New Books on Mesoamerica, Mexico, Chicano Topics

New Books on Mesoamerica, Mexico, Chicano Topics

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Myths of the Opossum: Pathways of Mesoamerican Mythology

Paperback University of New Mexico Press January 1, 2011

ISBN-10: 0826350356 ISBN-13: 978-0826350350

Alfredo Lopez Austin

This is the first major theoretical study of Mesoamerican mythology by one of the foremost scholars of Aztec ideology. Using the myth cycle of the opossum and the theft of fire from the gods as a touchstone, Lopez Austin constructs a definition of myth that pertains to all of Mesoamerican culture, challenging the notion that to be relevant such studies must occur within a specific culture.

Day symbols of the Maya year (1897)

[Kindle Edition]

Cyrus Thomas (Author)

Format: Kindle Edition

File Size: 11 KB

Sold by: Amazon Digital Services

Language: English

ASIN: B004HW6EQ6

The Native Religions of Mexico and Peru

(Large Print) Perfect Paperback TGS Publishing; New Edition,

Large Print, 15 point font edition (January 1, 2011)

ISBN-10: 1610336771 ISBN-13: 978-1610336772

Albert Reville, Translator: Philip H. Wicksteed

Our age is not, as is sometimes said, an age of positive science and of industrial discoveries alone, but also, and in a very high degree, an age of criticism and of history. It is to history, indeed, more than to anything else, that it looks for the lights which are to guide it in resolving the grave difficulties presented by the problems of the hour, in politics, in organization, and in social and religious life.

Penetrated more deeply than the century that preceded it by the truth that the development of humanity is not arbitrary, that the law of continuity is no less rigorously applicable to the successive evolutions of the human mind than to the animal and vegetable transformations of the physical world, it perceives that the present can be no other than the expansion of germs contained in the past. 

It attempts to pierce to the very essence of spiritual realities by investigating the methods and the laws of their historical development; it strives, here as elsewhere, to separate the permanent from the transient, the substance from the accident, and is urged on in these laborious researches by no mere dilettante curiosity, but rather by the hope of arriving at a more accurate knowledge of all that is true, all that is truly precious, all that can claim, as the pure truth, our deliberate adhesion and our love.

And in the domain of Religion, more especially, we can never lose our confidence that, if historical research may sometimes compel us to sacrifice illusions, or even beliefs that have been dear to us, it gives us in return the right to walk in the paths of the Eternal with a firmer step, and reveals with growing clearness the marvellous aspiration of humanity towards a supreme reality, mysterious, nay incomprehensible, and yet in essential affinity with itself, with its ideal, with its all that is purest and sublimest. 

The history of religion is not only one of the branches of human knowledge, but a prophecy as well. After having shown us whence we come and the path we have trodden, it shadows forth the way we have yet to go, or at the very least it effects the orientation by which we may know in which direction it lies.

Maya Art and Architecture in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras

[Kindle Edition] File Size: 2686 KB

Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited

Publisher: Approach Guides (January 7, 2011)

Sold by: Amazon Digital Services

Language: English

ASIN: B004IEA1OO Lending: Enabled

Approach Guides

(Author), David Raezer

Jennifer Raezer (Author) 

Approach Guides are downloadable cultural travel guidebooks that take an in-depth look at key sites throughout the world, drawing connections among their history, art, and architecture.

This Approach Guide affords an expansive view of Maya art and architecture – covering five sites in Mexico (plus four Mexican sites that influenced and were influenced by the Maya), three in Guatemala, and one in Honduras.

For each profiled site, this guide walks you through what is most important from an artistic and architectural standpoint. Packed with detailed explanations and an expansive catalog of high resolution photos, it is focused on providing the information culturally-oriented travelers need to understand what characteristics make each site unique and how these fit into the larger Maya universe. 

To afford you a complete understanding, this guide even profiles non-Maya sites – that influenced or were influenced by the Maya – that are critically important for appreciating how the Maya fit into Mesoamerican civilization as whole.

We hope you enjoy what we believe is a totally unique cultural guide to some of the best Maya sites and wish you a wonder-filled cultural experience!

