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Have an idea for Subject of the Month?
SEPTEMBER 2020
Selectors: Ida Martinez and Serena Vaquilar
Hispanic Heritage Week began in 1968 and was expanded in 1988 to span 30 days in September and October. It is a time to recognize and celebrate the histories, cultures, and contributions of American citizens descended from Spain, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Mexico.
To fully celebrate Latinos in the U.S. today, it's important to get a full understanding of their history:
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Publication Date: 1997The classic survey of Latin America's social and cultural history, with a new introduction by Isabel Allende. Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx. Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe. Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably.
Kanopy Streaming Videos
Wayne State students, faculty, and staff can stream these videos available in Kanopy.
- Latino Influence on the United States
Uncover the countless ways in which Central and South American civilizations have influenced the U.S. From language to medicine, from food to manufacturing, develop a strong understanding of these influential and ancient civilizations. Learn about the idea of "Manifest Destiny," discover Puerto Rico's quest for independence and find out how the "Little War" effected Mexico. - Breaking the Maya Code
For almost 2000 years, the ancient Maya of Central America recorded their history and ideas in an intricate and beautiful hieroglyphic script. Then, in the 16th century, Spanish invaders burned their books and ruthlessly extinguished hieroglyphic literacy. By the 18th century, when stone inscriptions were discovered buried in the jungles of Central America, no one on earth could read them.
Breaking the Maya Code is the 200-year quest to decipher the hieroglyphs of the Ancient Maya. - Machuca
Santiago, Chile, 1973: Pedro Machuca is a poor boy of tribal descent, brought into an upper class private school during Chile's brief socialist era. Gonzalo, the well-to-do boy seated a row ahead, befriends Pedro against the bullying will of his classmates. In so doing, he discovers a raw, thrilling but wildly complicated world outside his own previously sheltered homelife. Pedro's fierce, attractive young neighbor Silvana by turns mocks Gonzalo's pampered background, only to fondly lead both boys in a number of kissing games. All around them, Chile drifts towards civil war.
The enormous rift between Gonzalo's comfortable household and Pedro's hard-scrabble life a few miles away in an illegal shantytown ultimately becomes impossible to bridge, once the bloody military coup of September 11, 1973 erupts. All three children suddenly face moral tests far beyond their young capacities. - The Pearl Button: The Coastline of Chile
The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds the voices of the Earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of a mysterious button that was discovered in its seabed. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline, the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian indigenous people, of the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.
"The Pearl Button is a vivid, essential portal to understanding not only the heritage of a nation, but also the art of nonfiction cinema." -Indiewire
On the Web
Hispanic Reading Room Exhibits and Digital Collections (Library of Congress)
Hispanic Heritage Month 2020 Statistics (U.S. Census)
Key Facts About U.S. Hispanics and Their Diverse Heritage (Pew Research Center)
Hispanic Heritage Month 2020 Collection Highlights (National Archives)
PBS Specials for Hispanic Heritage Month (Streaming Video)
Latino Stories (promotes Latino literature and resources)
Image credit: "Elsa Mantilla, Aurora Goicoechea and Milagros Cueto." Subjects: Dominican Americans. Dressmaking. Working in Paterson Project Collection, 1993-2002 (AFC 1995/028), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
Special and Archival Collections
Note: These resources are only available on-site at the Reuther Library or the Purdy/Kresge Library. The Reuther Library is allowing research visits by appointment during the fall semester. The Purdy/Kresge Library is closed. Updates regarding library access can be found here.
- Detroit Latino RecordsContains memorandum, meeting minutes, conference materials, and program materials for Latino community organizations within Detroit, as well as résumés and relevant news articles. This collection also includes materials produced by national organizations and academic programs, including programs within Wayne State University and its Center for Chicano-Boricua Studies, as well as the University of Michigan.
- Dolores Huerta PapersThe papers primarily deal with boycotts, strikes, and the ongoing struggle for workers’ rights and organizations involved in such matters. Learn more about Dolores Huerta.
- FBI File on Cesar Chavez and the United Farm WorkersThese microfilm rolls deal primarily with the 1960s, the period of the UFW's greatest growth. They will be of interest to scholars and students in a number of areas, including twentieth-century U.S. history, labor history, the 1960s, social history, Mexican immigrants, and Chicano history. These rolls also provide one glimpse of the FBI's interest in supposedly subversive groups during the era, and whom the establishment found threatening.
