Presents the essay Decentering a Discipline: Recent Trends in Latin American Literary Studies, based on a number of books. Cultural Diversity in Latin American Literature, by David William Foster; Do the Americas Have a Common Literature?, edited by Gustavo Perez Firmat; Reclaiming the Author: Figures and Fictions From Spanish America, by Lucille Kerr; Other books used in the essay.;
Reviews books on Afro-Hispanic and Caribbean literature. Includes The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin; Fifty Caribbean Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, edited by Daryl Cumber Dance; Nicolas Guillen: Popular Poet of the Caribbean, by Ian Isidore Smart.;
Examines the demography of slavery in Minas Gerais, Brazil from 1750-1808. Provision of a study on the values placed on slaves in Minas Gerais as the mineral export boom came to a close during the second half of the 18th century; Investigation of the cycles of expansion and contraction in the Mineiro economy between 1750 and 1808;
Balutansky reviews C. L. R. James, the Artist as Revolutionary by Paul Buhle, C. L. R. James's Caribbean edited by Paget Henry and Paul Buhle, The C. L. R. James Reader edited by Anna Grimshaw, Special Delivery: The Letters of C. L. R. James to Constance Webb, 1939-1948 edited by Anna Grimshaw and C. L. R. James: His Intellectual Legacies edited by Selwyn R. Cudjoe and William E. Cain.;
The article reviews several books about race and gender discrimination against African Americans including Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000, by George Reid Andrews, Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil, by Edward E. Telles, and Afro-Cuban Religiosity, Revolution and National Identity, by Christine Ayorinde.;
Discusses the relationship between squatters and the state in Brazil. Information on redemocratization in Latin America; Return of electoral democracy; Political transition from authoritarian to procedurally democratic regimes; Detailed information on the squatter settlements in Brazil; Distribution and sale of cocaine from public low-income housing projects; Information on prison authorities in Brazil.
Reviews several books. A Place in the Sun? Women Writers in Twentieth-Century Cuba, by Catherine Davis; Afro-Cuban Literature: Critical Junctures,'by Edward J. Mullen; My Own Private Cuba: Essays on Cuban Literature and Culture, by Gustavo Pérez Firmat.;
Reviews books on the history of Caribbean countries. Includes The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus, By Irving Rouse, The Boni Maroon Wars in Suriname, by Wim Hoogbergen, translated by Marilyn Suy and Alabi's World, by Richard Price.;
Reviews several books about Cuban history. The Social Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Cuba, by Sherry Johnson; Winds of Change: Hurricanes and the Transformation of Nineteenth-Century Cuba, by Louis A. Pérez Jr; Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition, by Stephan Palmié; Espacios, Silencios Y Los Sentidos De La Libertad: Cuba Entre 1878 Y 1912, edited by Fernando Martínez Heredia, Rebecca J. Scott and Orlando F. García Martínez.;
Review the books The Disappearance of the Dowry: Women, Families, and Social Change in Sao Paulo, 1600-1900, by Muriel Nazzari, Family and Frontier in Colonial Brazil: Santana De Parnaiba, 1580-1822, by Alida C. Metcalf, The Family in Bahia, Brazil, 1870-1945, by Dain Borges, and Gosto Do Pecado: Casamento E Sexualidade Nos Manuais De Confessores Dos Seculos XVI E XVII, by Angela Mendes de Almeida.;
Reviews several books. Not of Pure Blood: The Free People of Color and Racial Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico, by Jay Kinsbruner; From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity, by Juan Flores; Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures, by Frances R. Aparicio.;
Reviews the essays El Amor, El Sexo Y Los Celos, by Alberto Orlandini, Before Night Falls A Memoir, by Reinaldo Arenas, El Caiman Ante El Espejo: Un Ensayo De Interpretación De Lo Cubano, by Uva de Aragon Clavijo, Cuba Sin Caudillos: Un Enfoque Feminista Para El Siglo XXI, by Illeana Fuentes, La Mujer Rural Y Urbana: Estudios De Casos, by Mariana Ravnet et al.;
Focuses on the book "Casa-grande e senzala," by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. In his book, Freyre introduces the idea of Brazilian racial democracy (democracia racial) and analyzes the views of black people in Brazil. Freyre and his ideas were said to be controversial and racist and many believed that these ideas created myths within society
Reviews books on American relations with Latin America. Includes The United States and Somoza, 1933-1956: A Revisionist Look, by Paul Coe Clark Jr; The Rich Neighbor Policy: Rockefeller and Kaiser in Brazil, by Elizabeth Anne Cobbs; Prize Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal, 1903-1979, by John Major.;
