Book Reviews General Histories and Historicities in Amazonia. Edited by neil l. whitehead. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Photographs. Maps. Tables. Figures. Bibliography. Index. xx, 236 pp. Cloth, $55.00. Paper, $25.00. Neil Whitehead believes Amazonian history remains “an eternal present of ‘first contacts’ and ‘marvelous discover[ies]’” (p. vii). Western scholars have preferred to accept, as history, the discursive inventions of European chroniclers whose reports are several removes from their sources. What has been regarded as Amazonian history, then, is more correctly part of an Iberian travelogue tradition, in which the narrator, estranged from his surroundings, is his own subject of contemplation—and his imagination his primary source. Histories and Historicities uses the Amazon case to explore “a new scholarship on history and historicity.” In it, nine anthropologists from Brazil, Venezuela, and the United States rely on oral histories and symbolic narratives of indigenous spokespersons, rather than written archival documents. Together, these contributions well illustrate that history is local, shaped by the specificities and interests of its narrators. The choice of the plural “histories” in the title, rather than the conventional “history,” makes this point. Several prominent motifs run through the contributions, such as the process of signifying space in order to read into it events in time. In the process of historicizing space, specific topi are imbued with meanings that record and construct the past. Silvia Vidal, for example, describes how the Arawakan Warekena of Venezuela use the landscape to encode events and the group relations they authorize. For the Warekena, the journey of a culture hero is a means of denoting the landscape. Vidal finds Warekena cartography to be both a sociogeography of traditional territories and a cosmological mapping through which generations record and interpret their world. Domingo Medina finds similar historicizing and mapping functions in the journey narratives recounted by members of the De’kuana of Venezuela. The symbol-laden journey of the culture hero Kuyujani links the De’kuana to the landscape and to their past. Because laws defining rights to land are phrased in terms of antecedence, historic narratives that link native Amerindians to the lands they occupy play a critical role in shaping their future autonomy. The Kyujani texts described by Medina were used in a recent project to legitimize De’kuana land claims. The De’kuana demarcation process became one of self-discovery. As they reinforced and reified cultural as well as spatial boundaries, the texts also helped young De’kuana discover their own tribal histories. Thus, a Hispanic American Historical Review 85:3 Copyright 2005 by Duke University Press 492 HAHR / August neglected narrative body of historical knowledge finds new relevance in the context of control over culture and territory. Mary Riley discusses how Guyanese Makushi recontextualize past events to serve their interests in land negotiations. Since international NGOs advocating environmental conservation emphasize biological diversity within indigenous territories, native peoples construct historic narratives that demonstrate responsible stewardship of their lands. Riley contributes to a growing literature on the mutually advantageous indigenous-environmentalist alliance. In a different example of selecting historic representation, Makushi persuasively present their history as “special . . . and unique” (p. 155). On the basis of that uniqueness, the Makushi are guaranteed cultural autonomy and rights to lands not extended to other Guyanese citizens. This language links the Makushi to domestic law and international instruments that uphold their rights. Whereas other authors in this volume emphasize monologic speech forms, Rafael Gassón Pacheco considers the role of interactive ceremonial speech in conveying historic information and creating polities among pre-Columbian savannah societies of Venezuela and Colombia. Gassón Pacheco argues that ceremony provides an arena in which various interested parties play out the contest over history. If history is local—subject to the perspectives of its producers—then how is a dialogic outcome constructed when two groups conspire to create a historic common ground? The process deserves analysis, as native Amazonian ritual is a locus of the negotiation of histories through narrative production. Neil Whitehead provides the volume with a much-needed metacommentary. Using his own research to raise broader issues and questions of historic production, Whitehead writes, “For the Patamuna [of Guyana] the construction of history is as much about the present as it is about things past. In this way prophecy is history, since the meaning of what has been can only be understood in relation to the things that are and are to come. In this way the Patamuna historicity is strongly marked by the practice of prophecy, and so the form and content of history is concerned with sustaining, into the future, a Patamuna way” (p. 72). For most readers, Amazonian history was invented with its “discovery” by European chroniclers. As this compendium shows, however, the range of representational media for encoding historical information are broader than European accounts would suggest. Historians have overlooked the relevance of “texts” inscribed in symbolic clusters on material objects and narrated in oral histories. If our understanding of history, however, includes