Presenter/Author: Pablo Piccato, Professor of History at Columbia University.
In conversation with Fernando Perez Montesinos, Associate Professor of History, UCLA.
About the book:
Mexico is not essentially violent. Each form of Mexico’s violence has a history.
Political rhetoric often portrays Mexico as an inherently violent nation. Pablo Piccato’s essential work, now available in English for the first time, cuts through the noise to contextualize violence as a historical phenomenon. Piccato shows us that violence is not unique to Mexico but, just as anywhere else, has erupted there in many forms. Attending to multiple histories of violence, Piccato reveals how violence emerges as a resource that people mobilize to various ends—not an uncontrollable impulse or the simple result of corrupt political power.
Traversing the twentieth century through the lens of violence, Piccato interprets and draws connections between violence arising from revolution, agrarian and religious struggles, guerrilla and counterinsurgency movements, and common crime, all without losing sight of the distinct contexts and social dynamics of each. Gender violence, he argues, surfaces as a common thread, shaping all other forms of violence. Piccato brings to light how guerrillas, the military, politicians, and common criminals rationalized violence to fit their goals, ideologies, and values. In an unflinching analysis that contends that violence is not an essential trait of Mexican society, Piccato presents a new paradigm for understanding violence and illustrates that we are not powerless against it.
Author/Speaker:
Professor Pablo Piccato, specializes in Mexican history (History, Columbia University). He has worked on the political and cultural history of Mexico, and on the history of crime. He is currently working on an overview of crime in Mexico during the twentieth century. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Alliance Visiting Professor at the Universite Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne (2011) and the Lenfest/Columbia Distinguished Faculty Award (2008). Among his previous books include A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth, and Justice in Mexico. Berkeley: UC Press, 2017; and La tiranía de la opinión: El honor en la construcción de la esfera pública en México. Translation by Lucía Rayas. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán-Instituto Mora, 2015.
Fernando Pérez Montesinos is Associate Professor of history at UCLA specializing in modern Mexico with a focus on the nineteenth century and the Mexican revolution. His first book, Landscaping Indigenous Mexico: The Liberal State and Capitalism in the Purépecha Highlands (UT Press, 2025), focuses on the Purépecha people of Michoacán, Mexico.