Department of History | The University of Chicago

The University of Chicago
Department of History
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
(773) 834-4769 -- Office
(773) 702-7550 -- Fax
Email: kouri@uchicago.edu

Field Specialties
Modern Mexico; social and economic history of Latin America; agrarian studies; the history of ideas; Cuba and the Spanish Caribbean; US Latino history.

Biography

Emilio Kourí's main scholarly interest is in the social and economic history of rural Mexico since Independence. He is the author of A Pueblo Divided: Business, Property, and Community in Papantla, Mexico. It tells the story of the strife-ridden transformation of rural social relations in the Totonac region of Papantla during the course of the nineteenth century, paying particular attention to how the progressive development of a campesino-based international vanilla economy changed and ultimately undermined local forms of communal landholding. A Pueblo Divided received the 2005 Bolton-Johnson Prize from the Conference on Latin American History (CLAH) and the 2005 Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize (Honorable Mention) from the American Society for Ethnohistory.

His current research project is an interdisciplinary study of the idea of the "Indian pueblo" in 19th and 20th century Mexican thought, law, and political discourse. Using modern Mexico as a case study, this book examines the origins and evolution of two deeply entrenched ideas about the character of indigenous communal organization: harmony and cohesion as defining features of Indian village social relations, and communal land tenure as the natural expression of this inherent cultural solidarity. Where did these unsubstantiated ideas about Indian culture and sociability come from? How and why did they become so influential? Part one, an intellectual history, traces the philosophical assumptions underpinning the analysis of "native communities" in early sociology and anthropology. Part two, an archival-based socio-political history, describes how these conceptions shaped 20th century Mexican social thought, agrarian reform, and Indian policy.

He teaches seminars on land reforms, rural social movements, and the history of agrarian thought, as well as courses on Latin American and Latino history, and is Director of the Katz Center for Mexican Studies.

Publications

"Manuel Gamio y el Indigenismo de la Revolución Mexicana," in Carlos Altamirano, ed., Historia de los intelectuales en América Latina, vol. 2, Katz Editores, Buenos Aires, forthcoming, April 2009

"John Womack: sobre historia e historiadores," Interview published in Revista Temas, La Habana, 2008

"Aspectos económicos de la desamortización de las tierras de los pueblos," in Rafael Dobado, Aurora Gómez Galvarriato, & Graciela Márquez, eds., España y México, ¿Historias económicas paralelas?, Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007

A Pueblo Divided: Business, Property, and Community in Papantla, Mexico (Stanford University Press, 2004)

"Interpreting the Expropriation of Indian Pueblo Lands in Porfirian Mexico: The Unexamined Legacies of Andrés Molina Enríquez," The Hispanic American Historical Review 82:1, February 2002

"El comercio de exportación en Tuxpan, 1870-1900," in Antonio Escobar Ohmstede y Luz Carregha Lamadrid (coords.), El siglo XIX en las Huastecas, México, CIESAS-El Colegio de San Luis (Colección Huasteca), 2002

"Economía y comunidad en Papantla: reflexiones sobre "la cuestión de la tierra" en el siglo XIX," in Antonio Escobar Ohmstede y Teresa Rojas Rabiela (coords.), Estructuras y formas agrarias en México. Del pasado al presente, México, CIESAS-RAN-Universidad de Quintana Roo, 2001

"La vainilla de Papantla: Agricultura, comercio y sociedad rural en el siglo XIX," Signos Históricos #3, 2000

"Lo agrario y lo agrícola: reflexiones sobre el estudio de la historia rural posrevolucionaria," Boletín del Archivo General Agrario (Mexico) (vol. 3, July 1998)

Recent Course Offerings

Tropical Commodities in Latin America
Latin American History Seminar
Zapatista Social Movements, Old and New
Agrarian Reform in 20th Century Mexico
The History of Mexico, 1876 to the Present
Pre-Columbian and Early Colonial Latin America
U.S. Latinos: Origins and Histories
Latin American Civilizations

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Emilio H. Kourí

Associate Professor of History
Ph.D. Harvard University 1996