This chapter examines the implications of mapping Latinx theater history through a singular narrative of race and cultural resistance. Scholars have written the history of Latinx theater as the story of minoritarian struggles for representation against the dominant white gaze since the 1960s. I assess how the narrative of overcoming racial oppression has taken a decidedly romantic form since it tells the story of how Latinx communities move from oppression toward an emancipatory future, and how, in turn, this romance’s linear temporal plot defines Latinidad as brown and as antithetical to whiteness. The “romance of Latinidad,” I argue, has served generations of Latinxs artists to craft an aesthetic and a cultural politics of resistance. However, the story of brown resistance consolidates a post-1960s brown/white racial binary that erases non-brown Latinxs from Latinx theater history. After tracing the generations of artists included in the resistance narrative, the chapter turns to Latinidad’s pre-1960s past and discusses the biography and racial ideologies of Josefina Niggli (1910–83), the Mexican American playwright whose whiteness and folkloric representations of Mexicans trouble the romance of brown resistance. Indeed, the analysis seeks to account for Latinidad’s antiracist possibilities by reckoning with Latinx theater’s collusions with racism.

Atrocity crimes and grand corruption: the chapter argues that adopting a “corruption lens” is useful to characterize and understand patterns of crimes against humanity, especially whether acts are widespread or systematic, whether there is a state or organizational policy, how high-ranking actors are tied to crimes by subordinates (“modes of liability”) and whether specific acts constitute crimes under the ICC’s Rome Statute. The chapter uses examples from Mexico and Venezuela to illustrate.

This chapter considers access to courts for victims of grand corruption, especially in Latin America. It explains the origins and meaning of victim compensation in the UNCAC, how “victim” is defined in human rights law, and uses the Honduran Gualcarque River case to introduce how courts are beginning to apply concepts from human rights law to cases involving victims of grand corruption. It divides these cases into “direct harm” suffered by individual or group victims, and cases involving broad or diffuse harm where victims as a class are represented by civil society organizations. It looks briefly at which civil society organizations should be able to represent victims in proceedings.

This chapter explores how domestic political factors related to oil and gas resource nationalism and its path-dependency effect influence energy transition capabilities. Methodologically, the chapter adopts a qualitative case study approach in paired oil-rich countries, Kuwait, (UAE), Mexico, and Brazil.

It explores how the origins of each country’s resource nationalism have influenced their abilities to adapt to a post-hydrocarbon economy. Countries that have adopted social-based policies such as Kuwait and Mexico, transition to renewable energy more slowly in comparison with countries that have adopted market-based policies like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Brazil. Understanding these factors expands the literature on energy-rich countries beyond the concepts of the resource curse and rentier states, allowing academics to propose theories that are better suited to the heterogeneous nature of energy-rich countries.

In the context of the transnational rule-of-law crisis the world is experiencing, this chapter asks whether the institutional solutions typically embraced by contemporary Latin American constitutions make a difference in fighting contemporary patterns of rule-of-law violations, and what sort of difference they make. The chapter advances the preliminary hypothesis that Latin American last-wave constitutions make a positive difference. After recalling historic trends with regard to democracy and the rule of law in Latin America and providing an overview of the standard institutional tools contained in Latin American constitutions, it describes the patterns of rule-of-law undermining that dominate the current political scenario in Mexico. The chapter especially addresses attacks on the National Electoral Institute and the quest to weaken electoral reliability, and the militarization of public life and state functions. The analysis shows that the Mexican constitution is successfully used to resist these developments, but it also suggests that existing dynamics excessively rely on ex post reaction and the overcharge judiciary.

The subject of Chapter 2 is the tradition of the apotheosis in Mesoamerica, principally Central Mexico. The chapter opens with the context of indigenous political and social organization, and a summary of Spanish penetration of Mexico from 1519. There follows a fictive reconstruction of dialogue between the Aztec ruler Moctezuma and his counsellors in order to offer one plausible, source-based scenario for how the ruling elite might have interpreted the advent of the Spaniards on the basis of rational, pragmatic considerations. The chapter then analyzes the response of Moctezuma and the Mexica, outlines the lack of evidence for an apotheosis in the Spanish and native chroniclers, and examines the significance of Nahuatl terminology, in particular the concept of teotl, which was the word often translated as “god.” The Quetzalcoatl myth (the notion of the identification of Cortés with the god Quetzalcoatl) is presented as a post-conquest construct, devised retrospectively to make sense of the momentous events. The tradition of pre-conquest omens is discussed. No evidence is found that the emperor Moctezuma treated Cortés as a god at their meetings.

The main purpose of this chapter is to study gender inequality within the inventive activities in three emerging countries – Brazil, India, and Mexico – using the framework of knowledge economics. It aims to determine which factors that influence a growing propensity of women to be inventors help reduce gender inequality in knowledge economies. In addition, the chapter contributes policy proposals that aim at increasing female participation in inventive activities. The key questions for this research are as follows: What are the characteristics and dynamics of female inventive activities in emerging countries with different economic development paths? What factors influence women’s propensity to invent? Based on the results of the econometric model proposed in this chapter, the inventive variables, such as the stock of prior knowledge, the size of inventor teams, the type of patent holder, technological field, and the presence of foreign researchers – positively influence women’s propensity to become inventors in a differentiated manner in each country. These findings validate how some variables could influence the inclusion of a greater number of women in research teams and the deployment of their potential inventive activities. The chapter proposes policies aimed at reducing gender inequality in the knowledge economy.

