Villa legends pervade not only Mexico but the United States and beyond, existing not only in the popular mind and tradition but in ballads and movies. There are legends of Villa the Robin Hood, Villa the womanizer, and Villa as the only foreigner who has attacked the mainland of the United States since the War of 1812 and gotten away with it.Whether exaggerated or true to life, these legends have resulted in Pancho Villa the leader obscuring his revolutionary movement, and the myth in turn obscuring the leader. Based on decades of research in the archives of seven countries, this definitive study of Villa aims to separate myth from history. So much attention has focused on Villa himself that the characteristics of his movement, which is unique in Latin American history and in some ways unique among twentieth-century revolutions, have been forgotten or neglected. Villa’s División del Norte was probably the largest revolutionary army that Latin America ever produced. Moreover, this was one of the few revolutionary movements with which a U.S. administration attempted, not only to come to terms, but even to forge an alliance. In contrast to Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro, Villa came from the lower classes of society, had little education, and organized no political party.The first part of the book deals with Villa’s early life as an outlaw and his emergence as a secondary leader of the Mexican Revolution, and also discusses the special conditions that transformed the state of Chihuahua into a leading center of revolution. In the second part, beginning in 1913, Villa emerges as a national leader. The author analyzes the nature of his revolutionary movement and the impact of Villismo as an ideology and as a social movement. The third part of the book deals with the years 1915 to 1920: Villa’s guerrilla warfare, his attack on Columbus, New Mexico, and his subsequent decline. The last part describes Villa’s surrender, his brief life as a hacendado, his assassination and its aftermath, and the evolution of the Villa legend. The book concludes with an assessment of Villa’s personality and the character and impact of his movement.

    Charles Bowden, who first brought attention to the story of the Juarez photographers in Harper's (December 1996), has written an uncompromising, piercing work that combines insightful and informed reporting with a poetic and wry style. His text, integrated with brutal and revealing images by a group of unknown Mexican street photographers, takes on issues of NAFTA, immigration, gangs, corruption, drug trafficking, and poverty, uncovering a very different Mexico than generally depicted in the press, and by the United States and Mexican governments. While Charles Bowden presents a riveting investigation of Juarez, its inhabitants, and its visual chroniclers, the renowned activist and writer Noam Chomsky offers in his introduction a bitingly critical account of NAFTA, suggesting its nullifying effect on democracy and the rights of both workers and consumers, and its underlying strategy for protecting the rich and powerful, and keeping everyone else in his or her place. In his afterword, the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano poses the question: Should the Third World really aspire to be like the First World? His insider's look at contemporary North/South American relations reveals how the relationship between Juarez and El Paso can serve as a metaphor for U.S. - Latin American relations, and demonstrates the devastating toll United States policy and attitude knowingly take on human rights and the environment south of our border.

    The extraordinary earthenware figures illustrated have all been recovered from burial sites and shaft tombs. They represent a wide range of subjects -- warriors, chieftains, acrobats, shamans, musicians, ball players, festival couples, and bound prisoners -- in a variety of styles from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 800 that constitute the artistic canon of a region encompassing the modern states of Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit.This distinctive artistic tradition is among the most aesthetically appealing and culturally informative of the ancient Americas. Yet until now the region has never been as thoroughly documented as other early Mesoamerican civilizations. The ancient cultures of this period were not isolated farming villages, as was long thought, but impressive chieftaincies with complex social organizations; art, architecture, ritual dance, and performance played an essential and dynamic role in the formation and integration of these multiethnic societies.This is the first publication to analyze fully the splendid accomplishments of the area. It includes an analysis of a recently discovered multichambered shaft tomb in Huitzilapa, west of Guadalajara, the first scientifically excavated tomb found complete with multiple human remains, mortuary vessels, large-scale earthenware figures, conch-shell trumpets, and other precious objects. Other essays, by a distinguished team of American andMexican archaeologists, art historians, and ethnohistorians, describe the discovery at Tenochtitlan of a major circular ceremonial center; shamanism and spirituality as reflected in funerary sculpture; the West Mexican ball game, an elaborate ritual associated with pan-Mesoamerican themes of fertility, life, death, and renewal; the iconography of rulership in ancient funerary figures; and the evidence for sea trade between ancient West Mexico and Ecuador.

    police training in Brazil and other Latin American countries. With data from a wide range of primary sources, including previously classified U.S. and Brazilian government documents, Martha K. Huggins uncovers how U.S. strategies to gain political control through police assistance—in the name of hemispheric and national security—has spawned torture, murder, and death squads in Latin America.After a historical review of policing in the United States and Europe over the past century, Huggins reveals how the United States, in order to protect and strengthen its position in the world system, has used police assistance to establish intelligence and other social control infrastructures in foreign countries. The U.S.-encouraged centralization of Latin American internal security systems, Huggins claims, has led to the militarization of the police and, in turn, to an increase in state-sanctioned violence. Furthermore, Political Policing shows how a domestic police force—when trained by another government—can lose its power over legitimate crime as it becomes a tool for the international interests of the nation that trains it.Pointing to U.S. responsibility for violations of human rights by foreign security forces, Political Policing will provoke discussion among those interested in international relations, criminal justice, human rights, and the sociology of policing.

    foreign policy toward Central America in the waning years of the Cold War. From the overthrow of the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua and the outbreak of El Salvador's civil war in the late 1970s to the final regional peace settlements negotiated a decade later, he chronicles the dramatic struggles--in Washington and Central America--that shaped the region's destiny. For good or ill, LeoGrande argues, Central America's fate hinged on decisions that were subject to intense struggles among, and within, Congress, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House--decisions over which Central Americans themselves had little influence. Like the domestic turmoil unleashed by Vietnam, he says, the struggle over Central America was so divisive that it damaged the fabric of democratic politics at home. It inflamed the tug-of-war between Congress and the executive branch over control of foreign policy and ultimately led to the Iran-contra affair, the nation's most serious political crisis since Watergate.A masterly and comprehensive chronicle of U.S. policy toward Central America in the 1980s.--Atlantic Monthly[LeoGrande] has risen above partisanship to produce a book central to any historical evaluation of those troubled times.--Foreign Affairs[LeoGrande] takes the reader confidently through a complex, often tortuous story. . . . Throughout, the analysis is thorough and clear.--New York Times Book ReviewFull of unorthodox, original perspectives, LeoGrande's clearly written, magisterial study holds timely post-Cold War lessons that transcend the Central American setting.--Publishers WeeklyIlluminating one of the most controversial chapters in the history of American foreign policy, William LeoGrande presents a comprehensive account of U.S. involvement in Central America during the 1980s. From the military clashes fought on the ground in Central America to the bitter political discord that wrenched apart Washington, he chronicles the dramatic struggles that characterized what he calls the last battle of the Cold War.