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People of Power: Fifty Years of Conversation in MexicoDate: Wednesday January 28, 2026
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Location: SRH 1.313, LLILAS Hackett Room
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Roderic Camp, Claremont McKenna College
In this lecture, Professor Roderic Camp, Claremont McKenna College explores Mexican politics from its post-revolutionary era and decades of authoritarian politics to its transformation to a more democratic electoral system in 2000. Following his remarks, Professor Camp will be in conversation with Peter Ward, Senior Centennial Chair Emeritus in United States–Mexico Relations #1, UT College of Liberal Arts, Department of Sociology.
Camp demonstrates how he was able to connect with dozens of prominent national and local figures by writing letters to various individuals in the 1960s, a number of whom became mentors in explaining the unique features of Mexican political and economic systems. These Mexicans also included every living president from 1930 to 2000 and 2006–2012. These unique friendships also included Catholic bishops, generals, prominent intellectuals, and the first female public figures to reach cabinet-level positions. Many of the letters to-and-from those figures can be found in the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection.
Roderic Camp is the Philip McKenna Professor Emeritus of the Pacific Rim at Claremont McKenna College. He serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the Mexico Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Smithsonian Institution. Camp is a member of the Editorial Board of Mexican Studies and an Advisory Editor for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin America. He is a frequent consultant to national and international media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, and the BBC.
Dr. Camp is the author of numerous articles and thirty books on Mexico, seven of which have been designated by Choice as outstanding academic books; he has also published five books on Latin America. His most recent publications include The Politics in Mexico: The Path of a New Democracy (Oxford, 2020); Mexico: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2017); The Oxford Handbook of Mexican Politics; Mexican Political Biographies, 1935–2009 (UT Press, 2011); and The Metamorphosis of Leadership in a Democratic Mexico (Oxford, 2010). He is the recipient of the Order of the Aztec Eagle from the Mexican Government, the highest honor it can bestow on a foreigner, for his contributions to Mexico.
Free and open to the public. For more information, contact Paloma Díaz. ([email protected])
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