The Cosmos of the Yucatec Maya: Cycles and Steps from the Madrid Codex  

[Paperback]Publisher: University of New Mexico Press January 1, 2011

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0826350364

ISBN-13: 978-0826350367

Meredith Paxton (Author) 

In The Cosmos of the Yucatec Maya, Merideth Paxton provides an ingenious and thorough new study of parts of two of the Maya books, or codices, with particular focus on a previously unrecognized image of the solar year that appears in the manuscript known as the Madrid Codex. 

The motif of the solar year also underlies her identification of a regional organization among the ruins of the Yucatec Maya settlements. Incorporating analyses of art, archaeology, astronomy, and colonial and modern ethnography pertaining to Yucatan, as well as studies of sixteenth-century Spanish beliefs, Dr. Paxton elicits fascinating new meanings from her sources and she invites Mesoamerican specialists and students to consider links between components of pre-Conquest Maya civilization. 

This innovative, scholarly text is essential reading for all who are interested in Mesoamerica, and it is sure to stimulate additional developments in the field of Maya cosmology and ideology.

Bartolom de las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas

(Viewpoints / Puntos de Vista) Paperback Wiley-Blackwell January 25, 2011

ISBN-10: 1405194286 ISBN-13: 978-1405194280

Lawrence A. Clayton(Editor)

This is a short history of the age of exploration and the conquest of the Americas told through the experience of Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican friar who fervently defended the American Indians, and the single most important figure of the period after Columbus. 

Explores the period known as the Encounter, which was characterized by intensive conflict between Europeans and the people of the Americas following Columbus’s voyages

Argues that Las Casas, ‘protector of Indians,' was primarily motivated by Scripture in his crusade for justice and equality for American Indians

Draws on the 14 volume Complete Works of Las Casas as a window into his mind and actions

Encourages students to understand history through the viewpoint of individuals living it

MEXICO

Hidalgo

(Spanish Edition) Paperback Reading level: Ages 9-12

Paperback: 127 pages

Ediciones B (January 30, 2011)

Language: Spanish

ISBN-10: 6074800871 ISBN-13: 978-6074800876

Guillermo Samperio (Author) 

Mariano Hidalgo y Costilla nos cuenta la historia de su hermano, Miguel, el cura que ahora le llaman El Padre de la Patria Mexicana. A decir verdad, hay dos o tres cosas que hay que preguntar: sabias que don Miguel tuvo hijos? Sabias que se caso tres veces? 

Si supieras que, antes de dar El Grito, el cura andaba en un baile, te la creerias? Bueno, y si supieras cual fue su primer apodo? -por supuesto, a el le encantaba-; quiza le hubiera gustado mas eso: que en los libros lo llamaramos El Zorro y no don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. / Mariano Hidalgo y Costilla tells the story of his brother, Miguel, yes, of course, this is the same priest who now call him Father of the Fatherland, but in those days was involved in every mess, it is better not remember here. Although in truth, there are two or three things you need to ask: did you know that Don Miguel had children?

Morelos 

(Spanish Edition) [Paperback]Reading level: Ages 9-12

Paperback: 101 pages

Ediciones B (January 30, 2011)

Language: Spanish

ISBN-10: 607480088X

ISBN-13: 978-6074800883

Guillermo Samperio (Author) 

Jose Maria Teclo Morelos Perez y Pavon, pacifico parroco de Curacuaro -un pueblo de Michoacan-, no habia imaginado que ese 19 de octubre de 1810 volveria a encontrarse con aquel cura que habia sido su maestro en un colegio llamado San Nicolas; ahora no platicarian de filosofia sino de la estrategia para lograr la independencia de Mexico. 

Jose Maria Teclo Morelos Perez y Pavon, a peaceful Curacuaro parrisher in the village of Michoacan, had not imagined that on October 19, 1810 he will meet again with the priest who had been his teacher at a school called St. Nicholas, except that now, they will not talk philosophy, but the strategy for getting the independence of Mexico.

Juarez. Heroe de papel

(Spanish Edition) Paperback Reading level: Ages 9-12

Paperback: 98 pages

Publisher: Ediciones B (January 30, 2011)

Language: Spanish

ISBN-10: 6074800863 ISBN-13: 978-6074800869

Guillermo Samperio (Author)

Al principio, a Miguel no le interesaba para nada su clase de Historia, y menos la vida de Benito Juarez. A partir de que conocio a Selene, una de las chicas mas populares de la escuela, todo cambio. 

