El Yanqui


Book Description




Intellectuals and Communist Culture


Book Description

This book investigates a central chapter in the history of 20th century intellectualism: the commitment to the communist ideal and the Soviet Union. Focusing on Argentina, whose communist party was among the most important in Latin America, Petra engages with the current literature on Western communism in order to conduct an exhaustive study of the intellectuals, cultural organizations, publications, and debates within Argentine communism in the decades following World War II. Based on rigorous archival research from diverse sources, Petra’s book distances itself from existing teleological visions and institutional approaches to the communist world, offering instead a complex framework in which multiple contexts, scales, and actors frame the larger problem: the intellectual commitment to a political project that brooked no dissent. Intellectuals and Communist Culture also addresses the emergence of Peronism, a crucial movement in Argentine political life to this very day, thus offering an important chapter on Latin American political and intellectual history and an invaluable contribution to the global history of the international communist movement.




Gringos Get Rich


Book Description

Documents counterimperialism in Chilean music since the 1960s Gringos Get Rich: Anti-Americanism in Chilean Music examines anti-Americanism in Latin America as manifested in Chilean music in recent history. From a folk-based movement in the 1960s and early 1970s to underground punk rock groups during the Pinochet regime, to socially conscious hip-hop artists of postdictatorship Chile, Chilean music has followed several left-leaning transnational musical trends to grapple with Chile's fluctuating relationship with the United States. Eunice Rojas's innovative analysis introduces US readers to a wide swath of Chilean musicians and their powerful protest songs and provides a representative and long view of the negative influences of the United States in Latin America. Much of the criticism of the United States in Chile's music centers on the perception of the United States as a heavy-handed source of capitalist imperialism that is exploitative of and threatening to Chile's poor and working-class public and to Chilean cultural independence and integrity. Rojas incorporates Antonio Gramsci's theories about the difficulties of struggles for cultural power within elitist capitalist systems to explore anti-Americanism and anti-capitalist music. Ultimately, Rojas shows how the music from various genres, time periods, and political systems attempts to act as a counterhegemonic alternative to Chile's political, cultural, and economic status quo. Rojas's insight is timely as a political trend toward the right continues in the Americas. There is also increased interest in and acceptance of popular song lyrics as literary texts. The book will appeal to Latin Americanists, ethnomusicologists, scholars of popular culture and international relations, students, and general readers.





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Passion and Cunning


Book Description

Conor Cruise O'Brien's brilliant and hugely controversial 1965 essay on the political convictions of W. B. Yeats is the title-piece for this superb 1988 collection of pieces on politics, religion, nationalism and terrorism. 'O'Brien is a man of strong views, and he writes with verve and wit. Agree with him or not, one reads him with enjoyment.' Foreign Affairs '[ Passion and Cunning] displays once again [O'Brien's] wonderful range of talents: a beautiful command of the language, gentle wit and coruscating satire, shrewd political judgment and a raking critical power. O'Brien is, moreover, a critic against all-comers, his spiky guns pointing in all directions: woe betide anyone incautious enough to presume that O'Brien is on their 'side'. . . O'Brien believes in all manner of good causes, but his own independence is finally what he cares about most.' R. W. Johnson, London Review of Books




Church and Politics in Latin America


Book Description

Complex and profound changes have been taking place in the Latin American Catholic Church in the 20th century which have often been misunderstood and misrepresented. This is a collection of essays written by scholars working in the fields of history, political science, sociology, law and theology.




Yankee No!


Book Description

In 1958, angry Venezuelans attacked Vice President Richard Nixon in Caracas, opening a turbulent decade in Latin American–U.S. relations. In Yankee No! Alan McPherson sheds much-needed light on the controversial and pressing problem of anti-U.S. sentiment in the world. Examining the roots of anti-Americanism in Latin America, McPherson focuses on three major crises: the Cuban Revolution, the 1964 Panama riots, and U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic. Deftly combining cultural and political analysis, he demonstrates the shifting and complex nature of anti-Americanism in each country and the love–hate ambivalence of most Latin Americans toward the United States. When rising panic over “Yankee hating” led Washington to try to contain foreign hostility, the government displayed a surprisingly coherent and consistent response, maintaining an ideological self-confidence that has outlasted a Latin American diplomacy torn between resentment and admiration of the United States. However, McPherson warns, U.S. leaders run a great risk if they continue to ignore the deeper causes of anti-Americanism. Written with dramatic flair, Yankee No! is a timely, compelling, and carefully researched contribution to international history.