narratives and other representational vehicles constructed in the present about the past, here we may fi nd a rich repository of unmediated Amazonian histories from those who lived and produced them. Like all historic discourse, these accounts originate in the perspectives of the narrators and are constructed, consciously or unconsciously, for specific ideological ends. No single account may speak for all. Together, these essays demonstrate that if culture is historical, history is fundamentally cultural. Although several hundred thousand native Amazonians remain from Book Reviews / General 493 a pre-Conquest population ten times larger, reports of the death of indigenous cultures (as anthropologist Marshall Sahlins recently quipped) have been greatly exaggerated. Local expressions, exemplified by the ones cited and analyzed in this volume, attest to a vital and fully native, Amazonian reflection on the past(s) and the discovery there of locally specific histories. janet chernela, University of Maryland Estudios sobre historia y ambiente en América. Vol. 2. Norteamérica, Sudamérica y el Pacífico. Edited by bernardo garcía martínez and maría del rosario prieto. Mexico City: El Colegio de México / Centro de Estudios Históricos, 2002. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Figures. Bibliographies. 336 pp. Paper. It has been some time in maturing, but environmental history both in and of Latin America is now coming of age. Two major congresses have been held in recent years, in Santiago and Havana. The trickle of monographs, in Spanish, Portuguese, and English, is swelling, and the number of young scholars in Latin America taking an environmental history approach is growing apace. This book is the second of two volumes with the same title, which together provide a good idea of what Latin American environmental historians are up to. The first, published in 1999, focused on Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, and Paraguay. This one, the fruits of a continuing collaborative project organized by the Grupo de Trabajo de Historia Ambiental, under the direction of Bernardo García Martínez, is broader in range. The book includes 13 pieces, plus an introduction. Geographically, they touch upon Costa Rica, the Andes, Argentina, the white pine region of North America, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, and Mexico. Thematically, they address climate history (to which four chapters are dedicated and which a fifth also confronts), landscape history (three chapters), and such diverse topics as crop diseases, livestock drives, forest depletion, and nineteenth-century concerns about environmental degradation. Almost all the chapters are anchored in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Of the chapters on climate history, the most interesting (by Ricardo García Herrera and eight coauthors) attempts to reconstruct the climate history of the Pacific on the basis of the records of the Manila galleons in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Using ship logbooks and other sources from the AGI in Seville, as well as modern climate data and computer-simulated voyages, García Herrera and his team show that trans-Pacific voyages took longer (100–120 days, on average) in the 1640–80 period than either earlier or later. Before 1640 they averaged 80–90 days, while after 1690 the average duration held very steady at around 95 days. After discussing ship design, routes, cargoes and other potentially relevant variables, they conclude that changing weather patterns in the tropical Pacific are the likeliest explanation for the changes in voyage duration. The other climate chapters are more local in scope and more traditional in method, although some of the information I found fascinating. I had not known, for 

Book Reviews General Histories and Historicities in Amazonia. Edited by neil l. whitehead. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Photographs. Maps. Tables. Figures. Bibliography. Index. xx, 236 pp. Cloth, $55.00. Paper, $25.00. Neil Whitehead believes Amazonian history remains “an eternal present of ‘first contacts’ and ‘marvelous discover[ies]’” (p. vii). Western scholars have preferred to accept, as history, the discursive inventions of European chroniclers whose reports are several removes from their sources. What has been regarded as Amazonian history, then, is more correctly part of an Iberian travelogue tradition, in which the narrator, estranged from his surroundings, is his own subject of contemplation—and his imagination his primary source. Histories and Historicities uses the Amazon case to explore “a new scholarship on history and historicity.” In it, nine anthropologists from Brazil, Venezuela, and the United States rely on oral histories and symbolic narratives of indigenous spokespersons, rather than written archival documents. Together, these contributions well illustrate that history is local, shaped by the specificities and interests of its narrators. The choice of the plural “histories” in the title, rather than the conventional “history,” makes this point. Several prominent motifs run through the contributions, such as the process of signifying space in order to read into it events in time. In the process of historicizing space, specific topi are imbued with meanings that record and construct the past. Silvia Vidal, for example, describes how the Arawakan Warekena of Venezuela use the landscape to encode events and the group relations they authorize. For the Warekena, the journey of a