Kategoria BISAC: History >> Latin America - South America

No social class has generated more controversy than the middle class, and nowhere has that class been more controversial than in Latin America. Once believed not to exist, then later the great hope of the Alliance for Progress, the Latin American middle class is often blamed for not fulfilling the entrepreneurial, democratizing, progressive, or stabilizing role that others ascribe to it. Yet never has a class so widely discussed been so little studied and so poorly understood. David Parker meets this challenge by combining the methods of social historians with attention to language and the...

No social class has generated more controversy than the middle class, and nowhere has that class been more controversial than in Latin America. Once believed not to exist, then later the great hope of the Alliance for Progress, the Latin American middle class is often blamed for not fulfilling the entrepreneurial, democratizing, progressive, or stabilizing role that others ascribe to it. Yet never has a class so widely discussed been so little studied and so poorly understood. David Parker meets this challenge by combining the methods of social historians with attention to language and the...

Until the 1960s, rural laborers and peasants composed the majority of Brazil's population and yet most scholars have downplayed their influence on the country's history. In contrast, The Seed Was Planted argues that rural labor has been fundamental to the making of modern Brazil.

When the Brazilian military took power in 1964, anarchy in the countryside was one of the problems the conspirators used to justify ousting the civilian government. Cliff Welch examines this claim by narrating the history of rising rural worker activism in Sao Paulo, Brazil's most influential...

Military rule in Argentina from 1976 to 1983 was a classic case of bureaucratic authoritarianism. This book now presents for the first time in English a close look at that country's experience, providing new information on legal and institutional aspects of the Argentine regime and the intricate interaction between military rulers and trade unionists, while offering a model for the study of regimes in general.

Integrating insights from a wide range of literature, Gerardo Munck advances a novel conceptual framework for the study of political regimes and regime change. He follows the...

The success of political efforts to create a more open economy in Brazil over the past decade has depended crucially on support from the industrial sector, which long enjoyed the benefits of protection by the state from economic competition. Why businesses previously so sheltered would back neoliberal reform, and why opposition arose at times from sectors least threatened by free trade, are the puzzles this book seeks to answer.

Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with industrialists and business association representatives, as well as a wide range of other sources, Peter...

Most studies about the politics of economic reform focus on the struggles between the state and interest groups or opposition political parties. In this book Javier Corrales argues instead that the key struggle is between the executive and the ruling party. Deep economic transformations require cooperation from the ruling party. This support allows the state to sustain societal support and simultaneously ward off the potentially paralyzing influence of interest groups. Without such cooperation, the executive loses credibility and the political fortitude necessary to neutralize the...

With the role of local government becoming more important as Latin American countries moved away from state-led development models in the 1980s, and with social movements helping to bring about the transition to democracy, questions arose about whether and how popular participation at the local level might be able to contribute to the consolidation of democracy from the grassroots upward. This book, based on extensive research in low-income districts of Lima, provides a sophisticated analysis of the relationship between a resurgent civil society and democratization.

Exploring the...

In early April 1536, Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada led a military expedition from the coastal city of Santa Marta deep into the interior of what is today modern Colombia. With roughly eight hundred Spaniards and numerous native carriers and black slaves, the Jimenez expedition was larger than the combined forces under Hernando Cortes and Francisco Pizarro. Over the course of the one-year campaign, nearly three-quarters of Jimenez's men perished, most from illness and hunger. Yet, for the 179 survivors, the expedition proved to be one of the most profitable campaigns of the sixteenth century....

A country perceived as having unusually complex political, economic, and social problems, Peru has long fascinated social scientists. The Peruvian Labyrinth brings together a new generation of scholars to explore the multifaceted Peruvian "experiment" as it has evolved further, in often dramatic ways, in the 1980s and 1990s.

The volume focuses special attention on the administration of Albert Fujimori, who suspended the constitution in 1992, two years after he first became president, but then was reelected in 1995. The experience of Peru under his regime raises important...

To studies of Brazilian slavery, this book adds a new dimension by showing how it developed in a region where mining was the chief commercial activity and how important a role gender played in this frontier setting in creating opportunities for slaves to achieve some measure of autonomy, compared with slaves who worked in sugar-cane and coffee-growing areas.

The interactions among masters, slaves, and royal officials were profoundly shaped by the accessibility and widespread dispersal of gold deposits, the emergence of small urban centers in which commercial activities thrived, the...

Brazilian Spiritism (espiritismo, kardecismo) is an important middle-class religious movement whose followers believe in communication with the dead via spirit mediums and in healing illnesses by means of spiritual therapies. Unlike Anglo-Saxon Spiritualists, Brazilian Spiritists count among their number a well-developed and institutionalized intellectual elite that has reinterpreted northern hemisphere parapsychology and developed its own alternative medicine and sociology of religion. As a result, the mediation between popular religion (especially Afro-Brazilian...

This book takes a fresh look at the role the United States Government and the Chilean military played in the overthrow of the Allende government. It addresses four specific topics. Part I focuses on official and non-official United States intervention and examines other actors in the international system. Part II covers special interest groups (the Catholic church, women's organizations, trade unions, and others), the Chilean military, the Political Opposition, the political structure of Chile, and the economic situation. Part III discusses the problems within the decision-making elite....

A thoroughly documented account of the 1967 guerrilla challenge in Bolivia, this volume reconstructs events leading up to, during, and after the defeat of the insurgency. Against the background of the 1960s' attempt to extend Cuban influence throughout Latin America, the book offers an analysis of trends in Bolivian politics from 1952 to 1967. General Prado then evaluates the geographical setting of the insurgency, guerrilla preparations, and the Bolivian response. Prado identifies key strategic errors, including Che Guevara's failure to capture peasant support, and analyzes Che's own...

The daily routines, habits, beliefs, and values of the Hispanic culture that create unique human interactions in this society are revealed in this book. The book consists of 26 chapters relating to different themes that collectively provide an understanding of cultural responses. An anecdote is placed at the beginning of each chapter to assist the reader in understanding the more pedagogical information that follows. Reflected in this book is the reality that the Hispanic world covers a vast geographical area, and as such, is a mosaic of ethnic, religious, and historical backgrounds....

The Atacama Desert, a coastal area where the borders of Chile, Peru, and Bolivia meet, was a region of little interest in the late nineteenth century until European research on the use of nitrates in fertilizers and explosives rendered the droppings of millions of sea birds a valuable commodity. In a move that echoed the California Gold Rush, the three neighboring countries soon battled for control of the region. In 1879, a comparatively modern and powerful Chile seized Bolivia's coastal province, and a secret alliance between Peru and Bolivia soon led to a full-scale war, one which saw...