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Politics of Latin America: The Power Game (6th edition)
Gary Prevost and Harry E. Vanden
Now in its sixth edition, Politics of Latin America: The Power Game explores both the evolution and the current state of the political scene in Latin America. This text demonstrates a nuanced sensitivity to the use and abuse of power and the importance of social conditions, gender, race, globalization, and political economy throughout the region. It is uniquely divided into two parts: one that treats big-picture, thematic questions, and one that focuses on particular countries through case studies of ten representative nations: Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.
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On the Graphic Novel
Santiago Garcia and Bruce Campbell
A noted comics artist himself, Santiago García follows the history of the graphic novel from early nineteenth-century European sequential art, through the development of newspaper strips in the United States, to the development of the twentieth-century comic book and its subsequent crisis. He considers the aesthetic and entrepreneurial innovations that established the conditions for the rise of the graphic novel all over the world.
García not only treats the formal components of the art, but also examines the cultural position of comics in various formats as a popular medium. Typically associated with children, often viewed as unedifying and even at times as a threat to moral character, comics art has come a long way. With such examples from around the world as Spain, France, Germany, and Japan, García illustrates how the graphic novel, with its increasingly global and aesthetically sophisticated profile, represents a new model for graphic narrative production that empowers authors and challenges longstanding social prejudices against comics and what they can achieve.
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US National Security Concerns in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Concept of Ungoverned Spaces and Failed States
Gary Prevost, Harry E. Vanden, Carlos Oliva Campos, and Luis Fernando Ayerbe
The concepts of 'ungoverned spaces' and 'failed states' where the limited presence of the state is seen as a challenge to global security have generated a rich intellectual debate in recent years. In this edited volume, scholars from Latin America and the United States will analyze how US foreign policy making circles have applied the concepts to the creation of new US security initiatives in the Latin American region during the post September 11, 2001 era. The extension of concepts to Latin America has been significant because it has meant that during the past thirteen years US policy in the Hemisphere has shifted away from the primarily economic emphasis of the 1990s, the era of the Free Trade Area of the Americas project, back to a security focus reminiscent of the Cold War era. The last decade has witnessed a significant increase in US military presence in the region highlighted by the re-launching of the Caribbean-based Fourth Fleet, the militarization of drug fighting efforts in Mexico, and the establishment of several new military bases in Colombia, the staunchest US ally in the region.
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The New Mediatrix: Reconciling Feminism and Spirituality in 20th Century Latin American Women's Narrative
Elena Sánchez Mora
The convergence of Hispanic Studies, Literary Criticism, feminism and spirituality has been specifically associated, on the one hand, with the study of the autobiographical writings by cloistered women in 16th and 17th century Spain and its colonies; and on the other hand, it has been a common occurrence in the analysis of contemporary texts by Chicana and Latina writers in the United States.
This book centers its attention on the convergence of these four areas in a group of contemporary novels published between 1969 and 1995 by women writers from Mexico, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic and Colombia. It focuses on the portrayal of female characters in Hispanic literature for whom religious faith is a source of individual and social development. [from the back cover] -
Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality
Esteban Morales Dominguez, Gary Prevost, and August H. Nimtz
As a young militant in the 26th of July Movement, Esteban Morales Domínguez participated in the overthrow of the Batista regime and the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. The revolutionaries, he understood, sought to establish a more just and egalitarian society. But Morales Dominguez, an Afro-Cuban, knew that the complicated question of race could not be ignored, or simply willed away in a post-revolutionary context. Today, he is one of Cuba's most prominent Afro-Cuban intellectuals and its leading authority on the race question. Available for the first time in English, the essays collected here describe the problem of racial inequality in Cuba, provide evidence of its existence, constructively criticize efforts by the Cuban political leadership to end discrimination, and point to a possible way forward. Morales Dominguez surveys the major advancements in race relations that occurred as a result of the revolution, but does not ignore continuing signs of inequality and discrimination. Instead, he argues that the revolution must be an ongoing process and that to truly transform society it must continue to confront the question of race in Cuba.
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Social Movements and Leftist Governments in Latin America: Confrontation or Co-option?
Gary Prevost, Harry E. Vanden, and Carlos Oliva Campos
In recent years, the simultaneous development of prominent social movements and the election of left and center-left governments has radically altered the political landscape in Latin America. These social movements have ranged from the community based "piqueteros" of Argentina that brought down three governments in the space of a month in 2001 to the indigenous movements in Ecuador and Bolivia that were instrumental in toppling five governments in the last decade. And in the cases of Venezuela and Brazil, social movements helped to provide the political base from which leftist leaders like Hugo Chávez and Lula were swept into power by election.
