New Books In Latin American Studies

Here’s something I learned by reading Joel Wolfe’s terrific Autos and Progress: The Brazilian Search for Modernity (Oxford, 2010): the United States and Brazil have a lot in common. Both hived off European empires; both struggled with slavery and its legacy; both are profoundly multiethnic and multiracial; both have spent much of their respective histories settling a vast “wild” frontier (though, to be fair, it was already “settled” by indigenous people); and, most importantly for our purposes, both are car-crazy, and indeed for almost the same reason. In the United States, the automobile meant modernity. It was the implement with which we, Americans of every stripe, would “tame” a continent and thereby realize our national potential. The Brazilians, according to Wolfe, feel the same way. Joel does a masterful job of explaining how the promise of this crucial technology entered the Brazilian psyche and became not only the vehicle of modernity (pardon the pun) bu

It’s shocking and embarrassing how little I, as an American, know about Mexican history. Mexico shares a 2,000 mile long border with the United States. Mexico is America’s third largest trading partner (behind Canada–about which I also know nothing–and China). Over 20 million people in the U.S. say they are of “Mexican descent.” But all I can tell you about Mexican history is that the Aztecs built some really impressive pyramids, then the Spanish took over, then the Mexicans threw the Spanish out, then “we” beat the Mexicans and grabbed a bunch of their territory, then there was a confusing period involving France, and then Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata did some revolutionary stuff. The only phrase that comes to mind when I think of the period that followed–1910 to the present–is “illegal aliens.” My ignorance is just pathetic (not to mention irresponsible). So I was really happy when William H. Beezley told me that he and Colin M. Mac

The question of how we come to understand who we are–nationality-wise–is a thorny one. In a widely-read book, Benedict Anderson said we got nationality, inter alia, by reading about it in books. William Beezley‘s got a different, though complementary, thesis regarding Mexicans of the 19th century: they were shown nationality in things like puppet shows. That’s right. Puppet shows. In his excellent Mexican National Identity. Memory, Innuendo and Popular Culture (University of Arizona Press, 2008) he explores how Mexicans were taught Mexican nationality through a variety of popular performances, games, carnivals, holidays, and household items. “Taught” might be a little too strong, as the point of each of these folk enterprises was, well, enterprise and entertainment. In any event, Mexican nationality seems to have came from the bottom up, not the top down. Seems about right to me. I learned I was American by reading a comic book called “Sergeant Rock.” Please bec