New Books in Latin American Studies

Is natural history a genre of political thought? What do we miss about the substance of political ideas when we ignore the study of nature?Writing the New World: The Politics of Natural History in the Early Spanish Empire (University of Florida Press, 2021) demonstrates how the natural historical writings of chroniclers, explorers, and missionaries “helped to lay out a distinct set of empirical foundations for modern political thought.” Dr. Mauro José Caraccioli connects scientific, historical, religious, and political ideals to show how Spanish natural history of the so-called “New World” was deeply political.Political theorists focus on empire, racial hierarchy, conquest, and colonization but Caraccioli cautions not to ignore the “interplay between empire, faith, and the experiences of New World environments” that shaped Imperial Spain’s early efforts to shape culture and politics. That natural history context is essential to fully understand the context of early modern political thought. Caraccioli uses natural history texts written by early Spanish missionaries to create the “first work of political theory that accounts for New World exploration and evangelization as a dual science of domination.” The intersecting analysis of the ecological, political, religious, and historical makes this book an important one for the 21st century.Dr. Mauro José Caraccioli is an assistant professor of political science and core faculty in the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought (ASPECT) at Virginia Tech.Amber Gonzalez assisted with this podcast.Susan Liebell is Dirk Warren '50 Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

In the 1920s, Mexico established rural normales—boarding schools that trained teachers in a new nation-building project. Drawn from campesino ranks and meant to cultivate state allegiance, their graduates would facilitate land distribution, organize civic festivals, and promote hygiene campaigns. In Unintended Lessons of Revolution: Student Teachers and Political Radicalism in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Duke University Press, 2021), Tanalís Padilla traces the history of the rural normales, showing how they became sites of radical politics. As Padilla demonstrates, the popular longings that drove the Mexican Revolution permeated these schools. By the 1930s, ideas about land reform, education for the poor, community leadership, and socialism shaped their institutional logic. Over the coming decades, the tensions between state consolidation and revolutionary justice produced a telling contradiction: the very schools meant to constitute a loyal citizenry became hubs of radicalization against a government that increasingly abandoned its commitment to social justice. Crafting a story of struggle and state repression, Padilla illuminates education's radical possibilities and the nature of political consciousness for youths whose changing identity—from campesinos, to students, to teachers—speaks to Mexico’s twentieth-century transformations.Brad Wright is an historian of Latin America specializing in postrevolutionary Mexico. I teach world history at Kennesaw State University currently. PhD in Public History with specialization in oral history. My research interests include post-1968 Mexico, the urban popular movement, Christian base communities, popular education, cities in Latin America, popular culture, class formation, Latin American social movements, rural migration, and place. Book manuscript tentatively titled “Counternarratives of Doña Lucha: Class, Power, and Women’s Leadership in Mexico’s Urban Popular Movement” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

In Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), Dr. David Alston shows how Scots were involved in every stage of the slave trade: from captaining slaving ships to auctioning captured Africans in the colonies and hunting down those who escaped from bondage. This book focuses on the Scottish Highlanders who engaged in or benefitted from these crimes against humanity in the Caribbean Islands and Guyana, some reluctantly but many with enthusiasm and without remorse. Their voices are clearly heard in the archives, while in the same sources their victims’ stories are silenced – reduced to numbers and listed as property.Dr. Alston gives voice not only to these Scots, but to enslaved Africans and their descendants – to those who reclaimed their freedom, to free women of colour, to the Black Caribs of St Vincent, to house servants, and to children of mixed race who found themselves in the increasingly racist society of Britain in the mid-1800s. The book pays special attention to the new colonies of the southern Caribbean, including Grenada and Guyana, and to Suriname in the years to 1863.As Scots recover and grapple with their past, this vital history lays bare the enormous wealth generated in the Highlands by slavery and emancipation compensation schemes. This legacy, entwined with so many of our contemporary institutions, must be reckoned with. This book therefore contributes to the debate on reparation by reappraising the idea of Scots complicity in the slave trade.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

The Presidential Elections of Trump and Bolsonaro, Whiteness, and the Nation (Lexington Books, 2021) is a sociological analysis of the similarities between the elections of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, based on biographies, academic sources, newspaper, television, and internet reports published in the United States and Brazil between 2014 and 2021. The author argues that the success of each candidate reflects the racially hierarchical structure of their societies and the strength of the ideology of White supremacy to maintain that structure despite efforts to dismantle it. Regardless of class and gender, Whites responded to Trump's nativist call to exclude undesirable immigrants, especially Mexicans and Muslims, both of whom are racialized as non-White.In Brazil, the country with the largest population of African descent outside of Africa and the largest miscegenation rates in the world, the votes for Bolsonaro pointed to the social wish to achieve Whiteness and thus eliminate (or at least abate) the insecurity that comes from a belief in the racial inferiority of non-Whites. The author suggests that the results of the presidential elections reflect Whites' fear of losing ground after decades of gains by minorities, women, and the poor in both countries.Dr. Penha-Lopes will have a book launch with the Columbia Global Center in Rio de Janeiro on Feb.11, 2022. Check the Center's Youtube page to view the event. Vânia Penha-Lopes is a Professor of Sociology at Bloomfield College, co-chair of the Brazil Seminar at Columbia University (2008-present), and was a member of the executive committee of the Brazilian Studies Association-BRASA (2010-14).Reighan Gillam is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