- In the Fields: En los Campos - Oral HistoriesThe collection consists of audio recordings, transcripts, and accompanying images. There are 13 oral history interviews of teenaged, largely Latino/a, migrant farm workers. 104 digital images taken by Freddi Stevens-Jacobi and Pam LeBlanc also exist, and an article about the accompanying museum exhibit.
- Raza y Trabajo en el Caribe Hispánico: Los Inmigrantes de las Indias Occidentales en Puerto Rico Durante el Ciclo Agro-exportador, 1800-1850Signed: "To the Wayne State University Library, Best regards, J.L. Chinea, Detroit, April 30, 2015"
- United Farm Workers California Boycott RecordsThe primary mission of the UFW California boycott offices was to alert the nation that farm laborers were looking for civil rights, as well as fairer wages. Cesar Chavez, president of the United Farm Workers Union believed that a non-violent boycott of grapes and lettuce would convey the message. The records of the California boycott offices mainly consist of coordinators’ files, leaflets, grape and lettuce reports, legal actions against pesticide usage, and correspondence from boycott support organizations. Also, files documenting the attempt to defeat a California farm labor initiative, Proposition 22, is also prevalent throughout the collection.
Databases and Journals
The Latino American Experience
Wide-ranging and easy to use, LAE is the first full-text database focusing on the history and culture of Latinos living in the United States. Its content spans from the pre-Columbian Indigenous civilizations of the Americas, through the Spanish and Mexican settlement of much of what is now the United States, to the triumphs and challenges facing present-day U.S. Latinos.
Journals:
Hispanic American Historical Review
"Pioneered the study of Latin American history and culture in the U.S. and remains the most widely-respected journal in the field." - Duke University Press
Latino Studies
"Explores Latino/a culture at the local, national, transnational and hemispheric levels; Includes páginas recuperadas, celebrating influential people and events in Latino/a culture; Illuminates the struggles of Latino/as for equality, representation, and social justice. - Palgrave Macmillan
Latino Policy & Issues Brief
Offers findings from research that are of interest to Chicana/o and Latina/o communities. From UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center.
Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies
An interdisciplinary, international, and peer reviewed on-line journal housed at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies
"Since 1997, the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies has been publishing insightful essays on the relationships between market forces, politics and culture in Spain, Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Chicano and Latino United States." - AJHCS
eBooks: Selected Recent Titles
Wayne State students, faculty, and staff can access the following titles. WSU AccessID and password required.
Latinos in the United States by
As the largest and youngest minority group in the United States, the 60 million Latinos living in the U.S. represent the second-largest concentration of Hispanic people in the entire world, after Mexico. Needless to say, the population of Latinos in the U.S. is causing a shift, not onlychanging the demographic landscape of the country, but also impacting national culture, politics, and spoken language. While Latinos comprise a diverse minority group - with various religious beliefs, political ideologies, and social values - commentators on both sides of the political divide havelumped Latino Americans into a homogenous group that is often misunderstood.Latinos in the United States: What Everyone Need to KnowRG provides a wide-ranging, multifaceted exploration of Latino American history and culture, as well as the forces shaping this minority group in the U.S. From exploring the origins of the term "Latino" and examining what constitutes LatinAmerica, to tracing topical issues like DREAMers, the mass incarceration of Latino males, and the controversial relationship between Latin America and the United States, Ilan Stavans seeks to understand the complexities and unique position of Latino Americans. Throughout he breaks down the varioussubgroups within the Latino minority (Mexican-Americans, Dominican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Puerto Ricans on the mainland, and so on), and the degree to which these groups constitute - or don't - a homogenous community, their history, and where their future challenges lie.Stavans, one of the world's foremost authorities on global Hispanic civilization, sees Latino culture as undergoing dramatic changes as a result of acculturation, changes that are fostering a new "mestizo" identity that is part Hispanic and part American. However, Latinos living in the United Statesare also impacting American culture. As Ilan Stavans argues, no other minority group will have a more decisive impact on the future of the United States.
