollywood starlet in the 1920s, […]
Textbooks, Texas, and Discontent: The Fight against Inadequate Educational Resources
By Alejandra Garza and Maria Esther Hammack Controversies surrounding textbooks are nothing new, especially in Texas. For years, textbook selection in Texas has grabbed headlines and generated great discontent and debate. Textbooks adopted by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) are unusually important because they are also adopted for use in classrooms across the country. Whatever Texas adopts, students across […]
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