During the wars for independence in Spanish South America (1808-1826), thousands of slaves enlisted under the promise of personal freedom and, in some cases, freedom for other family members. Blacks were recruited by opposing sides in these conflicts and their loyalties rested with whomever they believed would emerge victorious. The prospect of freedom was worth risking one's life for, and wars against Spain presented unprecedented opportunities to attain it.

Much hedging over the slavery issue continued, however, even after the patriots came to power. The prospect of abolition threatened...

As the world's fifth-largest country, Brazil presents a compelling example of democracy in action. In this sequel to their landmark study "Democratic Brazil," editors Peter Kingstone and Timothy Power have assembled a distinguished group of U.S.- and Brazilian-based scholars to assess the impact of competitive politics on Brazilian government, institutions, economics, and society.
The 2002 election of Lula da Silva and his Worker's Party promised a radical shift toward progressive reform, transparency, and accountability, opposing the earlier centrist and market-oriented policies of the...

Examines the negotiations over women's rights and the politics of gender in Chile throughout the twentieth century. Centering her study on motherhood, Pieper Mooney explores dramatic changes in health policy, population paradigms, and understandings of human rights, and reveals that motherhood is hardly a private matter defined only by individual women or couples. Instead, it is intimately tied to public policies and political competitions on nation-state and international levels.

After the revolutionary period of 1910-1920, Mexico developed a number of social protection programs to support workers in public and private sectors and to establish safeguards for the poor and the aged. These included pensions, healthcare, and worker's compensation. The new welfare programs were the product of a complex interrelationship of corporate, labor, and political actors. In this unique dynamic, cross-class coalitions maintained both an authoritarian regime and social protection system for some seventy years, despite the ebb and flow of political and economic tides.
By focusing...

The first work in English to discuss the social and political history of lawyers in a Latin American country, "Honorable Lives" presents a portrait of lawyers in late colonial and early modern Colombia. Uribe-Uran focuses on the social origins, education, and careers of those qualified to practice law before the highest colonial courts Audiencias and the republican courts after the 1820s. In the course of his study, Uribe-Uran answers many questions about this elite group of professionals. What were the social origins and families of lawyers? Their relation to the state? Their participation...

The industrial development of Ecuador has made fortunes for some, but has largely bypassed the general population. Armed by its new power, the bourgeoisie has captured sate mechanisms for its own advancement, leading to the paradox of a democratic authoritarianism. In this study, Catherine M. Conaghan views the crucial differences between the social and economic changes in newly developed Latin American nations and those of the southern cone. Using Ecuador as her case study, she shows how industrial growth has given birth to an exclusive, ingrown bourgeoisie that is highly dependent on the...

Thomas Scheetz shows that the Internationaly Monetary Fund's approach in 1980s Peru did not addresses the roots of debt and financial crisis, but instead has instituted inadequate stopgap policies, which have caused great inequities because of incorrect or biased assumptions. He argues that policies to eliminate "excess demand" in fact harm the poor, and the support the rich.

This book introduces to a larger audience the work of a group of Mexican writers whose work reflects the stimulus of the boom of the 1960s, especially in the experimental nueva novella.
Duncan views the work of six writers in the context of more well known writers of the period (Ruflo, Fuentes, and Del Paso), and concludes with a chapter on other recent innovators in Mexican literature. Despite their diversity, these texts share many common features, and unlike social realism, the works are not openly political, but at the same time they question assumptions about reality itself-and the...

Argentine Workers provides an insightful analysis of the complex combination of values and attitudes exhibited by workers in a heavily unionized, industrially developing country, while also ascertaining their political beliefs. By analyzing empirical data, Ranis describes what workers think about their unions, employers, private and foreign enterprise, the economy, the state, privatization, landowners, politics, the military, the dirty war and the disappeared, the Montonero guerillas, the church, popular culture and leisure pursuits, and their personal lives and ambitions."

Brazil was one of the most successful examples of state-led industrialization in the post-1945 era. Yet, on the surface, the Brazilian bureaucracy appears highly fragmented, personalized, and ad-hoc. Ben Ross Schneider looks behind this facade to explain how the Brazilian bureaucracy contributes to industrialization by analyzing career patterns and appointments which structure incentives and power more than formal organizations or institutions. Politics and personalism, of the right sort, Schneider argues, can in fact enhance policy effectiveness and state capacity."