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This book examines the relationship between free markets and democracy. It demonstrates how the implementation of even very painful free-market economic reforms in Chile and Mexico have helped to consolidate democratic politics without engendering a backlash against either reform or democratization. This national-level compatibility between free markets and democracy, however, is founded on their rural incompatibility. In the countryside, free-market reforms socially isolate peasants to such a degree that they become unable to organize independently, and are vulnerable to the pressures of local economic elites. This helps to create an electoral coalition behind free-market reforms that is critically based in some of the market's biggest victims: the peasantry. The book concludes that the comparatively stable free-market democracy in Latin America hinges critically on its defects in the countryside; conservative, free-market elites may consent to open politics only if they have a rural electoral redoubt.

Cities arose independently in both the Old World and in the pre-Columbian New World. Lacking written records, many of these New World cities can be studied only through archaeology, including the earliest pre-Columbian city, Teotihuacan, Mexico, one of the largest cities of its time (150 B.C. to A.D. 750). Thus, an important question is how similar New World cities are to their Old World counterparts.Before recent times, the dense populations of cities made them unhealthy places because of poor sanitation and inadequate food supplies. Storey's research shows clearly that although Teotihuacan was a very different environment and culture from 17th-century London, these two great cities are comparable in terms of health problems and similar death rates.

Cities arose independently in both the Old World and in the pre-Columbian New World. Lacking written records, many of these New World cities can be studied only through archaeology, including the earliest pre-Columbian city, Teotihuacan, Mexico, one of the largest cities of its time (150 B.C. to A.D. 750). Thus, an important question is how similar New World cities are to their Old World counterparts. Before recent times, the dense populations of cities made them unhealthy places because of poor sanitation and inadequate food supplies. Storey's research shows clearly that although Teotihuacan was a very different environment and culture from 17th-century London, these two great cities are comparable in terms of health problems and similar death rates.

This study examines mobility and migration patterns in early nineteenth-century Guadalajara, Mexico. Using data from censuses, notarial records, wills, and other sources, it reveals a high level of mobility that was short term and often cyclical and argues that mobility affected the vast majority of the city's residents.

Background Phytophthora root rot, caused by Phytophthora capsici, is a major disease affecting Capsicum production worldwide. A recombinant inbred line (RIL) population derived from the hybridization between ‘Criollo de Morellos-334’ (CM-334), a resistant landrace from Mexico, and ‘Early Jalapeno’, a susceptible cultivar was genotyped using genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS)-derived single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. A GBS-SNP based genetic linkage map for the RIL population was constructed. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping dissected the genetic architecture of P. capsici resistance and candidate genes linked to resistance for this important disease were identified. Results Development of a genetic linkage map using 1,973 GBS-derived polymorphic SNP markers identified 12 linkage groups corresponding to the 12 chromosomes of chile pepper, with a total length of 1,277.7 cM and a marker density of 1.5 SNP/cM. The maximum gaps between consecutive SNP markers ranged between 1.9 (LG7) and 13.5 cM (LG5). Collinearity between genetic and physical positions of markers reached a maximum of 0.92 for LG8. QTL mapping identified genomic regions associated with P. capsici resistance in chromosomes P5, P8, and P9 that explained between 19.7 and 30.4% of phenotypic variation for resistance. Additive interactions between QTL in chromosomes P5 and P8 were observed. The role of chromosome P5 as major genomic region containing P. capsici resistance QTL was established. Through candidate gene analysis, biological functions associated with response to pathogen infections, regulation of cyclin-dependent protein serine/threonine kinase activity, and epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation were identified. Conclusions Results support the genetic complexity of the P. capsici – Capsicum pathosystem and the possible role of epigenetics in conferring resistance to Phytophthora root rot. Significant genomic regions and candidate genes associated with disease response and gene regulatory activity were identified which allows for a deeper understanding of the genomic landscape of Phytophthora root rot resistance in chile pepper.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Physical Setting The Valley of Mexico Central Mexico Yucatán and the South The North Conclusion Further Reading Bibliography

Greater knowledge and transparency are often promoted as the keys to solving a wide array of governance problems. In Instituting Nature, Andrew Mathews describes Mexico's efforts over the past hundred years to manage its forests through forestry science and biodiversity conservation. He shows that transparent knowledge was produced not by official declarations or scientists' expertise but by encounters between the relatively weak forestry bureaucracy and the indigenous people who manage and own the pine forests of Mexico. Mathews charts the performances, collusions, complicities, and evasions that characterize the forestry bureaucracy. He shows that the authority of forestry officials is undermined by the tension between local realities and national policy; officials must juggle sweeping knowledge claims and mundane concealments, ambitious regulations and routine rule breaking. Moving from government offices in Mexico City to forests in the state of Oaxaca, Mathews describes how the science of forestry and bureaucratic practices came to Oaxaca in the 1930s and how local environmental and political contexts set the stage for local resistance. He tells how the indigenous Zapotec people learned the theory and practice of industrial forestry as employees and then put these skills to use when they become the owners and managers of the area's pine forests--eventually incorporating forestry into their successful claims for autonomy from the state. Despite the apparently small scale and local contexts of this balancing act between the power of forestry regulations and the resistance of indigenous communities, Mathews shows that it has large implications--for how we understand the modern state, scientific knowledge, and power and for the global carbon markets for which Mexican forests might become valuable.The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket.

