The Global Perspective of Urban Labor in Mexico City, 1910–1929 examines the global entanglement of the Mexican labor movement during the Mexican Revolution. It describes how global influences made their entry into labor culture through the cinema, the theater, and labor festivals as well as into the development of consumption patterns and advertisement. It further shows how the young labor movement constituted its discourse and invented its tradition at meetings and in the columns of newspapers. The local conditions constitute the framework for the examination of Mexican labor’s perspectives on and engagement with contemporary events of global significance. Thereby, this book demonstrates how workers turned to the global context in search of guidance and role models, embracing global developments and narratives. It also reveals the differentiations from this context in order to create a unique local identity. This approach allows new perspectives on the role of a neglected revolutionary actor and on the influence of global developments in a revolution that has been predominantly interpreted from a national point of view. It shows the way global ideas were brought to life in the framework of revolutionary Mexico City – providing new insights into the grand-narratives of Globalization and Revolution.

This book surveys the impact of the Monroe Doctrine on United States relations with Latin America, with a particular focus on the Caribbean Basin, since its proclamation in 1823. It explores the historical role of the Monroe Doctrine as the instrument to foreclose future European colonial adventures in the American hemisphere and to exclude from it any political system(s) deemed to be incompatible with the American political tradition. Modeste examines the elastic interpretations of the Monroe Doctrine to justify American territorial expansion and imperial ambitions, premised on a strategic question – the power controlling the Latin American/Caribbean trade routes and Sea Lines of Communication. Fundamental to the narrative is the linkage of the tenets of the Monroe Doctrine to contemporary local/regional crises where governments have applied extraordinary, extra-constitutional measures to exercise control or achieve political ends, mechanisms of peaceful conflict resolution failures, and subversive elements that use unorthodox methods to threaten the integrity of the state. Modeste also traces the transformation of the Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral policy declaration to a multilateral compact for the collective defence of the hemisphere.

This book presents new aspects of the U.S. "multiple path" policy toward Cuba that was designed and adopted after the Missile Crisis (October 1962) until the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, from a Cuban perspective. The policy was characterized by its contradictory profile, since simultaneously as aggressions were directed at Cuba, it also included the establishment of channels of communication with the Cuban government. The book also analyzes the Cuban–Soviet dispute during the same period. The Cuban experiences have still not been sufficiently discussed, and the aspects offered will enrich the knowledge of the U.S.–Cuban relationship during the mentioned period.

This book focuses on alternative types of slave narratives, especially courtroom testimony, and interrogates how such narratives were produced, the societies (both those that were majority slave societies and those in which slaves were a distinct minority of the population) in which testimony was permitted, and the meanings that can be attached to such narratives. The chapters in this book provide valuable information about the everyday lives—including the inner and spiritual lives—of enslaved African American and Native American individuals in the British and French Atlantic World, from Canada to the Caribbean. It explores slave testimony as a form of autobiographical narrative, and in ways that allow us to foreground enslaved persons’ lived experience as expressed in their own words.

During the nineteenth century, gridding, graphing, and surveying proliferated as never before as nations and empires expanded into hitherto "unknown" territories. Though nominally geared toward justifying territorial claims and collecting scientific data, expeditions also produced vast troves of visual and artistic material. This book considers the explosion of expeditionary mapping and its links to visual culture across the Americas, arguing that acts of measurement are also aesthetic acts. Such visual interventions intersect with new technologies, with sociopolitical power and conflict, and with shifting public tastes and consumption practices. Several key questions shape this examination: What kinds of nineteenth-century visual practices and technologies of seeing do these materials engage? How does scientific knowledge get translated into the visual and disseminated to the public? What are the commonalities and distinctions in mapping strategies between North and South America? How does the constitution of expeditionary lines reorder space and the natural landscape itself? The volume represents the first transnational and hemispheric analysis of nineteenth-century cartographic aesthetics, and features the multi-disciplinary perspective of historians, geographers, and art historians.

Kinship and Incestuous Crime in Colonial Guatemala examines social relations in colonial Guatemala through the lens of incest. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses of incest trials from the Spanish secular courts, this study shows that incest codes were not homogenous nor were its various forms equally condemned. Further, incest codes and the criminal process impacted the articulation of kinship and contributed to the racialization of kin behavior. Colonial actors of all sorts were proficient at using these types of distinctions as they negotiated various crises in their lives. The models of relatedness created within incestuous crime ultimately foreshadowed changes in marriage proscriptions and continued racial polarization following independence from Spain. Overall, this study demonstrates how the lens of incest can add further nuance to our understanding of social relations in a given area. Incest codes force latent divisions between kin to the surface and can provide individuals with multiple avenues to creatively manage interpersonal relationships. They also afford a fruitful arena in which to explore social inequalities in society and mechanisms of culture change. This book will appeal to anyone interested in Latin America or engaged in the fields of kinship, gender, or sexuality studies.

Education in Revolutionary Struggles introduces us to the fascinating world of Latin American educational thought in the third quarter of the 20th century. It discusses the contributions of three of the most distinguished intellectuals of the period – Iván Illich, Paulo Freire and Ernesto Guevara – and more specifically their answers to the eternal challenge: What is – or should be – the role of education in the profound structural and/or revolutionary transformation of our societies? The first part of the book identifies the cultural, economic and political context of the revolutionary years in Latin America. This historical framework is of particular interest because it is the setting for the intellectual and educational debates in which these three thinkers took part. The second part, the heart of the book, expounds in depth how Iván Illich, Paulo Freire and Ernesto Guevara contributed to understanding of how education is linked to the transformation of society. The third and final part highlights the most fertile dimensions of the educational thought of Iván Illich, Paulo Freire and Ernesto Guevara – deschooling, liberation education and revolutionary education respectively – and analyses the points where their conceptions of "education in revolutionary struggles" converged, complemented one another or diverged.