culture hero is a means of denoting the landscape. Vidal finds Warekena cartography to be both a sociogeography of traditional territories and a cosmological mapping through which generations record and interpret their world. Domingo Medina finds similar historicizing and mapping functions in the journey narratives recounted by members of the De’kuana of Venezuela. The symbol-laden journey of the culture hero Kuyujani links the De’kuana to the landscape and to their past. Because laws defining rights to land are phrased in terms of antecedence, historic narratives that link native Amerindians to the lands they occupy play a critical role in shaping their future autonomy. The Kyujani texts described by Medina were used in a recent project to legitimize De’kuana land claims. The De’kuana demarcation process became one of self-discovery. As they reinforced and reified cultural as well as spatial boundaries, the texts also helped young De’kuana discover their own tribal histories. Thus, a Hispanic American Historical Review 85:3 Copyright 2005 by Duke University Press 492 HAHR / August neglected narrative body of historical knowledge finds new relevance in the context of control over culture and territory. Mary Riley discusses how Guyanese Makushi recontextualize past events to serve their interests in land negotiations. Since international NGOs advocating environmental conservation emphasize biological diversity within indigenous territories, native peoples construct historic narratives that demonstrate responsible stewardship of their lands. Riley contributes to a growing literature on the mutually advantageous indigenous-environmentalist alliance. In a different example of selecting historic representation, Makushi persuasively present their history as “special . . . and unique” (p. 155). On the basis of that uniqueness, the Makushi are guaranteed cultural autonomy and rights to lands not extended to other Guyanese citizens. This language links the Makushi to domestic law and international instruments that uphold their rights. Whereas other authors in this volume emphasize monologic speech forms, Rafael Gassón Pacheco considers the role of interactive ceremonial speech in conveying historic information and creating polities among pre-Columbian savannah societies of Venezuela and Colombia. Gassón Pacheco argues that ceremony provides an arena in which various interested parties play out the contest over history. If history is local—subject to the perspectives of its producers—then how is a dialogic outcome constructed when two groups conspire to create a historic common ground? The process deserves analysis, as native Amazonian ritual is a locus of the negotiation of histories through narrative production. Neil Whitehead provides the volume with a much-needed metacommentary. Using his own research to raise broader issues and questions of historic production, Whitehead writes, “For the Patamuna [of Guyana] the construction of history is as much about the present as it is about things past. In this way prophecy is history, since the meaning of what has been can only be understood in relation to the things that are and are to come. In this way the Patamuna historicity is strongly marked by the practice of prophecy, and so the form and content of history is concerned with sustaining, into the future, a Patamuna way” (p. 72). For most readers, Amazonian history was invented with its “discovery” by European chroniclers. As this compendium shows, however, the range of representational media for encoding historical information are broader than European accounts would suggest. Historians have overlooked the relevance of “texts” inscribed in symbolic clusters on material objects and narrated in oral histories. If our understanding of history, however, includes narratives and other representational vehicles constructed in the present about the past, here we may fi nd a rich repository of unmediated Amazonian histories from those who lived and produced them. Like all historic discourse, these accounts originate in the perspectives of the narrators and are constructed, consciously or unconsciously, for specific ideological ends. No single account may speak for all. Together, these essays demonstrate that if culture is historical, history is fundamentally cultural. Although several hundred thousand native Amazonians remain from Book Reviews / General 493 a pre-Conquest population ten times larger, reports of the death of indigenous cultures (as anthropologist Marshall Sahlins recently quipped) have been greatly exaggerated. Local expressions, exemplified by the ones cited and analyzed in this volume, attest to a vital and fully native, Amazonian reflection on the past(s) and the discovery there of locally specific histories. janet chernela, University of Maryland Estudios sobre historia y ambiente en América. Vol. 2. Norteamérica, Sudamérica y el Pacífico. Edited by bernardo garcía martínez and maría del rosario prieto. Mexico City: El Colegio de México / Centro de Estudios Históricos, 2002. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Figures. Bibliographies. 