New Books in Latin American Studies

From the sounds of Samba to the spectacles of Carnival, Afro-Brazilian traditions are today seen as emblematic of Brazil and especially of Salvador de Bahia, the northeastern city where many Afro-Brazilian cultural traditions were first established. Salvador’s present status as the “Black Rome” of Brazil marks a shift from the early Twentieth Century, when Afro-Brazilian practices – particularly those associated with the religion Candomble – were denigrated as “primitive” and subject to repression in Bahia. Yet even as Afro-Brazilian culture is celebrated in Bahia and throughout Brazil, Afro-Brazilians themselves remain subject to discrimination, economic marginalization, and negative stereotypes, often directed at those same cultural traditions. In African-Brazilian Culture and Regional Identity in Bahia, Brazil(University Press of Florida, 2013), Scott Ickes explores the emergence of this paradoxical modern attitude towards Afro-Brazilian culture during and after the rule of Getulio Vargas (1930-1945). Ickes describes how during the Vargas era, Afro-Brazilians who sought greater acceptance for their practices found an newly-receptive audience among the white Brazilian elite: progressive intellectuals and journalists who valued Afro-Brazilian culture as folklore; and politicians, both national and regional, who sought the support of the Afro-Brazilian working class. Through government initiatives and the media, these elites elevated certain Afro-Brazilian practices – the martial art Capoeira, Samba music, and Candomble-influenced festival celebrations – and in doing so provided a public cultural and political forum for Afro-Brazilians involved in those practices. But as Ickes notes in every case, the new elite acceptance of Afro-Brazilian culture was limited and conditional. Only those Afro-Brazilian traditions deemed acceptable by elite intellectuals became accepted, and Afro-Brazilian culture never attained the prestige of European cultural traditions in Brazil. Thus, while the acceptance of Afro-Brazilian culture during the Vargas era had real benefits to Afro-Brazilians, it still allowed for Afro-Brazilians to remain marginalized into the modern day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

Today I spoke to Ioan Grillo about his book El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency (Bloomsbury, 2012). This book is an excellent introduction to the state of conflict between drug cartels themselves, the government and the Mexican community. This is not an academic study of criminology. Ioan has reported from Mexico for many years and he has brought together his accumulated wisdom into this book. The final product provides the multi-dimensional story and analysis of the events in that country. He explains how external factors such as the war on drugs in Columbia and internal issues relating to the nature of governance in Mexico have influenced the current situation. But this is more than just a retelling of criminal activity. Ioan gives an insight into the social aspects of the drug culture including the glorification of the participants in popular music and the religious justifications used by some cartels. El Narco is a fascinating book that read to me like a sci-fi almost post-apocalyptic world that actually exists. It is hard for someone from a more stable Western environment to comprehend this alien culture. Having said that Ioan’s account is not a sensationalized account of the events in Mexico but more an empathic expose of a very violent and ungoverned part of the world. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in organized crime and the broader social context in which it operates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

Ron Schmidt is the co-author (with Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh, Andrew L. Aoki, and Rodney Hero) of Newcomers, Outsiders, and Insiders: Immigrants and the American Racial Politics in the Early 21st Century (University of Michigan Press, 2013). Schmidt is professor of political science at California State University Long Beach. This is a big book that covers long and complex histories of numerous groups in the United States. The authors link the arrival and integration of Latino Americans and Asian Americans to evolving group identities and developing political institutions. They draw interesting comparisons between the legacies of the African American social movements of the Civil Rights era and immigrant protests in other ethnic communities. They conclude with a mixed assessment about where the US now stands in terms of immigrant politics. Gains have been made, but immigrants remain largely shut out of traditional forms of political representation and often lack entre into politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

Most people today think of war–or really violence of any sort–as for the most part useless. It’s better, we say, just to talk things out or perhaps buy our enemies off. And that usually works. But what if you lived in a culture where fighting was an important part of social status and earning a living? What if, say, you couldn’t get married unless you had gone to war? What if, say, you couldn’t feed your family without raiding your enemies? Such was the case with Chiricahua Apache of the Southwest. As Lance R. Blyth shows in his terrific book Chirichahua and Janos: Communities of Violence in the Southwestern Borderlands, 1680-1880 (Nebraska UP, 2012), war was a necessary part of Chiricahua life, at least in the 17th and 18th centuries. They needed to fight the Spanish in Janos, and there was nothing the Spanish could really do to stop them, at least in the long term. Of course the Spanish–who were, it should be said, invaders–fought back. And so the two communities entered into a two century-long struggle that only ended with the “removal” of the Chiricahua Apache by the United States in the nineteenth century. Listen to Lance tell the fascinating story. 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 violence in Mexico is receiving a lot of media attention internationally. Paul Rexton Kan has produced a book that provides us with a comprehensive and comprehendible introduction to the background to the conflict and its effects. Cartels at War: Mexico’s Drug-Fueled Violence and the Threat to US National Security (Potomac Books, 2012) is a relatively short book packed with detailed information. The book covers the nature of the drug war, the cartels involved, the national and international responses and the effects of this war on the local and international communities. But this is not just a descriptive work. Kan provides us with his recommendations for solutions and predictions about the future of the conflict. In particular, he draws comparisons between treating this as an insurgency and spells out how a counter-terrorist response would not be the correct way to deal with the issue. This is high intensity crime and requires a high intensity policing response. Overall the book is an excellent introduction to the very complex drug war in Mexico, as well as being a source of practical and realistic policy options for addressing a conflict this 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

