In the last 20 years, Mexico’s political and economic systems have undergone profound changes, driven by a combination of economic crisis, internationally imposed responses to those crises, and popular mobilizations to challenge those responses. These mobilizations have had many goals: changing economic policy, making the Mexican state more democratic and responsive to its citizens, reducing state control of trade unions and indigenous communities, increasing that state’s willingness and capacity to enforce basic human, indigenous and worker rights. These struggles have been particularly intense in the nation’s capital and in the states south of the capital, most notably Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Puebla. This course situates the struggles of recent years in the post-colonial history of Mexico, and then looks in-depth at the neoliberal economic restructuring of the last 25 years and the most important of the popular responses to it in the federal district and the southern states.

Syllabi are available to current LSA students. IMPORTANT: These syllabi are provided to give students a general idea about the courses, as offered by LSA departments and programs in prior academic terms. The syllabi do not necessarily reflect the assignments, sequence of course materials, and/or course expectations that the faculty and departments/programs have for these same courses in the current and/or future terms.