336 pp. Paper. It has been some time in maturing, but environmental history both in and of Latin America is now coming of age. Two major congresses have been held in recent years, in Santiago and Havana. The trickle of monographs, in Spanish, Portuguese, and English, is swelling, and the number of young scholars in Latin America taking an environmental history approach is growing apace. This book is the second of two volumes with the same title, which together provide a good idea of what Latin American environmental historians are up to. The first, published in 1999, focused on Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, and Paraguay. This one, the fruits of a continuing collaborative project organized by the Grupo de Trabajo de Historia Ambiental, under the direction of Bernardo García Martínez, is broader in range. The book includes 13 pieces, plus an introduction. Geographically, they touch upon Costa Rica, the Andes, Argentina, the white pine region of North America, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, and Mexico. Thematically, they address climate history (to which four chapters are dedicated and which a fifth also confronts), landscape history (three chapters), and such diverse topics as crop diseases, livestock drives, forest depletion, and nineteenth-century concerns about environmental degradation. Almost all the chapters are anchored in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Of the chapters on climate history, the most interesting (by Ricardo García Herrera and eight coauthors) attempts to reconstruct the climate history of the Pacific on the basis of the records of the Manila galleons in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Using ship logbooks and other sources from the AGI in Seville, as well as modern climate data and computer-simulated voyages, García Herrera and his team show that trans-Pacific voyages took longer (100–120 days, on average) in the 1640–80 period than either earlier or later. Before 1640 they averaged 80–90 days, while after 1690 the average duration held very steady at around 95 days. After discussing ship design, routes, cargoes and other potentially relevant variables, they conclude that changing weather patterns in the tropical Pacific are the likeliest explanation for the changes in voyage duration. The other climate chapters are more local in scope and more traditional in method, although some of the information I found fascinating. I had not known, for 494 HAHR / August example, that the revolt of Túpac Amaru took place in the context of prolonged drought (1777–87) in Upper Peru. Among the chapters on landscape change, the contribution of Juan Carlos Garavaglia on the pampas is an amplification of his (excellent) previously published work, while another by Graeme Wynn extends his earlier work on the forests of northeastern North America (it frankly seems a bit out of place in this volume). The others include local studies based on dissertations (including one, by Alfred Siemens, that is a return to a dissertation topic of 40 years hence—the Los Tuxtlas mountainscapes of the Veracruz region in Mexico). There is also a fine chapter on the environmental effects of the expansion of agriculture in nineteenth-century Venezuela. Perhaps the most compelling is a deeply researched essay on the hazards of long-distance transhumance in New Spain, which uses a diary from 1783 to illuminate the risks, especially from flooded rivers, faced by man and beast on cattle drives between Sinaloa and Querétaro. Among the most thoughtful chapters are those by Stuart McCook and José Padua. McCook connects the liberalization of commerce in the Spanish Empire after 1778 with an upswing in crop diseases in Ecuador, especially in the cacao plantations. He links this work with debates about globalization and the environment. Padua, in the lone chapter that deals squarely with the cultural and intellectual issues of environmental history, reveals a late nineteenthcentury discourse among Brazilian planters concerning agro-ecological issues, notably soil exhaustion in the coffee zone. Brazilian environmentalism, it seems, was a homegrown product. Some of the chapters will be too local to interest many readers, and many of them neglect (or reject) opportunities to link their subjects with large-scale processes afoot in Latin America and elsewhere, such as population growth or industrialization. In this respect, Latin American environmental historians are following in the footsteps of their North American predecessors, most of whose work remains unnecessarily local in scope and importance. Specialists will occasionally be irritated by (if accustomed to) citations that list merely a section of an archive. But in general, this volume provides a rich smorgasbord of delights for Latin Americanists interested in recent developments in environmental history, as well as for environmental historians interested in what is going on in Latin America. One can only hope that further volumes from the Grupo de Trabajo de Historia Ambiental will follow. j. r. mcneill, Georgetown University Book Reviews / General 495 States of Nature: Science, Agriculture, and Environment in the Spanish Caribbean, 1760–1940. By stuart mccook. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Table. