Beginnings of contemporary Mexico

El México antiguo. Los mexicas. El nacimiento de la Nueva España,1519-1530. El proceso institucional. La economía. La sociedad. Las mujeres y la familia. Racionalización, reforma y reacción. El proceso de independencia.

Sharply critical analysis of Mexico's recent round of ambitious structural reforms, particularly of oil industry and finance reforms, which author says show direct line of descent from 18th-century Bourbon reforms, politics of Porfirio Diaz and neoliberal ideals of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, historical antecedents vilified by many on left in Mexico. Author was Mexico's youngest elected governor and is currently serving in Congress.

Essays by specialists in several fields that document current Mexican realities and extrapolate what they might portend for country in future. Encompasses wide range of issues and trends, from ethnicity and peasant communities, to church-state relations, unions, environmental concerns, crime, higher education, urban growth, mobility, corruption, democracy and many more. Organized into sections on population, housing and cities; institutions and public policy; and insertion in globalized world.

"Garrido, author of an outstanding historical study of the founding and early years of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, offers the first book-length analysis of the most important internal development within the party's structure: the Corriente Democrática. Analyzes party divisions which produced the Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas presidential candidacy in 1988"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.