Para llamar su atencion, preparo muy bien la exposicion acerca de ese gran oaxaqueno, y conto que Juarez si sabia montar a caballo y que su esposa era mayor que el, cosas que el profe nunca nos dice, y tampoco que don Beno paso un tiempo de su vida en la carcel. Pero, al final habran andado Miguel y Selene? 

At first, Michael was not interested at all in his history class about the life of Benito Juárez. When he met Selene, one of the most popular girls in school, everything changed. To get her attention, he prepared a huge presentation on the great Oaxacan . And he knew that Juarez did know how to ride a horse and that his wife was older than him, things that the teacher never taught them.

Handmade Bricks for Texas: A Mexican Border Industry, Its Workers, and Its Business  

Hardcover Lexington Books January 16, 2011

ISBN-10: 0739147978 ISBN-13: 978-0739147979

Scott Cook

Brickmaking was one of the pioneering non-agricultural manufacturing industries in the lower Rio Grande/Rio Bravo corridor, and a precursor of the binational, cross-border maquiladora industry that came to identify the U.S.-Mexico border economy in the aftermath of the Border Industrialization Program [BIP] launched in 1965. 

Through research beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to the present, Scott Cook has sought to fill-in these blank pages on the binational handmade brick industry and its competitive situation in the Texas market.

The Glories of the Republic of Tlaxcala: Art and Life in Viceregal Mexico

(Translations from Latin America) Hardcover

University of Texas Press; Tra edition January 15, 2011

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0292723601

ISBN-13: 978-0292723603

Jaime Cuadriello (Author), Christopher J. Follett (Translator)

In 1996 Mexico's Museo Nacional de Arte acquired a remarkable dossier of text and images that included an eighteenth-century document requesting permission to carry out a specific iconographic program in Tlaxcala. 

This discovery planted a seed that grew into Jaime Cuadriello's landmark work Las glorias de la República de Tlaxcala, now available in English for the first time.

In 1789 don Ignacio Mazihcatzin, the Indian pastor of Yehualtepec, commissioned noted regional artist José Manuel Yllanes to do a set of oil paintings for his parish church. 

As a formal record of inquiry and approval between don Ignacio and the bishop of Puebla, the document includes depositions about the prospective paintings and watercolor sketches of them. 

From this material, art historian Cuadriello reconstructs both mythic and historic events in Tlaxcala's collective memory, providing an extensively contextualized study of art, society, religion, and history in eighteenth-century New Spain.

In its broad scope, the book reaches far beyond a mere deciphering of the symbolism of iconic images to provide a new social history of art for colonial Mexico. 

It will appeal to art historians, historians of colonial Latin America, and scholars interested in how indigenous communities took the initiative, through a mythic and prophetic discourse, to negotiate and claim their own place within New Spain.

Forceful Negotiations: The Origins of the Pronunciamiento in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

(The Mexican Experience) Paperback University of Nebraska Press January 1, 2011

ISBN-10: 0803225407 ISBN-13: 978-0803225404

Will Fowler (Editor, Introduction)

Often translated as “revolt,” a pronunciamiento was a formal, written protest, typically drafted as a list of grievances or demands, that could result in an armed rebellion. 

This common nineteenth-century Hispano-Mexican extraconstitutional practice was used by soldiers and civilians to forcefully lobby, negotiate, or petition for political change. 

Although the majority of these petitions failed to achieve their aims, many leading political changes in nineteenth-century Mexico were caused or provoked by one of the more than fifteen hundred pronunciamientos filed between 1821 and 1876.

The first of three volumes on the phenomenon of the pronunciamiento, this collection brings together leading scholars to investigate the origins of these forceful petitions. 

From both a regional and a national perspective, the essays examine specific pronunciamientos, such as the Plan of Iguala, and explore the contexts that gave rise to the use of the pronunciamiento as a catalyst for change. 

Forceful Negotiations offers a better understanding of the civil conflicts that erupted with remarkable and tragic consistency following the achievement of independence, as well as of the ways in which Mexican political culture legitimized the threat of armed rebellion as a means of effecting political change during this turbulent period.

Destiny and Desire: A Novel

Hardcover Random House January 4, 2011

ISBN-10: 1400068800 ISBN-13: 978-1400068807

Winner of the Cervantes Prize

Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes, one of the world’s most acclaimed authors, is at the height of his powers in this stunning new novel — a magnificent epic of passion, magic, and desire in modern Mexico, a rich and remarkable tapestry set in a world where free will fights with the wishes of the gods.