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xiv, 201 pp. Cloth, $50.00. Paper, $22.95. Scientists played a critical role in the reorganization of plantation agriculture in the Caribbean after slavery. They provided agroexporters with the knowledge, techniques, and attitudes to adapt to a series of ecological threats to their existence. In the process, scientists enabled them to subjugate vast stretches of the Caribbean to a handful of new crop varieties. This created new ecological problems to solve that perpetuated the need for expertise. Stuart McCook has produced a concise, incisive, yet far-ranging defense of this interpretation of the environmental histories of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, and the United States. McCook’s long chapter on the “Eco-Rationalization of the Caribbean Sugar Industry” is the heart and strength of this book. He highlights the heroic success achieved by Puerto Rican agronomist Carlos Chardón during the 1920s in combating mosaic disease, a virus that devastated fields of high-yielding cane hybrids. Through a series of elegant experiments, Chardón identified the insect vector involved and developed techniques to prevent its spread. As McCook points out in earlier chapters, these results were possible because of long-standing efforts to build “creole” scientific institutions and research agendas that served local needs. Latin American enthusiasm for science was not merely premised on ideology; it was based on tangible results. Of course, ideology was also important to these endeavors. In a chapter focused on Swiss botanist Henri Pittier, McCook underscores the importance of nationalist thinking in organizing support for inventories of native plants in Costa Rica and Venezuela. In order to properly serve these young nations, plants required a “civil status.” McCook actually underestimates the stakes involved in acquiring this knowledge: he neglects to note the economic devastation that occurred in South America after foreign scientists transplanted Cinchona and Hevea trees from their native range to form quinine and rubber plantations in tropical Asia. On the other hand, McCook overstates the centrality of liberalism to these projects. Conservatives also embraced them, often with the hope that scientific institutions would produce an “aristocracy of knowledge” to rule Latin America. This fact is implicit in McCook’s later chapters tracing the rising influence of technocratic ideology just before the Great Depression. Regional specialists should give special attention to McCook’s method. He did not allow political boundaries (or the chance acquisitions of specific archives) to delimit his investigation. Instead, he traced the movements of specific experts, plant varieties, and pathogens across national and ecological frontiers using sources scattered between Venezuela, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and the United States. This approach enabled McCook to answer fresh new questions about environmental change and to provide new perspectives on the old debate over “national science.” Despite its broad scope, there are limitations to McCook’s regional focus. He only provides occasional indications of the reciprocal influence of Spanish American crop sci- 496 HAHR / August ence on plantation agriculture elsewhere in the world (see p. 81 regarding Java’s embrace of Alvaro Reynoso’s 1862 treatise on Cuban cane agriculture). In this vein, readers might like to know about an additional case McCook overlooked: During the 1920s, Puerto Rican agronomists successfully controlled the depredations of white grub on sugar cane by introducing the cane toad (Bufo marinus) from Barbados (pp. 72–74, unfortunately referred to by McCook as the “Surinam toad,” rather than by its scientific name). Mark Lewis tells the rest of this story in the hilarious film Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (1987). Australian agronomists unintentionally unleashed a plague of biblical proportions when they tried to replicate Puerto Rico’s success. This raises an important question: Where should we draw the boundaries of “creole” science and Caribbean agroecosystems? McCook has provided us with a valuable base from which to launch such an investigation. gregory t. cushman, University of Kansas Latin America’s Wars. Vol. 2, The Age of the Professional Soldier, 1900–2001. By robert l. scheina. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2003. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Index. xxvi, 530 pp. Cloth, $49.95. It is a popular assumption that wars (at least international ones) are rare in Latin America and that professional soldiers (at least officers) spend more time playing at politics than they do making war. This solid companion volume to Latin America’s Wars: The Age of the Caudillos, 1791–1899 makes two major points convincingly. First, Scheina asserts, in the past century, armed conflict was principally a domestic phenomenon: interclass and intraclass struggles, interventions, ideological warfare, terrorism, narco-war, guerrilla, and the like. Second, throughout the twentieth century, military professionals across the region spent as much or more time struggling with varied enemies within than they did actually administering their countries or defending them against their neighbors. Well before the so-called postmodern era, peace and war, and relations between civil and military sectors of society, were miscible in Latin America. Like the caudillos before them, professional soldiers would have both internal and external missions to fulfill in the twentieth century. Beset by multiple limitations, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay struggled to define frontiers in the Andes and the South American heartland, most notably in the 1920s and 1930s. El Salvador and Honduras went at it in 1969, Argentina attempted to take over the Falklands/Malvinas in 1982, and there were frequent border skirmishes and mobilizations throughout the region. These international conflicts rarely settled long-standing grudges, and domestic confl ict, interventions, and civil wars did not always lead to desired ends. Military involvements in