(Part 3) Reddit mentions: The best mexico history books

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http://www.amazon.com/Conquistador-Hernan-Cortes-Montezuma-Aztecs/dp/055380538X/ref=sr_1_1

I love readings history books. This was the one I enjoyed the most this year.

Man-God by Alfredo Lopez Austin is (along with basically his entire bibliography) absolutely essential in getting a good grasp of the mesoamerican side of it, not only the religion but the culture that created, a culture that was effectively alien to western sensibilities.

Spanish public version: http://www.historicas.unam.mx/publicaciones/publicadigital/libros/hombre/dios.html

English commercial version: https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Quetzalcoatl-Religion-Rulership-History-ebook/dp/B01DY08EC8

Seizing women and children during raids was a common (violent) method of integrating tribes in what is now the American Southwest. Trade and commerce were thought to be beneath warriors; women and children taken during raids added status to the warrior who took them and brought them back to his community. The more you had, the more successful you were in battle. The integration of different tribes and families via childbirth between these women and their captors functioned to foster positive relations between tribes; it was a violent practice, but it had diplomatic results. Also, it wasn't "slavery" in the same chattel sense of how it was practiced in the U.S. South.

A great book on this subject is Captives and Cousins by James Brooks.

Hey Man, glad you liked and actually went ahead and bought it.

It is one of the few books written by pre-colonial peoples, but in a modern language. If you want to know more perhaps I could recomend this book:

The True History of The Conquest of New Spain

A couple of books about major events in 20th-century Mexico:

Villa and Zapata is a good introductory look at the personalities and issues in the Mexican Revolution.

Opening Mexico is a great book about the end of PRI rule.

This is what I said

>>absolutely on par with ISIS in terms of violence, insidiousness, and ability to garner control.

The fact that you equate that with "conservative ideology" is ridiculous.

Comparing equally brutal groups isn't a conservative line of thinking... Here, can educate yourself a little so you have some frame of reference:




If you want a comprehensive view of the issue and a way to actually make a great comparison I'd start with



Understanding MS-13:

Frontline Special

Discovery Documentary

United Nations Analysis

To preface ISIS Understanding the Caliphate:

Al Jazeera Documentary Part 1
Al Jazeera Documentary Part 2
Al Jazeera Documentary Part 3

Understanding ISIS

Frontline Special 1
Frontline Special 2

Understanding Central American Cartels:

United Nations Analysis

Well Done Unknown Source

Gotta Subscribe but a good documentary


Read a fucking book

I know that this would indeed be very hard for him, but I would love to hear his thoughts on this. My dad told me about this when I was very young too but I don't think he knew anyone who was there since he lived in Guadalajara at the time.

My only book I've read on this subject was one that someone else also mentioned this in this thread: "68" by Paco Ignacio Taibo. It's fiction but it's really an analysis of Mexico in the 60's and what led up to this.

This is where I read it first, but couldn’t find a link online–

The Codex Mendoza

Tribute list from Tochtepec

The number of towns of the hot and temperate lands drawn and named on the following page is twenty-two, etc. The things they gave in tribute to the lords of Mexico are the following:

First they paid in tribute one thousand six hundred loads of rich cloaks, clothing the lords and caciques wore;
Also eight hundred... (etc. etc.)

Also sixteen thousand round balls of rubber, which is the gum of trees, and when the balls are thrown on the ground they bounce very high– all of which they paid in tribute once a year.

excerpted from Mexican History: a Primary Source Reader, edited and compiled by Nora E. Jaffary, Edward W. Osowski, and Susie S. Porter. Pg. 32.

Another favorite book is 'damming the Colorado river' from Robert h. Webb. It's a history piece from like third expedition down the Colorado river where an engineer named Birdseye and a team of surveyors and photographers mapped reservoir locations. The best part is their journals and gear lists, transcribed word for word so you can see what kind of equipment they had, who hated who, and so on. Really fun read as you get into it and there's a lot of hydro involved

Edit: Got the title wrong. We should have a book thread though
http://www.amazon.com/Damming-Grand-Canyon-Colorado-Expedition/dp/0874216605

I have a few you might be interested in:

Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky
The footnotes to Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky

Foundation by Isaac Asimov This book will bring up many interesting discussions on power systems, for a discussion group I would recommend just reading the first book in the series and discussing the themes.

The Mexican Revolution by Alan Knight

Dreams of Freedom : A Ricardo Flores Magon Reader

Stone Age Economics by Marshall Sahlins

The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin

Fragments of Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber

[Zapatista Reader] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Zapatista-Reader-Nation-Books/dp/1560253355)

Our Word is Our Weapon

The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy

Government is Violence by Leo Tolstoy

That's as much as I can remember, but my recommendations are bias towards my interests.

When I was in undergrad, I took a sociology course with a professor who wrote a book on lucha libre as an expression of Mexical cultural and political views. She talked about the effeminate male character (it has a name that I've forgotten) as a recurring trope, the juxtapose of being physically male and muscular and strong but acting in a non-masculine way. Interesting to listen to.

If you want a more unusual culture with stratification, look up the Aztecs. They had the rulers -> priests -> warriors -> nobles -> craftsman -> laborers -> slaves like many others, so it's a good compare/contrast. This book gives a good overview, though you could find info in plenty of others.

That's a pretty neat coincidence. You should read a book called Schemers and Dreamers: Filibustering in Mexico, 1848-1921, which discusses in detail various abortive attempts to carve new American-ruled republics out of northern Mexico. Filibustering in general would be worth studying if you want to do a really deep dive. William Walker, who conquered Nicaragua and ruled it for two years, might be especially interesting. There are several modern books out about him, but I haven't read any of them so I can't offer any recommendations.