Publication Date: 2018
Race and Identity in Hispanic America: The White, the Black, and the Brown by
This book offers a historical and comparative overview of the evolution of racial classifications in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The Hispanicization of America is precipitating a paradigm shift in racial thinking in which race is no longer defined by distinct characteristics but rather is becoming synonymous with ethnic/cultural identity. Traditionally, assimilation has been conceived of as a unidirectional and racialized phenomenon. Newly arrived immigrant groups or longstanding minority/indigenous populations were "Americanized" in confining their racial and ethnic natures to the private sphere and adopting, in the public sphere, the cultural mores, norms, and values of the dominant cultural/racial group. In contrast, the Hispanicization of America entails the horizontal assimilation of various groups from Spanish-speaking countries throughout the Western Hemisphere and Caribbean into a pan-ethnic, Hispanic/Latino identity that also challenges the privileged position of whiteness as the primary and exclusive referent for American identity. Instead of focusing on one Hispanic group, ethnic identity, or region, this book chronicles the development of racial identity across the largest Hispanic groups throughout the United States. Highlights distinct differences in perceptions of racial identity for members of the Hispanic community Underscores the fluid and malleable nature of race through a comparative and historical review of the evolution of racial classifications Explains why the Hispanicization of the United States constitutes a paradigm shift from traditional notions of racial identity formation Documents how immigration to the United States from Spanish-speaking countries throughout the Western Hemisphere and Caribbean is creating the first truly Hispanic country by subsuming the national identities of immigrants to the pan-ethnic, Hispanic/Latino category
Publication Date: 2020
Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism by
"Laura Gómez‚ a leading expert on race‚ law‚ and society‚ illuminates the fascinating race-making‚ unmaking‚ and re-making of Latino identity that has spanned centuries‚ leaving a permanent imprint on how race operates in the United States today." (Amazon)
Publication Date: 2020
Writing Revolution: Hispanic Anarchism in the United States by
In the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries, the anarchist effort to promote free thought, individual liberty, and social equality relied upon an international Spanish-language print network. These channels for journalism and literature promoted anarchist ideas and practices while fostering transnational solidarity and activism from Buenos Aires to Los Angeles to Barcelona. Christopher J. Castañeda and Montse Feu edit a collection that examines many facets of Spanish-language anarchist history. Arranged chronologically and thematically, the essays investigate anarchist print culture's transatlantic origins; Latina/o labor-oriented anarchism in the United States; the anarchist print presence in locales like Mexico's borderlands and Steubenville, Ohio; the history of essential publications and the individuals behind them; and the circulation of anarchist writing from the Spanish-American War to the twenty-first century.Contributors: Jon Bekken, Christopher Castañeda, Jesse Cohn, Sergio Sánchez Collantes, María José Domínguez, Antonio Herrería Fernández, Montse Feu, Sonia Hernández, Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo, Javier Navarro Navarro, Michel Otayek, Mario Martín Revellado, Susana Sueiro Seoane, Kirwin R. Shaffer, Alejandro de la Torre, and David Watson
Publication Date: 2019
Campus Counterspaces: Black and Latinx Students' Search for Community at Historically White Universities by
Frustrated with the flood of news articles and opinion pieces that were skeptical of minority students' "imagined" campus microaggressions, Micere Keels, a professor of comparative human development, set out to provide a detailed account of how racial-ethnic identity structures Black and Latinx students' college transition experiences. Tracking a cohort of more than five hundred Black and Latinx students since they enrolled at five historically white colleges and universities in the fall of 2013 Campus Counterspaces finds that these students were not asking to be protected from new ideas. Instead, they relished exposure to new ideas, wanted to be intellectually challenged, and wanted to grow. However, Keels argues, they were asking for access to counterspaces?safe spaces that enable radical growth. They wanted counterspaces where they could go beyond basic conversations about whether racism and discrimination still exist. They wanted time in counterspaces with likeminded others where they could simultaneously validate and challenge stereotypical representations of their marginalized identities and develop new counter narratives of those identities. In this critique of how universities have responded to the challenges these students face, Keels offers a way forward that goes beyond making diversity statements to taking diversity actions.
Publication Date: 2020
Learning to Be Latino: How Colleges Shape Identity Politics by
In Learning to Be Latino, sociologist Daisy Verduzco Reyes paints a vivid picture of Latino student life at a liberal arts college, a research university, and a regional public university, outlining students' interactions with one another, with non-Latino peers, and with faculty, administrators, and the outside community. Reyes identifies the normative institutional arrangements that shape the social relationships relevant to Latino students' lives, including school size, the demographic profile of the student body, residential arrangements, the relationship between students and administrators, and how well diversity programs integrate students through cultural centers and retention centers. Together these characteristics create an environment for Latino students that influences how they interact, identify, and come to understand their place on campus. Drawing on extensive ethnographic observations, Reyes shows how college campuses shape much more than students' academic and occupational trajectories; they mold students' ideas about inequality and opportunity in America, their identities, and even how they intend to practice politics.
