The Mexico Initiative

OVERVIEW ŸŸŸ• PARTNERSHIPS • EVENTS • STUDENT ENGAGEMENT • BOOKS

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Overview

The strategic importance of Mexico for California and the United States goes well beyond the traditional issues of security, migration and trade. With a common border extending 2,000 miles and bilateral trade of more than $300 billion per year, the U.S.-Mexico relationship is among the most complex bilateral relationships in the world. However, the relationship is not just about the continued flow of finance and people or the linkages created by licit and illicit trade. It extend into areas such as arts and culture, renewable energy, water resources, epidemiological threats, and demographic transitions. 

Stanford has had a long scholarly engagement with Mexico, both through its Mexican and Mexican origin students as well as a long engagement of its faculty in research projects involving Mexico. The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies is launching the Mexico initiative to broaden and deepen Stanford’s work and to take advantage of key opportunities to strengthen its programs of research, education and outreach in Mexico. The greater aim of the initiative is to make a significant contribution to the study of contemporary Mexico by leveraging Stanford University’s unconventional approach to development, and promoting innovative thinking linking science, technology, society and the humanities. 

Partnerships

The Mexico Initiative is hosted at the Freeman Spogli Institute, and works in partnership with the Center for Latin American Studies, the Bill Lane Center for the American West, and the Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Events

The Mexico Initiative is working to promote and disseminate events and programs occurring in the campus. Some recent and upcoming events on Mexico at Stanford are highlighted below.

Please email us if you wish to have your event featured.

Upcoming Events

Past Events

Graduate Student Fellowships and Exchanges

Stanford supports several unique fellowship opportunities for international graduate students from Mexico:

• Claudio X. Gonzalez Graduate Student Aid Fund: In the Graduate School of Education, the Claudio X. Gonzalez Graduate Student Aid Fund provides financial support through fellowships to ICE/IEAPA students who are citizens of Mexico.
• Claudio X. Gonzalez Graduate Fellowship in Engineering
: In the School of Engineering, the fellowship aims to attract exceptional students from Mexico to Stanford and prepare them for leadership roles in society.
• CONACYT Stanford Graduate Fellowships 
Established by CONACYT (Mexican National Council of Science and Technology) and Stanford University, this fellowship is designed to attract talented students from Mexico to pursue graduate study in engineering at Stanford. By doing so, the university and CONACYT plan to promote cooperation among scientists and scholars in the United States and Mexico and help enhance the quality of the relationship among people from the two countries.

In addition to these Stanford programs, the Fulbright-García Robles scholarship is a prestigious award administered by the Mexico-U.S. Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (COMEXUS), which seeks promote mutual understanding between the two countries through educational and cultural exchanges.

Undergraduate Engagement

The Freeman Spogli Institute and the Mexico Initiative provide funding and advising to the Forum for Cooperation Understanding and Solidarity (US-Mex FoCUS). FoCUS is a product of the collaborative effort of students at Stanford University and at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). Through this partnership, students from both universities are attempting to develop and strengthen a network of young leaders committed to improving the academic exchange between the United States and Mexico.

Books

The Stanford University Press has published over 40 titles focused on Mexico. Below is a list of the books published by the Stanford UP since 2012:

• Pesos and Politics: Business, Elites, Foreigners, and Government in Mexico, 1854-1940 by Mark Wasserman (forthcoming)
• ¡Tequila! Distilling the Spirit of Mexico by Marie Sarita Gaytán (2014)
• Dreaming of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation in Colonial Mexico by Vera Candiani (2014)
• Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture During the Long Sixties by Jaime Pensado (2013)
• Nahua and Maya Catholicism: Texts and Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan by Mark Christensen (2013)
• Waking from the Dream: Mexico's Middle Classes after 1968 by Louise Walker (2013)
• The Life Within: Local Indigenous Society in Mexico's Toluca Valley, 1650-1800 by Caterina Pizzigoni (2013)
• The Making of Law: The Supreme Court and Labor Legislation in Mexico, 1875-1931 by William Suarez-Potts (2012)
• Measuring Up: A History of Living Standards in Mexico, 1850-1950 by Moramay Lopez-Alonso (2012)
• Social Forces and States: Poverty and Distributional Outcomes in South Korea, Chile, and Mexico by Judith Teichman (2012)
• "We Are Now the True Spaniards": Sovereignty, Revolution, Independence, and the Emergence of the Federal Republic of Mexico, 1808-1824 by Jaime Rodríguez (2012)
• Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico: The Other Half of the Centaur edited by Wil Pansters (2012)
• Police Reform in Mexico: Informal Politics and the Challenge of Institutional Change by Daniel Sabet (2012)
• Making the Chinese Mexican Global Migration, Localism, and Exclusion in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands by Grace Peña Delgado (2012)