Mexico's political, social, and economic landscapes have shifted in very striking ways in recent years and the country now moves cautiously forward, in the twenty-first century. Revised to address these remarkable transformations, The Course of Mexican History, now in its eleventh edition, offers a completely up-to-date, lively, and engaging survey from the pre-Columbian times to the present. Read more

The leading history of Latin AmericaBorn in Blood and Fire pioneered an integrative approach to teaching Latin America history. Combining a regional perspective with a chronological framework, it enables students to more clearly see connections and comparisons that span several countries. In the Fifth Edition, John Chasteen expands the examination of Colombia’s surging influence in the region and places greater emphasis on Latin America’s connections to the Pacific world. The new Norton Illumine Ebook provides the best opportunity for students to grasp major developments and check their understanding as they read. Read more

This guide gives a brief and accessible overview of the whole of Latin American Studies. Covering all the possible topics, from colonial cultures and identity to US Latino culture and issues of race, gender and sexuality, this book situates Latin America in its historical, linguistic and cultural context. Whether taking a single module or a whole degree in Latin American Studies, this book provides students with a reliable companion throughout the course.Written by an international team of experts, each chapter in the book supplies the necessary basic information and a sound introduction to key ideas, issues and debates. In addition to 13 short chapters on the main topics in Latin American Studies, the Companion includes time-lines, a glossary of terms and annotated suggestions for further reading. Read more

The second edition of A Concise History of Brazil offers a sweeping yet accessible history of Latin America's largest country. Boris Fausto examines Brazil's history from the arrival of the Portuguese in the New World through the long and sometimes rocky transition from independence in 1822 to democracy in the twentieth century. In a completely new chapter, his son Sergio Fausto, a prominent political scientist, brings the history up to the present, focusing on Brazil's increasing global economic importance as well as its continued democratic development and the challenges the country faces to meet the higher expectations of its people. Read more

This Biography of a runaway slave is arguably the best-known book to have been written and published in revolutionary Cuba, being the testimonial narrative of Esteban Montejo, a former slave, runaway, and soldier in the Cuban wars of independence. The text is the collaboration between ethnographer Miguel Barnet and Montejo, the result of three years of tape-recorded interviews, transcribed, edited and annotated by Barnet. Montejo provides a first-hand account of slavery in nineteenth-century Cuba – the language, religion, music, and customs – and describes life in the sugar plantations and mills and as a runaway slave. Montejo’s text also covers key historical moments, from slavery to Abolition, the Ten Years War, the Spanish American War, and US intervention in the new republic.Reflecting the growing interest in Latin American and Cuban Studies, this student edition includes the complete text in Spanish, notes in English, a time-line of Cuban history and themes for debate and discussion. The extensive introduction focuses on three main areas: an overview of Cuban history featuring slavery, wars of independence and the new republic; an overview of the genre of the testimonial narrative as it emerged as an important literary style in revolutionary Cuba; and an analysis of the relationship between the Cuban Revolution and the publication of the text. There is also an extensive bibliography. Read more

Recent biodiversity studies, reported here for the first time, have shown that the molluscan fauna of the Gulf of Mexico is far richer and more complex than previously thought. As a result of these new discoveries, the Gulf malacofauna is shown to contain large numbers of endemic species that reside within four separate biogeographical subdivisions of the larger Carolinian Molluscan Province: the Floridian, Suwannean, Texan, and Yucatanean Subprovinces. These four Gulf biotic components, with each supporting its own endemic fauna, are shown here to be separated by distinct ecological and oceanographic barriers. The resultant physical and genetic isolation has led to the evolution of spectacular sibling species radiations, many unknown and undescribed until now. Some of the most conspicuous and important of these are found in the gastropod families Fasciolariidae, Volutidae, Conidae, Muricidae, and Busyconidae, all of which are dominant predators in their respective benthonic ecosystems. The species within these ecologically important families, along with hundreds of endemic taxa in 50 other gastropod and bivalve families, are illustrated here in Molluscan Faunas of the Gulf of Mexico: Endemism in North America’s Inland Sea on 132 color plates and are discussed in detail in the individual chapters. Special attention is given to the mollusks of poorly studied and virtually unknown ecosystems such as those on the deep reefs off the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas, the deep water coralline algal beds off western Florida, the Flower Garden Reefs off Texas, the petroleum seeps and brine pools of the Sigsbee Escarpment, the Campeche Bank Archipelago, and the deep water areas at the mouth of the Yucatan Channel.This new book is unlike previous taxonomic surveys of the Gulf of Mexico mollusks in that it highlights only the endemic species and genera and does not cover the large number of widespread Carolinian and Caribbean taxa that occur with them. In this aspect, the book is designed to be an augmentation to previous faunal surveys, adding hundreds more taxa that had been missed in these older surveys or were described after those earlier works had been published. The emphasis on endemic species and species complexes is meant to underscore the special nature of the Gulf of Mexico malacofauna, setting it aside from all others in the Tropical Western Atlantic Region. Read more