Publication Date: 2018
In Search of Belonging: Latinas, Media, and Citizenship by
In Search of Belonging explores the ways Latina/o audiences in general, and women in particular, makes sense of and engage both mainstream and Spanish-language media. Jillian M. Báez's eye-opening ethnographic analysis draws on the experiences of a diverse group of Latinas in Chicago. In-depth interviews reveal Latinas viewing media images through a lens of citizenship. These women search for nothing less than recognition--and belonging --through representations of Latinas in films, advertising, telenovelas, and TV shows like Ugly Betty and Modern Family. Báez's personal interactions and research merge to create a fascinating portrait, one that privileges the perspectives of the women themselves as they consume media in complex, unpredictable ways. Innovative and informed by a wealth of new evidence, In Search of Belonging answers important questions about the ways Latinas perform citizenship in today's America.
Publication Date: 2018
Reel Latinxs: Representation in U.S. Film and TV by
Latinx representation in the popular imagination has infuriated and befuddled the Latinx community for decades. These misrepresentations and stereotypes soon became as American as apple pie. But these cardboard cutouts and examples of lazy storytelling could never embody the rich traditions and histories of Latinx peoples. Not seeing real Latinxs on TV and film reels as kids inspired the authors to dive deep into the world of mainstream television and film to uncover examples of representation, good and bad. The result: a riveting ride through televisual and celluloid reels that make up mainstream culture. As pop culture experts Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González show, the way Latinx peoples have appeared and are still represented in mainstream TV and film narratives is as frustrating as it is illuminating. Stereotypes such as drug lords, petty criminals, buffoons, and sexed-up lovers have filled both small and silver screens--and the minds of the public. Aldama and González blaze new paths through Latinx cultural phenomena that disrupt stereotypes, breathing complexity into real Latinx subjectivities and experiences. In this grand sleuthing sweep of Latinx representation in mainstream TV and film that continues to shape the imagination of U.S. society, these two Latinx pop culture authorities call us all to scholarly action.
Publication Date: 2019
Latina Outsiders and Remaking Latina Identity by
Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identityis an exploration of Latinas on the periphery of both Latina culture and mainstream culture in the United States. Whether they are deliberately rejected or whether they choose to reject sexist, classist, or racist practices within their cultures, the subjects of these articles, essays, short fiction, poems, testimonios, and visual art demonstrate the value of their experience. Ultimately, the outsider experience influences what the larger culture adopts, demonstrating that a different perspective is key to remaking Latina identity. Outside perspectives include those of queer, indigenous, Afro-Latina, activist, and differently-abled individuals. By challenging stereotypes and revealing the diverse range of narratives that make up the Latina experience, Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity will expand and deepen notions of the Latina identity for students and researchers of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. f the Latina identity for students and researchers of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Publication Date: 2019
The Rise of the Latino Vote: A History by
A new history reveals how the rise of the Latino vote has redrawn the political map and what it portends for the future of American politics. The impact of the Latino vote is a constant subject of debate among pundits and scholars. Will it sway elections? And how will the political parties respond to the growing number of voters who identify as Latino? A more basic and revealing question, though, is how the Latino vote was forged--how U.S. voters with roots in Latin America came to be understood as a bloc with shared interests. In The Rise of the Latino Vote, Benjamin Francis-Fallon shows how this diverse group of voters devised a common political identity and how the rise of the Latino voter has transformed the electoral landscape. Latino political power is a recent phenomenon. It emerged on the national scene during the turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s, when Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American activists, alongside leaders in both the Democratic and the Republican parties, began to conceive and popularize a pan-ethnic Hispanic identity. Despite the increasing political potential of a unified Latino vote, many individual voters continued to affiliate more with their particular ethnic communities than with a broader Latino constituency. The search to resolve this contradiction continues to animate efforts to mobilize Hispanic voters and define their influence on the American political system. The "Spanish-speaking vote" was constructed through deliberate action; it was not simply demographic growth that led the government to recognize Hispanics as a national minority group, ushering in a new era of multicultural politics. As we ponder how a new generation of Latino voters will shape America's future, Francis-Fallon uncovers the historical forces behind the changing face of America.
