Third Group of Reviews in May

Neter@s,

What is better than May showers? Five more reviews, of course. This productive month brings you another set of fine discussions of books. In addition to works concerned with Mexico and Argentina, these reviews involve the topics of the Atlantic slave trade, the literature of the early modern Atlantic, and the Haitian Revolution. We are proud to include a review in Spanish and reviewers from various disciplines. We hope you will find them interesting and useful.

Chris Bongie (Queen's University) does more than write a good book review. He takes Jeremy D. Popkins latest book as a prism to offer a glimpse of developments in Haitian Revolutionary Studies. That he begins with an otherwise inconspicuous source should show the reader that this essay delves into deep waters. Popkins’ book, Bongie tells us, does the necessary task of highlighting the importance of the year 1793 and the burning of Cap Français, then the most energetic city of the Caribbean. The book is a model of well-written scholarship; it did not earn the Pinkney Prize for nothing. But with his signature style, Bongie brings out the political in the writing of this book, which seems to deliberately lack such a dimension—a lack that Bongie claims is itself political. Both, the book and the review are must-reads for those interested in the history of the Haitian Revolution.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31431

Stephen Allen (Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey) reviews Kevin B. Witherspoon’s book at a time when scores of people around the world are feeling nostalgic and even drawing parallels between today and the year 1968. In _Before the Eyes of the World_ Witherspoon explains how the 1968 Summer Olympics coincided with several interests and currents that helped produced the sensational events characteristic of that fateful year. It is a history of sports, politics, race and international diplomacy. To a certain extent, this book is a welcome study of the Cold War and the 1960s radicalism outside of the United States— far too many scholars see this period only through U.S. centric lenses, ignoring Bogota (Congreso Eucarístico), Mexico City (Olympics), and the 5 countries that declared independence from colonial powers that same year. Yet, as Allen tells us, despite its value, Witherspoon fails to make this study truly comparative or shared history; his accent stays in the U.S. rather than on Mexico.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31733

Srividhya Swaminathan (Long Island University) takes on the delicate task of reviewing the reissue of Seymour Drescher’s _Econocide_. There is no more striking question in the study of the Atlantic slave trade than the one posted by Eric Williams. Williams studied the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade through the eyes of an economist. His answer, first published in his doctoral thesis (1938) and in a 1940 article (_ The Journal of Negro History__), rocked the establishment. Ever since, all significant work on abolitionism has wrestled with Williams’ “Decline Thesis.” Drescher comes to the picture in 1977 as the champion of the idea that the British were well-intended, and that in pursuing abolitionism they actually committed economic suicide, hence the term “Econocide.” An interesting point of the republication of this work is that David Brion Davis, a long-time warden of Williams’ thesis, opens the book with a story of Drescher’s contribution to the debate. Swaminathan, however, tells in this review that Williams’ thesis cannot be entirely dismissed. She also tells us how Drescher contributed to complicate the picture and bring Latin American History into the discussion.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31617

Luis A. Intersimone (Texas State University at San Marcos) considers Raanan Rein’s _In The Shadow of Perón_. How can you explain the broad and steady political support for populists like Juan Perón? Some readers may refer to the leader’s charisma and the cultural legacy of caudillismo as explanations of Latin American populism. The implication, which many early U.S. writers proposed, was that the emotional masses had little judgment when following such leaders (basis to which they assigned their supposedly lack of democratic abilities). But Rein, Intersimone tells us, explains that that is not the case; that masses are not irrational after all; that there is more to them than meets the eye. Rein takes the case of Perón’s leadership to demonstrate his point. But the focus is on those leaders that connected Perón to the masses. Rein does not diminish Perón’s charisma, however. Instead, he raises the importance of those on whom Perón relied, and shows, in splendid details, how Peronism’s personality cult actually worked to defeat its politics.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31720

Amanda Clark (Virginia Tech) examines a book about accounts of Whites taken captives by non-Europeans: Lisa Voigt’s _Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic_. The book is about literature and history. The narratives that Voigt inspects here range from those that are widely known, as el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and John Smith’s Pocahontas, to less known ones like Francisco Nuñes de Pineda’s “Cautiverio Feliz,” and José de Santa Rita Durão’s “Caramurú.” Clark tells us that one of Voigt’s contributions is her emphasis on Ibero-American literature. This is a welcome feature because English sources have dominated early modern Atlantic studies for many years. Voigt’s main argument is that despite the authors’ bravery and apparent challenge to imperialism, all of these narratives worked to sustain the imperial project. By offering to the Western World narratives that described how was being a captive among barbarians these ex-captives not only reinforced the non-Western “Otherness,” but also justified their colonialism. Clark, however, goes even further by making the case that these sources were less effective than what Voigt suggests and that the empires’ control over the production of knowledge was more effective than assumed here.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=32970

We are grateful to these excellent reviewers who contribute with their
time and expertise. I also want to thank the team of editors who help
me behind the scenes to keep the H-LatAm review project running.

