Latin American Studies : History of the Americas

Through a stimulating account of the major civilizations in Mesoamerica and the Andes, this book aims not only to give state-of-the-art syntheses of each culture, but also to build a living picture of the fundamentally different nature of indigenous Amerindian societies. From Publisher

Rebecca Earle shows that anxieties about food were fundamental to Spanish understandings of the new environment they inhabited and their interactions with the native populations of the New World. Settlers wondered whether Europeans could eat New World food, whether Indians could eat European food and what would happen to each if they did. From Publisher

Capturing readers in a story exposing the complexities of a diverse region peopled by characters such as Cortes, Eva, and Juan Peron, Sister Inor Suarez and Che Guevara, John Chasteen focuses on the major events of Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Working within a chronological framework, this text incorporatres the histories of individual countries into the history of a region, providing students with a foundation for further study. It embraces race, class and gender as principle issues in the Latin American experience and recognizes relationships between sociocultural, political and economic forces.

Documentary sources provide readers with the tools to develop a broad understanding of the course of Latin American social, cultural, and political history. Drawing upon labor, biographical, economic, and military histories, the book offers a unique blend of perspectives of history from both above and below, from under-studied as well as often-studied regions, and from a combination of archival and classic sources that will allow readers to engage in a meaningful way with the Latin American past.

Drawing on Michael Reid’s many years of reporting from inside Latin America’s cities, presidential palaces, and shantytowns, the book provides a vivid, immediate, and informed account of a dynamic continent and its struggle to compete in a globalized world. From Publisher

The collision of peoples and cultures--Native Americans, Europeans, Africans--that defines Latin America, and gives it both its unity and diversity, provides the central theme of this concise, synthetic history. From the Publisher

In addition to the great diversity within Latin America, there is also a common theme that encompasses the sweep of history in the region. The original author of the text, E. Bradford Burns, cast the problem as the paradox that poor people inhabit rich lands. The reason for this paradox is that a tiny group of elites confuses their nation's well-being with their own. From Publisher

This book provides an accessible and interesting discussion of a broad range of topics, including democracy, revolution, indigenous populations, culture, gender, religion, politics, economy, and relations with the United States. Unlike many texts on the region, this book places the voices of long-ignored and previously marginalized groups in Latin America--women, indigenous peoples, Afro-Latinos, workers, peasants, and gays and lesbians--at the heart of its analysis. From Publisher

Marcello Carmagnani's award-winning and multidisciplinary analysis sheds new light on historical processes and explains how this vast expanse of territory--stretching from the American Southwest to the tip of the Southern Cone--became Europeanized in the colonial period, and how the European and American civilizations transformed one another as they grew together. From Publisher

The aim of this book is to provide unfamiliar readers with a more balanced, interpretive view of Latin America's long and complex history by identifying key patterns and trends and tracing them across time and space. From Publisher

Christopher Darnton's comparative study of the nature of conflict between Latin American states during the Cold War, provides a counterintuitive and shrewd explanation of why diplomacy does or doesn't work. From Publisher

Empire by Treaty looks at treaty-making in Dutch colonial expansion, the Spanish-Portuguese border in the Americas, aboriginal land in Canada, French colonial West Africa, and British India. From Publisher

Beginning with the roots of African slavery in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Iberian empires, this work explores central issues, including the transatlantic slave trade, labor, Afro-Latin American cultures, racial identities in colonial slave societies, and the spread of antislavery ideas and social movements. From Publisher

This work will present the reader with a very good survey into the history of Christianity on the South American continent, based on a tremendous breadth of literature. From Publisher

Science in Latin America has roots that reach back to the information gathering and recording practices of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations. Spanish and Portuguese conquerors and colonists introduced European scientific practices to the continent, where they hybridized with local traditions to form the beginnings of a truly Latin American science. From Publisher

Authored by an interdisciplinary team of specialists from the United States, Latin America, and Europe, the book consists of fifteen original essays, as well as an introduction and an afterword by renowned scholars in the field. From Publisher

This broadly gauged, synthetic study examines how the Spanish invasion of the Inca Empire (called Tawintinsuyu) in 1532 brought dramatic and irreversible transformations in traditional Andean modes of production, technology, politics, religion, culture, and social hierarchies. From Publisher

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. From Publisher

Bolivia is an unusual high-altitude society created by imperial conquests and native adaptations, and it remains today the most Indian of the American republics, yet it fully participates in the world economy. It has also seen the most social and economic mobility of Indian and mestizo populations in Latin America. From Publisher

Carlos Gustavo Poggio Teixeira recuperates the virtually neglected literature on regional subsystems. In so doing, Teixeira maintains that researchers of inter-American relations would greatly benefit from a characterization reflecting actual regional realities more than entrenched preconceptions. From Publication

