This collection of essays offers an overview of colonial legacies of racial and social inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean. Rich in theoretical framework and close textual analysis, they offers new paradigms and approaches to both reading and resolving the opposing forces of race, class, and the power states.
This collection of essays offers a comprehensive overview of colonial legacies of racial and social inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean. Rich in theoretical framework and close textual analysis, these essays offer new paradigms and approaches to both reading and resolving the opposing forces of race, class, and the power of states. The contributors are drawn from a variety of fields, including literary criticism, anthropology, politics, and sociology. The contributors to this book abandon the traditional approaches that study racialized oppression in Latin America only from the standpoint of its impact on either Indians or people of African descent. Instead they examine colonialism's domination and legacy in terms of both the political power it wielded and the symbolic instruments of that oppression. The volume's scope extends from the Southern Cone to the Andean region, Mexico, and the Hispanophone and Francophone Caribbean. It contests many of the traditional givens about Latin America, including governance and the nation state, the effects of globalization, the legacy of the region's criollo philosophers and men of letters, and postulations of harmonious race relations. As dictatorships give way to democracies in a variety of unprecedented ways, this book offers a necessary and needed examination of the social transformations in the region.
In colonial Latin America, social identity did not correlate neatly with fixed categories of race and ethnicity. As Imperial Subjects demonstrates, from the early years of Spanish and Portuguese rule, understandings of race and ethnicity were fluid. In this collection, historians offer nuanced interpretations of identity as they investigate how Iberian settlers, African slaves, Native Americans, and their multi-ethnic progeny understood who they were as individuals, as members of various communities, and as imperial subjects. The contributors’ explorations of the relationship between colonial ideologies of difference and the identities historical actors presented span the entire colonial period and beyond: from early contact to the legacy of colonial identities in the new republics of the nineteenth century. The volume includes essays on the major colonial centers of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil, as well as the Caribbean basin and the imperial borderlands. Whether analyzing cases in which the Inquisition found that the individuals before it were “legally” Indians and thus exempt from prosecution, or considering late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century petitions for declarations of whiteness that entitled the mixed-race recipients to the legal and social benefits enjoyed by whites, the book’s contributors approach the question of identity by examining interactions between imperial subjects and colonial institutions. Colonial mandates, rulings, and legislation worked in conjunction with the exercise and negotiation of power between individual officials and an array of social actors engaged in countless brief interactions. Identities emerged out of the interplay between internalized understandings of self and group association and externalized social norms and categories. Contributors. Karen D. Caplan, R. Douglas Cope, Mariana L. R. Dantas, María Elena Díaz, Andrew B. Fisher, Jane Mangan, Jeremy Ravi Mumford, Matthew D. O’Hara, Cynthia Radding, Sergio Serulnikov, Irene Silverblatt, David Tavárez, Ann Twinam
The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean (1492-1898) brings together an international team of scholars to explore new interdisciplinary and comparative approaches for the study of colonialism. Using four overarching themes, the volume examines a wide array of critical issues, key texts, and figures that demonstrate the significance of Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean across national and regional traditions and historical periods. This invaluable resource will be of interest to students and scholars of Spanish and Latin American studies examining colonial Caribbean and Latin America at the intersection of cultural and historical studies; transatlantic, postcolonial and decolonial studies; and critical approaches to archives and materiality. This timely volume assesses the impact and legacy of colonialism and coloniality.
Latin America has a rich and complex social history marked by slavery, colonialism, dictatorships, rebellions, social movements and revolutions. Comparative Racial Politics in Latin America explores the dynamic interplay between racial politics and hegemonic power in the region. It investigates the fluid intersection of social power and racial politics and their impact on the region’s histories, politics, identities and cultures. Organized thematically with in-depth country case studies and a historical overview of Afro-Latin politics, the volume provides a range of perspectives on Black politics and cutting-edge analyses of Afro-descendant peoples in the region. Regional coverage includes Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti and more. Topics discussed include Afro-Civil Society; antidiscrimination criminal law; legal sanctions; racial identity; racial inequality and labor markets; recent Black electoral participation; Black feminism thought and praxis; comparative Afro-women social movements; the intersection of gender, race and class, immigration and migration; and citizenship and the struggle for human rights. Recognized experts in different disciplinary fields address the depth and complexity of these issues. Comparative Racial Politics in Latin America contributes to and builds on the study of Black politics in Latin America.
