Bartolomé de Las Casas was the first and fiercest critic of Spanish colonialism in the New World. An early traveller to the Americas who sailed on one of Columbus's voyages, Las Casas was so horrified by the wholesale massacre he witnessed that he...

A panoramic social history of hurricanes in the Caribbean The diverse cultures of the Caribbean have been shaped as much by hurricanes as they have by diplomacy, commerce, or the legacy of colonial rule. In this panoramic work of social history, Stuart...

Peter Smith has written a comprehensive and in-depth study of the structure and more important of the transformation of the national political elite in twentieth-century Mexico. In doing so, he analyzes the long-run impact of the Mexican Revolution of...

Addressing problems of objectivity and authenticity, Sabine MacCormack reconstructs how Andean religion was understood by the Spanish in light of seventeenth-century European theological and philosophical movements, and by Andean writers trying to find...

In this long-awaited study, Claudio Lomnitz tells an unprecedented story about the experience and ideology of American and Mexican revolutionary collaborators of the Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón. Based on extensive research in American and...

Pakal was one of the greatest ancient rulers and the most prominent among a long line of monarchs who held sway at Palenque from AD 300 to 800. This "queen of Maya cities," as Palenque has been called, fell into ruin and was abandoned along with other...

This book is an introductory history of racial slavery in the Americas. Brazil and Cuba were among the first colonial societies to establish slavery in the early sixteenth century. Approximately a century later British colonial Virginia was founded, and...

The Earth's human population is expected to pass eight billion by the year 2025, while rapid growth in the global economy will spur ever increasing demands for natural resources. The world will consequently face growing scarcities of such vital renewable...

The United States played a decisive role in Cuba's political and economic development during the first half of the twentieth century. The emergence in the 1950s of a broad-based opposition movement to the Batista dictatorship was viewed by American...

Jean Franco's work as a pathbreaking theorist, cultural critic, and scholar has helped to define Latin American studies over the last three decades. In the process, Franco has played a crucial role in developing cultural studies in both the English- and...

“A pathbreaking work about how policies forged in blood and fire in Latin America were then exported to every corner of the globe. This brilliant and up-to-the-minute new edition is absolutely crucial to understanding our perilous present.” —Naomi Klein,...