The following speech was written in acceptance of the Distinguished Service Award of the Conference on Latin American History (CLAH) for 2020, would have been delivered at the January 2021 meeting of the American Historical Association/CLAH, were it not for the coronavirus pandemic. I share this award with the majority of the members of CLAH: the scholar-teachers of Latin American history who dedicate

Acapulco became a global town during the early seventeenth century, characterized not only by transpacific trade, but also by an increasingly large Afro-Mexican population residing and laboring at the port. A cohort of Afro-Mexican women gained prominence and visibility by delivering accurate predictions on the arrival of galleons to Acapulco. They adapted mixed African and Indigenous divination practices

In 1568, a group of Mexican mulatos unsuccessfully petitioned the Spanish crown for a license to build a hospital. The mulatos’ petition, however, is an important document that speaks to the legal avenues Afro-Mexicans explored in the mid sixteenth century in their attempts to improve their social position. Through an analysis of how the petition process played out, this article demonstrates how that

This article mines archival sources and published accounts from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to highlight the extent to which enslaved men, women, and children in the South Sea came into contact with British corsairs. It does so in ways that lend to three important observations: that people of African descent occupied a central role within the history of British corsair activity

The History of the Incas is a chronicle written in Cusco, Peru, at the end of the sixteenth century, by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. It was never published in the colonial period and its only manuscript was lost for three hundred years. At the end of the nineteenth century, the manuscript was found in Göttingen, Prussia. This research note is about a missing manuscript and its unexpected discovery. Moreover

This article examines the relationship between ritual specialists, nanahualtin or nahualistas (pl.) and nahualli or nahual (sing.), and healing practices, adding context to the social roles they fulfilled and the range of feats they performed. The cases examined here reveal that nanahualtin operated as intellectuals in their communities because of their ability to control animals, prognosticate, and

In 1821, as the Wars of Independence drew to a close, officials of the newly created republic of Gran Colombia passed a national gradual emancipation law. At the center of it was a Free Womb law that declared legally free the children of enslaved women born after the law's promulgation, while bonding these children to their mothers’ masters until the age of 18. Yet, in addition to establishing a term

This article examines how people in Mexico's Federal District (Distrito Federal) contested transit policies and responded to the introduction of new technical infrastructures, like the electrified tram network. District officials published transit guidelines that reflected elite preoccupation with order, but their heavy-handed policies faced resistance from poor, working-class, and middle-class residents

This article looks at popular responses to the zarzuela Chin-Chun-Chan and the issues that surfaced around its timely subject in early twentieth-century Mexico City. The principal source is the Mexico City satiric penny press for workers, supplemented by somewhat less polemical broadsides, both sold on the streets of the capital. Aimed mostly at working-class Mexicans, these sources offer a glimpse

period from Independence to the 1850s. Skimming over the Reforma period, the French Intervention, the Liberal Restoration, and the first 14 years of the Porfiriato, the final chapter examines a much different political situation. The last decade of the nineteenth century exhibited the sharp decline of the liberal, egalitarian early independence era. The temporal leap from the mid nineteenth century

with fiction, one in which both the reader and the author can construct together. “There is no definitive Sofía del Valle. But we, you and I, can say something about Sofía.” As he constructs a complex portrait of his protagonist, he humanizes himself as a fallible historian, thus breaking “the spell of historical objectivity” (xvi). He shares with readers the mysteries and vagaries of the research

Diana Arbaiza has written a powerful, thought-provoking book that reminds readers that Hispanism was much more than an aesthetic and literary movement that helped to bring respectability to reactionary political forces: it also offered a powerful economic critique of modern industrial capitalism. As she writes, “The very cultural identity and values Hispanism presented as a source of transatlantic

to new infrastructure development projects articulated in the spirit of Pan-Americanism. The building of the International Pacific Highway along Mexico’s west coast was one of these endeavors. Nevertheless, this project also underscored persistent regional tensions: promoters in Los Angeles wanted to build a picturesque route for American motorists, whereas hundreds of local Mexican officials wanted

Sonya Lipsett-Rivera has done it again by writing another well-researched and highly readable history. The author reminds readers that colonial Mexicans themselves did not use the word macho. Yet, her book analyzes precisely the colonial period (mid to late seventeenth to early nineteenth century), with an eye toward the subject of men’s experiences and notions of male behavior. Lipsett-Rivera’s motivation

eroded the degree of security offered by these negotiated informal relationships. An example is the Operation Against Smugglers, Initiative on Safety and Security (OASISS). This US regulatory agency, created to arrest and prosecute human smugglers, has actually made it more difficult for migrants and coyotes (human smugglers) to trust one another. Eroding trust equals increasing danger (159-61). Chapter