Are you looking for a good Hanukkah gift? A good Christmas gift? Heck, any gift? Or maybe you just want to read a terrific book? Well I’ve got just the ticket: Ilan Stavans and Steve Sheinkin‘s, El Iluminado: A Graphic Novel (Basic Books, 2012). Stavans and Scheinkin team up to perform a minor miracle: they not only tell the story of hispanic crypto-Jews (conversos, marranos) in the Old and New Worlds, but they do it in the most entertaining, compelling way possible–with a great, moving, thought-provoking, and often funny (yes, funny) mystery. This is how popular history should be done. El Iluminado is–or should be–a model for all those scholars who want to bring their work to the public. I strongly urge you to take a look at the book and perhaps give it to someone you love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

Daniela Bleichmar‘s new book is a story about 12,000 images. In Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press, 2012), Bleichmar uses this vast (and gorgeous) archive of botanical images assembled by Spanish natural history expeditions to explore the connections between natural history, visual culture, and empire in the eighteenth century Hispanic world. In beautifully argued chapters, Bleichmar explores that ways that eighteenth century natural history expeditions were grounded in a visual epistemology where observation and representation were powerful tools for negotiating both scientific and imperial spheres. The “botanical reconquista” spanned fields, shops, gardens, and cabinets across the New World and the Old. Botanists, artists, and others employed images for collaboration and competition, developing distinct styles and practices for observing and representing the natural world. The expeditions’ taxonomic botanizing was ultimately more successful than their efforts to exploit the cinnamon, cinchona, and other products that comprised the “green gold” of the colonial herbarium. Nonetheless, they made imperial nature visible…even as they made much of the empire invisible. Enjoy the book! And be sure to check out the fifth chapter, which juxtaposes Casta paintings from Mexico with some fascinating and little-known paintings from Quito and Peru to deepen and extend our understanding of the visuality of Spanish empire in the eighteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

Isaac Campos is the author of Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs (University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Campos is an assistant professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. His book traces the intellectual history of marijuana from Europe to Mexico and the ways in which usage of the drug was portrayed – as a source of madness and violence — in the Mexican media. Campos turns on its head the popular myth that drug regulation in Mexico derives from US sources. For political scientists and for all those interested in the issue, the book offers a deep historical context for the current “war on drugs” and related violence in the US and in Mexico. 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 my work with pre-Hispanic and colonial Mexican pictorial texts, I often wish I could talk with the people who authored them. In the academic setting, sometimes we forget that these documents represent conversations about what was happening in the lives of many people at the time they were created and that some aspects of these materials that we have found in archives or ancient cities are still part of the cultural heritage and daily lives of the descendants of the creators. Ethelia Ruiz Medrano helps us realize that the study of popular culture also can mean the sharing of knowledge. Ruiz Medrano’s research in the tiny town of Santa Maria Cuquila has led to a new way of thinking about our pasts and how they connect with our presents. Ruiz Medrano’s book Mexico’s Indigenous Communities: Their Lands and Histories, 1500-2010 is a best-selling work on popular culture from the University of Colorado Press. Indigenous Communities traces a new context for our Amerindian heritage. Ruiz Medrano examines local administrative power and the resolution of community issues as functions of life today in much the same way as they were 500 years ago. At the same time, these communities are also rooted in the twenty first century. Many community members have relatives and friends in the United States. They keep in touch with cell phones and text messages while also seeking answers in their pictorial documents and oral and cultural accounts. Ruiz Medrano has become their student and her book offers a fascinating study of past and present, and of a community of teachers for this scholar-student. 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 my work with pre-Hispanic and colonial Mexican pictorial texts, I often wish I could talk with the people who authored them. In the academic setting, sometimes we forget that these documents represent conversations about what was happening in the lives of many people at the time they were created and that some aspects of these materials that we have found in archives or ancient cities are still part of the cultural heritage and daily lives of the descendants of the creators. Ethelia Ruiz Medrano helps us realize that the study of popular culture also can mean the sharing of knowledge. Ruiz Medrano's research in the tiny town of Santa Maria Cuquila has led to a new way of thinking about our pasts and how they connect with our presents.Ruiz Medrano's book Mexico's Indigenous Communities: Their Lands and Histories, 1500-2010 is a best-selling work on popular culture from the University of Colorado Press. Indigenous Communities traces a new context for our Amerindian heritage. Ruiz Medrano examines local administrative power and the resolution of community issues as functions of life today in much the same way as they were 500 years ago. At the same time, these communities are also rooted in the twenty first century. Many community members have relatives and friends in the United States. They keep in touch with cell phones and text messages while also seeking answers in their pictorial documents and oral and cultural accounts. Ruiz Medrano has become their student and her book offers a fascinating study of past and present, and of a community of teachers for this scholar-student. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies