Mexico, Interrupted

Labor, Idleness, and the Economic Imaginary of Independence

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón, Sergio Negrón

• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780826505538
  9780826505545
• eBook ISBN:
  9780826505552
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: History

Honorable Mention, Premio al Mejor Libro en Humanidades, Latin American Studies Association–Mexico Section, 2024

Mexican independence was, in a sense, an economic event. Through economic concerns, elites created a common ground with non-elites in their demands against foreign domination, and independence was imagined by the lettered men of Mexico as a feat that would nationalize a rich and productive economic apparatus.
 
Mexico, Interrupted investigates these economic hopes during the difficult decades between 1821, the year of the country's definite separation from Spain, and 1852, a period of political polarization after the US-Mexico War that led the country to the brink of another armed conflict. Drawing on political and popular media, this book studies the Mexican intelligentsia's obsession with labor and idleness in their attempts to create a wealthy, independent nation.
 
Focusing on figures of work and its opposites, Mexico, Interrupted reconstructs these decades' "economic imaginaries of independence": the political and cultural discourses that structured understandings, beliefs, and fantasies of the relationship between "the economy" and the life of an independent polity. By bringing together intellectual history, critical theory, and cultural studies, Gutiérrez Negrón offers a new account of the Mexican nineteenth century and complicates the history of the "spirit of capitalism" in the Americas.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Colono: The Territory, the Future of Labor, and the Subject of Production
• 2. The Artisan: Industrialization, Labor, and the Modernization of Customs
• 3. The Vagrant: Vagrancy, Police, and the Opacity of the Social
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index