This book is the illustrated catalog of an exhibit commemorating the life of Francisco José de Caldas (1768–1816) that opened in December 2018 at the Museo Nacional de Colombia to mark the 250th anniversary of Caldas’s birth. This beautifully produced volume features high-quality images of more than 100 maps, objects, and documents related to Caldas’s scientific activities, drawn from museums, archives

The chapters included in this volume address gaps in the scholarship on President Augusto B. Leguía’s second administration (1919-30), also known as La Patria Nueva or El Oncenio. This volume builds upon long-established perspectives, while also introducing new insights about diverse priorities within the regime. The interaction between government and different interlocutors shaped official actions

of the graffiti and muralism featured in this book tends to be implicitly rather than explicitly political” (21). One long-time artist reflected on the loss of hard targets, bemoaning that they ended up “posting crap about clean air, about saving the whales” (55). The lure of commercialization is hard to resist: one artist admits “I live in the capitalist system and at the end of the day I will have

mass-organic parties of the left in the region, most notably Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). It traces how its leaders gradually deprived activists of an “efficacious voice” and transformed the organization into a “professional electoral party.” By contrast, the authors conclude, the Frente Amplio’s unique structure, which consistently makes room for the grassroots movement, has preserved

As Lipsett-Rivera unearths men’s experiences across the colonial era, some surprises emerge. First, we see plentiful evidence that non-elite men understood their subordinate place in society, but also that subordination had its limits when unspoken lines were crossed, such as in excessive punishments in the workplace. Her work is creative in its attention to space and reveals that while men are usually

individuals of African and Amerindian ancestry and further helped Afro-Argentines disappear from the historical record. Edwards concludes that generations of miscegenation, flexibility within the racial hierarchy, and shifting degrees of inequity between individuals of African and Amerindian descent created pathways for Còrdoba’s Afro-Argentines to “erase” their African ancestry and, in turn, construct

articles. Despite clear connections between each of the articles, cross-referencing is extremely limited. As a result, there exists a considerable amount of redundancy and repetition, and the lack of a final discussion chapter means that individual warp strings carefully strung throughout each chapter are left with a rather weak weft, as no one is present but the knowledgeable and observant reader

Uruguay’s Frente Amplio was founded in 1971 as a coalition of left and center-left political organizations to oppose the increasingly authoritarian government of Jorge Pacheco Areco. At the height of Latin America’s Cold War, during an era when many activists were turning away from traditional political parties, the Frente Amplio rank-and-file demanded the creation of a bottom-up movement and a voice

More than shortcomings, these critiques point to the book’s value. Central American literature remains marginalized. Yet, the volume effectively establishes Costa Rica’s contributions to the transnational world of letters. Whether writing from Mexico, the United States, or Costa Rica, this volume claims Rossi, Chaves, and Quesada as Costa Rican writers. As the volume’s title suggests, the notion of

A compelling page-turner, Stephen Andes fascinating biography positions Sofía del Valle (1891–1982), the book’s protagonist, as a compelling figure whose life and life’s mission—educating young Catholic women—intersect with the social, political, and religious turmoil of postrevolutionary Mexico. Her pious activism in the support of the Instituto Superior de Cultura Femenina and its sister organization

Given the way the book is organized, its historical time is predominantly short-term. For this reason, when considering each of the presidential administrations, Conniff and Bigler extend themselves, sometimes excessively, by reconstructing the corresponding context of each government, and insist on reiterating themes already considered in previous chapters. To counter this attention to detail and

Research groups have different goals. For example, Lippi and Gudiño (Chapter 3) argue that local Ecuadorean potters made Inca pottery according to imperial standards. Falabella and colleagues (Chapter 16) suggest that although La Granja in central Chile was a center for ritual activities that included the use of hallucinogens, it may not have drawn participants from beyond its region. Neves and colleagues

Abstract For a half-century, the historiography on Spanish Habsburg rule suggested that the crown envisioned Indies society as best divided into two segregated sociolegal groups: the republic of the Spaniards and the republic of the Indians. This model was popularized by the eminent mid twentieth century Swedish historian Magnus Mörner and has since become a foundational concept in the field. However

Abstract This article examines a back-to-Africa movement from early twentieth-century Cuba. The leader, William George Emanuel, arrived in Cuba from Antigua in 1894, and over the next several years, he worked to unite the cabildos de nación and sociedades de color on the island. After independence in 1898, Emanuel and his followers rejected Cuban citizenship and began petitioning Britain, the United

Abstract This article examines a much cited but little understood aspect of the Latin American intellectual and cultural ferment of the 1910s and 1920s: the frequency with which intellectuals from the southeastern Brazilian state of São Paulo referred to developments in post Sáenz Peña Argentina, and to a lesser extent in Uruguay and Chile. In books, pamphlets, speeches, and the pages of a vibrant

