In this first comprehensive study of Latin America's literary vanguards of the 1920s and 1930s, Vicky Unruh explores the movement's provocative and polemic nature. Latin American vanguardism—a precursor to the widely acclaimed work of contemporary Latin American writers—was stimulated by the European avant-garde movements of the World War I era. But as Unruh's wide-ranging study attests, the vanguards of Latin America—emerging from the continent's own historical circumstances—developed a very distinct character and voice. Through manifestos, experimental texts, and ribald public performance, the vanguardists' work intertwined art, culture, and the politics of the day to produce a powerful brand of aesthetic activism, one that sparked an entire rethinking of the meaning of art and culture throughout Latin America.

The Spatiality of the Hispanic Avant-Ultraísmo & Estridentismo, 1918-1927 is a thorough and original exploration of place and space in the work of the Hispanic vanguards; a transatlantic study that will surely join international discussions on space and modernism.

For a thousand days in the early 1970s, Chileans experienced revolution not as a dream but as daily life. Alongside Salvador Allende’s attempt to democratically bring about a socialist regime, new understandings of the meaning of revolutionary change emerged. In her groundbreaking book Beyond the Vanguard, Marian E. Schlotterbeck explores popular politics in Chile in the decade before Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship and provides an in-depth account of how working-class people transformed the existing social order by embracing radical politics. Schlotterbeck eloquently examines the lost opportunities for creating a democratic revolution and the ways that the legacy of this period continues to resonate in Chile and beyond. Learn more about the author and this book in an interview published online with Jacobin.

This book highlights the ruin's prolific resurgence in Latin American cultural life at the turn of the millennium and sharply reveals a stirring creative drive by artists and intellectuals toward ethical reflection and change in the midst of ruinous devastation.

Rochlin probes the origins and effects of Latin America's most potent insurgent movements.

During the swan song of the Soviet Union and the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, many insurgent groups that had been dependent on Moscow or Havana quickly faded into political oblivion. But some existing groups, as well as emerging ones, flourished within a new and uncharted political constellation. This comparative study probes the origins and effects of Latin America's most potent insurgent movements - in Peru, Colombia, and Mexico - which are thriving now in large part by exploiting the revolution in military affairs. Rochlin considers the intriguing question of what makes a successful revolutionary movement at the start of the 21st century. Addressing the commonalities and distinctions among six subversive groups, he focuses on domestic and international context, support base, ideology, strategy, and prospects for power. He also explores the roots, metamorphosis, and prognosis of the conflicts. His in-depth discussion of these powerful rebel groups emphasizes the ways in which they are successfully rethinking the meaning of politics, revolutionary activity, and strategy in a new era.