Social Movements and Leftist Governments in Latin America moves beyond simple discussion of these social movements to address an issue that is crucial for politics in the region today but has yet to be properly analyzed - specifically, what is the position of the social movements after progressive governments take power? Are they co-opted in support of government policies or do they remain at arm's length as continuing opponents? How many of the movement's demands are actually met and what happens when the government almost inevitably disappoints its supporters in such movements? This work explores these questions, shedding new light on how these social movements continue to operate in Latin America. -
Cuban-Latin Relations in the Context of a Changing Hemisphere
Gary Prevost and Carlos Oliva Campos
Following the election of Mauricio Funes to the presidency of El Salvador in 2009, relations between Cuba and Latin America came full circle. El Salvador subsequently restored diplomatic relations with Cuba and was the last country to do so, just months after the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban revolution. In the wake of these dramatic events, it should be noted that just fifty years ago, all Latin American countries--with the exception of Mexico--severed their formal ties with the island. In 1962, with heavy pressure from the United States, Cuba's membership in the Organization of American States (OAS) was suspended. In May 2009, at an historic OAS meeting in Honduras and against the strong wishes of the United States, the Latin American countries voted unanimously that Cuba should be returned to full membership in the organization.
This volume seeks to fill a very significant void in the recently published scholarship in English on Cuba's relationship with Latin America. Cuban foreign policy has received attention over the years, but the bulk of the scholarship has been on its relationship with the United States. That relationship is important and will also be addressed in this book by Esteban Morales Dominguez, who for many years has been Cuba's leading scholar of US-Cuban relations. The contributors to this volume have demonstrated conclusively that a decade into the twenty-first century, Cuba has achieved a position in the hemisphere that is far less isolated than at any previous time since the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959. That reintegration into hemispheric affairs is evident in many crucial areas like politics, economics, and culture. There is no doubt that Cuba's position in the hemisphere has been bolstered by the leftward direction of Latin American politics. This trend has clearly permitted the development of such new organizations as ALBA and the Bank of the South, but it is not likely that even the return to more conservative governments in the region would risk putting Cuba back into its previous position of relative isolation. It is unlikely that Washington, in a multipolar world, would be able to convince key Latin American governments to reverse their policies of full inclusion of Cuba into hemispheric affairs.
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The Very Nature of God: Baroque Catholicism and Religious Reform in Bourbon Mexico City
Brian R. Larkin
The changing practices and meanings of Catholicism in Bourbon Mexico are the subject of this study, based on research in the last wills and testaments of the faithful of Mexico City as well as contemporary devotional literature and ecclesiastical documentation. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, baroque Catholicism, with its exuberant ornamentation of sacred space and lavish rituals, dominated both ecclesiastical and lay religious practice in New Spain. During the second half of the eighteenth century, a group of reforming bishops attempted to remake religious culture, to move the faithful away from baroque Catholicism to a simpler, and in their minds, more interior piety. The reform movement distanced God from the physical world as reformers sought to redefine the balance in Catholic religious practice to emphasize pious contemplation over ritual action.
Larkin examines baroque Catholicism, the project to reform religious culture in Mexico, and the new pious practices that reformers and the faithful negotiated as the colonial period moved toward a close. He argues that baroque and reformed Catholicism rested on different understandings of the very nature of God. Baroque Catholicism privileged a corporeal conception of God; whereas reformed piety promoted a more spiritual one. Religious reform, he argues, coincided with secular reforming projects, all of which participated in and influenced new forms of epistemology and subjectivity that established the conditions for the contested beginnings of the modern era in eighteenth-century Mexico.
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Latin America: An Introduction
Gary Prevost and Harry E. Vanden
Latin America: An Introduction offers a contemporary, thematic analysis of the region that is grounded in Latin America's social, political, economic, and cultural past. Based on chapters from Harry Vanden and Gary Prevost's popular text, Politics of Latin America, this book provides an accessible and interesting discussion of a broad range of topics, including democracy, revolution, indigenous populations, culture, gender, religion, politics, economy, and relations with the United States. Unlike many texts on the region, this book places the voices of long-ignored and previously marginalized groups in Latin America--women, indigenous peoples, Afro-Latinos, workers, peasants, and gays and lesbians--at the heart of its analysis. Offering balanced regional coverage, the book discusses such recent political, social, and economic developments as the failure of the neoliberal economic policies of the 1980s and 1990s to deliver promised prosperity; the related resurgence of progressive politics in the region, as manifested in the election of numerous left and center-left governments; and the strong role of numerous social movements in setting the region's political agenda in the new century. The authors analyze the continuing power of the United States in the region, as seen in the implementation of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), bilateral trade agreements with Chile and Peru, and the continued funding of Plan Colombia. They also discuss the role of various Latin American-based initiatives, including the expansion of MERCOSUR, the Bolivarian Alternative, and The Bank of the South. Providing a historical perspective for the challenges and problems facing the region today, Latin America: An Introduction's regionally balanced, multidisciplinary approach makes it an ideal text for introduction to Latin American studies courses.