An unexpected fusion of two major western religious traditions, Judaism and Christianity, has been developing in many parts of the world. Contemporary Christian movements are not only adopting Jewish symbols and aesthetics but also promoting Jewish practices, rituals, and lifestyles. Becoming Jewish, Believing in Jesus: Judaizing Evangelicals in Brazil (Oxford University Press, 2021), is the first in-depth ethnography to investigate this growing worldwide religious tendency in the global South. Focusing on an austere "Judaizing Evangelical" variant in Brazil, Manoela Carpenedo explores the surprising identification with Jews and Judaism by people with exclusively Charismatic Evangelical backgrounds. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork and socio-cultural analysis, the book analyses the historical, religious, and subjective reasons behind this growing trend in Charismatic Evangelicalism.Interviewee: Manoela Carpenedo is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

In Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene (Duke UP, 2020), Mimi Sheller delves into the ecological crises and reconstruction challenges affecting the entire Caribbean region during a time of climate catastrophe. Drawing on fieldwork on postearthquake reconstruction in Haiti, flooding on the Haitian-Dominican border, and recent hurricanes, Sheller shows how ecological vulnerability and the quest for a "just recovery" in the Caribbean emerge from specific transnational political, economic, and cultural dynamics. Because foreigners are largely ignorant of Haiti's political, cultural, and economic contexts, especially the historical role of the United States, their efforts to help often exacerbate inequities. Caribbean survival under ever-worsening environmental and political conditions, Sheller contends, demands radical alternatives to the pervasive neocolonialism, racial capitalism, and US military domination that have perpetuated what she calls the "coloniality of climate." Sheller insists that alternative projects for Haitian reconstruction, social justice, and climate resilience-and the sustainability of the entire region-must be grounded in radical Caribbean intellectual traditions that call for deeper transformations of transnational economies, ecologies, and human relations writ large. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

On this episode I spoke to Dr. Susie Porter, Professor in History and in Gender Studies at the University of Utah. She is the author Working Women in Mexico City: Public Discourses and Material Conditions, 1879-1931 published in 2003, and in today's podcast we will be talking about her more recent book From Angel to Office Worker: Middle-Class Identity and Female Consciousness in Mexico, 1890–1950, which is part of The Mexican Experience Series of the University of Nebraska Press.In late nineteenth-century Mexico a woman’s presence in the home was a marker of middle-class identity. However, as economic conditions declined during the Mexican Revolution and jobs traditionally held by women disappeared, a growing number of women began to look for work outside the domestic sphere. As these “angels of the home” began to take office jobs, middle-class identity became more porous.To understand how office workers shaped middle-class identities in Mexico, From Angel to Office Worker examines the material conditions of women’s work and analyzes how women themselves reconfigured public debates over their employment. At the heart of the women’s movement was a labor movement led by secretaries and office workers whose demands included respect for seniority, equal pay for equal work, and resources to support working mothers, both married and unmarried. Office workers also developed a critique of gender inequality and sexual exploitation both within and outside the workplace. From Angel to Office Worker is a major contribution to modern Mexican history as historians begin to ask new questions about the relationships between labor, politics, and the cultural and public spheres.Your host, Paula De La Cruz-Fernandez is a consultant, historian, and digital editor. Editor New Books Network en español. Edita CEO. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

Vincent Joos' book Urban Dwellings, Haitian Citizenships: Housing, Memory, and Daily Life in Haiti (Rutgers UP, 2021) explores the failed international reconstruction of Port-au-Prince after the devastating 2010 earthquake. It describes how, in the meantime, people from various backgrounds use, transform, and create vibrant urban spaces and economies that enable them to rebuild their lives. By exploring how the state, international organizations, and everyday people transform the environment, the book reflects on the possibilities of dwelling in post-disaster landscapes.Alejandra Bronfman is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies Latin American, Caribbean & U.S. Latino Studies at SUNY, Albany. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

In 1895, forty-seven rebel military officers contested the terms of a law that granted them amnesty but blocked their immediate return to the armed forces. During the century that followed, numerous other Brazilians who similarly faced repercussions for political opposition or outright rebellion subsequently made claims to forms of recompense through amnesty. By 2010, tens of thousands of Brazilians had sought reparations, referred to as amnesty, for repression suffered during the Cold War-era dictatorship. Amnesty in Brazil: Recompense After Repression, 1895-2010 (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021) examines the evolution of amnesty in Brazil and describes when and how it functioned as an institution synonymous with restitution. Ann M. Schneider is concerned with the politics of conciliation and reflects on this history of Brazil in the context of broader debates about transitional justice. She argues that the adjudication of entitlements granted in amnesty laws marked points of intersection between prevailing and profoundly conservative politics with moments and trends that galvanized the demand for and the expansion of rights, showing that amnesty in Brazil has been both surprisingly democratizing and yet stubbornly undemocratic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

“No country is ever just one thing.” In her new book Cuba: An American History (Scribner, 2021), NYU historian Ada Ferrer shows this again and again. In clear and engaging prose, Ferrer narrates five centuries of history from a decidedly different angle than previous one-volume studies; the main drivers of history in this book are not just familiar political figures and abstract historical forces, but a whole range of typically marginalized historical actors. Ferrer integrates the voices of the enslaved, ordinary Cubans, and her own family to reimagine what it means to tell the history of the island. Part of this reimagining also involves showing the many points of convergence between the history of the United States and Cuba. Ferrer uses many anecdotes—such as the story of the inauguration of a Vice President of the United States on a sugar plantation in Cuba—to suggest how the lines between Cuban and American history were often blurred together. The result is a finely crafted and deeply personal book that encourages readers to recognize Cuba’s contested past and its multiple identities.Steven P. Rodriguez is a PhD Candidate in history at Vanderbilt University. You can reach him at steven.p.rodriguez@vanderbilt.edu and follow his twitter at @SPatrickRod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies