This unique reader offers an engaging collection of essays that highlight the diversity of Latin America's cultural expressions from independence to the present. Leading historians explore funerals, dance and music, letters and literature, spectacles and monuments, and world's fairs and food. These themes and events highlight the ways in which 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...

This unique reader offers an engaging collection of essays that highlight the diversity of Latin America's cultural expressions from independence to the present. Leading historians explore funerals, dance and music, letters and literature, spectacles and monuments, and world's fairs and food. These themes and events highlight the ways in which 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...