New Books In Latin American Studies

Gonzalo Soltero's book Conspiracy Narratives South of the Border: Bad Hombres Do the Twist (Routledge, 2022) examines four conspiracy narratives from Mexico that push the boundaries of conspiracy research in a new direction. They include narratives about Lee Harvey Oswald's visit to Mexico City, shortly before he apparently assassinated JFK, and street gangs across borders and how some of our worst fears are projected into them. ‘Lights Out’ and ‘Burundanga’ are popular narratives across the border, but Soltero provides us with their contextualization in Mexico and tells us how they transformed from urban legends into conspiracy theories. Mexico is a fertile terrain for conspiracy theories due to its complex social environment and its proximity to the United States, which not only made it a strategic platform during the Cold War but also today’s land of bad hombres that according to Donald Trump should be fended off with a wall. Conspiracy theories are always narrative in nature, telling us about the state of