Monday, September 22, 2025
4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. EDT
The Georgetown Americas Institute and the Americas Forum invite you to join us in a conversation with Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato, a research professor at El Colegio de México who recently published El pan nuestro: Una historia de la tortilla de maíz (Colegio de México 2024), a new history of the tortilla. The foundation of the Mexican diet since time immemorial, tortillas were long made by women, until recently re-made as an industrial product. The analysis emphasizes the essential role of women’s hard daily labors—until they were liberated by access to machine-made tortillas. Gómez-Galvarriato’s first book, Industry and Revolution: Social and Economic Change in the Orizaba Valley, Mexico was published by Harvard in 2013 (with a Spanish translation, Fondo de Cultura Económica, in 2017). With El pan Nuestro, she has brought women and sustenance to the center of Mexican history. The conversation will be followed by a reception.
Featuring
Aurora Gómez Galvarriato is professor of history in the School of Historical Studies at El Colegio de México. She is an expert on Mexican economic and social history, whose work focuses on understanding key issues of Mexican economic development and its impact on the well-being of the population. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and was the general director of the Mexican National Archive from 2009 to 2013. She has also held positions at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University and at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (Center for Research and Teaching in Economics). She specializes in the history of industrialization and the evolution of business and the financial system, with a focus on workers’ organizations, living standards, and the participation of women in the labor force. Her work seeks to understand how globalization and capitalism have transformed the lives of workers and their families, as well as the agency of workers and their communities in shaping these processes. Her book Industry and Revolution: Economic and Social Changes in the Orizaba Valley, Mexico (Harvard University Press, 2013) studies these issues through the history of Mexico’s textile industry. Her recent research deals with technological change and business development in corn tortilla production through the twentieth century, including its impact on living standards, particularly in the lives of women. She has published in the Journal of Economic History, Journal of Latin American Studies, Business History Review, Enterprise and Society, and Revista de Historia Económica - Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, among others.
John Tutino is professor of history and international affairs at Georgetown, and director of the Americas Forum. His recent publications include The Mexican Heartland: How Communities Shaped Capitalism, a Nation, and World History, 1500-2000 (Princeton 2018; Spanish translation, FCE, 2024) and The Bajío Revolution: Remaking Capitalism, Community, and Patriarchy in Mexico, North America, and the World (Duke 2025)
Alejandro Werner is the founding director of the Georgetown Americas Institute and a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute. He recently completed almost nine years as director of the Western Hemisphere Department at the International Monetary Fund. Prior to that appointment, he was undersecretary of finance and public credit in Mexico’s Finance Ministry and held several positions in that ministry and the Central Bank. He also taught at leading universities in Mexico, Spain, and the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in economics from ITAM.