Best of
Latin-American-History

2003

The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability


Peter Kornbluh - 2003
    role in undermining Chilean democracy and supporting the advent of General Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship. "Thanks to Peter Kornbluh," Marc Cooper wrote, "we have the first complete, almost day-to-day and fully documented record of this sordid chapter in Cold War American history."Peter Kornbluh led the campaign for the declassification of some 24,000 secret CIA, White House, NSC, and Defense Department records on Chile. The paperback edition includes new information and documents released since the hardcover went to press. This material is incorporated into a powerful retelling of the events that Newsweek magazine calls "a remarkable reconstruction of the secret U.S. foreign policy that transformed Chile into a dictatorship."

Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991


Piero Gleijeses - 2003
    Americans, Cubans, Soviets, and Africans fought over the future of Angola, where tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were stationed, and over the decolonization of Namibia, Africa's last colony. Beyond lay the great prize: South Africa. Piero Gleijeses uses archival sources, particularly from the United States, South Africa, and the closed Cuban archives, to provide an unprecedented international history of this important theater of the late Cold War. These sources all point to one conclusion: by humiliating the United States and defying the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro changed the course of history in southern Africa. It was Cuba's victory in Angola in 1988 that forced Pretoria to set Namibia free and helped break the back of apartheid South Africa. In the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cubans destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor . . . [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa.

The Fire and the Word: A History of the Zapatista Movement


Gloria Muñoz Ramírez - 2003
    Originally published in Mexico to mark the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Zapatistas, this new edition has been expanded with an epilogue that outlines developments from 2003 to the present. According to Subcomandante Marcos, The Fire and the Word is “the most complete version of the public history of the Zapatistas.”Gloria Muñoz Ramírez has worked for Punto (Mexico), La Opinion (United States), and the Mexican daily La Jornada. She has lived and worked extensively in Chiapas, Mexico.

Disease in the History of Modern Latin America: From Malaria to AIDS


Diego Armus - 2003
    This innovative collection provides a vivid look at the latest research in the cultural history of medicine through insightful essays about how disease—whether it be cholera or aids, leprosy or mental illness—was experienced and managed in different Latin American countries and regions, at different times from the late nineteenth century to the present. Based on the idea that the meanings of sickness—and health—are contestable and subject to controversy, Disease in the History of Modern Latin America displays the richness of an interdisciplinary approach to social and cultural history. Examining diseases in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, the contributors explore the production of scientific knowledge, literary metaphors for illness, domestic public health efforts, and initiatives shaped by the agendas of international agencies. They also analyze the connections between ideas of sexuality, disease, nation, and modernity; the instrumental role of certain illnesses in state-building processes; welfare efforts sponsored by the state and led by the medical professions; and the boundaries between individual and state responsibilities regarding sickness and health. Diego Armus’s introduction contextualizes the essays within the history of medicine, the history of public health, and the sociocultural history of disease. Contributors. Diego Armus, Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Kathleen Elaine Bliss, Ann S. Blum, Marilia Coutinho, Marcus Cueto, Patrick Larvie, Gabriela Nouzeilles, Diana Obregón, Nancy Lays Stepan, Ann Zulawski

Lightning Warrior: Maya Art and Kingship at Quirigua


Matthew G. Looper - 2003
    Though always a relatively small city, Quirigua stands out because of its public monuments, which were some of the greatest achievements of Classic Maya civilization. Impressive not only for their colossal size, high sculptural quality, and eloquent hieroglyphic texts, the sculptures of Quirigua are also one of the few complete, in situ series of Maya monuments anywhere, which makes them a crucial source of information about ancient Maya spirituality and political practice within a specific historical context. Using epigraphic, iconographic, and stylistic analyses, this study explores the integrated political-religious meanings of Quirigua’s monumental sculptures during the eighth-century A.D. reign of the city’s most famous ruler, K’ak’ Tiliw. In particular, Matthew Looper focuses on the role of stelae and other sculpture in representing the persona of the ruler not only as a political authority but also as a manifestation of various supernatural entities with whom he was associated through ritual performance. By tracing this sculptural program from its Early Classic beginnings through the reigns of K’ak’ Tiliw and his successors, and also by linking it to practices at Copan, Looper offers important new insights into the politico-religious history of Quirigua and its ties to other Classic Maya centers, the role of kingship in Maya society, and the development of Maya art.

Peru's MRTA: Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement


Suzie Baer - 2003
    At the heart of this book are two equally compelling dramas: the MRTA's months-long siege of the Japanese Embassy in Lima in 1996 and 1997, and the strange story of American Lori Berenson's alleged involvement with the group and subsequent imprisonment in the country's notorious terrorist prisons.