extraregional, intercontinental, and global affairs did little to resolve any regional problems. Latin America’s wars, Scheina shows, have been more symptomatic than definitional of long-standing cultural, diplomatic, economic, political, and social issues. This made peace and war all the more miscible. Book Reviews / General 497 Scheina’s taxonomy of Latin American conflicts purposely leads readers to see the region as fraught with complexity, and this is a very good thing if the majority of its recent wars are ever to mean much more to scholars and statesmen than failed international campaigns, frustrated domestic attempts to alter the status quo, or reactions to interventions and manipulations from without—or all of these. Some readers may want to make analogies with West Asia in the post–cold war decades. Scheina’s discussion of the Chaco War of 1932–35 is a case in point. Once condescendingly described by Eurocentrics as “two bald men fighting over a comb,” this binational tragedy exposed Bolivian and Paraguayan realities all too brutally. But only in the Andes did international war prove more than symptomatic of domestic ills. In Bolivia, the international conflict ultimately led the way to the interclass revolution of 1952. In Paraguay, it led to an inconclusive intraclass war, that of 1947. In discussing this conflict, Scheina does an admirable job recalling the most important domestic causes and effects of the region’s only sustained international conflict of the past century. Just like politics, all war is local. Latin America’s Wars is a far cry from traditional military history, because Latin American history is sui generis, and the author knows it. Better and more maps would doubtless complement the solid writing and excellent illustrations, but this cavil does not deter from the book’s value as a contribution to the study of Latin American civil-military and military-civilian relations. frederick m. nunn, Portland State University Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770. By james h. sweet. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Notes. Bibliograpy. Index. xiv, 296 pp. Cloth, $55.00. Paper, $19.95. “The great leaveners of power in the slave societies of the African-Portuguese world were not muscle and might, but rather, African forms of religion and spirituality” (p. 83). With this bold statement, James Sweet concludes the first section of Recreating Africa and announces the thesis of the rest of this provocative book. Rejecting the view that the slave trade so disoriented and dislocated Africans that they could only build creolized African-American cultures in the New World, Sweet argues that in the Portuguese world, “the beliefs and practices of Central African slaves were more than culturally detached or diluted ‘survivals.’” Rather, “an essential character or worldview . . . was transferred to the Americas and survived in large measure” (p. 227). Focusing on the first three centuries of slavery in the Luso-Atlantic world—the period about which we know the least—Sweet offers a rich feast of vignettes of African religious practices culled from Inquisition records, which he juxtaposes with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century missionary descriptions of religious practices in Central Africa. By this means, he shows how Africans’ “core beliefs were not destroyed by 498 HAHR / August the influences of Western Christianity” (p. 103). Rather, the “broad cosmological core” (pp. 116–17) of African religions (explanation, prediction, and control of human affairs) endured under slavery. Chapters on divination, calundú (spirit possession) and other forms of curing, and understandings of witchcraft amply document African practices. Moreover, African culture profoundly influenced Portuguese masters, who routinely turned to African healers and acknowledged the power of African spirits. (In the 1730s, even a priest admitted that exorcism had no effect against African witchcraft.) Other masters resorted to African divination, thereby ceding “judicial power” to their slaves and offering them spaces for resistance. Sweet stresses repeatedly that African religious practices were powerful weapons of slave resistance. To Africans, enslavement was a form of diabolical witchcraft that could best be fought by religious means. “Many masters” lived in constant fear of their slaves’ feitiços (spells), the “stealthy, silent killer[s] of the hated master, and a very real threat to the colonial status quo” (pp. 159–60). Slave diviners employed by masters, he argues, tended to protect their immediate communities by finding outsiders guilty. Others used their divining skills to win economic advantage. Recreating Africa is also an extended critique of John Thornton’s arguments about the strength of Kongolese Christianity and the continuation of Africanized Christianity in the New World. From the early sixteenth century, elites in the Kingdom of Kongo accepted Christianity, and a thin but steady stream of missionaries (to whom we owe most of our knowledge of Central African culture) served there. According to Sweet, however, what Christianity filtered down to the common people of Kongo was thoroughly integrated into African cosmological frameworks, and he finds virtually no evidence that “the so-called Christian beliefs” (p. 196) of Central Africans influenced Brazilian slave Christianity. At times, Recreating Africa is Atlantic history at its best. Sweet is well versed in both African—especially the relatively well-documented cultures