Juan Coddou Wilson

Juan Coddou Wilson is a legal historian whose research explores the intersection of economic development, agrarian change, and authoritarianism. His current project analyzes the first social revolution of the twentieth century, the Mexican Revolution, to explain how policies to redistribute land, protect workers, and promote industrialization replicated the authoritarian practices of the regime that the revolution had toppled. Rooted in Veracruz (on the Mexican Gulf), the pioneer state in implementing post-revolutionary policies, the project shows how local peasant and labor leaders interpreted the social rights created by the revolution as mandates to increase agrarian and industrial productivity and satisfy social needs. Positive material results created popular support for these policies, despite their negative political consequences: the subjection of local self-governance institutions to administrative coordination, the deindustrialization of the area’s hybrid economy, and the creation of clientelist networks that destroyed budding political alliances offering alternative development paths.

Juan received his PhD in History from the University of Chicago and an LLB/BA in Law and Social Sciences from Universidad de Chile. Before moving to the United States, he taught courses on Property, Contracts, and Legal History at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile. He also worked on international arbitration cases as a clerk for former Supreme Court Justice Enrique Barros Bourie. His research has been published in Latin American Legal Studies, Nexos, and Tocqueville 21.