Sincerely yours,

Dennis R. Hidalgo
H-LatAm

May's Second Set of Reviews

Dear Neter@s,
In our second bouquet of reviews this month we offer you analyses of five books covering the countries of Chile, Mexico and the Andean region. They also deal with the topics of U.S. and Latin American Historiography, colonial medicine, modern propaganda, presidential politics, indigenous political systems, and cultural anthropology. We invite you to take pleasure and benefit fromtheir reading. I offer you simple summaries to whet your appetite

Susan E. Ramirez (Texas Christian University) offers us a close analysis of the peculiar work of cultural anthropologist Denise Arnold and archaeologist Christine Hastorf in the book _Heads of State_. In this book Arnold and Hastorf look at the symbolic power of heads in the Andes, and elaborate a hypothesis about cultural practice and indigenous political systems. In the review, Ramirez tells us she found merit in the discussion on the importance of heads in centripetal versus centrifugal polities. Also useful was the discussion on the Andean heterarchichal system of organization, teeming with overlays, multiplicity, and mixed ascendancy,but concurrent with patterns of relation. This argument relates with recent scholarshipthat point to a less centralized system of politics in the Andes than previously thought. Ramirez, however, found that from the historian point of view the book opens itself to a huge gap in time full of anachronisms, which tends to take some issues for granted (i.e., the concept of the Ayllu). Nevertheless, this is a book Ramirez recommends reading.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31882

Peter Villella (University of North Carolina in Greensboro) reflects on Sherry Field’s _Pestilence and Headcolds_. How would life be in a time when everybody, from the top-level ranks of society to the least known person, is dreadfully concerned with death? What underlying epistemologies would we find beneath the plethora of health and wellnesspractices people used to survive? Field’s book focuses on colonial Mexico and looks at the cultureof sickness and health in the time when epidemics and the loss of life were unprecedented. This is also the time in which people lived in the midst of two apparently opposing cosmologies; one informed by indigenous belief in the supernatural sources of illness and the other acquainted with the medieval humorism of Galenus. Field’s main contributions, according to Villella, are in the synthesis of thescholarship and in the broad interpretative framework. Despiteits structural limitations (i.e., extensiveness), the reader can learn about a world in which a cut, a minor infection and even a sniffle could be ground for distress.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31466

Thomas Schoonover (University of Louisiana at Lafayette) reviews Helen Delpar’s book, _Looking South_. Delpar’s contribution to scholarship is one that present historiography in a different package: as a narrative of the history of US people fascinated with the study of Latin America since the 19th Century. This is a study of both US, and Latin American History, but seen principally from the eyes of US writers. Here we learn about why the more formal and scholarly interest in Latin America began after the works of people like William H. Prescott and Washington Irving. Delpar informs the reader about the development of professional and academic institutions that led to the current forms of Latin American scholarship in the US. Schoonover argues that in telling us personal narratives Delpar has made historiography enjoyable to read.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31628


Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney tells us about a book that Silvia Borzutzky and Gregory B. Weeks have edited, which sheds light on why voters in Chile chose a government of the right to replace Michelle Bachelet. But this is not a pundit book attempting to explain in vain the inscrutable course of presidential elections. Instead, it is a collection of fine scholarly essays querying the historical post-Pinochet period. The focus is the Bachelet’s administration, as the book title would reveal: _The Bachelet Government_. That she was the first Chilean women president is just one of the many points of interest of her presidency. She also openly attempted the impossible: to promote a more equal society while still adhering to most of the neoliberal policies of her predecessors. As it happens often with political histories, the consensus of these authors is that the realities are more interesting and more complex than what they appear from a distance. At the end, you may not know everything with certainty, but after reading this book, Pieper Mooney affirms, at least you gain a better insight on why the nation took the direction it did in the last election.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31660

Andrae Marak reviews a book about the production of propaganda, governmental and otherwise, in post-revolutionary Mexico. The word propaganda often masquerades the manipulation of people’s opinions. Monica A. Rankin, however, uses a less narrow definition in her book, _¡Mexico, la patria!_. In it, she looks for patterns in the messages aimed at large Mexican audiences within the span of three periods: before WII, during WII and post-WII. The book offers suggestions, but avoids gauging the propaganda effects on people. It also brings new light into the U.S. and Mexico’s relations. Most interesting to me is how Rankin shows the symbolic (and discursive) co-option of the Mexican Revolution. In the 1940s, with the purpose of promoting national unity, the Ávila Camacho government successfully propagated the idea of the Mexican Revolution as a positive historical event that had set the nation on a democratic process. Taken as a whole, the nation-building messages behind all propaganda schemes, either from the right or from the left, were aimed to both industrialize and homogenize cultural Mexico. Marak recommends Rankin’s work as necessary for those studying post-revolutionary Mexico and those wanting to explore modern propaganda production.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=32059


I want to thank our competent reviewers and dependable H-LatAm editors who have loaned me a “second pair of eyes” to read the reviews.