Publication Date: 2019
Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial by
The whiteness of mainstream environmentalism often fails to account for the richness and variety of Latinx environmental thought. Building on insights of environmental justice scholarship as well as critical race and ethnic studies, the editors and contributors to Latinx Environmentalisms map the ways Latinx cultural texts integrate environmental concerns with questions of social and political justice. Original interviews with creative writers, including Cherríe Moraga, Helena María Viramontes, and Héctor Tobar, as well as new essays by noted scholars of Latinx literature and culture, show how Latinx authors and cultural producers express environmental concerns in their work. These chapters, which focus on film, visual art, and literature--and engage in fields such as disability studies, animal studies, and queer studies--emphasize the role of racial capitalism in shaping human relationships to the more-than-human world and reveal a vibrant tradition of Latinx decolonial environmentalism.Latinx Environmentalisms accounts for the ways Latinx cultures are environmental, but often do not assume the mantle of "environmentalism."
Publication Date: 2019
Telling Migrant Stories by
In the media, migrants are often portrayed as criminals; they are frequently dehumanized, marginalized, and unable to share their experiences. Telling Migrant Stories explores how contemporary documentary film gives voice to Latin American immigrants whose stories would not otherwise be heard. The essays in the first part of the volume consider the documentary as a medium for Latin American immigrants to share their thoughts and experiences on migration, border crossings, displacement, and identity. Contributors analyze films including Harvest of Empire, Sin país, The Vigil, De nadie, Operation Peter Pan: Flying Back to Cuba, Abuelos, La Churona, and Which Way Home, as well as internet documentaries distributed via platforms such as Vimeo and YouTube. They examine the ways these films highlight the individual agency of immigrants as well as the global systemic conditions that lead to mass migrations from Latin American countries to the United States and Europe. The second part of the volume features transcribed interviews with documentary filmmakers, including Luis Argueta, Jenny Alexander, Tin Dirdamal, Heidi Hassan, and María Cristina Carrillo Espinosa. They discuss the issues surrounding migration, challenges they faced in the filmmaking process, the impact their films have had, and their opinions on documentary film as a force of social change. They emphasize that because the genre is grounded in fact rather than fiction, it has the ability to profoundly impact audiences in a way narrative films cannot. Documentaries prompt viewers to recognize the many worlds migrants depart from, to become immersed in the struggles portrayed, and to consider the stories of immigrants with compassion and solidarity. Contributors: Ramón Guerra | Lizardo Herrera | Jared List | Esteban Loustaunau | Manuel F. Medina | Ada Ortúzar-Young | Thomas Piñeros Shields | Juan G. Ramos | Lauren Shaw | Zaira ZarzaA volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez
Publication Date: 2018
Latin American and Latinx Philosophy by
Latin American and Latinx Philosophy: A Collaborative Introduction is a beginner's guide to canonical texts in Latin American and Latinx philosophy, providing the non-specialist with necessary historical and philosophical context, and demonstrating their contemporary relevance. It is written in jargon-free prose for students and professors who are interested in the subject, but who don't know where to begin. Each of the twelve chapters, written by a leading scholar in the field, examines influential texts that are readily available in English and introduces the reader to a period, topic, movement, or school that taken together provide a broad overview of the history, nature, scope, and value of Latin American and Latinx philosophy. Although this volume is primarily intended for the reader without a background in the Latin American and Latinx tradition, specialists will also benefit from its many novelties, including an introduction to Aztec ethics; a critique of "the Latino threat" narrative; the legacy of Latin American philosophy in the Chicano movement; an overview of Mexican existentialism, Liberation philosophy, and Latin American and Latinx feminisms; a philosophical critique of indigenism; a study of Latinx contributions to the philosophy of immigration; and an examination of the intersection of race and gender in Latinx identity.
Publication Date: 2019
Featured Recent Latino Literature
The Carrying: Poems by Winner: 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award.
ALA Notable Book of 2018.
Finalist: 2019 Pen/Jean Stein Book Award
Love War Stories by Finalist: 2019 Pen/Faulkner Award
Finalist: 2018 Foreward Reviews Indies Award
Chosen as must read book 2018 by: Cosmopolitan, The Root, Bitch Media, Electric Literature, Bust, The Rumpus, Popsugar, Bustle, Remezcla, Mitu, AutoStraddle, She Reads, and more.