A History of Argentina in the Twentieth Century, originally published in Buenos Aires in 1994, attained instantaneous status as a classic. Written as an introductory text for university students and the general public, it is a profound reflection on the "Argentine dilemma" and the challenges that the country faces as it tries to rebuild democracy. In the book, Romero painstakingly and brilliantly reconstructs and analyzes Argentina’s tortuous, often tragic modern history, from the "alluvial society" born of mass immigration, to the dramatic years of Juan and Eva Perón, to the recent period of military dictatorship and democracy. For this first English-language edition, Romero has written a new chapter covering the decade of the 1990s. A rare book combining great erudition with an engaging narrative, it is destined to be the standard English-language history of Argentina for many years to come. The son of Argentina’s greatest twentieth-century historian, José Luis Romero, Luis Alberto Romero has emerged as one of the leading historians of his generation in Argentina. Romero’s generation is one that has witnessed the most dramatic decades of the country’s modern history, the decline of Argentina and its descent into violence, dictatorship, and despair, but also the hopeful if often difficult process of rebuilding democracy since the mid-1980s. Combining the rigor of the professional historian with a passionate commitment to his country’s future, Romero’s work is a major contribution to our understanding of one of Latin America’s most important nations. This translation by James Brennan, himself a leading English-speaking historian of Argentina, makes this valuable book available to a wide readership in the United States and elsewhere in the world. Read more

This volume presents the first full English translation of four key texts from the dispute between Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and Bartolomé de las Casas regarding the justice of Spain's invasion of the Americas, culminating in their famous debate in Valladolid in 1550-51. An impassioned defence of the invasion, Sepúlveda's Democrates secundus (composed around 1544) amplified the controversy within Spain about the justice of its activities in the Americas. When Las Casas schemed to block publication of Sepúlveda's manuscript, Sepúlveda wrote an Apologia (1550) in its defence. Tensions were so high that Emperor Charles V called a temporary halt to undertakings in the Americas and convoked a meeting of theologians and jurists in Valladolid to address the matter. Here, Sepúlveda and Las Casas debated bitterly. Las Casas subsequently printed a composite record of the Valladolid deliberations (Aquí se contiene una disputa o controversia, 1552). Sepúlveda retaliated by penning a furious response (Proposiciones temerarias y de mala doctrina, around 1553-54) and strove to have Las Casas' text banned by the Inquisition. The debate between Sepúlveda and Las Casas was a pivotal moment in the history of international legal thought. They argued over fundamental matters of empire and colonial rule; natural law and cultural difference; the jurisdiction of the Church, responsibilities of Christian rulers, and rights of infidel peoples; the just reasons for war and grounds for resistance; and the right to punish idolatry, protect innocents from tyranny, and subjugate unbelievers for the purpose of spreading the Christian faith. With a detailed scholarly introduction that elucidates the complex story of these four controversial texts and reflects on the impacts of Sepúlveda's ideas, which continue to be felt in the theories and practices of war today, this book is a must-read for all those interested in the fields of history, political science, international relations, and colonial studies. Read more

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Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) is a classic of Cuban revolutionary culture, and is hailed as a prime example of a radical style of 1960s political filmmaking that became known worldwide as Latin American “new cinema.” Darlene J. Sadlier's detailed study approaches this much-written-about film from a new perspective. Her analysis situates the film in its historical context, considering how Cuban political history affected and informed the production of the film, particularly its use of archival footage. She discusses the film as an adaptation of Edmundo Desnoes's novel Memorias del subdesarrollo (1965), exploring how the novel itself is “re-written” in significant ways by the film. Sadlier goes on to analyse the curious opening of the film on an outdoor scene of Afro-Cubans dancing to the “new” music of Pello del Afrokán, arguing that this opening scene prefaces the film's exploration of both class and race. She focuses on the unique style of the film, particularly the use of voiceover, music and documentary footage to show how the themes of ennui, isolation, writing, and remembering are depicted. In doing so, she highlights the film's lasting impact and its role in defining Latin American “new cinema”. Read more

