This book examines the life and times of Getulio Vargas, Brazilian dictator and president for most of the period from 1930 to 1954. It asks how Vargas' legacy influenced Brazil, and to what extent his social legislation affected people's lives. Vargas ignored individual rights and devoted as much effort to manipulating workers as to benefiting them. He did not perceive the unequal distribution of power as a problem that needed to be solved. Although Vargas promised much and delivered little, Brazilians idolized him. Ordinary people would shrug and say, "The President always thought about...

Noble David Cook explains, in vivid detail and sweeping scope, how the conquest of the New World was achieved by a handful of Europeans--not by the sword, but by deadly disease. The Aztec and Inca empires with their teeming millions were destroyed by a few hundred Europeans whose most important weapons, though the conquerors did not realize it at the time, were diseases previously unknown in the Americas. The end result of the colonizing experience in the Americas, whether of the Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, English, or French, was the collapse of native society.

This book is an introductory history of racial slavery in the Americas. Brazil and Cuba were among the first colonial societies to establish slavery in the early sixteenth century. Approximately a century later British colonial Virginia was founded, and slavery became an integral part of local culture and society. In all three nations, slavery spread to nearly every region, and in many areas it was the principal labor system utilized by rural and urban elites. This is the first work that systemically surveys slavery in the three nations from comparative perspectives. Chapters focus on slave...

This book is an original exploration into the history of material culture and consumption in Latin America over the past 500 years with special attention to the categories of food, clothing, shelter, and the arrangement of public and private space. The practice of consumption is related to supply and demand but also to the importance of ritual and the scramble for identity within the ethnic and class arrangements imposed by colonial and postcolonial societies.

This book examines the life and times of Getulio Vargas, Brazilian dictator and president for most of the period from 1930 to 1954. It asks how Vargas' legacy influenced Brazil, and to what extent his social legislation affected people's lives. Vargas ignored individual rights and devoted as much effort to manipulating workers as to benefiting them. He did not perceive the unequal distribution of power as a problem that needed to be solved. Although Vargas promised much and delivered little, Brazilians idolized him. Ordinary people would shrug and say, "The President always thought about...

This survey is a synthesis of the economic, social, cultural, and political history of the Atlantic slave trade, providing the general reader with a basic understanding of the current state of scholarly knowledge of forced African migration and compares this knowledge to popular beliefs. The Atlantic Slave Trade examines the four hundred years of Atlantic slave trade, covering the West and East African experiences, as well as all the American colonies and republics that obtained slaves from Africa. It outlines both the common features of this trade and the local differences that developed. It...

Born in La Paz in 1792, Andres de Santa Cruz lived through the turbulent times that led to independence across Latin America. He fought to shape the newly established republics, and between 1836 and 1839 he created the Peru-Bolivia Confederation. The epitome of an Andean caudillo, with armed forces at the center of his ideas of governance, he was a state builder whose ambition ensured a strong and well-administered country. But the ultimate failure of the Confederation had long-reaching consequences that still have an impact today. The story of his life introduces students to broader...

Born in La Paz in 1792, Andres de Santa Cruz lived through the turbulent times that led to independence across Latin America. He fought to shape the newly established republics, and between 1836 and 1839 he created the Peru-Bolivia Confederation. The epitome of an Andean caudillo, with armed forces at the center of his ideas of governance, he was a state builder whose ambition ensured a strong and well-administered country. But the ultimate failure of the Confederation had long-reaching consequences that still have an impact today. The story of his life introduces students to broader...

In Search of an Inca examines how people in the Andean region have invoked the Incas to question and rethink colonialism and injustice, from the time of the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century until the late twentieth century. It stresses the recurrence of the Andean utopia, that is, the idealization of the precolonial past as an era of harmony, justice, and prosperity and the foundation for political and social agendas for the future. In this award-winning work, Alberto Flores Galindo highlights how different groups imagined the pre-Hispanic world as a model for a new society. These...

Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present examines the immigration to Brazil of millions of Europeans, Asians, and Middle Easterners beginning in the nineteenth century. Jeffrey Lesser analyzes how these newcomers and their descendents adapted to their new country and how national identity was formed as they became Brazilians along with their children and grandchildren. Lesser argues that immigration cannot be divorced from broader patterns of Brazilian race relations, as most immigrants settled in the decades surrounding the final abolition of slavery in...