This important collection explores how Mexicos tumultuous past informs its uncertain present and future. Cycles of crisis and reform, of conflict and change, have marked Mexicos modern history. The final decades of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries each brought efforts to integrate Mexico into globalizing economies, pressures on the countrys diverse peoples, and attempts at reform. The crises of the late eighteenth century and the late nineteenth led to revolutionary mobilizations and violent regime changes. The wars for independence that began in 1810 triggered conflicts that endured for decades; the national revolution that began in 1910 shaped Mexico for most of the twentieth century. In 2000, the PRI, which had ruled for more than seventy years, was defeated in an election some hailed as revolution by ballot. Mexico now struggles with the legacies of a late-twentieth-century crisis defined by accelerating globalization and the breakdown of an authoritarian regime that was increasingly unresponsive to historic mandates and popular demands.