Mexico Working Group - Past Events

Diálogos: Conversations with Mexico

  • March 16, 2015: Diálogo: Conversations with Mexico: “Migration in Mexico Today: Addressing issues with human rights, Central Americans, and the U.S-Mexican border” with Dr. Leo Chávez, Professor of Anthropology at University of California-Irvine and Dr. Alex Chávez, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Notre Dame. It will be moderated by Dr. José Limón, Director of the Institute for Latino Studies.
  • April 27, 2013: “Post-revolutionary Mexico” with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (Hewlett Visiting Fellow for Public Policy University of Notre Dame) and Alan Knight (Professor of History and Fellow of St. Antony's College at the University of Oxford)
  •  April 27, 2013: “The Left in Mexico” with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (Hewlett Visiting Fellow for Public Policy, Kellogg Institute) and Enrique Krauze (Director, Letras Libres)
  • January 22, 2013: “The Quality of Mexico's Democracy" with Manuel Camacho Solis (Federal Senator of Mexico) and Michael Coppedge (Professor of Political Science and Kellogg Institute Faculty Fellow, University of Notre Dame)
  • September 6, 2012: “The Left in Mexico Today: Is there a future for the 132 Movement?” with Elisa Servín (Professor of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia) and Guillermo Trejo (Associate Professor of the Political Science Department of Notre Dame)

Lectures, Workshops, and Rountables Discussions

  • February 16, 2015: "The Land of Open Graves: Necroviolence and the Politics of Migrant Death in the Arizona Desert," Jason de León(Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan)
  • November 14, 2014: Alex Aviña (Assistant Professor of History, Florida State University), discussion of his book, Specters of Revolution: Peasant Guerrillas in the Cold War Mexican Countryside (Oxford University Press, 2014). 
  • October 30, 2014: Roundtable discussion: How do we “make sense” of the events that are taking place in Guerrero Mexico today, including the 43 students disappeared, the presence of the drug cartel, and the 19 mass graves recently discovered?
  • September 16, 2014: Mauricio Tenorio (Professor of History, University of Chicago), discussion of his book, "I Speak of the City": Mexico City at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
  • April 24, 2014: “Catholic Youth in Cold War Mexico,” Jaime Pensado
  • April 1, 2014: “Capitalist Expansion in Mexico, 1867—1898: Business and Politics (Not Institutionalism,” 
John Womack (Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, Harvard University)
  • March 3, 2014: “Historia del narcotráfico en México” (History of Illegal drug trade in Mexico), Guillermo Valdés (Director of the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, CISEN, during the presidency of Felipe Calderón)
  • February 28, 2014: “Candidate-Centered Campaigning in a Party-Centered Electoral Context: The Case of Mexico,” Joy Langston(Professor, División de Estudios Políticos, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica)
  • February 24, 2014: “Constitutional Reform and Religious Liberty in Mexico,” Jorge E. Traslosheros (Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
  • September 27, 2013: “José Guadalupe Posada's influence on Mexico’s New Left,” Jaime M. Pensado
  • September 13, 2013: “Sanitizing Rebellion: Doctors, Hospitals, and Social Unrest in late 1960s Mexico,” Gabriela Soto Laveaga(Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara)
  • April 25, 2013: “Was the Mexican Revolution a Success?,” Alan Knight(Professor of History and Fellow of St. Antony's College at the University of Oxford)
  • April 12, 201: “The Ejido of the Mexican Revolution,” Emilio Kourí (Professor of History and Director of the Katz Center for Mexican Studies, University of Chicago)
  • April 9, 2013: “The 1988 Presidential Elections in Mexico,” Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (Hewlett Visiting Fellow for Public Policy University of Notre Dame)
  • March 22, 2013: “The Social Foundations of Organized Crime and Violence in Mexico,”
José Antonio Aguilar Rivera (Professor of Political Science, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, CIDE) and Javier Osorio (Kellogg Institute PhD Fellow, Political Science, University of Notre Dame)
  • March 6, 2013: “Unwanted Revolutionaries: Lázaro Cárdenas, Fidel Castro and the Unexpected Challenges to Mexican Political Authority, 1958-1959,” Eric Zolov (Associate Professor of History, Stony Brook University and Editor of The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History)
  • February 15, 2013: “Technological Change and the Search for ‘el progreso material’ in Nineteenth Century Mexico,” Ted Beatty(Associate Professor of History and Kellogg Institute Faculty Fellow, University of Notre Dame)
  • November 30, 2012: “The Roots of Mexico's Conservative Ideology,” José Antonio Aguilar Rivera (Professor of the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica, CIDE)
  • November 16, 2012: “The Latino vote during the U.S. 2012 presidential election,” Allert Brown-Gort (Kellogg Fellow)
  • September 5, 2012: “Frank Tannenbaum and the Cuban Revolution,” Elisa Servín (Professor of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia)
  • February 22, 2012: “Elections in Mexico: Change or Continuity,” Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (Hewlett Visiting Fellow for Public Policy University of Notre Dame)