Migration is typically seen as a transnational phenomenon, but it happens within borders, too. Oaxaca in Motion documents a revealing irony in the latter sort: internal migration often is global in character, motivated by foreign affairs and international economic integration, and it is no less transformative than its cross-border analogue. Iván Sandoval-Cervantes spent nearly two years observing and interviewing migrants from the rural Oaxacan town of Santa Ana Zegache. Many women from the area travel to Mexico City to work as domestics, and men are encouraged to join the Mexican military to fight the US-instigated \"war on drugs\" or else leave their fields to labor in industries serving global supply chains. Placing these moves in their historical and cultural context, Sandoval-Cervantes discovers that migrants' experiences dramatically alter their conceptions of gender, upsetting their traditional notions of masculinity and femininity. And some migrants bring their revised views with them when they return home, influencing their families and community of origin. Comparing Oaxacans moving within Mexico to those living along the US West Coast, Sandoval-Cervantes clearly demonstrates the multiplicity of answers to the question, \"Who is a migrant?\"

Identifying factors that may be responsible for regulating the size of animal populations is a cornerstone in understanding population ecology. The main factors that are thought to influence population size are either resources (bottom-up), or predation (top-down), or interspecific competition (parallel). However, there are highly variable and often contradictory results regarding their relative strengths and influence. These varied results are often interpreted as indicating \"shifting control\" among the three main factors, or a complex, nonlinear relationship among environmental variables, resource availability, predation, and competition. We argue here that there is a \"missing link\" in our understanding of predator-prey dynamics. We explore whether the landscape-of-fear model can help us clarify the inconsistencies and increase our understanding of the roles, extent, and possible interactions of top-down, bottom-up, and parallel factors on prey population abundance. We propose two main predictions derived from the landscape-of-fear model: (1) for a single species, we suggest that as the makeup of the landscape of fear changes from relatively safe to relatively risky, bottom-up impacts switch from strong to weak as top-down impacts go from weak to strong; (2) for two or more species, interspecific competitive interactions produce various combinations of bottom-up, top-down, and parallel impacts depending on the dominant competing species and whether the landscapes of fear are shared or distinctive among competing species. We contend that these predictions could successfully explain many of the complex and contradictory results of current research. We test some of these predictions based on long-term data for small mammals from the Chihuahuan Desert in the United States. and Mexico. We conclude that the landscape-of-fear model does provide reasonable explanations for many of the reported studies and should be tested further to better understand the effects of bottom-up, top-down, and parallel factors on population dynamics.

\"I think that the U.S.'s plan is to make Mexico into a kind of colony,\" says [Manuel Valadez Lopez], with a half smile. \"People go to the U.S. to work and earn dollars. They come back to Mexico and spend their dollars on American products. It's a nice, round business.\" He continues: \"Everyone here depends on the U.S. If this isn't a colony, then how do you define colony?\" \"In Mexico, we have exported the factory of migrants,\" says Rodolfo Garcia Zamora, an economics professor who also teaches at the Graduate School of Development Studies. Zamora, author of Migration, Remittances and Local Development, says Mexico \"is mortgaging its future\" with migration and remittances. In the 10 Mexican states with the longest migration histories, he says, 65 percent of municipalities have a negative population growth. \"This means that in the future,\" says Zamora, \"these communities will not be able to reproduce, neither economically nor socially, because the demographics of migration have condemned them to disappear.\" Garcia Zamora, who helped write the Zacatecas state development plan, is unconvinced The main problem, he says, is the lack of real political alternatives to neoliberalism. According to Zamora, \"there is only one political party in Mexico-the PRI,\" referring to Mexico's notoriously corrupt Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled the country from 1929 to 2000. \"The PRD government in Zacatecas now acts just like a PRI government,\" Zamora says, this time referencing the Party of the Democratic Revolution, the opposition party to the PRI. \"The same lack of planning and nepotism. It spends its time mainly implementing federal programs. They drafted a good development plan, but they... have never carried out a serious regional economic development policy that seeks to diminish the massive exodus of 40,000 Zacatecas residents who abandon Mexico every year.\"