Divided spirits (2015)

Bowen delivers a rigorous examination of how Mexico's agave spirits, tequila and mezcal, became battlegrounds of national identity, agrarian politics, and international trade. The narrative charts how colonial Spanish distilling bans gave way to post-revolutionary peasant cooperatives, which were later dismantled by multinational conglomerates following the North American Free Trade Agreement. It is a compelling study of how global intellectual property rules and trade diplomacy reshaped indigenous distilling traditions.