Graduate Student Workshops

  • April 5, 2013: “Negative Advertisements and Voter Turnout in the 2006 Presidential Election in Mexico,”  Víctor Hernández Huerta(PhD Candidate – Political Science)
  • February 1, 2013: “Contesting Ideologies in Post-revolutionary Mexico: The Catholic Right and the Spanish Civil War,”
Robert Costello Palermo (Graduate Student - History)
  • November 16, 2012: “Disputed elections: Challenging electoral outcomes as a negotiation tool,” Victor Hernández Huerta (PhD student, Department of Political Science)
  • October 26, 2012: “Rites of Passage: Mexican American Women and the American Middle Class,” Felicia Moralez (PhD student, Department of History)
  • April 13, 2012: “New Fruits from Rotten Seeds: Political Parties' Internal Democracy and Political Participation of Mexican Citizens,” Esteban Manteca (PhD student, Department of Political Science)
  • February 17, 2012: “Democratization and Drug Violence in Mexico,” Javier Osorio (PhD student, Department of History),
  • January 20, 2012: “The General, the President, and the Pontiff: Pan-Hispanism, Anticlericalism and the Right in Interwar Mexico and Spain,” Robert Costello Palermo (PhD student, Department of History)

Co-Sponsored Events

  • March 25, 2015: Film Screening: “Ayer, Hoy y Mañana: Música Tradicional de Cuerdas” by Simón Sedillo and talk by Colectivo Altepee."
  • February 10, 2015: “Searching for Mañana: A Century of American Re-Creationism in Mexico,” Jason Ruiz (Assistant Professor of American Studies, University of Notre Dame)
  • January 28, 2015: “The Second City Anew: Mexicans, Urban Culture, and Migration in the Transformation of Chicago, 1940-1986,”Mike Amezcua (Assistant Professor of History, University of Notre Dame)
  • December 4, 2014: Workshop: "How films are used to raise awareness of human rights issues" with Director and Producer of the film, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís.
  • December 3, 2014: Film screening and discussion of Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (2011) with Director Pamela Yates.
  • November 10, 2014: David Bacon (noted journalists and photographer), “The Right to Stay Home: Justice for Migrants & Sending Communities.”
  • October 31, 2014: “Día de los Muertos: Remembering the Undocumented Across the Rio Grande,” Sandra Fernández  (Assistant Professor at the Department of Art & Art History, University of Texas at Austin).
  • September 22, 2014: “Reframing Culture and Success: Why Mexicans are the Most Successful Immigrants in America,” Jennifer Lee(Professor of Sociology, University of California Irvine). This event is co-sponsored with the Institute for Latino Studies.

Undergraduate Student Conferences

  • April 27, 2013: "¿México?"
  • April 16, 2011: “Mexico 1810, 1910, 2010”

Other events

  • September 27, 2014: Undergraduate student fieldtrip to the Art Institute of Chicago to see “The Taller de Gráfica Popular and the Mexican Political Print Exhibit.”
  • February 27, 2014: Discussion Panel (Co-sponsored with the Public Opinion and Elections Working Group), “Democratization and Political Change in Mexico’s Party System”: “México, 1991- 2012: age of realignment,” Ulises Beltrán (Professor, División de Estudios Políticos, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica) and “Democratization and Party Change. The Case of Mexico’s PRI,” Joy Langston (Professor, División de Estudios Políticos, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica). Discussant: Guillermo Trejo(Associate Professor, Political Science)
  • December 6, 2013: Book launch: Jaime M. Pensado, Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture During the Long Sixties with talk by Gilbert Joseph (Farnam Professor of History and International Studies, Yale University).
  • September 19, 2013: Film screening and discussion: “Serge Eisenstein's Que viva México (1932)” with Jaime M. Pensado
  • October 16, 2013: Book discussion of Jaime Pensado, Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture During the Long Sixties at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Chicago with:
Elena Poniatowska (journalist and author of La Noche de Tlatelolco) and Christopher Boyer (Associate Professor of History and Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago)
  • April 26, 2013: Film screening and discussion of El Ingeniero/The Engineer (2012) with Director Alejandro Lubezki
  • November 1, 2012: “Día de los muertos” with a special ofrenda created by Notre Dame students and a lecture by Javier Osorio (PhD candidate in political science at Notre Dame).
  • October 26, 2012: Discussion on “Mexicans in Indiana” with Consul Juan Manuel Solana (Consulate of Mexico, Indianapolis).
  • January 12, 2012: “Constructing Mexican Democracy.” In this first-ever event of its kind (co-organized with Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute, IFE), the presidents of Mexico’s seven major political parties shared their visions for Mexico’s future in dialogue with leading Mexico experts from area universities. Topics on the agenda included the economy, security, education and democracy.