American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization


Neil Smith - 2003
    The power of geography did not die with the twilight of European colonialism, but it did change fundamentally. That the inauguration of the American Century brought a loss of public geographical sensibility in the United States was itself a political symptom of the emerging empire. This book provides a vital geographical-historical context for understanding the power and limits of contemporary globalization, which can now be seen as representing the third of three distinct historical moments of U.S. global ambition.The story unfolds through a decisive account of the career of Isaiah Bowman (1878–1950), the most famous American geographer of the twentieth century. For nearly four decades Bowman operated around the vortex of state power, working to bring an American order to the global landscape. An explorer on the famous Machu Picchu expedition of 1911 who came to be known first as "Woodrow Wilson’s geographer," and later as Frankin D. Roosevelt’s, Bowman was present at the creation of U.S. liberal foreign policy.A quarter-century later, Bowman was at the center of Roosevelt’s State Department, concerned with the disposition of Germany and heightened U.S. access to European colonies; he was described by Dean Acheson as a key "architect of the United Nations." In that period he was a leader in American science, served as president of Johns Hopkins University, and became an early and vociferous cold warrior. A complicated, contradictory, and at times controversial figure who was very much in the public eye, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine.Bowman’s career as a geographer in an era when the value of geography was deeply questioned provides a unique window into the contradictory uses of geographical knowledge in the construction of the American Empire. Smith’s historical excavation reveals, in broad strokes yet with lively detail, that today's American-inspired globalization springs not from the 1980s but from two earlier moments in 1919 and 1945, both of which ended in failure. By recharting the geography of this history, Smith brings the politics—and the limits—of contemporary globalization sharply into focus.

Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth-Century Southern Andes


Sergio Serulnikov - 2003
    Subverting Colonial Authority focuses on one of the main—but least studied—centers of rebel activity during the age of the Túpac Amaru revolution: the overwhelmingly indigenous Northern Potosí region of present-day Bolivia. Tracing how routine political conflict developed into large-scale violent upheaval, Sergio Serulnikov explores the changing forms of colonial domination and peasant politics in the area from the 1740s (the starting point of large political and economic transformations) through the early 1780s, when a massive insurrection of the highland communities shook the foundations of Spanish rule. Drawing on court records, government papers, personal letters, census documents, and other testimonies from Bolivian and Argentine archives, Subverting Colonial Authority addresses issues that illuminate key aspects of indigenous rebellion, European colonialism, and Andean cultural history. Serulnikov analyzes long-term patterns of social conflict rooted in local political cultures and regionally based power relations. He examines the day-to-day operations of the colonial system of justice within the rural villages as well as the sharp ideological and political strife among colonial ruling groups. Highlighting the emergence of radical modes of anticolonial thought and ethnic cooperation, he argues that Andean peasants were able to overcome entrenched tendencies toward internal dissension and fragmentation in the very process of marshaling both law and force to assert their rights and hold colonial authorities accountable. Along the way, Serulnikov shows, they not only widened the scope of their collective identities but also contradicted colonial ideas of indigenous societies as either secluded cultures or pliant objects of European rule.

Moche Portraits from Ancient Peru


Christopher B. Donnan - 2003
    Using the medium of three-dimensional ceramic vessels that could have contained liquid, Moche artisans typically formed the heads of the individuals they wished to portray, though sometimes they presented full figures with realistic portrait faces. Depicting an astonishing range of physical types, these portraits now allow us to meet Moche people who lived more than 1,500 years ago and to sense the nuances of their individual personalities.This pathfinding book presents the first wide-ranging, systematic study of the Moche portraits. Drawing on more than 900 examples from museums and private collections around the world (some 300 of which are illustrated here in full color) Christopher Donnan documents how the portrait tradition evolved, how the portraits were produced and distributed, who they portrayed, why they were made, and how they were used in Moche society. His analysis is supported by extensive archaeological evidence, which provides the context for portraits found in Moche tombs and midden deposits, as well as useful information for identifying the headdresses and ornaments worn by the individuals portrayed.

Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies


Mala Htun - 2003
    This study explores the patterns of gender-related policy reform in these countries and reveals their implications for the peoples of Latin America. In addition, it offers a broader understanding of the logic behind the state's role in affecting private lives and gender relations everywhere.

Trouble in Paradise: Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America


J. Timm Roberts - 2003
    The volume began to crescendo when space shuttle astronauts photographed five thousand fires on a single night in the Brazilian Amazon state of Rondonia in 1985, and grew shrill when rubbertapper Chico Mendes was shot in 1988 trying to stop ranchers from clearing rainforests near his home in Acre. Since the early 80s, we've heard pleas from rock star, environmental groups, and scientists, asking us to focus our attention on environmental destruction in Latin America-oil spills, lax NAFTA driven ecological standards, endangered indigenous cultures, and the destruction of the rainforests. This volume presents an overview of the pressing nature of these issues and the scope of the problems and seeks to focus our attention on environmental destruction in Latin America by examining several types of environmental crises in Latin American countries. With discussions of the World Bank, urban pollution, NAFTA, toxic pollution in maquiladoras, headline grabbing environmental disasters, drug trafficking, and the 1992 Rio Earth Conference, this book will be a must read for anyone interested in the future of Latin America or world ecology.