The University of Arizona Press
Mexico in Space
From la Raza Cósmica to the Space Race
From Aztec sun stones to satellite launches, from muralist visions to dark sky parks, Mexico’s engagement with outer space is fundamental to its identity. Mexico in Space offers a groundbreaking look at how the country has navigated the tensions between technological dependence and sovereign dreams.
Anthropologist Anne W. Johnson reveals Mexico’s unique relationship with outer space, describing Indigenous knowledge, nationalist projects, artistic visions, and community practices. Through rich ethnographic detail and historical insight, Johnson challenges the notion that space is for everyone and shows whose voices truly shape the world’s cosmic futures. Johnson introduces us to satellite engineers, community astronomers, space generation youth, and artists imagining Mars, each crafting alternative cosmic futures.
As space exploration increasingly becomes the domain of billionaires and superpowers, this book offers a compelling counternarrative, demonstrating how Mexican cosmic engagements suggest more just, inclusive ways of inhabiting Earth and beyond and providing vital lessons for reimagining humanity’s place in the cosmos.
“Johnson opens the book by taking the phrase ‘space is for everyone’ seriously—and then systematically dismantling it. Her argument is not that space is for no one, but that the very grammar of ‘everyone’ implies a singular outer space available for appropriation by a singular humanity. That implication, she shows through eight years of ethnographic fieldwork across Mexico, is both politically consequential and empirically wrong. Johnson’s central conceptual move is to borrow the notion of milieu from the French philosopher of biology Georges Canguilhem—a term she translates as something like a constitutive environment: neither backdrop nor container, but an active medium through which organisms (or, in her usage, people, institutions, and ideas) simultaneously shape and are shaped. . . . different communities in Mexico have engaged with outer space, not as a single infinite frontier, but as overlapping, sometimes contradictory places and practices.”—Keivan G. Stassun, American Scientist
“This is a tour de force of thick description of Mexico and its history from pre-Hispanic times to the present day and its intimate and nuanced relationship to outer space. Firmly linked to terrestrial histories and experiences, it elegantly deploys historical tropes to think with and is an analytical model for researchers to aspire to for the wider understanding of society and outer space.”—Victor Buchli, author of An Archaeology of the Immateria
“Mexico in Space: From La Raza Cósmica to The Space Race is timely and necessary. As the colonial intentions of space ventures come under increasing scrutiny, the cosmic histories of countries impacted by colonialism becomes evermore important. Mexico in Space is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Mexican history, technological development, and non-dominant space narratives.”—Savannah Mandel, Anthropology Book Forum
“Johnson opens the book by taking the phrase ‘space is for everyone’ seriously—and then systematically dismantling it. Her argument is not that space is for no one, but that the very grammar of ‘everyone’ implies a singular outer space available for appropriation by a singular humanity. That implication, she shows through eight years of ethnographic fieldwork across Mexico, is both politically consequential and empirically wrong. Johnson’s central conceptual move is to borrow the notion of milieu from the French philosopher of biology Georges Canguilhem—a term she translates as something like a constitutive environment: neither backdrop nor container, but an active medium through which organisms (or, in her usage, people, institutions, and ideas) simultaneously shape and are shaped. She adapts this idea into space milieux: the plural, historically situated, socially embedded contexts through which different communities in Mexico have engaged with outer space, not as a single infinite frontier, but as overlapping, sometimes contradictory places and practices.”—Keivan G. Stassun, American Scientist