Mexico’s consular diplomacy and protection are unique. Mexico has a diaspora of close to 40 million people; approximately 9 percent live in the United States and 12 million of them were born in Mexico. Also, more than 50 percent of Mexicans have a relative living abroad, and over 20 percent of Mexican families receive remittances. Therefore, due to the relevance of its diaspora and its close connections with Mexico, consular diplomacy and protection are high priorities within Mexican foreign policy. This chapter analyzes the current scenario of the Mexican diaspora, as well as the Mexican consular and diplomatic work at a global level and its concentration in the United States; it also explains the economic, social, and military activities carried out by the Mexican state through its diplomatic representations. Its main findings are that Mexico’s policy for protecting its nationals abroad is multifaceted and goes well beyond traditional consular protection, entering the realm of bilateral and multilateral political relations, as well as public diplomacy. The main motivation of consular diplomacy and protection is one of support and, to a lesser degree, one of co-optation, since it seeks to include the Mexican population in the United States as part of a Mexican transnational nation.

This chapter explores how enslaved people developed legal know-how about Castilian laws of slavery and freedom, and shared and exchanged such information with others. In particular, the chapter focuses on the history of enslaved Black people’s determination to raise capital or credit to purchase their liberty from their enslavers. The chapter explores how enslaved Black men and women often plotted their paths to liberty through economic decisions by focusing on the lives of enslaved Black people who resided in the towns along the Camino Real in New Spain between Veracruz and Mexico City during a time of economic boom in the late sixteenth century. Notarial records that cataloged the self-purchase and liberation of enslaved people in port towns of the Spanish Atlantic often reveal how enslaved Black people developed social ties and capital among kin, friends, and charitable residents, and consorted with people from varied socioeconomic backgrounds who lived or passed through the places where they resided. These records index a history of conversations about strategies to obtain liberty among enslaved Black people and relationships across different socioeconomic spheres that allowed for some enslaved people to access precious credit to pay for their liberty.

This chapter tests the argument about new parties’ adoption of mobilization strategies in a context where they have limited access to organizational allies. Whereas most of the organizational allies discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 are major (often nationally organized) peak associations, MORENA could only rely on smaller, locally focused organizations. As this chapter shows, despite the different organizational structures, the shared experience of moments of solidarity also shaped whether party–organization ties later became institutionalized in this case; as a result, MORENA could consistently rely on organizationally mediated appeals. However, I find that the difference in the degree or level of organizational aggregation – aggregated/peak versus local organization – had important implications for the resulting party structures.

This chapter expands on the micro-level evidence from Chapter 6 on how effective one-off organizational endorsements are at swaying vote preferences by exploring how repeated organizational expressions of support over multiple years (due to a mechanism that institutionalized a new party’s ties with its organizational allies) can help new parties secure support in subsequent elections. Analyzing a natural experiment from Mexico, in which MORENA uses lotteries to select candidates for national public office, it shows how the party took root and mobilized voters more successfully in localities where it was able to tap into organizational networks through candidates who are embedded in local organizations.

This chapter explores the resulting party identification in the three cases. Drawing on original and existing survey data, it shows that membership in organizations that regularly support a new party is strongly associated with whether a voter develops an attachment to the party. Further analysis of the poster experiments suggests that the frequency of attending organization meetings is associated with the robustness of the attachment. Additional analyses of the natural experiment reveal that repeated organizational expressions of support over multiple years help new parties gain new followers. It then compares and contrasts this organizationally mediated path to partisanship (organizational cultivation), which can account for the development of robust partisan attachments to the MAS and MORENA, with an alternative path to partisanship that can yield party identification even for parties without organically linked organizational allies. In the case of Alianza PAIS, which could not rely on organizational cultivation through organically linked organizations, partisan attachments have developed in direct response to voters’ evaluations of the party’s performance.

Of the many CGIAR research centres around the world there is none as historically important to the organization’s international development of wheat and maize interests than the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), headquartered in Mexico. CIMMYT, launched in 1966, is both a local and a global creation. Rooted in Mexico’s approach to agricultural research, CIMMYT’s mission is equally intertwined with international development promises and growing food security concerns of the mid-twentieth century. Initial research that led to Norman Borlaug’s famous high-yielding hybrid wheat seeds took advantage of Mexico’s microclimates – and existing experimental stations – to solve narrower agronomic questions while later programs expanded in focus to include an increased socioeconomic bent and emphasis on the farmer. This chapter examines how CIMMYT, modeled after the successful Mexican Agricultural Program of the 1940s, evolved from a nation-centred agenda to become a mold-breaking international organization, while remaining rooted in and influenced by Mexican realities. The chapter illustrates that to speak of CGIAR is to engage with locally centred histories.