Since the mid-1960s it has been apparent that authoritarian regimes are not necessarily doomed to extinction as societies modernize and develop, but are potentially viable (if unpleasant) modes of org
Originally published in 1985, this book is concerned with the housing and service needs of the poor in Latin America and how they are articulated and satisfied. It examines the aims and implementation of government policies towards low-income housing dwellers and tries to relate those policies to the wider interests of the state. It discusses how the poor perceive the constraints on barrio servicing and improvement, their involvement in community organisations and the role the community and its leaders play in influencing state action. Since housing and servicing issues directly impinge on the interests of politicians, bureaucrats, landowners and real-estate developers, as well as on those of the poor, patterns of provision mirror closely the nature of the relationships between the poor and the wider urban society. The main theme of this book is thus the allocation of resources within urban society and the operation of political and administrative power at city level. The book will
From 1958 to 1986, Colombian politics were characterised by a series of coalition governments. This book analyses the historical antecedents, establishment and subsequent evolution of the political regime created in 1958. For most of this period, the country was governed by a National Front power-sharing system between the Conservatives and the Liberals, the country's two major parties. This system was initially established to prevent a return to the intense violence between the parties that had earlier led to a political breakdown and military rule. In crucial respects, the Colombian governing arrangement was similar to a number of other cases of coalition governments (termed consociational democracies), to which it is compared in the book.
Southern central Chile supports one of the largest functioning indigenous societies in South America, the Mapuche, who have withstood more than four hundred years of persistent efforts at colonization
Founded in 1891, the Unión Cívica Radical, generally known as the Radical Party, is the oldest national political party in Argentina. As a central component of Argentina's political history, the Radical Party has received much attention from historians. However, most accounts have concentrated on the period after 1916, when the party won its first presidential election; the formative years of the party have generally been ignored. Yet as the strongest opposition party during the 1890s, a pivotal decade in the birth of Argentina's party system, the Radical Party effected a critical development in Argentine politics: it created a system of open confrontation and political competition. This study offers not merely a revised version of the party's story but also a new perspective on the nature of the Radical Party and of the politics of the nation as a whole.
This 2000 book examines the demographic and economic history of slavery in Minas Gerais, the single largest slave-holding region in Brazil, from its settlement in the early eighteenth century until the abolition of Brazilian slavery in 1888. It utilizes the largest database ever assembled on a slave population in the Americas to reconstruct and analyse the unique history of slave labour in Minas Gerais. This slave population was remarkable in its ability to diversify economically as well as in increasing through natural reproduction, rather than through importation via the trans-atlantic slave trade. Minas Gerais therefore invites comparison with the patterns of slave reproduction found in the United States' South, heretofore considered unique. Extensively researched and finely documented, this book places the history of a unique Brazilian slave community into comparative perspective.
The first comprehensive history of labour relations and the working class in twentieth-century Monterrey, Deference and Defiance explores how both workers and industrialists perceived, responded to and helped shape the outcome of Mexico's revolution. Snodgrass's narrative covers a sixty-year period that begins with Monterrey's emergence as one of Latin-America's pre-eminent industrial cities. He then explores the roots of two distinct and enduring systems of industrial relations that were both historical outcomes of the revolution: company paternalism and militant unionism. By comparing four local industries - steel, beer, glass and smelting - Snodgrass demonstrates how workers and managers collaborated in the development of paternalistic labour regimes that built upon working-class traditions of mutual aid as well as elite resistance to state labour policies. Deference and Defiance in Monterrey thus offers an urban and industrial perspective to a history of revolutionary Mexico that
The island of Hispaniola is split by a border that divides the Dominican Republic and Haiti. This border has been historically contested and largely porous.Dividing Hispaniola is a study of Dominican
Since Mexico’s defeat in the Mexican-American War of the 1840s, the United States has continued to dominate Mexico economically, militarily, and politically. This long history of asymmetry has
Over the last two decades, indigenous populations in Latin America have achieved a remarkable level of visibility and political effectiveness, particularly in Ecuador and Bolivia. In Struggles of Voic
Modern Mexico derives many of its richest symbols of national heritage and identity from the Aztec legacy, even as it remains a predominantly Spanish-speaking, Christian society. This volume argues that the composite, neo-Aztec flavor of Mexican identity was, in part, a consequence of active efforts by indigenous elites after the Spanish conquest to grandfather ancestral rights into the colonial era. By emphasizing the antiquity of their claims before Spanish officials, native leaders extended the historical awareness of the colonial regime into the pre-Hispanic past, and therefore also the themes, emotional contours, and beginning points of what we today understand as 'Mexican history'. This emphasis on ancient roots, moreover, resonated with the patriotic longings of many creoles, descendants of Spaniards born in Mexico. Alienated by Spanish scorn, creoles associated with indigenous elites and studied their histories, thereby reinventing themselves as Mexico's new 'native' leadership
