The government-sanctioned killing of student protesters in Mexico City on October 2, 1968, continues to haunt the city and the nation. Elaine Carey's Plaza of Sacrifices is the first English-language book-length study to situate this watershed event in an analytic framework. She provides a gendered analysis of the protest movement that culminated in the killing of as many as 700 students (estimates are still disputed) and looks at the movement's ongoing effects on relations between the state and the individual, between parents and children, and between men and women in Mexico. Carey traces the trajectory of political and social protests in Mexico City during the summer and early fall of 1968, the tension-filled days of street marches and campus takeovers that gave way to violence. The protestors were students from the middle classes questioning the fundamental assumption of an authoritarian, paternal, centralized state. Their critique of the system dismayed the ruling elite and embarrassed the government because it coincided with the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. Carey shows that the Mexican student protesters were part of an ongoing critique of the failed promises and corrupted ideals of the Mexican Revolution half a century earlier. The government deemed politicized young men as dangerous because they embraced certain foreign influences while resisting co-option into the ruling party. Women, on the other hand, were not seen in such a politicized way. By their mobilization in the movement, however, young women challenged traditional concepts of their proper place within Mexican society and the movement. Carey details the roles and lives of activists to show how the events of 1968 shaped contemporary Mexico.

"A really interesting and provocative take on 1968. This book addresses the truly global dimensions-and the unexpected, often long-term consequences-of that year of protest. It's an original and highly usable comparative history sure to attract student interest." -Peter N. Stearns, George Mason University

"A really interesting and provocative take on 1968. This book addresses the truly global dimensions-and the unexpected, often long-term consequences-of that year of protest. It's an original and highly usable comparative history sure to attract student interest." -Peter N. Stearns, George Mason University

In the flow of drugs to the United States from Latin America, women have always played key roles as bosses, business partners, money launderers, confidantes, and couriers--work rarely acknowledged. Elaine Carey's study of women in the drug trade offers a new understanding of this intriguing subject, from women drug smugglers in the early twentieth century to the cartel queens who make news today. Using international diplomatic documents, trial transcripts, medical and public welfare studies, correspondence between drug czars, and prison and hospital records, the author's research shows that history can be as gripping as a thriller.

In this volume the borders of North America serve as central locations for examining the consequences of globalization as it intersects with hegemonic spaces and ideas, national territorialism, and opportunities for--or restrictions on--mobility. The authors of the essays in this collection warn against falling victim to the myth of nation-states engaging in a valiant struggle against transnational flows of crime and vice. They take a long historical perspective, from Mesoamerican counterfeits of cacao beans used as currency to cattle rustling to human trafficking; from Canada's and Mexico's different approaches to the illegality of liquor in the United States during Prohibition to contemporary case studies of the transnational movement of people, crime, narcotics, vice, and even ideas.
By studying the historical flows of contraband and vice across North American borders, the contributors seek to bring a greater understanding of borderlanders, the actual agents of historical change who often remain on the periphery of most historical analyses that focus on the state or on policy.
To examine the political, economic, and social shifts resulting from the transnational movement of goods, people, and ideas, these contributions employ the analytical categories of race, class, modernity, and gender that underlie this evolution. Chapters focus on the ways power relations created opportunities for engaging in "deviance," thus questioning the constructs of economic reality versus concepts of criminal behavior. Looking through the lens of transnational flows of contraband and vice, the authors develop a new understanding of nation, immigration, modernization, globalization, consumer society, and border culture.