Although they were highly influential in the processes and outcomes of the Mexican Revolution the Flores Magon brothers and the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) are often excluded from the traditional narrative of this important era of Mexican history. Their anarcho-communist politics are surely a cause for their marginalization. Their contributions to Mexican politics cannot be denied, and have long been documented. This thesis explores beyond their political activities to present the PLM's contributions to education. The PLM acted as more than a political organization. They were also educators. Through the distribution of their newspaper Regeneracion and the establishment of escuelas racionalistas inspired by Spanish anarchist educator Francisoco Ferrer they encouraged people to educate themselves while organizing toward their liberation in both Mexico and the United States.

This dissertation is about the uses and function of public art and makes the argument that public art should be viewed as an historical project. When developed within the framework of a collaborative community project with a thoughtful consideration to the experiences, values, and aspirations of community members, these projects challenge neocolonial tenets of exploitative labor conditions, racism, homophobia and sexism. By imagining public art as an innovative process that crosses the boundaries of social justice, history, and collective memory, Judith F. Baca established, and the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) employed a form of remembering that served as an essential component to understanding how communities envisioned themselves, their struggles, and their ability to transform history.

Reimaging certain flashpoints in U.S. history through the historical projects of public murals urges a more nuanced consideration of the past that dislodges narratives of de jure and de facto discrimination and racial violence. What results from this reconsideration is a construction of multiple histories that challenge universally venerated, yet often distorted legacies of this nation. This dissertation also makes the claim that Baca has spent a lifetime developing a process that at its core is a voice of the people and that speaks for the community. It is a process that has been refined over decades and a process that this is still being shared with the future generations of artists and activists. Chronicling her work and understanding her artistic and political ethos also demonstrate how she broke with a long line of prolific and respected artists in an effort to build broader and more inclusive opportunities for her community.

Indigenous social movements in the Americas have multiple sources, but in regards to Mexican Americans, my focus considers Chicana/o Indigeneity of particular importance to decolonization efforts because of its density, scope, and breadth, as well as spatial location. My dissertation answers the following question: how are Chicana/o assertions of cultural Indigeneity, intrinsically parallel and related to Chicana/o participation in Indigenous transnational struggles? The underlying premises for my investigation of Chicana/o Indigeneity are the following subquestions: how do transnational these efforts enrich our understanding of the respect of human rights, and what are the bases of Chicana/o Indigeneity? I explicate how Chicana/o historic consciousness is influenced by the complex transnational activism with Indigenous Peoples to decolonize the Americas and contend that Chicana/o Indigenist activists, informed by trans-border interactions, cultural practices, and long oral traditions challenged hegemonic constraints of Indigeneity constructed by Mexican and U.S. pro-western domination premised assimilationist projects. These challenges have resulted in Chicana/o participation in broader challenges to the prominence of western cultural hegemony in the nation-states of the Americas.

I depict groups and organizations comprising a specific activism that challenge assimilation and contribute to the prominence of contemporary Indigenismo or Indigenism as a cultural and political ideology. This activism, which seeds and stimulates Indigenism, instills calls for cultural assertion within international human rights advocacy. I focus on Chicana/o activists, activist organizations, and cultural groups that demanded the right to revive their Indigenous culture, and in doing so, aligned their cultural revival with the right to cultural survival that is integral to the demands of Indigenous Peoples. Since the late 1960s, the objective of Chicana/o statements on Indigeneity have provided the forum for a discussion regarding a culturally autonomous trajectory for Chicanas and Chicanos free of colonial logics, hegemonic cultures, and oppression. By no means has this road been straight forward and without equivocations. Nevertheless, by the 1980s and well into the twenty-first century, most Chicana/o and Indigenous activists stood generally unified by certain precepts and agreements despite national borders in their efforts to redress the violation of human rights in the Americas.

