Challenging Authoritarianism in Mexico : Revolutionary Struggles and the Dirty War, 1964-1982

Alexander Aviña received his BA in History at Saint Mary's College of California (2002) and his PhD in Latin American History at the University of Southern California (2009). He has conducted field research in Mexico, primarily in Mexico City and the state of Guerrero, funded by the University of Southern California and a Fulbright-García Robles Fellowship. His specialization is Modern Mexico with an emphasis on rural social movements and politics, post-1940 Mexico and the Cold War, and peasant politics. He has also published essays that focus on Guerrero's peasant guerrillas of the 1960s and 70s and state terrorism in Guerrero. He is currently revising his dissertation, "Insurgent Guerrero: Genaro Vázquez, Lucio Cabañas and the Guerrilla Challenge to the Postrevolutionary Mexican State, 1960-1996," into book manuscript form. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Florida State University.

The Cold War in Latin America spawned numerous authoritarian and military regimes in response to the ostensible threat of communism in the Western Hemisphere, and with that, a rigid national security doctrine was exported to Latin America by the United States. Between 1964 and 1985, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uraguay experienced a period of state-sponsored terrorism commonly referred to as the "dirty wars." Thousands of leftists, students, intellectuals, workers, peasants, labor leaders, and innocent civilians were harassed, arrested, tortured, raped, murdered, or 'disappeared.'

Many studies have been done about this phenomenon in the other areas of Latin America, but strangely, Mexico's dirty war has been excluded from this particular scholarship. Here for the first time is a sustained look at this period and consideration of the many facets that make up the nearly two decades of the Mexican dirty war. Offering the reader a broad perspective of the period, the case studies in the book present narratives of particular armed revolutionary movements as well as thematic essays on gender, human rights, culture, student radicalism, the Cold War, and the international impact of this state-sponsored terrorism.

Introduction: The Unknown Mexican Dirty War / Fernando Calderón and Adela Cedillo "Madera 1965 : Primeros Vientos" / Elizabeth Henson Seizing Hold of Memories in Moments of Danger : Guerrillas and Revolution in Guerrero, Mexico / Alexander Aviña At the Vanguard of the Revolution : The Revolutionary Action Movement (MAR) and the Armed Struggle / Verónica Oikión Solano "Por la reunificación de los Pueblos Libres de América en su Lucha por el Socialismo" : The Chicana/o Movement, the PPUA and and the Dirty War in Mexico in the 1970s / Alan Eladio Gómez From Books to Bullets : Youth Radicalism and Urban Guerrillas in Guadalajara / Fernando Herrera Calderón A Revolutionary Group Fighting Against a Revolutionary State : The September 23rd Communist League Against the PRI-State (1973-1975) / Romain Robinet Armed Struggle Without Revolution : The Organizing Process of the National Liberation Forces (FLN) and the Genesis of Neo-Zapatismo (1969-1983) / Adela Cedillo Subjugating the Nation : Woman and the Guerrilla Experience / Lucía Rayas Armed Forces and Counterinsurgency : Origins of the Dirty War (1965-1982) / Jorge Luis Sierra Transcending Violence : A Crisis of Memory and Documentation / Elaine Carey.