Left-Wing and the ‘Other’ History: The 1906 Cananea Strike

The timeline of revolutions is never clear in regards to when we can say it began or ended. For example, we traditionally mark the storming of the Bastille as the start of the French Revolution, but there were agricultural strikes in the year preceding this. Likewise, the Mexican Revolution (dated roughly 1910 to 1920) is

The Casta Paintings: Creating Race in Colonial Mexico

Photo D Espanol y Negra se produce un Mulato by Juan Rodriguez Juarez, c.1715. Taken by author at the Leicester Museum A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to visit the Leicester Museum’s special exhibition on the Casta paintings. A series of these paintings, largely painted by Juan Rodriguez Juarez around 1715, were found

The Making of Today: Miguel Hidalgo, Religion, and Society in colonial Mexico, April-June 1753

On May 8 1753 one of the key figures behind the independence of Mexico was born – Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. Born to a criollo family and brought into the clergy, Miguel Hidalgo sat at a juncture in Mexican history. Two centuries after the Conquest a criollo population expanded and mixed with populations of peninsulares,

Paleo Profiles: Giant Vampire Bat

Today is the first day of 2020’s Month of Horror so we’re starting off by looking at a bat named after Dracula himself. Desmodus draculae is the scientific name for the giant vampire bat – a species of vampire bat which was 30% larger than modern vampire bats. What a better way to start the

Left-Wing and the ‘Other’ History: The Zapatistas

*Part of this post has been adapted from an essay written by myself for the University of Edinburgh On January 1 1994 in the forests of Chiapas, southern Mexico an uprising took place. An armed libertarian socialist group calling themselves the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, (the Zapatista National Liberation Army), better known as the EZLN,

The Legend of La Llorona

From Chilango.com Welcome to 2019’s ‘Month of Horror’ where each post in the month of October we look at something horror related. This week, and the first post of 2019’s ‘Month of Horror’, we will be looking at one of the most enduring legends in Mexican, Latin American,and Chicano folklore: that of La Llorona. ‘The Weeping

Left-Wing and the ‘Other’ History: Indigenous Peoples and the Mexican Revolution

Yaquis in Sonora, c.1911 On this series we have not managed to look at the ‘Others’ in history so far, and looking at Mexico’s indigenous community during the Mexican Revolution shows an interesting way to view the event. Despite being at the forefront of the revolution, indigenous communities have regularly been sidelined in how the

Comics Explained: La Lucha, The Story of Lucha Castro and Human Rights in Mexico

As I am writing it has recently been International Women’s Day and in my local area a more radical version of the movement has came into being – one advocating internationalism, trans rights, and anti-fascism. This reminded me of a graphic novel released in 2015, and in our first for Comics Explained it is based

World History: Latin American Revolutions

Again on World History we’re looking at a period of time nicknamed ‘the Age of Revolution’, and so far we’ve discussed the America, Haitian, French and Industrial Revolutions. The rest of the Americas during this period also saw revolution – a series of revolts and wars of independence broke out over a thirty year period

World History: The Aztecs

A piece of Aztec art Throughout Mesoamerican history there has been a history of city states. The last time we looked at Mesoamerican history we focused particularly on the Maya and their height of power. Today we shall look at the most famous Mesoamerican civilization: the Aztecs. However, we do run into a bit of an issue