USA

The 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, created a rupture with a series of neoliberal policies implemented in Mexico and on a global scale over the last few decades of the 20th century. In a moment when alternatives to neoliberal global capitalism appeared to have disappeared from the world stage, the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN) initiated a movement and process that would have significance not only in Chiapas and for Mexico, but for many struggles and movements around the world that would come to identify with a kind of “alter globalization” project. This dissertation examines the historical moment of neoliberal globalization, what the EZLN calls the “Fourth World War,” the Zapatista initiative to construct an alternative political project, and the importance of this process of rupture and construction for our understanding of social organization, political participation, struggle and subjectivity.

USA

This dissertation examines the cultural and political significance of sentimiento, the emotionally charged delivery of song in ranchera genre musical performance. Briefly stated, sentimiento entails a singer’s fervent portray al of emotions, including heartache, yearning, and hope, a skillfully achieved depiction that incites extraordinary communication between artist and audience. Adopting a feminist perspective, my work is attentive to the elements of nationalism, gender and sexuality connected to the performance of sentimiento, especially considering the genre’s historic association with patriotism and hypermasculinity. I trace the logic that associates representations of feeling with nation - based pathology and feminine emotional excess and deposits this stigmatized surplus of affect onto the singing body, particularly that of the mexicana female singing body. In this context, sentimiento is represented in film, promotional material, and other mediating devices as a bodily inscription of personal and gendered tragedy, as the manifestation of exotic suffering, or as an ancestral and racial condition of melancholy.

USA

The 2006 Mexican presidential election and the 2008 U.S. presidential election are valuable opportunities for cross-cultural comparative research. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, a woman and an African American man, were two candidates in the United States. Patricia Mercado, a woman and strong defender of minorities’ rights, was one of the candidates in Mexico. This dissertation used a comparative ethnographic analysis of these candidates’ political advertisements to identify the framing devices that female and minority candidates utilized in their self-presentations to audiences. The findings show that candidates in both countries use similar frames and tend to emphasize personality traits over issues and policies.

USA

This dissertation explores the interplay of early radio technology and twentieth century state power in Mexico. It argues that wireless technology was crucial to government attempts at incorporating frontiers, foreign policy, the outcome of the Mexican Revolution, and the formation of the single party state that ruled from 1929 to 2000. Examining radio development in Mexico is especially useful because political leaders first incorporated the technology immediately preceding a fractious revolution turned civil war. The subsequent dissolution and reconsolidation of the political order shows how wireless technology affected new attempts at state building during the first half of the twentieth century. Initially used as a tool of centralization, trade, and military domination, the Revolution proved that in the hands of insurrectionists and foreigners, radio could also be a tool of de centralization. The Revolution intensified the tendency of leaders to focus on the medium’s military potential as warring factions incorporated wireless devices to advance their causes.

USA

This dissertation analyzed how the media on both sides of the U.S. - Mexico border portrayed the issue of gun traffic king’s into Mexico and its impact on Mexico’s border violence. National newspapers from both sides of the U.S.- Mexico border were analyzed from January 2009 through January 2012, The New York Times for the U.S. and El Universal for Mexico, which resulted in a sample of 602 newspaper articles. Qualitative research methods were utilized to collect and analyze the data, specifically content analysis. Drawing on a theoretical framework of social problems and framing this study addressed how gun trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border impacted the drug related violence that is ongoing in Mexico, how gun trafficking was portrayed as a social problem by the media, and how the media depicted the victims of drug related violence.

USA

This dissertation examines Mexico City’s material politics of print —the central actors engaged in making print, their activities and relationships, and the legal, business, and social dimensions of production — across the nineteenth century. Inside urban printshops, a socially diverse group of men ranging from manual laborers to educated editors collaborated to make the printed items that fueled political debates and partisan struggles in the new republic. By investigating how print was produced, regulated, and consumed, this dissertation argues that printers shaped some of the most pressing conflicts that marked Mexico’s first formative century: over freedom of expression, the role of religion in government, and the emergence of liberalism. Printers shaped debates not only because they issued texts that fueled elite politics but precisely because they operated at the nexus where new liberal guarantees like freedom of the press and intellectual property intersected with politics and patronage, the regulatory efforts of the emerging state, and the harsh realities of a post colonial economy.

USA

The rapid increase in the use of social media during the “war on drugs” in Mexico, especially in the first decades of the 21st century, has stimulated a growing research agenda in academia. To date, this scholarship has focused primarily on investigating the opportunities social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube offer to civilians as organizing mechanisms, to fill the informational vacuum left by the tightly self-censured mainstream media outlets, and as a tool for survival. Yet, in Mexico, the use of these platforms has taken a darker, more sinister turn. Research exploring the use of social media platforms has largely ignored the fact that these communication outlets also provide major opportunities for criminal organizations to engage in public relations strategies, ease their recruitment tactics, send threatening messages to government authorities, civilians, and to warn off potential rivals.

USA

This project reconsiders the relationship between the government and media as revealed by the development of national print media organizations in Mexico before and after the revolutionary period, 1900 - 1940. Historians have long believed that Mexican journalists had accepted payments from the PRI, the party that laid the foundation for its seventy year dictatorship during this period, in exchange for positive news coverage and to cover up the government’s failings. This project challenges this assumption and demonstrates a different history of intense contestation between the state and media organizations. Instead of acquiescing to government officials, Mexican journalists founded new periodicals and used them to defy their authority throughout this time period, often at the risk of their careers and lives. Journalists remained strong activists and worked closely with politicians to pass the reforms they fought for during the revolution. It was only through the leadership of President Lázaro Cárdenas that the government was able to integrate these defiant reporters into the “Revolutionary Family.”

León

En el primer libro se presentan cuatro textos. El primero, propone una serie de reflexiones a partir de la escuela del taoísmo como una serie de metáforas para entender las posibilidades, los límites y los riegos del Internet. El segundo, sintetiza una serie de reflexiones sobre las redes y comunidades de investigación. El tercero, es un trabajo sobre los estudios culturales y de la comunicación en México e incluye una revisión de lo producido por la Red Nacional de Investigadores de Culturas Contemporáneas. El cuarto, relata la experiencia de la primera revista electrónica sobre comunicación en México. El segundo libro incluye también cuatro textos: el primero es sobre el uso del ciberespacio. El segundo, es una propuesta de investigación que tiene como objetivo la conformación de redes de jóvenes en el país. El tercero, es el protocolo de investigación sobre la telenovela Mirada de mujer. El cuarto, ofrece reflexiones sobre la relación de las ciberculturas en el mundo contemporáneo, y las imágenes para pensar, la sociedad, la cultura y la comunicación.

México

En este artículo se presenta un informe sobre el estado de la comunicación vía satélite en México y sobre las perspectivas que se diseñan a partir de la instalación del sistema nacional Morelos, anunciado para 1985 Los resultados de la investigación realizada participan de la incertidumbre que domina la política estatal de comunicación, caracterizada por vacilaciones y contradicciones propias, tal vez, de un momento de fuertes decisiones. El paso tecnológico que señala la adopción del sistema Morelos ha puesto en tensión toda la estructura destinada a conducir y manejar el área de comunicaciones. Una conclusión global, que por generalizante puede dejar a un lado excepciones de indudable valor, es que la política oficial de uso de la tecnología satelital para comunicaciones, las decisiones en las innovaciones o adquisición de nuevos recursos y la evaluación de las ventajas e inconvenientes de la incorporación de estas nuevas tecnologías, dan muestra de una notable improvisación, falta de análisis integrales y apresuramientos.