of Angola—and Brazilian cultural history, and he deftly weaves his cases together to construct his central argument about African religious practices. He carefully avoids reifying a generic African culture. Occasionally, his evidence allows him to distinguish between West and Central African practice, but given that the majority of Brazil’s slaves came from the latter region, the dominant culture in Portuguese America was “probably Mbundu in origin” (p. 227). Indeed, Recreating Africa makes a useful counterpoint to the essays in Linda Heywood’s Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002). Some portions of the book do not cohere quite as well; early chapters on demography, kinship (including same-sex relationships), and the brutalities of slave life—the latter graphically detailed—are not fully integrated into the discussion of religious practices. Similarly, the chapter that analyzes the determined allegiance of Christian and Muslim slaves to their respective faiths does not advance his argument about African culture. Inevitably, one is left to wonder whether the cases brought before the Inquisition are truly representative of cultural practices in colonial Brazilian society. And, at times, Book Reviews / Background 499 Sweet may be overstating the efficacy of religious resistance. Many slaves, after all, opted to flee to Palmares, the long-lived quilombo (runaway slave community) also profoundly shaped by Angolan culture, which represented a very different response to slavery. hendrik kraay, University of Calgary Background Historia general de América Latina. Vol. 1. Las sociedades originarias. Edited by teresa rojas rabiela. Coedited by john v. murra. Paris: UNESCO, 1999. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Figures. Bibliography. Indexes. 660 pp. Cloth. Since the sesquicentennial of European arrival in the Americas, there has been a florescence of very useful multivolume histories of Latin America. Many of these have adopted a long-range perspective, from the first human habitation of the continent to the present. Societal changes and transformations over time are covered with different emphases on details and points of view depending on the series, as well as on new data and research not easily accessible to readers elsewhere. They are usually oriented toward students and specialists. UNESCO’s projected nine-volume Historia general de América Latina is a welcome addition. Six hardbound, well-illustrated, and well-presented volumes have already been released. What distinguishes this series from others is that it has been conceived and executed by Latin American scholars and published in Spanish, with the inclusion of authors from the United States, Canada, and Europe. The Venezuelan scholar Germán Carrera, president of the Latin American UNESCO History Committee, states that the underlying principle of the series is “to contribute to the renewal of historical awareness of Latin America’s multiple ancestries” (p. 23). The first volume reevaluates the particular histories of the multiplicity of Latin American societies, from both their own vantage points and a world historical perspective. In the process, works by Latin American scholars who have not received the attention due them outside of their own countries are brought to light. The volume under review, the first in the series, deals with human societies from their early beginnings in Meso- and South America to the sixteenth century. Nineteen of the authors are Latin American, five are from the United States, and three are from France. The work offers a comprehensive perspective on the sociocultural history of the entire area. Following a very brief description of Latin America’s complex ecology and a chapter on the peopling of the Americas, two more general chapters set the conceptual framework for each of the volume’s two major divisions: Mesoamerica and South America. South America is divided into ten geocultural areas, and authors cover the development of human societies since their early beginnings to the sixteenth century. There is a brief chapter on the Inca Empire. Similarly, Mesoamerica is covered, although the Mexica (Aztec) Empire is only treated very briefly in the chapter on the Post Classic. One nevertheless gets a very good overview of the regional, site-specific and societal sequences. In contrast to 500 HAHR / August many other such volumes, treatment of the two major sixteenth-century empires does not overwhelm other information, historically or regionally. The regional introductions offer very good overviews and serve as introduction to the essays that follow. However, the volume lacks an overarching introduction integrating the specific studies and does not address societies of the Caribbean, where the first encounters with Europeans took place. Although the last chapter deals with the archaeology of island native settlements, there is no further information that brings us closer to the sixteenth century. The 24 case studies are short, but their brevity does not detract from their learned presentation and their value as guides to areas in which readers do not have expertise. The volume raises issues of interpretation that will not be resolved for some time. The antiquity of the peopling of the Americas (12,000? 