Cheers,

Dennis R. Hidalgo

Reviews: The First Five of May 2011

Neteros,
The first week of May welcomes us with five exciting reviews. They cover the topics of (1) autobiography as a form of historical journey in Jamaica, (2) little known, but notable Cuban art, (3) an attempt to understand paramilitary and death squads, (4) the role of enslaved soldiers in the wars for independence, and (5) an essay on a contentious book about the Catholic Church in Latin America. True to our international appeal, we continue publishing reviews in Spanish (and seek to publish in French and Portuguese) and search for diverse and able reviewers, even outside of the United States (and aim to review more works published abroad too).

Damion Blake (University of West Indies and Virginia Tech) introduces the reader to a form of literature similar to “testimonios” that do more than describe life in colonial Jamaica from the perspective of the subaltern. Yvonne Shorter Brown’s _Dead Woman Pickney_ blends historical scholarship with the personal in a way that makes the history of colonial Jamaica accessible and attractive to readers of all types. The focus is on the author’s quest for her mother’s past, and through her pursuit we learn about gender, race, coloration, and class in the last decades of British colonialism on the island. A postcolonial narrative, Blake highly recommends this poignant and entertaining book for the classroom and for research as a form of primary source.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31425

Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier (Université Laval) writes in Spanish about a collection of Cuban art that was rescued from the Fidelista’s censuring project. The Ramos Collection in Zeida Comesañas Sardiñas’ _Great Masters of Cuban Art_, a bilingual book, is the product of years of clandestine safeguarding and intercontinental collectors’ chase. Here the reader would find Cuban paintings dated from the 19th and 20th centuries. The Ramos Collection, Boudreault-Fournier tells us, is a must for all those interested in Cuban history and art history in general.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31693

Daniel Breslau (Virginia Tech) offers a decidedly scholarly review of Julie Mazzei’s _Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces?_ Breslau informs that differently from other works on paramilitaries, Mazzei’s work is refreshingly comparative and theoretically useful (a combination not easily found together). The focus is on assorted groups in Chiapas, Colombia, and El Salvador. Mazzei proposes a nuanced view of paramilitaries as more than covert detachments of national militaries. Mezzei’s study shows that (apparent) nonstate militarized action consistently came about when reformist governments tried civilian rule and transparency. Despite problems inherited in the comparative system, Mazzei’s work is an important contribution in the field of terror, civilian and military studies.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31845

Jesse Cromwell (The University of Texas at Austin) focuses on Peter Blanchard’s

_Under the Flags of Freedom_. In a highly readable analysis of the book, Cromwell explains why Blanchard’s book is indispensable for the study of the Wars for Independence and of Blacks in Latin America. Blanchard’s archival research spanned through Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, England, Peru, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela. And his contribution goes beyond showing how enslaved Blacks assisted on both sides of the conflict and the motivations that led them to enlist. Blanchard also shows the underpinnings of the institution of slavery and its longevity; how slavery lasted for about a generation even after the wars have ended. Cromwell puts Blanchard in a historiographical context, and affirms that in spite of some criticism, this book now fills a gap in Abolitionism and Black studies in Latin America.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31743

Jayeel S. Cornelio (National University of Singapore) takes the arduous task of bringing into a scholarly discussion a book meant for pious readerships. Edward L. Cleary’s _How Latin America Saved the Soul of the Catholic Church_ attempts to show how the Catholic Church in Latin America has not only changed itself, but transformed the global church. Cleary’s enthusiasm for the Latin American Catholic experience is obvious throughout the book, and Cornelio patiently leads the reader through each of these steps. The Church, according to Cleary, continues to grow, continues to lead, and has a consistent and strong voice for justice: it has come out of the shadows by appropriating certain tenets of popular religiosity and social justice (read Theology of Liberation?). But, as Cornelio reminds us, that is not the entire story. There are some sinister corners that Cleary clearly missed, and these are necessary to highlight for us to have a complete picture of the Church in Latin America. Cornelio does even more than provide this standard criticism as he also shows us that a worldly broader portrait of the Church should include the Global South.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31951

My sincere thanks to the reviewers for their contributions and for the support from H-LatAm editors.

Cheers,

Dennis R. Hidalgo

H-LatAm Reviews