Reviews several books which focused on the social and political history of Haiti. Haiti in the New World Order: The Limits of the Democratic Revolution, by Alex Dupuy; Building Peace in Haiti, by Chetan Kumar; Haiti Renewed: Political and Economic Prospects, edited by Robert Rotberg; The Haitian Dilemma: A Case Study in Demographics, Development, and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Ernest Preeg.;
Reviews several books on Cuban history before 1959. American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean 1898-1934, by César Ayala; Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898, by Ada Ferrer; Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba, by Rosalie Schwartz.;
Reviews several essays. Essays include Tradición de futuro: El primer siglo del banco popular de Puerto Rico (1893-1993),'by Guillermo A. Baralt, Contra la corriente: Seis microbiografias de los tiempos de España,' by Fernando Pico, and El día menos pensado: Historia de los presidiarios en Puerto Rico (1793-1993), by Fernando Pico.;
This article explores the "elitist profile" of racial discrimination through eighty in-depth interviews with black professionals in Rio de Janeiro. The results show that interviewees describe their trajectories of social mobility through mechanisms that involve both socioeconomic and racial exclusion. Their perceptions of injustice, however, are more directly related to experiences of racial discrimination.
Reviews several books about post-revisionist scholarship on race in Latin America. Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945, by Jerry Dávila; Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics, by Melissa Nobles; Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico, by Alexander S. Dawson.;
This study relies on Brazilian census data from 1960-2000 to analyze long-term trends in racial and gender wage disparities in the urban labor market of São Paulo, one of Latin America's most dynamic economies. Afro-Brazilians and women have made remarkable progress over the past four decades in securing hard-won legal rights and in gaining access to the highest levels of schooling, entrance into higher paying occupations, and narrowing the intraethnic gender wage ga Despite such progress, Afro-Brazilians and women are paid less than similarly qualified white men, and wage discrimination is increasing. Placing the interplay of race and gender at the center of this analysis shows how the workplace barriers people confront on the basis of skin color and sex play a fundamental role in shaping social and economic inequality in contemporary Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];
Reviews several books regarding Cuban history which focused on the areas of race, identities, ideology and nationhood. Between Race and Empire: African-Americans and Cubans Before the Cuban Revolution, by Lisa Brock and Digna Castaneda; `El Directorio Central de las Sociedades Negras de Cuba, 1886-1894,'by Oilda Hevia Lanier; Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940, by Robin Moore.;
Presents the essay Recent Literature on Cuba and the United States, based on several books. `Cuba and the United States: Intervention and Militarism, 1868-1933, by José M. Hernandez; Cuba: The Shaping of Revolutionary Consciousness, by Tzvi Medin; Cuba: A Short History, by Leslie Bethell; Other books used.;
Reviews books on Latin American slavery. Includes Slavery and Abolition in Early Republican Peru, by Peter Blanchard; Slave Women in Caribbean Society, ,1650-1838, by Barbara Bush; Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, edited by Barbara L. Solow.;
Article is concerned with the relations of Afro-Latin Americans to modes of production (slavery, capitalism, socialism), economic institutions (the plantation, transnational corporations), economic development models, transnational relations, political systems, institutions, behavior, group and class relations (including class struggle), social mobility, and political mobilization.
Examines the relations between the state and the church in the Dominican Republic during three distinct phases. Relations during the First Republic from 1844 to 1861; Spanish annexation 1861-1865; Early period of the Second Republic from 1865 to 1879; Policy implications.;
Reviews several books on slavery. The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil: The "Liberation" of Africans Through the Emancipation of Capital, by David Baronov; The Virgin, The King and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670-1780, by María Elena Díaz; The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas, by David Eltis.;
Argues that although evangelical Christianity involves a variety of beliefs that are incompatible with a strong ethnic identity, this religion also includes a range of ideas and practices that nourish rather than corrode black identity.
