Kategoria BISAC: History >> Latin America - South America

Since prehistoric times, Andean societies have been organized around the ayllu, a grouping of real or ceremonial kinspeople who share labor, resources, and ritual obligations. Many Andean scholars believe that the ayllu is as ancient as Andean culture itself, possibly dating back as far as 6000 B.C., and that it arose to alleviate the hardships of farming in the mountainous Andean environment.

In this boldly revisionist book, however, William Isbell persuasively argues that the ayllu developed during the latter half of the Early Intermediate Period...

Playwright, journalist, and spectacularly successful governor, Carlos Lacerda was Brazil's foremost orator in the 20th century and its most controversial politician. He might have become president in the 1960s had not the military taken over. In the words of eminent historian Jose Honorio Rodrigues, "No one person influenced the Brazilian historical process as much as Carlos Lacerda from 1945 to 1968."

In this volume, the first of a two-volume biography, Professor Dulles paints a portrait of a rebellious youth, who had the willfulness of his prominent father and who crusaded for...

The encounter between Native American peoples and Europeans and their descendants has marked the history of every nation in the Americas, both North and South. Lucio Mansilla's Una excursion a los indios ranqueles, published in Argentina in 1870, is one of very few works in American letters that presents a vivid, firsthand account of a noncombative encounter between Native American and European civilizations.

This volume is the first English translation of Mansilla's classic work. Long noted for its humor, adventurousness, and narrative ingenuity, the book offers...

What becomes clear throughout Missionary Scientists is that early missionaries were adept in adapting to local practices, in order to both understand the scientific...

The Amazon rain forest covers more than five million square kilometers, amid the territories of nine different nations. It represents over half of the planet's remaining rain forest. Is it truly in peril? What steps are necessary to save it? To understand the future of Amazonia, one must know how its history was forged: in the eras of large pre-Columbian populations, in the gold rush of conquistadors, in centuries of slavery, in the schemes of Brazil's military dictators in the 1960s and 1970s, and in new globalized economies where Brazilian soy and beef now dominate, while the market in...