Abstract The article examines the ideological character of Juan Carlos Onganía's dictatorship by exploring its ties and dialogue with Francisco Franco's Spain. Known as the “Argentine Revolution,” Onganía's regime (1966-70) was, the article shows, one of the first Cold War Latin American dictatorship to overtly use Francoist ideology as its point of reference. While building on the conventional wisdom

The article analyzes political conflict in Mexico through a powerful social movement that erupted in the massive shantytown of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl between 1969 and 1973. In the summer of 1969, after decades of abysmal living conditions, the residents of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl (Neza) launched a payment strike to demand the federal government expropriate the land from private land developers, with the

Few, if any, of Stanley Stein’s students were not profoundly affected by the experience of working for and with him. His incisive questioning, profound intellect, and broad learning typically made for memorable— and often unpredictable—discussions. Stein was, in the best sense, a teacher and scholar of rare distinction, not so much by conventional method, as by sheer force of personality. He was preceded

Electoral results allow us to follow the political history and the transformations of the Peruvian party system in the capital, their contrasts with the rest of the country, and their relationships with different socioeconomic groups in the city. Given that it is one of the main objectives of the book, the analysis of the relationship between social data and electoral results is somehow too basic and

clase, all topics raised here, intersect, but are also different. We cannot conflate these in practice, because although closely related, they meant different things, and it is important to be precise about them. Otherwise, we risk reducing these, and other Latin American experiences, to processes more historically linked to US experiences. The scholarship on Afro-Mexicans, for its part, has depicted

This is the first book-length study of the institutional underpinnings, social reactions to, and repercussions of the imposition of royal tribute on free Afro-Mexicans in eighteenth-century New Spain. In six detailed chapters, the author presents the legal, political, and social facets of the tributary process, examining these sequentially, and over the eighteenth century. Broadly, the book invites

This edited volume spotlights innovative new scholarship on a range of topics in modern Argentine political, intellectual, and social history. It is organized around the theme of citizenship, but the editors define that project broadly, so that it includes questions about the relationship between individuals and the state as well as cultural issues such as identity and ethnicity. In addition to an

The second weakness is stylistic. Although Castro makes a commendable effort to offer a readable narrative, his chapters refuse to forego the introduction-content-conclusion format of most monographs, so the text is a good deal more repetitive than it need be. These introductions also summarize Rolland’s private life, depriving the ensuing narrative sections of any suspense, surprise, or pathos. And

the direction and consolidation of the revolutionary hard-liners. As she argues, “he history in this book is a history of the vanquished, of the middle ranking officers who were not able to prevent the consolidation of a hierarchical military regime despite their past, their involvement in the state apparatus, or even a ‘spirit of the times’ that occasionally looked kindly on actions by reform-minded

Henry Dietz follows the evolution of the city of Lima using census data from 1940 to 2007, describing the changes that have transformed the Peruvian capital into a spatially and socially segregated megacity profoundly marked by social inequalities. One of the main questions of this book is whether segregation and socio-residential inequality have also led to “identifiable political behaviors” (3).

Offner’s account thus revises common understandings of twentieth-century political economy, in several helpful ways. It illuminates the contradictions of welfare and developmental states. It suggests that neoliberalization was a longer-term process than often thought. And it reveals new links between that process in the United States and Latin America, highlighting the interchanges between Latin American

Neoliberalism’s sordid record has often engendered nostalgia for the mid twentieth century, which was characterized by Keynesianism and welfare state expansion in the United States and by developmentalist policy (and more modest welfare measures) in Latin America. Most analysts see the neoliberal assault that began in the 1970s as a moment of radical rupture. Amy Offner instead shows that the signature

David Sheinin and Jennifer Adair offer new interpretations of Argentina’s democratic transition of the early 1980s. Focusing primarily on a series of key legal cases, Sheinin argues that the administration of Raúl Alfonsín accepted many legal principles elaborated by the military dictatorship and that as a result, the “legal heritage of authoritarian rule” (160) survived the transition intact. More

considerable influence over the press. Smith points to the shared socioeconomic interests of the government and pressmen (a masculine subculture cemented in boozy revelry), the manipulation of myriad financial incentives, and the development of government publicity machines as the primary factors in influencing what was and was not fit to print. Smith’s analysis of these “spin machines,” which used

