Initially decimated by disease and later faced with the loss of their lands and their political autonomy, Latin American Indians have displayed remarkable resilience. They have resisted cultural hegemony with rebellions and have initiated petitions to demand remedies to injustices, while consciously selecting certain aspects of the West to incorporate into their cultures. Leading historians, anthropologists and sociologists examine Indian-Western relationships from the Spaniards' initial contact with the Incas to the cultural interplay of today's Latin America. This revised edition contains four brand new chapters and a revised introduction. The list of suggested readings and films has also been updated.

Now in its fourth edition, this leading reader has been updated to tighten the focus of each chapter on a major interpretive problem. This edition includes an entirely new chapter, “Historical Memory,” which allows readers to revisit the era of the Cold War from a contemporary perspective, and the chapters on nationalism and globalization have been thoroughly revised. The book continues to offer a rich variety of materials that can be tailored to the needs of individual instructors. The reader’s unique and successful chapter organization provides a thematic complement to narrative accounts of modern Latin American history. By focusing each chapter on a single concept or interpretive problem—such as nationalism, women’s rights, or social revolution—the text engages students in the analysis of historical sources and, at the same time, introduces them to the twists and turns of historiography. Each chapter in this new edition includes at least two primary sources. With its innovative combination of primary and secondary sources and editorial analysis, this text is designed specifically to stimulate critical thinking in a wide range of courses on Latin American history since independence.

"Revised and expanded third edition"--Cover.

Interpreting the History of a Region in Crisis / Robert H. Holden -- Land and Climate: Natural Constraints and Socio-Environmental Transformations / Anthony Goebel McDermott -- Regaining Ground: Indigenous Populations and Territories / Peter H. Herlihy, Matthew L. Fahrenbruch, Taylor A. Tappan -- The Ancient Civilizations / William R. Fowler -- Marginalization, Assimilation, and Resurgence: The Indigenous Peoples since Independence / Wolfgang Gabbert -- The Spanish Conquest? / Laura E. Matthew -- Spanish Colonial Rule / Stephen Webre -- The Kingdom of Guatemala as a Cultural Crossroads / Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara -- From Kingdom to Republics, 1808-1840 / Aaron Pollack -- The Political Economy / Robert G. Williams -- State Making and Nation Building / David Díaz Arias -- Central America and the United States / Michel Gobat -- The Cold War: Authoritarianism, Empire, and Social Revolution / Joaquín M. Chávez -- Central America since the 1990s: Crime, Violence, and the Pursuit of Democracy / Christine J. Wade -- The Rise and Retreat of the Armed Forces / Orlando J. Pérez and Randy Pestana -- Religion, Politics, and the State / Bonar L. Hernández Sandoval -- Women and Citizenship: Feminist and Suffragist Movements, 1880-1957 / Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz -- Literature, Society, and Politics / Werner Mackenbach -- Guatemala / David Carey Jr. -- Honduras / Dario A. Euraque -- El Salvador / Erik Ching -- Nicaragua / Julie A. Charlip -- Costa Rica / Iván Molina -- Panama / Michael E. Donoghue -- Belize / Mark Moberg.

New Approaches to Latin American History incorporates methods and concepts from the social sciences without abandoning a distinctively historical approach. A collection of original essays by distinguished younger scholars, it proposes original concepts and methods for analyzing crucial problems in Latin American history. Using as examples such subjects as salvery, dictatorship, immigration, and the relationship between land ownership and political power, the contributors show how approaches and techniques from psychology, political science, economics. and sociology can be applied to historical studies. The papers attempt to explain the thematic and substantive importance of the particular problems at hand; describe and evaluate standard approaches to them; propose original hypotheses; suggest methods for testing the hypotheses; or indicate major methodological or conceptual difficulties that have so far hampered such work. Despite their diversity of content, the papers show strong underlying unities. First, they all point to the need for placing institutions and actions in a broad societal context. The authurs present an implicit, cumulative argument against the excessive isolation of historical phenomena. Second, they demonstrate the utility of interdisciplinary research. Third, they issue an implicit call for rigorous comparative analysis. The propositions formulated in these essays can best tested and modified in comparative fashion. Ultimately this book deals with the exposition of a research style: a style based on systematic doubt, an awareness of the need for conceptual rigor, and a willingness to try new methodologies. For this reason it is of interest to historians in every field as well as to students of Latin America.

Provides an up-to-date analysis of many aspects of Latin America through a series of short essays, written by experienced geographers.

Throughout Latin America's history the world of work has been linked to race, class, and gender within the larger framework of changing social, political, and economic circumstances both in the region and abroad. In this compelling narrative, David McCreery situates the work experience in Latin America's broader history. Rather than organizing the coverage by forms of work, he proceeds chronologically, breaking 500 years of history into five periods: Encounter and Accommodation, 1480 -- 1550; The Colonial System, 1550 -- 1750; Cities and Towns, 1750 -- 1850; Export Economies, 1850 -- 1930; Work in Modern Latin America, 1930 -- the Present.Within each period, McCreery discusses the chief economic, political, and social characteristics as they relate to work, identifying both continuities and discontinuities from each preceding period. Specific topics studied range from the encomienda, the enslaving of Indians in Spanish America, the introduction of Black African slaves, labor in mining, agricultural labor, urban and domestic labor, women and work, peasant economies, industrial labor, to the maquilas and more.

Far from being a footnote in Latin American history, Indians form the structure upon which Latin American history is based. More than ten million Indians were organized into many complex cultures and societies thousands of years before Europeans reached their hemisphere. In The Indian in Latin American History, Professor John E. Kicza compiles articles by leading historians and anthropologists to examine the complex interplay of Indian and Western cultures. The ten articles in this work explore Indian-Western relations from initial contact to contemporary struggles for cultural identity.

The subject of missions-formal efforts at religious conversion of native peoples of the Americas by colonizing powers-is one that renders the modern student a bit uncomfortable. Where the mission enterprise was actuated by true belief it strikes the modern sensibility as fanaticism; where it sprang from territorial or economic motives it seems the rankest sort of hypocrisy. That both elements-greed and real faith-were usually present at the same time is bewildering. In this book seven scholars attempt to create a "new" mission history that deals honestly with the actions and philosophic motivations of the missionaries, both as individuals and organizations and as agents of secular powers, and with the experiences and reactions of the indigenous peoples, including their strategies of accommodation, co-optation, and resistance. The new mission historians examine cases from throughout the hemisphere-from the Andes to northern Mexico to California-in an effort to find patterns in the contact between the European missionaries and the various societies they encountered. Erick Langer is associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the author of Economic Change and Rural Resistance in Southern Bolivia, 1880-1930 and editor, with Zulema Bass Werner de Ruiz, of Historia de Tarija: Corpus Documental. Robert H. Jackson is the author of Indian Population Decline: The Missions of Northwestern New Spain, 1687-1840 and Regional Markets and the Agrarian Transformation in Bolivia Cochabamba, 1539-1960. He is an assistant professor in the Department of History and Geography at Texas Southern University.

A reference guide to the vast array of art song literature and composers from Latin America, this book introduces the music of Latin America from a singer's perspective and provides a basis for research into the songs of this richly musical area of the world. The book is divided by country into 22 chapters, with each chapter containing an introductory essay on the music of the region, a catalog of art songs for that country, and a list of publishers. Some chapters include information on additional sources. Singers and teachers may use descriptive annotations (language, poet) or pedagogical annotations (range, tessitura) to determine which pieces are appropriate for their voices or programming needs, or those of their students. The guide will be a valuable resource for vocalists and researchers, however familiar they may be with this glorious repertoire.