To many observers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mexico appeared to be a modern nation-state at last assuming an international role through its participation in NAFTA and the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development). Then came the...

Contrary to widespread expectation, the ending of the Cold War has not produced continuous harmony and cooperation in U.S.-Latin American relations. Instead, NAFTA seems to threaten as much as it promises; economic prospects have been shaken by the...

Today they stand as enemies, but in the 1950s, few countries were as closely intertwined as Cuba and the United States. Thousands of Americans (including Ernest Hemingway and Errol Flynn) lived on the island, and, in the United States, dancehalls swayed...

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In all the history of Latin America, few historians have been so influential as the Brazilian scholar Joao Capistrano de Abreu. His own life reflected the changes that swept his country and his academy: the nineteenth century scion of a remote Brazilian...

Like two roosters in a fighting arena, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are encircled by barriers of geography and poverty. They co-inhabit the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, but their histories are as deeply divided as their cultures: one...

“Gripping. … Araujo’s accretion of detail has a powerful effect, demonstrating how deeply the culture of violence has seeped into the social fabric of Amazonia — and how hard it will be to eradicate.” — New York Times Book Review"A raw account of the...

Backed by Brazil’s wealthy agribusiness groups, a growing evangelical movement, and an emboldened military and police force, Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019. Driven by the former army captain’s brand of controversial, aggressive rhetoric, the divisive...

The region once known as Pimería Alta—now southern Arizona and northern Sonora—has for more than three centuries been a melting pot for the beliefs of native Tohono O'odham and immigrant Yaquis and those of colonizing Spaniards and Mexicans. One need...

The new Zapatistas in Chiapas have served as a catalyst for revolutionary indigenous movements across Mexico, pioneering a new model of resistance and posing a powerful threat to the stability of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Homage to...

Following the dissolution of the Soviet bloc, Cuba found itself struggling to find its place in a new geopolitical context, while dealing with an unprecedented agricultural and food crisis that experts feel foreshadows the future of many countries across...

As new democratic regimes take root in Latin America, two of the most striking developments have been a dramatic rise in crime rates and increased perception of insecurity among its citizens. The contributors to this book offer a collective assessment of...

In The Formation of Souls: Imagery of the Republic in Brazil, José Murilo de Carvalho examines the birth of the Brazilian Republic in 1889. Given that the majority of the population of Brazil participated very little in the change from an empire to a...

The pioneering essays collected in this volume bring critical new perspectives to the interdisciplinary study of racial, national, and religious identities. The authors demonstrate that one cannot study these categories of identity formation in...

What is history? And why do people value it? Basing his inquiry on fieldwork near Guadalajara in west Mexico, anthropologist Trevor Stack focuses on one reason for which people commonly value history--knowing history is said to make for better citizens,...

The existential conditions under which most Latin Americans live are explored in this book in a systematic dialectic between primary documents and social science analysis. The authors developed their own interpretatioins in an ongoing argument, drawing...

Against All Hope is Armando Valladares' account of over twenty years in Fidel Castro's tropical gulag. Arrested in 1960 for being philosophically and religiously opposed to communism, Valladares was not released until 1982, by which time he had become...

Winner of the 2011 ALLA Book Award honorable mention!Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network is an ethnography of undocumented immigrants who work as busboys at a Chicago-area restaurant. Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz introduces readers to...

Latin America's Multicultural Movements is a collection of empirically-based chapters that advance debates over the struggle between communitarianism, autonomy, and human rights. Assembling some of the most eminent scholars of Latin America, it presents...