Mexican History and Literature

Winner of the American Historical Association's 2025 J. Franklin Jameson Award for outstanding achievement in the editing of historical sources.

"A welcome tome for the study of slavery and freedom in the African Diaspora. An extensive, and often difficult to access repository of documents has been made available in a bilingual edition that will richly benefit scholars and students alike to better understand the complexities of the Black experience in colonial and early national Mexico. Bridging normal historical chronologies, and featuring sweeping sets of documents ranging from politics, religion, economics, and social life, there is little ground left uncovered for providing windows and glimpses of the evolution of blackness in Mexico. Expertly curated, marvelously framed, and diligently translated, this is a jewel of a book for historians."
—Ben Vinson III, Distinguished Historian of Latin America and former President of Howard University

Selected as one of the best historical materials of 2023 by the Reference and User Services Association, a division of The American Library Association.

"Henderson and Buchenau have done an excellent and thoughtful job of collecting a wide range of voices for students to learn about the Mexican Revolution and its causes, both from ‘above’ and from ‘below’. I’m particularly appreciative of the authors’ inclusion of women’s voices and women’s issues of the era, including the point of view of the first woman elected to public office in Mexico. They deserve praise for including documents that complicate widely accepted, heroic revolutionary narratives of the period for students—such as the experience of soldaderas and the massacre of Chinese people in Torreón. It is also worth mentioning that the editors have done an admirable job in choosing documents from across Mexico’s many diverse and heterogenous regions. The general Introduction is excellent; it is both accurate and highly readable for students. It is no easy feat to succinctly describe both the events and the significance of this period in Mexican history as the authors have done here." —Sarah Osten, The University of Vermont

"Guzmán was uniquely qualified to offer his critique of the Mexican political scene. His resume reveals a man who lived the Revolution as military commander, advisor, confidant, emissary, politician, academic, and writer. The style of The Shadow of the Strongman borrows from each of those diverse experiences to become, in many ways, a mixed genre that hovers between novel and biography, invention and history. Great reading for anyone interested in Mexico. The novel is not easy to translate. Guzmán is writing about political and historical events that require realistic accuracy while also incorporating complex and poetic descriptions of people and places. Pellón is to be congratulated for his translation that understands this duality." —Douglas J. Weatherford, Brigham Young University

"Chasteen conveys [the novel's] power and action, as well as the colorful language and humor of the gaucho found in the original text. Acree's astute introduction contextualizes the life and exploits of Argentina’s great 19th-century bandit hero. Moreira's humanity and heroism come through clearly to the modern reader. Thanks to Gutiérrez's skillful blending of fact and fiction about Moreira, readers today will learn a great deal about the social realities and folk customs of 19th-century gauchos. General readers will enjoy the action and pathos of this early work of ‘true crime.’ Instructors seeking to engage their students with a compelling tale of 19th-century Latin American class conflict and social injustice will want to assign the book in their courses."
    —Richard W. Slatta, North Carolina State University

Ideally suited for use in swift-moving surveys of World, Atlantic, and Latin American history, this abridgment of Ted Humphrey and Janet Burke’s 2012 translation of the True History provides key excerpts from Diaz’s text and concise summaries of omitted passages. Included in this edition is a new preface outlining the social, economic, and political forces that motivated the European “discovery” of the New World.

"Bernal Díaz’s True History of the Conquest of New Spain, the chronicle of an ‘ordinary’ soldier in Hernando Cortés’s army, is the only complete account (other than Cortés’s own) that we have of the Spanish conquest of ancient Mexico. Although it is neither so ‘true’ nor so unassumingly direct as its author would have us believe, it is unmistakably the voice of the often unruly, undisciplined body of untrained freebooters who, in less than three years, succeeded against all apparent odds, in bringing down the once mighty ‘Aztec Empire.’ It makes for consistently fascinating reading, and Ted Humphrey and Janet Burke have provided the best, and the most engaging, translation ever to have appeared in English."
     —Anthony Pagden, UCLA

"This is a superb overview of Aztec society and culture.  It also provides a wonderful postscript by discussing the Spanish invasion and the compelling legacy of Aztec civilization."
    —Douglas Richmond, University of Texas at Arlington

In addition to a fresh translation of Los de Abajo, Azuela's classic novel of the Mexican Revolution, this volume offers both a general Introduction to the work and an extensive appendix setting the novel in its historical, literary, and political context.  Related texts include contemporary reviews of Azuela's book, an excerpt from Anita Brenner's Idols Behind Altars (1929), and selections from John Reed's Insurgent Mexico (1914).

"Pellón's translation marks a clear improvement over the previous English versions of this seminal novel.  Pellón captures the crisp, tense, and terse dialogue of Azuela's original, and I believe that his decision to leave some words in Spanish is a good one, given that most of the words involved are already well known to the non-Spanish speaking public.  The retention of these Spanish words adds flavor to the translation without turning it into a 'Taco Bell' version of the novel.  I am so enthusiastic about Pellón's translation that I believe it should become the standard edition of Los de Abajo read in America. . . In short, this new translation is worthy of the classic on which it is based.  I will certainly use it in my courses, but more to the point, I will recommend it to my colleagues teaching courses on English literature, Comparative literature, and American studies." —Roberto González Echevarría, Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literatures, Yale University

David Frye’s abridgment of his 2003 translation of The Mangy Parrot captures all of the narrative drive, literary innovation, and biting social commentary that established Lizardi’s comic masterpiece as the Don Quixote of Latin America.

“Finally, an engaging, full-fledged rendition of the first Latin American novel ever—and still one of the savviest. José Joaquin Fernández de Lizardi invented Mexico . . . and David Frye shows us how.”
     —Ilan Stavans