This book offers an innovative, thematic approach to the history of Latin America since independence. It traces continuity and change in colonial legacies that became central political issues following independence: authoritarian governance; a rigid social hierarchy based on race, color, and gender; the powerful Roman Catholic Church; economic dependency; and the large landed estate. Generally, liberals have sought to modify or abolish these legacies in the interest of what they consider progress, while conservatives have attempted to preserve them as much as possible as bastions of their power and privilege. Examining the evolution of these colonial legacies across two centuries reveals the processes that formed the political systems, economies, societies, and religious institutions that characterize Latin America today.
What is Latin America, after all? While histories of the "other" Americas often link disparate histories through revolutionary or tragic narratives, Latin America since Independence begins with the assumption that our efforts to imagine a common past for nearly thirty countries are deeply problematic. Without losing sight of chronology or regional trends, this text offers glimpses of the Latin American past through carefully selected stories. Each chapter introduces students to a specific historical issue, which in turn raises questions about the history of the Americas as a whole. Key themes include: Race and Citizenship Inequality and Economic Development Politics and Rights Social and Cultural Movements Globalization Violence and Civil Society The short, thematic chapters are bolstered by the inclusion of relevant primary documents – many translated for the first time – including advertisements and posters, song lyrics, political speeches, government documents, and more. Each chapter also includes timelines highlighting important dates and suggestions for further reading. Richly informative and highly readable, Latin America since Independence provides compelling accounts of this region’s past and present. This second edition brings the story up to the present, with revised chapters, new primary documents and images, and a new ‘At A Glance’ feature that uses a selection of maps and tables to illuminate key issues like the economy, the environment, and demographics. For additional information and classroom resources please visit the Latin America since Independence companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/dawson.
A comprehensive and accessible overview of the economic history of Latin America over the two centuries since Independence. It considers its principal problems and the main policy trends and covers external trade, economic growth, and inequality.
Mexico Since Independence brings together six chapters from Volumes III, V and VII of the Cambridge History of Latin America to provide in a single volume an economic, social and political history of Mexico since independence from Spain in 1821. This, it is hoped, will be useful for both teachers and students of Latin American history. Each chapter is accompanied by a bibliographical essay.
Latin America's quest for independence is revealed through the national struggles of Mexico, Spanish Central and South America, and Brazil. Excerpted from the Cambridge History of Latin America.
This unique reader offers an engaging collection of essays that highlight the diversity of Latin America's cultural expressions from independence to the present. Exploring such themes and events as funerals, dance and music, letters and literature, spectacles and monuments, and world's fairs and food, a group of leading historians examines the ways that a wide range of individuals with copious, at times contradictory, motives attempted to forge identity, turn the world upside down, mock their betters, forget their troubles through dance, express love in letters, and altogether enjoy life. The authors analyze case studies from Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Trinidad-Tobago, tracing as well how their examples resonate in the rest of the region. They show how people could and did find opportunities to escape, if only occasionally, their daily drudgery, making lives for themselves of greater variety than the constant quest for dominance, drive for profits, orknee-jerk resistance to the social or economic order so often described in cultural studies. Instead, this rich text introduces the complexity of motives behind and the diversity of expressions of popular culture in Latin America.
Anubhav Sinha directs this big-budget Bollywood sci-fi superhero action film starring Shah Rukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Arjun Rampal. Geeky video game designer Shekhar (Khan) has a secret alter-ego: leather-clad, musclebound superhero-with-a-heart G.One, on hand to protect the world from the villainous forces that threaten it.
In 1808, world history took a decisive turn when Napoleon occupied Spain and Portugal, a European event that had lasting repercussions more than half the world away, sparking a series of revolutions throughout the Spanish and Portuguese empires of the New World. These wars for independence resulted eventually in the creation of nineteen independent Latin American republics.Here is an engagingly written, compact history of the Latin American wars of independence. Proceeding almost cinematically, scene by vivid scene, John Charles Chasteen introduces the reader to lead players, basic concepts, key events, and dominant trends, braided together in a single, taut narrative. He vividly depicts the individuals and events of those tumultuous years. Here are the famous leaders--Simon Bolivar, Jose de San Martin, and Bernardo O'Higgins, Father Hidalgo and Father Morelos, and many others. Here too are lesser known Americanos: patriot women such as Manuela Saenz, Leona Vicario, Mariquita Sanchez, Juana Azurduy, and Policarpa Salavarrieta, indigenous rebels such as Mateo Pumacahua, and African-descended generals such as Vicente Guerrero and Manuel Piar. Chasteen captures the gathering forces for independence, the clashes of troops and decisions of leaders, and the rich, elaborate tapestry of Latin American societies as they embraced nationhood. By the end of the period, the leaders of Latin American independence would embrace classical liberal principles--particularly popular sovereignty and self-determination--and permanently expanding the global reach of Western political values.Today, most of the world's oldest functioning republics are Latin American. And yet, Chasteen observes, many suffer from a troubled political legacy that dates back to their birth. In this book, he illuminates this legacy, even as he illustrates how the region's dramatic struggle for independence points unmistakably forward in world history.
