Latin American history traditionally has been defined by larger-than-life heroes such as Simon Bolivar, Emiliano Zapata, and Evita Peron. Recent scholarship, however, tends to emphasize social and cultural factors rather than great leaders. In this new collection, Samuel Brunk and Ben Fallaw bring heroes back to the center of the debate, arguing that heroes not only shape history, they also "tell us a great deal about the places from which they come."

The original essays in this collection examine ten modern Latin American heroes whose charisma derived from the quality of their...

Cardenas Compromised is a political and institutional history of Mexico s urban and rural labor in the Yucatan region during the regime of Lazaro Cardenas from 1934 to 1940. Drawing on archival materials, both official and popular, Fallaw combines narrative, individual case studies, and focused political analysis to reexamine and dispel long-cherished beliefs about the Cardenista era.
For historical, geographical, and ethnic reasons, Yucatan was the center of large-scale land reform after the Mexican Revolution. A long-standing revolutionary tradition, combined with a harsh division...

Cardenas Compromised is a political and institutional history of Mexico s urban and rural labor in the Yucatan region during the regime of Lazaro Cardenas from 1934 to 1940. Drawing on archival materials, both official and popular, Fallaw combines narrative, individual case studies, and focused political analysis to reexamine and dispel long-cherished beliefs about the Cardenista era.
For historical, geographical, and ethnic reasons, Yucatan was the center of large-scale land reform after the Mexican Revolution. A long-standing revolutionary tradition, combined with a harsh division...

Forced Marches is a collection of innovative essays that analyze how the military experience molded Mexican citizens in the years between the initial war for independence in 1810 and the consolidation of the revolutionary order in the 1940s. The contributors--well-regarded scholars from the United States and the United Kingdom--offer fresh interpretations of the Mexican military, caciquismo, and the enduring pervasiveness of violence in Mexican society. Employing the approaches of the new military history, which emphasizes the relationships between the state, society, and the...

The religion question the place of the Church in a Catholic country after an anticlerical revolution profoundly shaped the process of state formation in Mexico. From the end of the Cristero War in 1929 until Manuel Avila Camacho assumed the presidency in late 1940 and declared his faith, Mexico's unresolved religious conflict roiled regional politics, impeded federal schooling, undermined agrarian reform, and flared into sporadic violence, ultimately frustrating the secular vision shared by Plutarco Elias Calles and Lazaro Cardenas.

Ben Fallaw argues that previous scholarship has not...

The religion question the place of the Church in a Catholic country after an anticlerical revolution profoundly shaped the process of state formation in Mexico. From the end of the Cristero War in 1929 until Manuel Avila Camacho assumed the presidency in late 1940 and declared his faith, Mexico's unresolved religious conflict roiled regional politics, impeded federal schooling, undermined agrarian reform, and flared into sporadic violence, ultimately frustrating the secular vision shared by Plutarco Elias Calles and Lazaro Cardenas.

Ben Fallaw argues that previous scholarship has not...