By N. H. Gill(February 26, 2020) – Ecuadorian ex-President Rafael Correa is on trial again, this time for campaign-finance fraud. Three years after a national referendum forced him from office, Correa is being tried in absentia for his alleged role in a scheme to extort government contractors for campaign contributions during his decade in power.… Read More Ecuador’s Splintered Left on Trial with Correa
(July 3, 2019) – Enrique Mayer’s Ugly Stories of Peruvian Agrarian Reform, a “people-oriented kind of oral history,” provides a memory study of the 1969 land reforms enacted by Peruvian President Juan Velasco Alvarado. Written from the perspective of historical stakeholders and incorporating Mayer’s lifelong participation in the reforms as an academic observer, he weaves… Read More Enrique Mayer: Ugly Stories of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform
(June 1, 2019) – The role of violence and the importance of cultural identity in the struggles between indigenous communities and the nation-state are the subjects of Ana María Alonso’s monograph, Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico’s Northern Frontier (1995). This anthropological history of machismo in the culturally-mestizo Namiquipa community in Chihuahua… Read More Ana María Alonso: Thread of Blood
Florencia E. Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood: The Mapuche Community of Nicolás Ailío and the Chilean State, 1906-2001, Radical Perspectives (Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 2005). By N. H. Gill (May 17, 2019) – Florencia Mallon’s 2005 book, Courage Tastes of Blood: The Mapuche Community of Nicolás Ailío and the Chilean State, 1906-2001, examines… Read More Florencia Mallon: Courage Tastes of Blood
By N. H. Gill (April 2, 2019) – Jeffrey Gould’s monograph, To Die in This Way (1998), looks at the dialectic relationship between indigenous identity and the formation of the nation-state in Nicaragua from the late nineteenth century until the mid twentieth. Gould challenges the “myth of mestizaje” that holds that, except for the… Read More Jeffrey Gould: To Die in This Way
By N. H. Gill (March 11, 2019) – Cynthia McClintock’s monograph, Peasant Cooperatives and Political Change in Peru, looks at the social and political effect of the agrarian reforms of the Velasco administration between 1968 to 1975. Focusing closely on the 1969 hacienda expropriations and subsequent implementation of self-managing agrarian cooperatives, McClintock uses a… Read More Cynthia McClintock: Peasant Cooperatives and Political Change in Peru
Léon Zamosc. The Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Colombia: Struggles of the National Peasant Association, 1967-1981. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1986. By N. H. Gill (Feb. 3, 2019) – Sociologist Léon Zamosc’s The Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Colombia, looks at the development of… Read More Léon Zamosc: The Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Colombia
