Activities & Initiatives

The annual Mexico Center Puentes Conference was the cornerstone of Mexico Center initiatives under outgoing Mexico Center chair Professor Ricardo Ainslie (end of term Aug. 31, 2022), with projects taking shape on the basis of emerging topics that were identified as critical.

• Health Initiative
  During the 2017–18 academic year, the Mexico Center indentified faculty from across the university researching health-related topics. They included faculty from the College of Liberal Arts, Dell Medical School, College of Education, Steve Hicks School of Social Work, College of Natural Sciences, Pharmacy, Nursing, and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. In collaboration with Dell Medical School and the Latino Research Initiative, the Mexico Center helped organize the Puentes: Advancing Population Health in February 2018, a two-day summit of UT and Mexican health researchers aimed at establishing targeted collaborations and developing projects and grant proposals.
       In August 2022, Ainslie traveled to Puebla to join researchers from the UT Austin Dell Medical School, Indiana University, Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública, the medical school at Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), and staff from Fundación Comunitaria de Puebla for the three-day conference Puentes III: Building Collaborative Implementation Research Teams. Participants worked to identify four to five marginalized communities in Puebla that will serve as pilot sites to replicate the AMPATH-Mexico program, an academic model that provides access to medical care in such communities. The care will focus on diabetes, nutrition and its role in preventing chronic illness, mental health services, maternal health, and the inclusion of healthcare students in primary care delivery. This collaborative effort is described here. Ainslie discusses the initiative in an interview on the BUAP TV station here (starts at 6:35).    
• Security and Governance Initiative
  The Mexico Center hosted a second Puentes summit focusing on security and governance in February 2019. Organized jointly with the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, the Human Rights Clinic at Texas Law, the College of Liberal Arts, and the LBJ School of Public Affairs, this summit focused on critical issues related to Mexico's security concerns and their implications for the United States, as well as issues in governance, electoral integrity, human rights, the role of civil society, corruption, and the structure of institutions.
• Shared Economies Initiative
  A Puentes summit focusing on shared economies is planned to follow the Security and Governance initiative. It will focus on key aspects of US–Mexico economic relations, including NAFTA, migration, energy, and water. Collaborations are being explored with a variety of colleges and units, including the McCombs School of Business, Jackson School of Geosciences, Cockrell School of Engineering, College of Natural Sciences, and College of Liberal Arts. Mexican counterparts will help shape a critical and dynamic examination of US–Mexico economic relations.
• Shared Heritage Initiative
  A Puentes summit focusing on Shared Heritage will allow for an engagement between UT repositories of cultural and historical objects and documents, such as the Benson Collection and the Harry Ransom Center, and the wealth of scholarship taking place in the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Fine Arts and other areas on campus such as Radio-Television-Film, to engage and accelerate collaborative work with parallel institutions and collections in Mexico.

In partnership with the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations, LLILAS Benson hosted the Matías Romero Visiting Scholars Program, which brought up to ten distinguished academics from Mexico to perform research at UT Austin each year. Although long-term visits have been suspended indefinitely by the Mexican government, short-term visits by scholars will resume in academic year 2023–2024.

Mexican studies are strongly represented in the activities of the Digital Initiatives office at the Benson Latin American Collection. Ongoing projects include the following.

• Libros de Hijuelas Post-Custodial Digitization Project
  Launched in November 2016, this two-year project encompassed the digitization of 192 land deed books, called libros de hijuelas, from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The hijuelas document indigenous Michoacanos’ negotiation with the reparto de tierras, a nationwide process of communal land privatization. Michoacán’s libros de hijuelas are the only known records that document this process at a statewide level. Digital copies of the archive will reside at the British Library, LLILAS Benson, and the Archivo General e Histórico del Poder Ejecutivo de Michoacán (AGHPEM).
  
  The project was funded by the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme, and was a collaborative effort between LLILAS Benson archivists Theresa Polk and David Bliss, UT Department of History professor Matthew Butler, Dr. Antonio Escobar Ohmstede of CIESAS, Dra. Cecilia Bautista of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, and AGHPEM. A team of four historians from the Colegio de Michoacán performed the digitization and description work.

• Fondo Real de Cholula Post-Custodial Digitization Project
  This project will digitize and catalog the Fondo Real de Cholula, held at the Archivo Judicial del Poder Judicial del Estado de Puebla, in the city of Puebla.The collection documents Cholultecos’ interaction with colonial and modern judicial structures, from the 1580s to the late 19th century. By bringing together materials from the colonial and modern periods, this collection will allow researchers to trace the transformation of Mexican legal practices, as well as indigenous adaptation to the changes, over a long period. This project launched in summer 2018 and will conclude in May 2019. A copy of the digital archive will remain at the Archivo Judicial in Puebla, and LLILAS Benson will publish an online copy.
  
  The Fondo Real de Cholula project is one of several funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation currently under way at LLILAS Benson. Collaborators on this project include LLILAS Benson archivists, UT professor of Spanish & Portuguese Kelly McDonough, Dra. Lidia Gómez García of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, the Tribunal Superior de Justicia del Estado de Puebla, and the Archivo Judicial del Poder Judicial de Puebla. The digitization and cataloging work will be performed by a team of three local historians, with support from staff of the Archivo Judicial.

For more information on these digital initiatives, contact Theresa Polk.