Brazil: Five Centuries of Change vividly traces the development of Brazil over the last 500 years. Author Thomas E. Skidmore, a preeminent authority on Brazil, provides a lively political and economic narrative while also including relevant details on society and culture. From Publisher

Between 1730 and 1750, powerful healer and vodun priest Domingos Alvares traversed the colonial Atlantic world like few Africans of his time--from Africa to South America to Europe--addressing the profound alienation of warfare, capitalism, and the African slave trade through the language of health and healing. From Publisher

This acclaimed study of slavery in Santos, Brazil is from our own professor, Ian Read. From the publisher: "By tracing the lives of slaves and owners through multiple records, the author is able to show that the cruelties that slaves faced were not equally shared. One important implication is that internal stratification likely helped perpetuate slavery because there was the belief, however illusionary, that escaping captivity was not necessary for social mobility."

The Chile Reader makes available a rich variety of documents spanning more than five hundred years of Chilean history. Most of the selections are by Chileans; many have never before appeared in English. From Publisher

Geoff Simons examines the state of Colombia, from the time of the conquistadors until the 2002 election and the repercussions of the "War on Terrorism". From Publisher

Iglesias argues, Cubans engaged the Americans on multiple levels, and her work demonstrates how their ambiguous responses to the U.S. occupation shaped the cultural transformation that gave rise to a new Cuban nationalism. From Publisher

Organized to analyze—not describe—Cuba’s foreign relations, the work examines sanctions, the embargo, regime change, Guantánamo, the exile community, and more. Drawing from personal experiences as well as recently declassified documents, these essays update, summarize, and explain one of the prickliest political issues in the Western Hemisphere today. From Publisher

The unprecedented integration of women in the ranks and leadership of this struggle was a true measure of the revolutionary course it has followed to this day. Here, in firsthand accounts by women who helped make it, is the story of that revolution--and "the revolution within. From Publisher

Spanning the years before the arrival of the Spanish in the early 1500s to the present, this rich anthology addresses colonialism, independence, the nation’s integration into the world economy, and its tumultuous twentieth century. From Publisher

This reader brings together more than 200 texts and images in a broad introduction to Guatemala's history, culture, and politics... It includes not only the opinions of politicians, activists, and scholars, but also poems, songs, plays, jokes, novels, short stories, recipes, art, and photographs that capture the diversity of everyday life in Guatemala. From Publisher

Lost Shores, Forgotten Peoples is the first collection and translation of important seventeenth-century narratives about Europeans travelling across the great “Ocean Sea” and encountering a people who had maintained an independent existence in the lowlands of Guatemala and Belize. From Publisher

David Carey Jr. provides a new perspective on contemporary Guatemalan history by allowing the indigenous peoples to speak for themselves. Combining the methodologies of anthropology and history, Carey uses both oral interviews and meticulous archival research to construct a history of the last 130 years in Guatemala from the perspective of present-day Mayan people. From the Publisher

This sweeping introduction unveils the fascinating, complex, and evolving history of Mexico―from its earliest settlement to the first decade of the 21st century. From Publisher

A diverse collection of more than eighty selections, The Mexico Reader brings together poetry, folklore, fiction, polemics, photoessays, songs, political cartoons, memoirs, satire, and scholarly writing. Many pieces are by Mexicans, and a substantial number appear for the first time in English. From Publisher

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. From Publisher

This book provides a political and cultural history of Honduras, covering the era of the Mayan and Lenca civilizations to today's current political strife. From Publisher

Through interviews with indigenous peoples and records of the elite discourse that suppressed the expression of cultural differences and rationalized the destruction of Indian communities, Gould tells a story of cultural loss. Land expropriation and coerced labor led to cultural alienation that shamed the indigenous population into shedding their language, religion, and dress. From Publisher

The Paraguay Reader is a lively compilation of testimonies, journalism, scholarship, political tracts, literature, and illustrations, including maps, photographs, paintings, drawings, and advertisements. Taken together, the anthology's many selections convey the country's extraordinarily rich history and cultural heritage... From Publisher

Bound Lives offers an entirely new perspective on racial identities in colonial Peru. It highlights the tenuous interactions of an imperial power, indigenous group, and enslaved population, and shows how each moved to establish its own power base and modify the existing system to its advantage, while also shaping the nature of colonialism itself. From Publisher

The volume covers Peru’s history from its extraordinary pre-Columbian civilizations to its citizens’ twenty-first-century struggles to achieve dignity and justice in a multicultural nation where Andean, African, Amazonian, Asian, and European traditions meet. From the Publisher

The history begins with Columbus's third voyage of discovery from Spain. Spanish explorers named the land "Little Venice" for the native homes built on stilts at the water's edge. Tracing the nation's 300 years as a Spanish colony through a brief unification followed by civil war, Tarver brings Venezuela's dramatic history to life. From Publisher