Kategoria BISAC: History >> Latin America - South America

When the Brazilian military overthrew President Joao Goulart in 1964, American diplomats characterized the coup as a "100 percent Brazilian movement." It has since become apparent, largely through government documents declassified during the course of research for this book, that the United States had an invisible but pervasive part in the coup.

Relying principally on documents from the Johnson and Kennedy presidential libraries, Phyllis Parker unravels the events of the coup in fascinating detail. The evidence she presents is corroborated by interviews with key participants.

Gods of the Andes provides the first English translation of the earliest lengthy description of Inca religion, An Account of the Ancient Customs of the Natives of Peru (1594). The Account is part of a Jesuit tradition of ecumenical works on religion that encompasses the more famous writings of Matteo Ricci in China and Roberto de Nobili in India. It includes original descriptions of many different aspects of Inca religion, including human sacrifice, the use of hallucinogens, mummification rituals, the existence of transgendered priests in the ancient Andes,...

The transition from authoritarian to democratic government in Brazil unleashed profound changes in government and society that cannot be adequately understood from any single theoretical perspective. The great need, say Graham and Wilson, is a holistic vision of what occurred in Brazil, one that opens political and economic analysis to new vistas. This need is answered in The Political Economy of Brazil, a groundbreaking study of late twentieth-century Brazilian issues from a policy perspective.

The book was an outgrowth of a year-long policy research project undertaken...

In providing a detailed account of the leftist opposition and its bloody repression in Brazil during the Old Republic and the early years of the Vargas regime, John W. F. Dulles gives considerable attention to the labor movement, generally neglected by historians. This study focuses on the formation and activities of anarchists and Communists, the two most important radical groups working within Brazilian labor. Relying on a wide variety of sources, including interviews and personal papers, Dulles supplies information that for the most part is unavailable in English and not easily...

Beauty and the Beastbegins with the question: Is beauty destined to end in tragedy? Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Colombia, Michael Taussig scrutinizes the anxious, audacious, and sometimes destructive attempts people make to transform their bodies through cosmetic surgery and liposuction. He balances an examination of surgeries meant to enhance an individual s beauty with an often overlooked counterpart, surgeries performed often on high profile criminals to disguise one s identity. Situating this globally shared phenomenon within the economic, cultural, and political history...

Here is a benchmark study of voter attitudes in a Latin American country. This volume is based on extensive survey research conducted during the Venezuelan elections of 1973. The methods employed by Baloyra and Martz to poll an "unpollable" society successfully challenge previously established paradigms.

The authors interviewed a representative sample of over 1,500 voters to determine relationships between class, status, community, context, religion, ideology, and partisanship on the one hand and political attitudes and preferences on the other. They found that the Venezuelan...