During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the social, economic, and political landscape of Peru was transformed profoundly. Within a decade of the country’s disastrous defeat by Chile during the War of the Pacific, the export economy was recovering on the strength of a variety of agricultural and mineral products. The sugar industry played a pivotal role in this process and produced wealthy and socially ambitious families who became prominent political leaders on the national level. This study, based primarily on previously unavailable private records of sugarcane plantations, examines the external and internal dynamics of the sugar industry. It offers new insights into the process of land consolidation, the economics of sugar technology and production, the formation of the coastal elite, and the organization, recruitment, and control of labor. By focusing on the plantation Cayalti within a regional context, Gonzales presents one of the richest descriptions of the modern plantation for any region of Latin America. The book is a vivid social history of laborers from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, from Chinese to Peruvians of Indian, mestizo, and black heritage.

The twelve essays in this book demonstrate the importance of bringing history back into historical materialism. They combine the discussion of Marx's categories with historical work on a wide range of themes and periods (the early middle ages, 'Asiatic' regimes, agrarian capitalism, etc.).

Many works about agragarian change in the Third World assumes that unfree relations are to be eliminated in the course of capitalist development. This text argues that the incidence of bonded labour is greater than supposed, and that in certain situations rural employers prefer an unfree workforce.

This comprehensive reference offers an authoritative overview of Andean lifeways. It provides valuable historical context, and demonstrates the relevance of learning about the Andes in light of contemporary events and debates. The volume covers the ecology and pre-Columbian history of the region, and addresses key themes such as cosmology, aesthetics, gender and household relations, modes of economic production, exchange, and consumption, postcolonial legacies, identities, political organization and movements, and transnational interconnections. With over 40 essays by expert contributors that highlight the breadth and depth of Andean worlds, this is an essential resource for students and scholars alike.

However urban slave societies might have differed from their rural counterparts, they still relied on a concerted assault on the psychological, social, and cultural identity of their African-descended inhabitants to maintain power and control. This ambitious book looks at how people of African descent in two such societies--Havana and New Orleans in the nineteenth century--created and maintained their own forms of cultural resistance to the slave regime's assault and, in the process, put forth autonomous views of sell and the social landscape. In Havana's annual Dia de Reyes festival and in the weekly activities that took place at New Orleans's Congo Square, author Daniel Walker identities specific cultural beliefs and activities that Africans brought to the New World and modified in order to withstand and contest the dehumanizing effects of oppression. "No More, No More crosses disciplinary boundaries as well, elucidating the economic, social, cultural, and demographic operations at work in two cities and the wide-scale efforts at cultural resistance embodied in public performances.

This judicious history of modern Mexico's revolutionary era will help all readers, and in particular students, understand the first great social uprising of the twentieth century. In 1911, land-hungry peasants united with discontented political elites to overthrow General Porfirio Díaz, who had ruled Mexico for three decades. Gonzales offers a path breaking overview of the revolution from its origins in the Díaz dictatorship through the presidency of radical General Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940) drawn from archival sources and a vast secondary literature. His interpretation balances accounts of agrarian insurgencies, shifting revolutionary alliances, counter-revolutions, and foreign interventions to delineate the triumphs and failures of revolutionary leaders such as Francisco I. Madero, Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Alvaro Obregón, and Venestiano Carranza. What emerges is a clear understanding of the tangled events of the period and a fuller appreciation of the efforts of revolutionary presidents after 1916 to reinvent Mexico amid the limitations imposed by a war-torn countryside, a hostile international environment, and the resistance of the Catholic Church and large land-owners.

A comparative study of the First World War's economic and socio-political repercussions in Latin America.

For a quarter of a century, Tulio Halperín Donghi's Historia Contemporánea de América Latina has been the most influential and widely read general history of Latin America in the Spanish-speaking world. Unparalleled in scope, attentive to the paradoxes of Latin American reality, and known for its fine-grained interpretation, it is now available for the first time in English. Revised and updated by the author, superbly translated, this landmark of Latin American historiography will be accessible to an entirely new readership. Beginning with a survey of the late colonial landscape, The Contemporary History of Latin America traces the social, economic, and political development of the region to the late twentieth century, with special emphasis on the period since 1930. Chapters are organized chronologically, each beginning with a general description of social and economic developments in Latin America generally, followed by specific attention to political matters in each country. What emerges is a well-rounded and detailed picture of the forces at work throughout Latin American history. This book will be of great interest to all those seeking a general overview of modern Latin American history, and its distinctive Latin American voice will enhance its significance for all students of Latin American history.

Politicians and political parties are for the most part limited by habit—they recycle tried-and-true strategies, draw on models from the past, and mimic others in the present. But in rare moments politicians break with routine and try something new. Drawing on pragmatist theories of social action, Revolutionizing Repertoires sets out to examine what happens when the repertoire of practices available to political actors is dramatically reconfigured. Taking as his case study the development of a distinctively Latin American style of populist mobilization, Robert S. Jansen analyzes the Peruvian presidential election of 1931. He finds that, ultimately, populist mobilization emerged in the country at this time because newly empowered outsiders recognized the limitations of routine political practice and understood how to modify, transpose, invent, and recombine practices in a whole new way. Suggesting striking parallels to the recent populist turn in global politics, Revolutionizing Repertoires offers new insights not only to historians of Peru but also to scholars of historical sociology and comparative politics, and to anyone interested in the social and political origins of populism.