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Douglass Sullivan Gonzalez examines the influence of religion on the development of nationalism in Guatemala during the period 1821-1871, focusing on the relationship between Rafael Carrera amd the Guatemalan Catholic Church. He illustrates the peculiar and fascinating blend of religious fervor, popular power, and caudillo politics that inspired a multiethnic and multiclass alliance to defend the Guatemalan nation in the mid-nineteenth century.Led by the military strongman Rafael Carrera, an unlikely coalition of mestizos, Indians, and creoles (whites born in the Americas) overcame a devastating civil war in the late 1840s and withstood two threats (1851 and 1863) from neighboring Honduras a...
Most non-Central Americans think of the narrow neck between Mexico and Colombia in terms of dramatic past revolutions and lauded peace agreements, or sensational problems of gang violence and natural disasters. In this volume, the contributors examine regional circumstances within frames of democratization and neoliberalism, as they shape lived experiences of transition. The authors--anthropologists and social scientists from the United States, Europe, and Central America--argue that the process of regions and nations "disappearing" (being erased from geopolitical notice) is integral to upholding a new, post-Cold War world order--and that a new framework for examining political processes must be accessible, socially collaborative, and in dialogue with the lived processes of suffering and struggle engaged by people in Central America and the world in the name of democracy.
Essays that track the long interrelationship between Britain and the American South in music, religion, and trade
First published in Chile in 1969 as Interpretación del desarrollo social centroamericano, this classic is now available in English. The first attempt at an integrated analysis of modern Central America's socioeconomic structure, Torres Rivas's work traces the social development of Central America from independence (1871) up to the 1960s. Using a dependency framework, but not limited by it, Torres Rivas describes the various divisions of Central American society and their evolution within the liberal development model that has been so much a part of the past century of Central American economic history. The book is compelling in its explanation of the relationship between foreign and native elements in the social development of the region. Torres Rivas describes and analyzes the resulting long-term problems this development has posed for Central America. With a new chapter added for the English edition, History and Society in Central America remains vital for readers interested in the region.
How the US crusade against prostitution became a tool of empire Between the 1870s and 1930s, American social reformers, working closely with the US government, transformed sexual vice into an international political and humanitarian concern. As these activists worked to eradicate prostitution and trafficking, they promoted sexual self-control for both men and women as a cornerstone of civilization and a basis of American exceptionalism. Empire of Purity traces the history of these efforts, showing how the policing and penalization of sexuality was used to justify American interventions around the world. Eva Payne describes how American reformers successfully pushed for international anti-tra...
Bananas, the most frequently consumed fresh fruit in the United States, have been linked to Miss Chiquita and Carmen Miranda, "banana republics," and Banana Republic clothing stores—everything from exotic kitsch, to Third World dictatorships, to middle-class fashion. But how did the rise in banana consumption in the United States affect the banana-growing regions of Central America? In this lively, interdisciplinary study, John Soluri integrates agroecology, anthropology, political economy, and history to trace the symbiotic growth of the export banana industry in Honduras and the consumer mass market in the United States. Beginning in the 1870s, when bananas first appeared in the U.S. mar...
The first comprehensive study of the close ties between the American South and the Caribbean With essays and commentaries by Roger D. Abrahams, Kenneth Bilby, David Eltis, Stanley L. Engerman, Aline Helg, Milton Jamail, Charles Joyner, Daniel C. Littlefield, Bonham C. Richardson, and Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr. Download Plain Text version With the trade of sugar, rum, and African slaves in the islands that form a perimeter around the Gulf of Mexico, the broad expanse of water known as the Caribbean ringed what came to be known as the South. Today concise political boundaries separate the coasts of the American South from the multicultural worlds that dominate the islands. Yet all anecdotal evide...
Company towns were the spatial manifestation of a social ideology and an economic rationale. The contributors to this volume show how national politics, social protest, and local culture transformed those founding ideologies by examining the histories of company towns in six countries: Argentina (Firmat), Brazil (Volta Redonda, Santos, Fordl ndia), Canada (Sudbury), Chile (El Salvador), Mexico (Santa Rosa, R o Blanco), and the United States (Anaconda, Kellogg, and Sunflower City). Company towns across the Americas played similar economic and social roles. They advanced the frontiers of industrial capitalism and became powerful symbols of modernity. They expanded national economies by support...
This book highlights historical explanations to and roots of present phenomena of violence, insecurity, and law enforcement in Central America. Violence and crime are among the most discussed topics in Central America today, and sensationalism and fear of crime is as present as the increase of private security, the re-militarization of law enforcement, political populism, and mano dura policies. The contributors to this volume discuss historical forms, paths, continuities, and changes of violence and its public and political discussion in the region. This book thus offers in-depth analysis of different patterns of violence, their reproduction over time, their articulation in the present, and finally their discursive mobilization.
The major issues addressed include the relationships between institution-building and state formation; between the university and the development of a national and regional identity; and between modernism and Catholicism (still a central tension in the region's culture), including the discursive process of constructing an ideology that fused elements from the Enlightenment and the tradition of scholasticism.