Paul Gillingham

Paul Gillingham, Northwestern historian of Mexico and author of Mexico: A 500-Year History, explores why Mexico stayed united after independence. He gets into Yucatán’s surprising safety, Oaxaca’s political magic, Guerrero’s long violence, Mexico’s unusual freedom from military coups, and why new judicial reforms could reshape the country.

Paul Gillingham, a Professor of Latin American history and author of *Mexico: A History*, takes listeners on a captivating journey through Mexico's complex 500-year tale. He discusses the chaotic Spanish conquest and the bittersweet effects of the U.S. defeat, while revealing the country's surprising status as one of the world's earliest democracies. Gillingham highlights Mexico's rich hybridity, the redistributive efforts of Pancho Villa, and challenges the negative narratives about its past, offering a nuanced view of national identity and legacy.

Paul Gillingham, Northwestern historian of modern Mexico, guides a sweeping 500-year tour. He traces early contact and conquest, colonial extraction, independence, the 1910 Revolution, Cárdenas’s reforms, PRI-era politics, and the 21st-century drug war. Short, vivid takes explore debt, urban modernity, land dispossession, and what U.S. historians can learn from Mexico.