Josué Nadal has lost more than his innocence: He has been robbed of his life — and his posthumous narration sets the tone for a brilliantly written novel that blends mysticism and realism. 

Josué tells of his fateful meeting as a skinny, awkward teen with Jericó, the vigorous boy who will become his twin, his best friend, and his shadow. 

Both orphans, the two young men intend to spend their lives in intellectual pursuit — until they enter an adult landscape of sex, crime, and ambition that will test their pledge and alter their lives forever.

Idealistic Josué goes to work for a high-tech visionary whose stunning assistant will introduce him to a life of desire; cynical Jericó is enlisted by the Mexican president in a scheme to sell happiness to the impoverished masses. 

On his journey into a web of illegality in which he will be estranged from Jericó, Josué is aided and impeded by a cast of unforgettable characters: a mad, imprisoned murderer with a warning of revenge, an elegant aviatrix and addict seeking to be saved, a prostitute shared by both men who may have murdered her way into a brilliant marriage, and the prophet Ezekiel himself.

Mixing ancient mythologies with the sensuousness and avarice and need of the twenty-first century, Destiny and Desire is a monumental achievement from one of the masters of contemporary literature.

Implications of Climate Change in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America 

[Hardcover]

Samuel B. Duncan (Editor)

Publisher: Nova Science Pub Inc (January 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1611228492

ISBN-13: 978-1611228496

Chicana

Paperback StoneGate Ink; 1 edition October 20, 2010

ISBN-10: 0982770553 ISBN-13: 978-0982770559

Debra Burroughs (Author) 

Chicana is the true story of loss and pain and ultimately triumph. Fleeing the Spanish flu and running for their lives. This is the gripping story of a families struggle to make it to America and survive the harsh conditions of illegal immigration. A book every American should read, truly the other side of the immigration issue.

Debra Burroughs grew up in the fertile Central Valley of California. She now lives in Boise, Idaho, with her husband and their dog. They have two grown, married children and are happily anticipating grandchildren.

The Reinvention of Mexico: National Ideology in a Neoliberal Era

Liverpool University Press - Liverpool Latin American Studies

Hardcover Liverpool University Press January 15, 2011

ISBN-10: 1846314852 ISBN-13: 978-1846314858

Gavin O'Toole

The Reinvention of Mexico explores the ideological conflict between neoliberalism and nationalism that has been at the core of economic and political development in Latin America since the mid-1980s. 

Grappling with a wide variety of issues generated by the dismantling of the statist economy and subsequent climate of market reforms, this timely volume shows that Mexico's transformation in the 1990s has broader implications for the study of nationalism. 

A welcome contribution to the literature on Latin American history, The Reinvention of Mexico offers important insight into national responses to globalization and the most appropriate vision of political economy in Latin America.

Street Life: Poverty, Gangs, and a Ph.D.

Volume 1, Paperback CreateSpace January 13, 2011

ISBN-10: 1453832696 ISBN-13: 978-1453832691

Dr. Victor Rios (Author) 

Victor Rios grew up in Oakland, California in a single parent household, in poverty and on welfare. He joined a gang at the age of thirteen and by age sixteen he had dropped out of school and had been incarcerated several times. 

Having witnessed the tragic murder of his best friend by gang rivals, Victor hit a critical juncture in life at which point he made the decision to transform. With the support of educators and mentors, Victor redirected his attitude towards life, and returned to school to eventually acquire a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. 

Dr. Rios uses his personal story, and 10 years of research experience, to discuss how personal and institutional "illusions" contribute to academic failure. He speaks about how society gives young people little choice but to use their "attitude" to solve their problems and how this strategy often leads to detrimental consequences. 

He discusses practical pathways to transformation relevant to the lives of students. Dr. Rios speaks about his own personal transformation by taking advantage of the support that teachers and programs provided him and discusses how these efforts can be replicated. 

This book is written to speak to a young adult audience — those young people who live on the margins, who are often assigned texts that do not represent their lived reality, their struggles, or their experiences. 

Educators and youth workers can use each of the short chapters in this book as tools for discussing complicated social issues like abuse, youth violence, delinquency, fatalism, opportunity, stratification, poverty, resilience, college, positive role models, healthy choices, and personal transformation.