Enrique Mayer, Ugly Stories of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform: Review

(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: Review

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Ana María Alonso, Thread of Blood: Review

(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: Review

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Florencia Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood: Review

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: Review

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Jeffrey Gould, To Die in This Way: Review

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: Review

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Cynthia McClintock, Peasant Cooperatives and Political Change in Peru: Review

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: Review

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Léon Zamosc, The Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Colombia: Review

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: Review

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Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Oppressed But Not Defeated: Review

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Oppressed But Not Defeated: Peasant Struggles Among the Aymara and Qhechwa in Bolivia, 1900-1980 (Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1987). By N. H. Gill             (Jan. 31, 2019) – Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s Oppressed but Not Defeated, on the struggles of Aymara and Quechua peasants in the highlands and western… Read More Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Oppressed But Not Defeated: Review

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Indigenous Elites: Survival and Subjugation in Colonial Latin America

By N. H. Gill           (Nov. 24, 2018) — Indigenous elites stood at the intersection of political subjugation and cultural survival in Spanish and Portuguese America. Over more than three centuries they acted as intermediaries between their communities and outsiders, as defenders before the law, and even as collaborators with local power… Read More Indigenous Elites: Survival and Subjugation in Colonial Latin America

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Asunción Lavrin, Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America: Review

Asunción Lavrin, ed. Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America. 1. paperback print. Latin American Studies Series. Lincoln, Neb.: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1992. Asunción Lavrin’s edited volume, Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, presents a series of perspectives on what Lavrin calls the “conquest of the mind,” the means through which the Spanish… Read More Asunción Lavrin, Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America: Review

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Surveying the Field: Peasant Power in Andean History

By N. H. Gill           (May, 2018) — Like many global hotspots of the twentieth century, the Andes is marked by its history of structural inequality, racial conflict, and legacies of poverty and violence. Tensions between urban and rural areas as well as between descendants of European and Andean ancestry still exist… Read More Surveying the Field: Peasant Power in Andean History

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Between Two Worlds: Andean Haciendas in Colonial History

By N. H. Gill          (May, 2018) — When historian James Lockhart published his renown article “Encomienda and Hacienda” in 1969, the modern historiography on haciendas was already more than forty-years-old.[1] Yet even after decades, historians were only beginning to understand these New World estates in terms of their origins and functions… Read More Between Two Worlds: Andean Haciendas in Colonial History

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