This book explains why Venezuela is so rich in natural resources―it has been producing oil since 1922 and harbors the largest oil reserves in the world―and yet it is also a failed nation of class-divided citizens exhibiting deep poverty in a corrupt, incompetent state. Venezuela is a bipolar nation, where two marked poles in the society exist which have historical origins and are mutually exclusive.The book provides a critical analysis of Venezuela's history, economy and politics and explains the context and implications of the bipolar poles, known as the elite pole and the resentful pole. Both, it shows, have done serious harm to Venezuela’s prosperity.The author describes the vicious circle of oil wealth, corruption, inefficiency and world market dependency and gives recommendations for a better future. Read more

Studies challenging the idea that technology and science flow only from global North to South.The essays in this volume study the creation, adaptation, and use of science and technology in Latin America. They challenge the view that scientific ideas and technology travel unchanged from the global North to the global Souththe view of technology as imported magic. They describe not only alternate pathways for innovation, invention, and discovery but also how ideas and technologies circulate in Latin American contexts and transnationally. The contributors' explorations of these issues, and their examination of specific Latin American experiences with science and technology, offer a broader, more nuanced understanding of how science, technology, politics, and power interact in the past and present.The essays in this book use methods from history and the social sciences to investigate forms of local creation and use of technologies; the circulation of ideas, people, and artifacts in local and global networks; and hybrid technologies and forms of knowledge production. They address such topics as the work of female forensic geneticists in Colombia; the pioneering Argentinean use of fingerprinting technology in the late nineteenth century; the design, use, and meaning of the XO Laptops created and distributed by the One Laptop per Child Program; and the development of nuclear energy in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile.ContributorsPedro Ignacio Alonso, Morgan G. Ames, Javiera Barandiarán, João Biehl, Anita Say Chan, Amy Cox Hall, Henrique Cukierman, Ana Delgado, Rafael Dias, Adriana Díaz del Castillo H., Mariano Fressoli, Jonathan Hagood, Christina Holmes, Matthieu Hubert, Noela Invernizzi, Michael Lemon, Ivan da Costa Marques, Gisela Mateos, Eden Medina, María Fernanda Olarte Sierra, Hugo Palmarola, Tania Pérez-Bustos, Julia Rodriguez, Israel Rodríguez-Giralt, Edna Suárez Díaz, Hernán Thomas, Manuel Tironi, Dominique Vinck Read more

The Oxford History of Mexico is a narrative history of the events, institutions and characters that have shaped Mexican history from the reign of the Aztecs through the twenty-first century. When the hardcover edition released in 2000, it was praised for both its breadth and depth--all aspects of Mexican history, from religion to technology, ethnicity, ecology and mass media, are analyzed with insight and clarity. Available for the first time in paperback, the History covers every era in the nation's history in chronological format, offering a quick, affordable reference source for students, scholars and anyone who has ever been interested in Mexico's rich cultural heritage.Scholars have contributed fascinating essays ranging from thematic ("Faith and Morals in Colonial Mexico," "Mass Media and Popular Culture in the Postrevolutionary Era") to centered around one pivotal moment or epoch in Mexican history ("Betterment for Whom? The Reform Period: 1855-1875"). Two such major events are the Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821) and the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), the subjects of several essays in the book. Publication of the reissued edition will coincide with anniversaries of these critical turning points. Essays are updated to reflect new discoveries, advances in scholarship, and occurences of the past decade. A revised glossary and index ensure that readers will have immediate access to any information they seek.William Beezley, co-editor of the original edition, has written a new preface that focuses on the past decade and covers such issues as immigration from Mexico to the United States and the democratization implied by the defeat of the official party in the 2000 and 2006 presidential elections. Beezley also explores the significance of the bicentennial of independence and centennial of the Revolution. With these updates and a completely modern, bold new design, the reissued edition refreshes the beloved Oxford History of Mexico for a new generation. Read more

This study examines the history of the sugar economy and the peculiar development of plantation society over a three hundred year period in Bahia, a major sugar plantation zone and an important terminus of the Atlantic slave trade. Drawing on little-used archival sources, plantations accounts, and notarial records, Professor Schwartz has examined through both quantitative and qualitative methods the various groups that made up plantation society. While he devotes much attention to masters and slaves, he views slavery ultimately as part of a larger structure of social and economic relations. The peculiarities of sugar-making and the nature of plantation labour are used throughout the book as keys to an understanding of roles and relationships in plantation society. A comparative perspective is also employed, so that studies of slavery elsewhere in the Americas inform the analysis, while at many points direct comparisons of the Bahian case with other plantation societies are also made. Read more