The Changing Face of Afro-Caribbean Cultural Identity


Book Description

The Changing Face of Afro-Caribbean Cultural Identity: Negrismo and N gritude looks primarily at Negrismo and N gritude, two literary movements that appeared in the Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean as well as in Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. It draws on speeches and manifestos, and use cultural studies to contextualize ideas. It poses the bases of both movements in the Caribbean and in Africa, and lays out the literary antecedents that influenced or shaped both movements. This book examines the search for cultural identity through the poetry of Nicolas Guill n, Manuel del Cabral, and Pal s Matos. This search is extended to the N gritude movement through the poems of L opold Senghor, L on-Gontran Damas, and Aim C saire. Mamadou Badiane further discusses the under-represented N gritude women writers who were silenced by their male counterparts during the first half of the twentieth century. Ultimately, this is a book on Caribbean cultural identity that shows it in a slippery and fluctuating zone. By demonstrating that while the founders of the N gritude movement both identified themselves as descendants of Africans and were proud to proclaim their African heritage, the members of the Antillanit and Cr olit movements see themselves as a product of miscegenation between different cultures.




Una vez fui tú (Once I Was You Spanish Edition)


Book Description

“El punto de vista de María es poderoso y vital. Hace años, cuando In the Heights empezaba a presentarse en teatros off-Broadway, María corrió la voz en nuestra comunidad para que apoyáramos este nuevo musical que trataba sobre nuestros vecindarios. Ella ha sido una campeona de nuestros triunfos, una crítica de nuestros detractores y una fuerza clave para enfrentar y corregir los errores de nuestra sociedad. Cuando María habla, estoy listo para escuchar y aprender de ella.” —Lin-Manuel Miranda La periodista ganadora de cuatro premios Emmy y presentadora de Latino USA de NPR, María Hinojosa, cuenta la historia de la inmigración en los Estados Unidos a través de las experiencias de su familia y décadas de hacer reportajes, con lo cual crea un riguroso retrato de un país en crisis. María Hinojosa es una periodista galardonada que ha colaborado con las cadenas más respetadas y se ha distinguido por realizar reportajes con un toque humano. En estas memorias escritas con gran belleza, nos relata la historia de la política de inmigración de los EE.UU. que nos ha llevado al punto en que estamos hoy, al mismo tiempo que nos comparte su historia profundamente personal. Durante treinta años, María Hinojosa ha informado sobre historias y comunidades en los Estados Unidos que a menudo son ignoradas por los principales medios de comunicación. La autora de bestsellers Julia Álvarez la ha llamado “una de las líderes culturales más importantes, respetadas y queridas de la comunidad Latinx”. En Una vez fui tú, María nos comparte su experiencia personal de haber crecido como mexicanoamericana en el sur de Chicago y documentar el páramo existencial de los campos de detención de inmigrantes para los medios de comunicación que a menudo cuestionaban su trabajo. En estas páginas, María ofrece un relato personal y revelador de cómo la retórica en torno a la inmigración no solo ha influido en las actitudes de los estadounidenses hacia los extranjeros, sino que también ha permitido la negligencia intencional y el lucro a expensas de las poblaciones más vulnerables de nuestro país, lo que ha propiciado el sistema resquebrajado que tenemos hoy en día. Estas memorias honestas y estremecedoras crean un vívido retrato de cómo llegamos aquí y lo que significa ser una superviviente, una feminista, una ciudadana y una periodista que hace valer su propia voz mientras lucha por la verdad. Una vez fui tú es un llamado urgente a los compatriotas estadounidenses para que abran los ojos a la crisis de la inmigración y entiendan que nos afecta a todos. También disponible en inglés como Once I Was You.




Equestrian Rebels


Book Description

Mariano Azuela (Mexico, 1873–1952) was a medical doctor by profession, recipient of Mexico’s Premio Nacional de Literatura (1949), a distinguished member of El Colegio Nacional and, by mid-century, one of Mexico’s leading novelists and literary critics. The author of novels, novellas, plays, biographies, and literary criticism, Azuela served as field doctor under Francisco Villa during the Mexican Revolution and, after Villa’s military defeats in 1915, published Los de abajo (The Underdogs, 1915) while in exile in El Paso, Texas. This book of essays commemorates the first centenary of Los de abajo, and traces its impact on twentieth-century autobiographies, memoirs and, more specifically, on the Novel of the Mexican Revolution. Equestrian Rebels: Critical Perspectives on Mariano Azuela and the Novel of the Mexican Revolution includes a full-length introduction and nineteen essays by leading international scholars who study Azuela and other novelists of the Mexican Revolution – such as Martín Luis Guzmán, Nellie Campobello and, among others, José Rubén Romero – from current, yet contrasting and innovative theoretical perspectives. Especially written for this volume, these critical essays are grouped into five sections that separately probe and analyze Azuela’s realism and contemporary affinities with photography; Azuela’s literary criticism; centennial studies on Los de abajo; critical approaches to other novels by Azuela; three independent analyses of Nellie Campobello’s Cartucho (1931); and a concluding section on literary representations of Mexican colonialism and revolution in the narratives of Juan Rulfo (El llano en llamas), Carlos Fuentes (Gringo viejo), and David Toscana (El último lector). This book will be of importance to scholars, teachers, students, and the general reader interested in topics related to the literary, cultural, and political forces and conflicts that led to the transformation of Mexico into a modern nation.