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¡Viva la historieta! Mexican Comics, NAFTA, and the Politics of Globalization
Bruce Campbell
¡Viva la historieta! critically examines the participation of Mexican comic books in the continuing debate over the character and consequences of globalization in Mexico. The focus of the book is on graphic narratives produced by and for Mexicans in the period following the 1994 implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), an economic accord that institutionalized the free-market vision of relationships among the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
Eight chapters cover a broad range of contemporary Mexican comics, including works of propaganda, romance and adventure, graphic novels, a corporate "brand" series, didactic single-issue books, and a superhero parody series. Each chapter offers an examination of the ways in which specific comics or comic book series represent Mexico's national identity, the U.S.'s influence, and globalization's effects on technology and economics since the passage of NAFTA.
Through careful attention to how recent Mexican comics portray a changing nation, author Bruce Campbell reveals a contentious range of perspectives on the problems and promises of globalization. At the same time, Campbell argues that the contrasting views of globalization that circulate widely in Mexican historietas reflect a still unsettled relationship between Mexico and its superpower neighbor.
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United States-Cuban Relations: A Critical History
Esteban Morales Dominguez and Gary Prevost
United States-Cuban Relations breaks new ground in its treatment of this long and tumultuous relationship. The overall approach, mirroring the political science background of both authors, does not focus on historical detail that has been provided by many other works, but rather on a broad analysis of trends and patterns that have marked the long relationship between the two countries. Dominguez and Prevost argue that U.S. policy toward Cuba is driven in significant measure by developments on the ground in Cuba. From the U.S. intervention at the time of the Cuban Independence War to the most recent revisions of U.S. policy in the wake of the Powell Commission, the authors demonstrate how U.S. policy adjusts to developments and perceived reality on the island. The final chapters of the book focus on the contemporary period, with particular emphasis on the changing dynamic toward Cuba from U.S. civil society. Dominguez and Prevost describe how the U.S. business community, fearful of being isolated from Cuba's reinsertion in the world's capitalist markets, have united with long-standing opponents of the U.S. embargo to win the right to sell food and medicines to Cuba over the last four years. Ultimately, the authors are realists about the possibility of better relations between the U.S. and Cuba, pointing out that, short of the collapse of Cuba's current political and economic system, fundamental change in U.S. policy toward the island is unlikely in the immediate future.
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From Revolutionary Movements to Political Parties: Cases from Latin America and Africa
Kalowatie Deonandan, David Close, and Gary Prevost
This volume is a series of original articles analyzing eleven case studies of revolutionary movements which have reconstituted themselves into formal political parties now contesting electoral politics. These case studies are drawn from Africa and the Americas and examined within the context of the democratic transitions which have taken place in the developing world. The book's principal objective is to analyze the factors influencing the successes and failures of these former politico-military movements within this new context of democracy and electoralism.
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The Bush Doctrine and Latin America
Gary Prevost and Carlos Oliva Campos
In the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, the government of George W. Bush has articulated a new strategy for U.S. foreign policy that has come to be known as the Bush Doctrine, and is based on a more aggressive approach to perceived threats to U.S. security. This book analyzes how the application of the Bush Doctrine in Latin America has changed U.S. policy in the region. Various authors demonstrate how security issues, never absent from hemispheric relations, have again moved to the forefront.
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Rodolfo Walsh: Argentino, Escritor, Militante
Eleonora Bertranou
A treinta años del último golpe de estado que inauguró el gobierno militar más violento de la historia argentina, Rodolfo Walsh, argentino, escritor, militante de Eleonora Bertranou, propone el análisis de uno de los íconos políticos más relevantes surgidos al final de la dictadura. Rodolfo Walsh intentó reconciliar un pasado de contradictorias corrientes políticas militando en la agrupación Montoneros, sin abandonar el periodismo donde, como en todo lo que emprendía, se comprometía exponiendo las falacias y excesos de los gobiernos militares. El estudio de su vida y su obra es doblemente necesario en la Argentina actual. Por un lado nos permite interpretar la historia reciente durante la cual se convirtió en uno de nuestros desaparecidos. Por el otro, si continuamos evocándolo como figura emblemática de la lucha por la verdad y la justicia, Walsh es un argentino a quien debemos conocer en profundidad. Este libro colabora en esa tarea inconclusa.