Brazil was the American society that received the largest contingent of African slaves in the Americas and the longest lasting slave regime in the Western Hemisphere. This is the first complete modern survey of the institution of slavery in Brazil and how it affected the lives of enslaved Africans. It is based on major new research on the institution of slavery and the role of Africans and their descendants in Brazil. Although Brazilians have incorporated many of the North American debates about slavery, they have also developed a new set of questions about slave holding: the nature of marriage, family, religion, and culture among the slaves and free colored; the process of manumission; and the rise of the free colored class during slavery. It is the aim of this book to introduce the reader to this latest research, both to elucidate the Brazilian experience and to provide a basis for comparisons with all other American slave systems. Read more

Colonial Brazil is a selection of chapters from the Cambridge History of Latin America volumes 1 and 2 brought together to provide a continous history of the Portuguese Empire in Brazil from the beginning of the sixteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The chapters cover early Portuguese settlement, political and economic structures, plantations and slavery, the gold rushes, the impact of colonial rule on Indian societies, imperial reorganization in the eighteenth century, and demographic and economic change during the final decades of the empire. Read more

Taking a fresh thematic approach to politics and society in Latin America, this introductory textbook analyzes the region's past and present in an accessible and engaging style well-suited to undergraduate students. The book provides historical insights into modern states and critical issues they are facing, with insightful analyses that are supported by empirical data, maps and timelines. Drawing upon cutting-edge research, the text considers critical topics relevant to all countries within the region such as the expansion of democracy and citizenship rights and responses to human rights abuses, corruption, and violence. Each richly illustrated chapter contains a compelling and cohesive narrative, followed by thought-provoking questions and further reading suggestions, making this text a vital resource for anyone encountering the complexities of Latin American politics for the first time in their studies. Read more

Islanders and Empire examines the role smuggling played in the cultural, economic, and socio-political transformation of Hispaniola from the late sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. With a rare focus on local peoples and communities, the book analyzes how residents of Hispaniola actively negotiated and transformed the meaning and reach of imperial bureaucracies and institutions for their own benefit. By co-opting the governing and judicial powers of local and imperial institutions on the island, residents could take advantage of, and even dominate, the contraband trade that reached the island's shores. In doing so, they altered the course of the European inter-imperial struggles in the Caribbean by limiting, redirecting, or suppressing the Spanish crown's policies, thus taking control of their destinies and that of their neighbors in Hispaniola, other Spanish Caribbean territories, and the Spanish empire in the region. Read more

Ligon's True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados is the most significant book-length English text written about the Caribbean in the seventeenth century. [It] allows one to see the contested process behind the making of the Caribbean sugar/African slavery complex. Kupperman is one of the leading scholars of the early modern Atlantic world. . . . I cannot think of any scholar better prepared to write an Introduction that places Ligon, his text, and Barbados in an Atlantic historical context. The Introduction is quite thorough, readable, and accurate; the notes [are] exemplary! --Susan Parrish, University of Michigan Read more

In Catholic doctrine, the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is the belief that Mary, the mother of Christ, was exempt from original sin from the moment of her conception, and thereby a co-redeemer alongside her son. Praise for this complicated devotion took place in Europe throughout the medieval period and resounded in the Americas with the founding of the first convent in Mexico City under the Order of the Immaculate Conception in 1540. All other orders of nuns in New Spain branched out from this convent, spreading the Marian devotion throughout the region.In this book, author Cesar D. Favila argues that the sonification of virginity and the Virgin Mary was fundamental to the promotion of the Immaculate Conception doctrine, and that this was part of a complex network of sonified practices in the lives of New Spanish nuns. These "immaculate sounds," a term Favila uses for the cloistered nuns' idealized vocalizations as well as the expression of doctrinal rhetoric through musical metaphors, echoed the highly regulated realm of the convent and played a pivotal role in mediating between the lives of New Spanish nuns and the expectation that they would save the secular world with their vocalized prayers. In addition to the sonification of discipline, Favila shows that immaculate sounds also enhanced the nuns' engagement with their religious practices and facilitated embodied and spiritual engagement with Catholic doctrines.Throughout his study, he delves into rarely studied music sources from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New Spain alongside the rulebooks, devotional literature, and nuns' biographies that regulated convent life and inspired nuns' hymns. In doing so, Favila brings together a narrative of salvation that shines a light on the musical lives of nuns and locates women's agency within a hierarchical society that silenced some women and required others to sing.This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Read more