The customs, myths, folklore, traditions, beliefs, fiestas, dances, and songs of the Mexican people.

In 2015, the Mexican state counted how many of its citizens identified as Afro-Mexican for the first time since independence. Finding Afro-Mexico reveals the transnational interdisciplinary histories that led to this celebrated reformulation of Mexican national identity. It traces the Mexican, African American, and Cuban writers, poets, anthropologists, artists, composers, historians, and archaeologists who integrated Mexican history, culture, and society into the African Diaspora after the Revolution of 1910. Theodore W. Cohen persuasively shows how these intellectuals rejected the nineteenth-century racial paradigms that heralded black disappearance when they made blackness visible first in Mexican culture and then in post-revolutionary society. Drawing from more than twenty different archives across the Americas, this cultural and intellectual history of black visibility, invisibility, and community-formation questions the racial, cultural, and political dimensions of Mexican history and Afro-diasporic thought.

This book is a must read for anyone who would like to learn more about Dance in Mexican History. It is an especially important reference for teachers of Mexican Folkloric Dance who would like to incorporate Mexican Dance History into their teachings. Using the time frame of 1325-1910, Martínez-Hunter skillfully gives a brief overview of Mexican history accompanied by an analysis of the dances during this period. She begins by diving into accounts of the Aztec dances in Pre-Hispanic Mexico before and after the conquest. Then, she describes the Dance Dramas that arose when the Spanish began to Christianize the Indigenous people. During the Spanish colonization, Martínez-Hunter notes the ways in which theatrical dances were imported from Europe to Mexico; the influences of the court dances including the pavane, sarabande, and the chaconne which began in the New World and traveled to Europe; as well as the Indigenous, mestizo, Chilean, and African influences on the dances of Mexico. Then, covering the dances during the Independence of Mexico (1810-1821) until the beginnings of the Mexican Revolutionary War (1910-1920), Martínez-Hunter juxtaposes the popularity of the European ballroom dances with the dances of the peasant people known as jarabes and sones. To honor the life's work of Martínez-Hunter all the photographs of the jarabes and sones included in this book feature her dancers of the University of Texas at Austin Ballet Folklorico from the 1970s. They document her many contributions to Dance when she was a faculty member at this institution.

Housed in the former 16th-century convent of Santo Domingo church, now the Regional Museum of Oaxaca, Mexico, is an important collection of textiles representing the area’s indigenous cultures. The collection includes a wealth of exquisitely made traditional weavings, many that are now considered rare. The Unbroken Thread: Conserving the Textile Traditions of Oaxaca details a joint project of the Getty Conservation Institute and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) of Mexico to conserve the collection and to document current use of textile traditions in daily life and ceremony. The book contains 145 color photographs of the valuable textiles in the collection, as well as images of local weavers and project participants at work. Subjects include anthropological research, ancient and present-day weaving techniques, analyses of natural dyestuffs, and discussions of the ethical and practical considerations involved in working in Latin America to conserve the materials and practices of living cultures.

This important book from a Pulitzer Prize finalist follows the brutal journey a group of men take to cross the Mexican border: "the single most compelling, lucid, and lyrical contemporary account of the absurdity of U.S. border policy" (The Atlantic). In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, the "Devil's Highway." Three years later, Luis Alberto Urrea wrote about what happened to them. The result was a national bestseller, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a "book of the year" in multiple newspapers, and a work proclaimed as a modern American classic.

"Over 370 tritone photographs, arranged in broadly chronological order, mark Alvarez Bravo's remarkable eighty-year career. Strikingly poetic and richly resonant, the collection includes iconic images as well as over thirty previously unpublished masterpieces. Urban and rural scenes, still lifes, nudes, religious and vernacular subjects, portraits of luminaries including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Octavio Paz: all illustrate the peerless acuity of the photographer's eye. Above all, Alvarez Bravo's work celebrates his beloved Mexico, with its indigenous rituals and age-old customs."--Jacket.