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Mexican Murals in Times of Crisis
Bruce Campbell
Murals have been an important medium of public expression in Mexico since the Mexican Revolution, and names such as Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco will forever be linked with this revolutionary art form. Many people, however, believe that Mexico's renowned mural tradition died with these famous practitioners, and today's mural artists labor in obscurity as many of their creations are destroyed through hostility or neglect. This book traces the ongoing critical contributions of mural arts to public life in Mexico to show how postrevolutionary murals have been overshadowed both by the Mexican School and by the exclusionary nature of official public arts. By documenting a range of mural practices—from fixed-site murals to mantas (banner murals) to graffiti—Bruce Campbell evaluates the ways in which the practical and aesthetic components of revolutionary Mexican muralism have been appropriated and redeployed within the context of Mexico's ongoing economic and political crisis. Four dozen photographs illustrate the text. Blending ethnography, political science, and sociology with art history, Campbell traces the emergence of modern Mexican mural art as a composite of aesthetic, discursive, and performative elements through which collective interests and identities are shaped. He focuses on mural activists engaged combatively with the state—in barrios, unions, and street protests—to show that mural arts that are neither connected to the elite art world nor supported by the government have made significant contributions to Mexican culture. Campbell brings all previous studies of Mexican muralism up to date by revealing the wealth of art that has flourished in the shadows of official recognition. His work shows that interpretations by art historians preoccupied with contemporary high art have been incomplete—and that a rich mural tradition still survives, and thrives, in Mexico.
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Neoliberalism and Neopanamericanism: The View from Latin America
Gary Prevost and Carlos Oliva Campos
In this edited volume fourteen scholars, mostly from Latin America, analyze the current state of relations between North America and Latin America in a number of sectors--economic, security, politics, and the environment. Particular attention is paid to processes of economic integration that dominated political discussions during the decade of the 1990s – North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), MERCOSUR, the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). Because most of the scholars are from Latin America, the book has a perspective that is often lacking in books on similar scholars written almost exclusively by scholars from the U.S.
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The Undermining of the Sandinista Revolution
Gary Prevost and Harry E. Vanden
This book explores the impact of Sandinista electoral defeat and the U.S. backed Chamorro administration on the gains of the Nicaraguan revolution. Through a series of essays based on current research, seven experts on contemporary Nicaragua draw a balance sheet on the gains of the Revolution and assess the current status of the revolutionary process. The Revolution brought dramatic social, economic and political changes to Nicaragua in the 1980s, but in the wake of the electoral defeat of the FSLN in 1990, the revolution struggled to survive in the face of challenges from the Chamorro administration, the U.S. government, and the International Monetary Fund. Significant efforts to protect the revolution's achievements have been mounted, especially in grassroots organizing and by women's organizations.
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Así Es: Stories of Hispanic Spirituality
Arturo Pérez, Consuelo Covarrubias, Edward Foley, Elena Sánchez Mora, and Sarah Pruett
Así es: Stories of Hispanic Spirituality explores the moments of grace of fifteen Hispanics from Mexican-American, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran traditions who live in the United States. These women and men, from youth to those who bear the gift of age and wisdom, share their intimate journey with their God.
You will identify with their human struggles, their insights as they cross boundaries from death to life, and their moments of crisis. You will also learn from the memories they share of root experiences, and how they are able to claim their awareness of God's presence working in their lives. These stories reveal how the authors tapped the resources within themselves, their community, and their Church. These stories also share how the authors discovered their God, embracing and passing through the experience of struggle, crisis, joy, transformation, and celebration.
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Democracy and Socialism in Sandinista Nicaragua
Harry E. Vanden and Gary Prevost
Moving beyond Cold War rhetoric and stereotypical views of Third World Marxism, the authors convincingly argue that the democratic tradition and practice that was emerging in socialist Nicaragua could well serve as a model for other Third World states. They analyze concepts of democracy and the ideology of the FSLN and show that the Sandinista movement is not in any way stock Marxist-Leninism. Instead, this nationalist variant of Third World Marxism is—like most others—a function of indigenous realities.
Vanden and Prevost demonstrate that Nicaragua has seen the establishment of at least three different forms of democracy: popular, participatory democracy (manifested in mass organizations); Western-style representative democracy (as seen in the 1984 and 1990 elections and the resultant governmental structure); and Leninist vanguardism (shown in the functioning of the FSLN itself). After showing why participatory democracy did not triumph, they conclude with an assessment of the 1990 elections and their impact on the future of democracy in Nicaragua.
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The 1990 Elections in Nicaragua and Their Aftermath
Vanessa Castro and Gary Prevost
Four experts on the Nicaraguan political system examine the causes and consequences of the striking defeat of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in the 1990 Nicaraguan democratic election. Using extensive survey data, the contributors detail a variety of circumstances, beyond the strong influence of U.S. military and diplomatic interest, that led to the victory of counter-revolutionary forces in Nicaragua.
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Cuba: A Different America
Wilber A. Chaffee and Gary Prevost
This well-balanced and objective work attempts to present the reality of contemporary Cuban life, particularly the social progress that the Cuban government has made over the past quarter-century. All the authors, who are from various backgrounds and have a wide range of expertise, have visited Cuba and investigated particular aspects of Cuban society.