As touchstones of colonial reality and claimants to something better, diasporic indigenous slaves in sixteenth-century Spain forced conversations about imperialism into the open. Their pursuit of freedom highlights the grasping geographical extent of early modern European imperialism and “some of the more insidious aspects of colonial governance” (227), including self-serving paternalism, the desire

concentration, emerged later under the dynamics of the triad: drug-trafficking, landlordism, and paramilitarism. Although the author is cautious and does not generalize about the concentrated effects of forced displacement in the Montes de María and César, the phenomenon has been proven in other Colombian regions. There is also an important problem in land restitution that this book does not address:

appeals to “specialists and non-specialists alike.” Quite bluntly, the non-specialists would have great difficulty deciphering Ward’s arguments. He inundates nearly every page with quotes from a wide range of authors, utilizes technical language that often requires access to a dictionary, and presents relatively simple arguments in overly complex ways. This type of writing has become too common among

Benjamin Smith counters these findings, arguing that despite the development of elaborate methods to both persuade and coerce the press, state control was not inescapable, especially in the provinces. By looking beyond the big Mexico City dailies to the tabloid and regional press, Smith demonstrates that even at the peak of the PRI’s influence Mexican newspapers did not always walk in lockstep with

In the last chapter, Monteiro challenges yet another myth about the bandeira leaders and their descendants. As he demonstrates, frontier bandeiras did not lead to an egalitarian society; instead, what emerged in São Paulo was great social inequality with an acute division of wealth, even within the free population, which led to rural poverty by the end of the seventeenth century. Thus, this book is

JohnMonteiro’sNegros da Terra is a classic in ethnohistory that launched significant research on the indigenous peoples of Brazil. This translation introduces English-speaking readers to a complex history of colonial São Paulo that challenges an older historiography that celebrated bandeirantes in the exploration of the interior and discovery of gold. Monteiro reveals how they invaded indigenous lands

Studies of state-formation and political regime creation in Latin America generally focus on the period following the revolutionary wars. Reference to the colonial era is sometimes presented in such studies, but typically in a summary form. Thomas Ward’s book alerts us to the fact that prior to the arrival of the colonizers there was a large population, divided into distinct nations, and that their

implications of Chile’s neoliberal system for science, governance, and environmental protection: salmon farming, the Celco Arauco mill, the Pascua Lama mining project, and the HidroAysén hydroelectric dam initiative. Each represents a major environmental flashpoint in an important industrial sector that generated substantial public debate, mobilization, and dynamics of conflict and accommodation among

Rinke is also aware of the current debates in the history of communication. Cortés’s letters to Emperor Charles Vare not used simply as a primary source; going beyond that use, the chronology includes a thorough explanation of all the measures taken by the conqueror, detailing when and why each of these were carried out (219, 274). In his reflections, Rinke also identifies the decisive role that vast

The book market in German-speaking countries considers practical publishing introductions to South American topics, at least those aimed at a broader readership, only during commemorative years such as the fifth centenary of the discovery of America or the bicentenary of the independent republics. In 2019, the fifth centenary of the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire led to various

This book is part of a tradition of scholarship that views understanding citizenship as necessary for understanding the nature of democracy. Although based on fieldwork conducted more than 15 years ago, the book sheds considerable light on the state of Brazilian democracy today. Situated in the heyday of Porto Alegre’s international reputation as “a vibrant center of leftist political experimentation

ABSTRACT This article aims to analyze traces of Aztec cultural memory recorded in sixteenth-century cultural sources of Central Mexico. It is a study of the particular case of an Aztec hero named Tlacahuepan, whose glorious death was commemorated in many songs and chronicles. The texts in question reveal highly symbolic language, as well as clearly established narrative patterns. The study of their

ABSTRACT This article examines the early history of the Hospital de San Hipólito in Mexico City, which delivered charitable care and basic medical services to a vulnerable category of colonial subjects known as “pobres dementes,” or mad paupers. In spite of the vast and robust literature on the history of madness and its institutions, surprisingly little is known about this institution, which, founded

ABSTRACT Founded in 1947 by a Catholic priest, Acción Cultural Popular (ACPO) was a pioneer in radio education. Offering a radio station (Radio Sutatenza), study manuals, and a newspaper, ACPO provided basic education and encouraged campesinos to seek personal development and to “vivir mejor”--to live better. From 1947 to 1994, it attracted over four million subscribers and became a model in 13 Latin

ABSTRACT The year 1976 was a violent one in Nicaragua. In an effort to quash the Sandinista guerrillas, the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle had declared a state of siege, suspending constitutional guarantees, muzzling the press, and unleashing the Guardia Nacional. Despite the dangers of dissent, thousands of students across the country walked off their secondary school campuses that year to protest

paleobotanical data from pollen cores is summarized in Chapter 3. However, the phase boundaries cannot be correlated with changes in material culture and include a notable gap from 4000 to 1200 cal BC, and future research is clearly needed to refine the region’s chronology. A second area where Walker’s work reveals the need for more research in Mojos concerns demographic estimates. A large majority