Kafka in a Skirt: Stories from the Wall by Kafka in a Skirt is not your ordinary short story collection. Chacón subverts expectation and breaks down the walls of reality to create stories that are intriguing, hilarious, and deeply rooted in Chicano culture.
Magical Realism for Non-Believers: A Memoir by A young woman from Minnesota searches out the Colombian father she's never known in this powerful exploration of what family really means.
The Accidental: Poems by Winner: 2019 CantoMundo Poetry Prize
Staten Island Stories by Winner of the Hornblower Award by the New York Society Library.
Teeth Never Sleep: Poems by Finalist: 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award
Finalist: 2019 PEN Open Book Award
Winner: 2019 American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation
Winner: 2018 CantoMundo Poetry Prize
Lima :: Limón by Finalist: 2020 Tufts Poetry Award
Finalist: 2020 International Griffin Poetry Prize
NPR's 2019 Poetry Preview
NBC's 8 Excellent Latino Poetry Books for National Poetry Month
The Rumpus's Books To Read in 2019
Remezcla's 8 Books to Read this Year
Bustle's Most Anticipated Books of 2019
Written by faculty from the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies
Race and Labor in the Hispanic Caribbean: The West Indian Immigrant Worker Experience in Puerto Rico, 1800-1850 by By Dr. Jorge Chinea-
Chinea examines the social, economic, and political impact of foreign immigrants in Puerto Rico during its transition from subsistence farming and ranching in the late 18th century to commercial agriculture during the first half of the 19th century. He provides an island-wide assessment of how the capital, labor, and specialized skills of European and West Indian immigrants enabled Puerto Rico to become a major global exporter of tropical staples, particularly sugar and coffee, during this period. Drawing upon a wide range of public safety, military, naval, passport, consular, and municipal archival sources in Puerto Rico and Spain, Chinea shows that fully one-third of all immigrants to Puerto Rico between 1800 and 1850 originated in the non-Hispanic Caribbean, and he explores the social and working experiences of West Indian immigrants. Without ignoring the cultural and economic contributions of West Indians, Chinea probes the relationship among racial politics, the rise of plantation enclaves organized around servile labor and oriented to international markets, and the spread of abolitionist and pro-independence struggles that threatened Iberian colonial hegemony in the Hispanic Caribbean. Readers interested in Latin American, Caribbean, and African diaspora studies, as well as ethnic, subaltern, and labor studies, will find valuable new insights in Chinea's work.
Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion by Chapter: "Racialized Hierarchies of Power in Colonial Mexican Society: The ‘Sistema de Castas’ as a Form of Social Control in Saltillo" by Jose Cuello. Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion brings together twelve original essays on Spain's presence in North America to understand the circumstances and application of social control. "Social control" refers to the use of coercion particularly in response to what dominant groups consider deviant behavior among subordinates. Spain attempted to maintain control of vast areas through persuasion, coercion, or indoctrination to make subordinates accept colonial government and behave according to Spanish expectations.
Modern Colonization by Medical Intervention: U.S. Medicine in Puerto Rico by By Dr. Nicole Trujillo-Pagan-
This volume explores the establishment of US colonial rule over Puerto Rico through the appropriation and usurpation of the status of local physicians, the undermining of their political legitimacy, and its role in the development of capitalism in the colony.
Prophetic Visions of the Past by Figueroa examines how the Haitian Revolution has been represented in twentieth-century literary works from across the Caribbean.
Civil Society and Electoral Accountability in Latin America by What is the role of civic associations in generating electoral accountability, and how do efforts by national groups to ensure free and fair elections advance democratic consolidation? Lean advances our understanding of how civic activism can strengthen election processes and provides new insight into role of elections for democratic consolidation.
Remembering the Hacienda: Religion, Authority, and Social Change in Highland Ecuador by From the colonial period through the mid-twentieth century, haciendas dominated the Latin American countryside. In the Ecuadorian Andes, Runa--Quichua-speaking indigenous people--worked on these large agrarian estates as virtual serfs. In Remembering the Hacienda: Religion, Authority, and Social Change in Highland Ecuador, Barry Lyons probes the workings of power on haciendas and explores the hacienda's contemporary legacy. Lyons lived for three years in a Runa village and conducted in-depth interviews with elderly former hacienda laborers. He combines their wrenching accounts with archival evidence to paint an astonishing portrait of daily life on haciendas.