This insightful book introduces the most important trends, people, events, and products of popular culture in Latin America and the Caribbean. In recent times, Latin American influences have permeated American culture through music, movies, television, and literature. This sweeping volume serves as a ready-reference guide to pop culture in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, focusing on Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Costa Rica, among other areas. The work encourages hands-on engagement with the popular culture in these places, making such suggestions as Brazilian films to rent or where to find Venezuelan music on the Internet. To start, the book covers various perspectives and issues of these regions, including the influence of the United States, how the idea of machismo reflects on the portrayal of women in these societies, and the representation of Latino-Caribo cultures in film and other mediums. Entries cover key trends, people, events, and products from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. Each section gives detailed information and profound insights into some of the more academic—and often controversial—debates on the subject, while the inclusion of the Internet, social media, and video games make the book timely and relevant.
The Struggle of Non-Sovereign Caribbean Territories is an essay collection made up of two sections; in the first, a group of anglophone and francophone scholars examines the roots, effects and implications of the major social upheaval that shook Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and Réunion in February and March of 2009. They clearly demonstrate the critical role played by community activism, art and media to combat politico-economic policies that generate (un)employment, labor exploitation, and unattended health risks, all made secondary to the supremacy of profit. In the second section, additional scholars provide in-depth analyses of the ways in which an insistence on capital accumulation and centralization instantiated broad hierarchies of market-driven profit, capital accumulation, and economic exploitation upon a range of populations and territories in the wider non-sovereign and nominally sovereign Caribbean from Haiti to the Dutch Antilles to Puerto Rico, reinforcing the racialized patterns of socioeconomic exclusion and privatization long imposed by France on its former colonial territories.
This book offers a comprehensive, detailed account of the bilateral economic assistance of six major donor nations-the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Japan, and China-to the nations of Latin America. Focus is placed on assistance that is structured to meet basic human needs, enhance social equity, promote economic growth, preserve natural environments, and support political reform. It thus offers a basic foundation for understanding the nature, impact, and motivations of such assistance to Latin America. This study also offers a series of recommendations for reforming economic assistance to Latin America, with emphasis placed on improving the design, implementation, and oversight of development projects, enhancing coordination among aid institutions, ensuring local control and ownership of the development process, and empowering poor communities. When the poor are active participants in improving their communities, they gain the knowledge, skills, and resources necessary to meet their own needs on a long-term basis. Since economic assistance will continue to be a major component of the foreign policies of donor states, it will be important to ensure that such assistance genuinely contributes to positive, meaningful, and lasting change in the region. Bilateral Aid to Latin America is an important volume for university libraries and research institutes. It will augment collections that focus on Latin America, international development, and economic assistance. The book would also be relevant for scholars and practitioners of Latin American development, as well as undergraduate and graduate courses on Latin America and international political economy.
No previous work has covered the web of important players, places, and events that have shaped the history of the United States’ relations with its neighbors to the south. From the Monroe Doctrine through today’s tensions with Latin America’s new leftist governments, this history is rich in case studies of diplomatic, economic, and military cooperation and contentiousness. Encyclopedia of U.S.-Latin American Relations is a comprehensive, three-volume, A-to-Z reference featuring more than 800 entries detailing the political, economic, and military interconnections between the United States and the countries of Latin America, including Mexico and the nations in Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. Entries cover: Each country and its relationship with the United States Key politicians, diplomats, and revolutionaries in each country Wars, conflicts, and other events Policies and treaties Organizations central to the political and diplomatic history of the western hemisphere Key topics covered include: Coups and terrorist organizations U.S. military interventions in the Caribbean Mexican-American War The Cold War, communism, and dictators The war on drugs in Latin America Panama Canal Embargo on Cuba Pan-Americanism and Inter-American conferences The role of commodities like coffee, bananas, copper, and oil "Big Stick" and Good Neighbor policies Impact of religion in U.S.-Latin American relations Neoliberal economic development model U.S. Presidents from John Quincy Adams to Barack Obama Latin American leaders from Simon Bolivar to Hugo Chavez With expansive coverage of more than 200 years of important and fascinating events, this new work will serve as an important addition to the collections of academic, public, and school libraries serving students and researchers interested in U.S. history and diplomacy, Latin American studies, international relations, and current events.
Francis Adams examines the United Nations' efforts to promote sustainable in Latin America. Adams analyzes the development work of various UN institutions and agencies that sponsor economic and social programs in the developing world as well as the UN's various funding initiatives, global conferences, and institutional goals.
