Global Stage Podcast
About the Episode:

In this episode, Gladys McCormick joins Kellogg Institute PhD Fellows Victoria Basulto (history) and Leon Heitler (political science) for a conversation about writing the history of Mexico’s “Dirty War.” McCormick discusses her new book, 'The Last Door: A History of Torture in Mexico’s War against Subversives,' and reflects on the challenges of documenting state violence through fragmented archives, contested memories, silences in the historical record, and the enduring legacy of forced disappearances and torture.

Show Notes:

In this episode of Global Stage, hosts Victoria Basulto and Leon Heitler welcome historian Gladys McCormick, Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives at Syracuse University and an endowed chair in Mexico–U.S. relations, to discuss her new book The Last Door: A History of Torture in Mexico’s War Against Subversives (University of California Press, 2025). McCormick situates the book within her broader scholarly trajectory, explaining how her work with newly declassified Mexican intelligence files and the physical space of the National Archive—housed in a former political prison—led her to examine the experiences of political prisoners and, ultimately, the central role of torture during Mexico’s so-called Dirty War.

McCormick describes how the project evolved from an initial focus on imprisonment to a deeper investigation of torture as a systematic state strategy in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on declassified documents, oral histories, and collaboration with Mexican scholars and activists, she highlights the silences that long surrounded political repression in Mexico and challenges the assumption that state terror was confined to other Latin American contexts. Her work argues for recognizing Mexico’s Dirty War as a case of sustained state violence comparable to, yet distinct from, experiences in the Southern Cone.

The conversation also explores McCormick’s methodology, particularly the ethical challenges of conducting and interpreting oral histories about extreme trauma. She explains her deliberate decision to rely on testimonies from individuals who had already publicly shared their experiences, emphasizing respect, moral responsibility, and the need to avoid sensationalizing suffering. McCormick reflects on how training in collective memory and trauma shaped her approach, as well as how collaboration and long-term relationships informed both her research and analysis.

Finally, McCormick reflects on the broader implications of her work for teaching and public scholarship. She discusses how to teach histories of torture and disappearance without reducing Latin America to violence alone, stressing the importance of linking past and present, humanizing narratives, and connecting Mexican history to contemporary crises and to U.S. history. She closes by identifying lingering questions—particularly the role of the CIA and the need to center Mexico in Dirty War historiography—while encouraging historians to engage more directly with policy debates and public-facing work

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