In 1823 and 1824, the newly independent government of Mexico entered the international capital market, raising two loans in London totaling £6.4 million. Intended to cover a variety of expenses, the loans fell into default by 1827 and remained in default until 1887. This case study explores how the loan process worked in Mexico in the early nineteenth century, when foreign lending was still a novelty, and the unexpected ways in which international debt could influence politics and policy. The history of the loans, the efforts of successive governments in Mexico to resume repayment, and the efforts of the foreign lenders to recover their investment became one of the most significant, persistent, and contentious, if largely misunderstood, issues in the political and financial history of nineteenth-century Mexico. The loans themselves became entangled in partisan politics in Mexico and abroad, especially in Great Britain and France, and were a fertile source of speculation for a wide rang
Why did José de León Toral kill Álvaro Obregón, leader of the Mexican Revolution? So far, historians have characterized the motivations of the young Catholic militant as the fruit of fanaticism. This book offers new insights on how diverse sectors experienced the aftermath of the Revolution by exploring the religious, political, and cultural contentions of the 1920s. Far from an isolated fanatic, León Toral represented a generation of Mexicans who believed that the revolution had unleashed ancient barbarism, sinful consumerism, and anticlerical tyranny. Facing attacks against the Catholic essence of Mexican nationalism, they emphasized asceticism, sacrifice, and the redemptive potential of violence. Their reckless enthusiasm to launch assaults was a sign of their devotion. León Toral insisted that 'only God' was his accomplice; in fact, he was cheered by thousands who dreamed of bringing the Kingdom of Christ to beleaguered Mexico.
This book opens new dimensions on race in Latin America by examining the extreme caste groups of colonial Mexico. In tracing their experiences, a broader understanding of the connection between mestizaje (Latin America's modern ideology of racial mixture) and the colonial caste system is rendered. Before mestizaje emerged as a primary concept in Latin America, an earlier precursor existed that must be taken seriously. This colonial form of racial hybridity, encased in an elastic caste system, allowed some people to live through multiple racial lives. Hence, the great fusion of races that swept Latin America and defined its modernity, carries an important corollary. Mestizaje, when viewed at its roots, is not just about mixture, but also about dissecting and reconnecting lives. Such experiences may have carved a special ability for some Latin American populations to reach across racial groups to relate with and understand multiple racial perspectives. This overlooked, deep history of
This book examines the emergence, development, and demise of a network of organizations of young leftist militants and intellectuals in South America. This new generation, formed primarily by people who in the late 1960s were still under the age of thirty, challenged traditional politics and embraced organized violence and transnational strategies as the only ways of achieving social change in their countries during the Cold War. This lasted for more than a decade, beginning in Uruguay as a result of the rise of authoritarianism in Brazil and Argentina, and expanding with Che Guevara's Bolivia campaign in 1966. These coordination efforts reached their highest point in Buenos Aires from 1973 to 1976, until the military coup d'état in Argentina eliminated the last refuge for these groups. Aldo Marchesi offers the first in-depth, regional and transnational study of the militant left in Latin America during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s.
From 1967 to 1973, a period that culminated in the socialist project of Salvador Allende, nearly 400,000 low-income Chileans illegally seized parcels of land on the outskirts of Santiago. Remarkably,
The troubled history of democracy in Latin America has been the subject of much scholarly commentary. This volume breaks new ground by systematically exploring the linkages among the historical legaci
Chile enjoyed unique prestige among the Spanish American republics of the nineteenth century for its stable and increasingly liberal political tradition. How did this unusual story unfold? The tradition was forged in serious and occasionally violent conflicts between the dominant Conservative Party, which governed in an often authoritarian manner from 1830 to 1858, and the growing forces of political Liberalism. A major political realignment in 1857–8 paved the way for comprehensive liberalization. This book examines the formative period of the republic's history and combines an analysis of the ideas and assumptions of the Chilean political class with a narrative of the political process from the consolidation of the Conservative regime in the 1830s, to the beginnings of liberalization in the early 1860s. The book is based on a comprehensive survey of the writings and speeches of politicians and the often rumbustious Chilean press of the period.
This book-length intellectual biography of Andrés Bello, first published in 2001, is the first to appear in English. Bello, the most important intellectual of nineteenth-century Latin America, made enduring contributions to the fields of international law, civil legislation, grammar and philology. He was also a poet of note, a literary critic and an influential statesman whose contributions to nation-building and Spanish American identity are widely recognized across the region. In this book, Jaksic provides an archival-based critical account that challenges the celebratory literature that has dominated Bello studies. He demonstrates how knowledge of Bello's contributions illuminate not only Latin American history, but also current issues of imperial fragmentation, nationalism and language.
