Public History in Mexico

This collection of essays explores how history is created, shared, and contested in urban and marginalized spaces by examining memory, displacement, resilience, and community-driven historical interventions across Mexico.

Bridging academic research with lived experiences, the book shows how public history is a powerful tool that both reflects on the past and projects more egalitarian futures of justice, representation, and cultural affirmation. Centred mainly around Mexico City, but also touching on the impact of migration at the northern border, it contributes to the debates around new forms of history construction and covers topics including territorial dispossession, deportation processes, the violence entailed in erased histories, and the reconfiguration of daily life during the COVID pandemic. Through diverse approaches and methodologies such as documentary film, digital storytelling, public art, museum interpretations, grassroots activism, and other collective or community work, it provides readers with valuable insights into how historical narratives shape identities, social movements, and public policies, as well as a deeper understanding of how communities engage with their past to reclaim space, resist erasure, and foster belonging.

This book is a useful resource for all upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in urban history, public history, cultural studies, anthropology, and Latin American studies.

Author Biography

María Moreno Carranco is a professor in the Department of Social Sciences at UAM-Cuajimalpa. Her research focuses on urban megaprojects, the impact of neoliberal globalization on contemporary cities, the effects of earthquakes on Mexico City’s urban communities and shifts in urban living during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Akuavi Adonon Viveros is a professor in the Department of Social Sciences at UAM-Cuajimalpa. Her research focuses on legal anthropology studies, ethno-racial classifications, national building narratives, urban and territorial memory.

Mario Barbosa Cruz is a professor in the Department of Humanities at UAM-Cuajimalpa. His research focuses on social and urban history, history of labor, middle classes in Mexico, and the relationship between history and memory.

Maite Zubiaurre is a professor in the Humanities at UCLA. She is the initiator and principal investigator of Forensic Empathy, a multi-pronged interdisciplinary endeavor that looks at migration, migrant death, the ecologies of migrant care, and material culture at the US-Mexico border. She is also an activist and a filmmaker.