Mexico’s official history does not properly address the Drug Wars and its effect on the nation as well as the U.S. – Mexico border region, including criminal spillover between the two countries especially since 1911. Drawing from evidence gathered at Mexico’s National Archives – specifically declassified documents from Mexico’s secret police files – contemporary news accounts from Tijuana, Mexico City, and California, as well as court cases and long ignored political biographies, I trace the historical origins of the Drug Wars in Northern Mexico extending into Mexico City; a history of drugs, dissidence, and violence.

In my view, the problem of drugs in Mexico must be examined in Three Phases, two of which – Phase One and Two – I take up in the volume. The First Phase is from 1911-1945. The Second Phase is from 1945-1985. The Third Phase, since 1985, covers the rise of what I refer to as turf wars between competing drug trafficking organizations for the control of specific corridors vital for the production and distribution of drugs into the United States.

The First Phase goes back to the year 1911 when General and later Governor Esteban Cantú arrived to defend the Northern Territory of Baja California against incursions from Southern California by the Flores Magón brothers during the start of the Mexican Revolution. This was also a period where the role of vice tourism in Tijuana and Mexicali profited from the Prohibition Era in the United States (1920-1933) set the foundations for a drug trafficking model– developed for Baja Norte by Governor Cantú. This cross-border smuggling model was later refined in Baja under General and then Governor Abelardo L. Rodríguez (1921-1930), who then took the model to Mexico when he joined President Ortiz as a Secretary of Defense (1932) and Economy (1932) before he became Interim President of Mexico (1932-1934). The model has held to this day.

The Second Phase encompasses Mexico’s official start on the War on Drugs from 1945 to 1985 and coincides not surprisingly with the start of the Cold War in the late 1940s. In this Second Phase I analyze the consolidation and metamorphoses of Drug Trafficking Organizations in Mexico’s War on Drugs up to 1960. Thus, I explore the connection between East-Coast based Mafia and its incursion and eventual control of the drug trade and organized crime in the West Coast as well as eventually the transborder region. I also analyze the early eradication campaigns carried out by Mexican authorities first on their Baja regional level and subsequently at the national level. I also examine links between “Bugsy” Siegel and his alleged control of the drug trade in Southern California, which stretched easily to Tijuana.

This volume also investigates the War on Drugs and a “hidden dirty-war” against dissidence and peasants in rural Mexico, a span that ranged from 1965 to 1985. Under the pretext of eradicating drug production by narcocultivadores or narcogrowers, Mexican authorities also launched an offensive against dissident groups interested in readdressing the land issue in rural Mexico, effectively eradicating dissidence, but not drugs.

The search for the source of drugs soon involved the CIA-Contra-Drug Trafficking connection from the Mexican perspective. By the early 1980s, The Mexican journalist Manuel Buendía had begun to explore the link between the CIA-Contra-Drug Trafficking Conenction from the Mexican perspective, and he hypothesized that it needed the complicity of corrupt Mexican and law enforcement officials. In addition to his, Buendía also uncovered the participation of other state actors, such as the Mexico Secret Police (DFS) and the CIA. Buendía was murdered in 1984.

The drug issues came together in the 1985 abduction in Guadalajara and torture-murder of DEA Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. To unwind this complicated issue, I analyze the official and unofficial versions about this major transnational crisis. The Third Phase in my analysis begins, then, with the grisly murder of “Kiki” by Drug Warriors, which threw down the gauntlet to the United States. The Mexican Government came under great pressure to take drastic action to help U.S. agents that had flocked to Mexico to find the killers.

In this volume I only offer a brief sketch of issues that need full research of this Third Phase since 1985. My on-going investigations call for a follow-up volume to cover the complex rise of full-scale “turf wars" between drug lords, and between the drug lords and the military/police. This research will lead us into President Calderón’s so-called “War on Drug Lords,” which in reality had already gotten underway.

In the Epilogue of this volume, I articulate questions that address both the recent and drug history of the region. The analysis I raise presents a deep historical analysis of Mexico up to 1985. It also provides a starting point for future scholarship to be placed in its proper historical context, thus utilizing my historical scholarship as developed in this work as a launching point in order to place Mexico’s long-standing major problem: Public Order and Safety, the disorder of which threatens the very being of what is called the “Mexican Nation System of Government.”