17,000? or even 33,000+ years?) is still hotly debated, as is the adequacy of Amazonian zones for the support of complex societies. We also have much to learn about the numerous politically complex fifteenthand sixteenth-century societies that we know existed but are not yet well documented. There is a close relationship in puzzle-solving between large questions and the quality of material collected. Although this volume’s regional approach is not geared toward debate, it adds to the development of potentially productive inquiries in a general framework that I consider very valuable. Focusing on local and regional data—artifact by artifact, stone by stone—we have rescued sites and peoples from oblivion, even if only in our recognition of them. But, as the volume points out, there is still a great deal of work to be done, both in the field and in the archives. It is my hope that ethnohistorians, intrigued by information presented in this and other recent volumes, will expand our knowledge of specific groups and of more widespread social, political, and economic systems as they sift through the surviving reams of unexplored documents. juan a. villamarin, University of Delaware Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas. Edited by richard l. burger and lucy c. salazar. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. Photographs. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. viii, 230 pp. Cloth, $45.00. This excellent interdisciplinary collection focuses on the nature of Machu Picchu as a royal estate owned by Pachacuti Inca, offering readers a broader understanding of the site in light of current archaeological, historical, anthropological, and architectural research. Despite Machu Picchu’s magnificence and perennial appeal as a tourist site, few publications provide such a comprehensive overview of this important Inca settlement in light of recent scientific research. Articles from both Peruvian and U.S. scholars address the function and evolution of Machu Picchu from different perspectives. One of the most interesting aspects addresses the changing roles of the site, from an icon symbolizing the imperial power of Pachacuti Inca to its modern role as an emblem of Peruvian identity. The book provides a new vision of Machu Picchu based on the reanalysis of materials from the Yale University excavations directed by Hiram Bingham in 1912 Book Reviews / Background 501 and a reevaluation of Bingham’s initials interpretations. It also aims to demonstrate that Machu Picchu was in fact an important royal estate owned by Pachacuti Inca. The book also provides a catalog of the current touring exhibit from the Bingham excavations, Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Inca. This catalog is an invaluable resource to Andean scholars and provides detailed information on the materials recovered by the Yale expeditions. Hiram Bingham’s original article on the discovery of Machu Picchu (first published in 1913) is reproduced in order to provide a historical background. Lucy Salazar then provides a fascinating reevaluation of the function of Machu Picchu, in light of royal imperial estates, based on examination of the architectural layout, associated cultural remains, and ethnohistory. She argues that the site was a royal estate symbolizing the imperial power and military prowess of Pachachuti Inca. Salazar contrasts Machu Picchu with most imperial settlements—its unique features as a royal estate involved with diplomatic feasting, religion, and as a country estate used by the royal family for entertainment and diplomacy. She also contrasts the site with other imperial royal estates to highlight, for example, the marked involvement of Pachacuti’s royal lineage in religion, as seen in the large number of shrines and the multiethnic character of the settlement. Susan Niles skillfully lays out the theoretical background of Inca royal estates, based on research on the Urubamba region, in order to provide a comparative framework. Using ethnohistory and architecture, Niles discusses the ways in which Inca royal lineages (panacas) functioned as corporate kin groups involved in the administration of estates and the allocation of resources. She also explores the slip inheritance system— based on the principle that government position, but not resources, are inherited by the Sapa Inca’s heir. She explores the effects of this institution on the functioning and organization of royal panacas, providing a captivating account of the multiethnic social composition of royal estates, their acquisition, and their involvement in the elite economy (where their significance often surpassed that of the state imperial economy). She also describes architectural differences between Inca royal estates and other Inca settlements, including royal palaces elsewhere. Her theoretical framework helps explain temporal variations in architecture and use of landscape between Pachacuti’s royal estates and those of his successors. Valencia Zegarra, the Peruvian archaeologist responsible for the most substantial archaeological work in Machu Picchu since Hiram Bingham, provides a detailed account of the recent archaeological findings in the site’s lower east flank agricultural terraces, ritual caves, and the Inca road beyond Machu Picchu. Her discussion of the system of water canals and fountains in Machu Picchu is especially interesting. Richard Burger summarizes several analyses of the cultural materials recovered by the Yale expeditions. Using John Verano’s reanalysis of nearly two hundred burials, along with bone chemistry analysis, Burger reconstructs the health, age, and diet profiles of Machu Picchu’s population. He also addresses the social status and ethnicity of burial remains, concluding that the site’s burials represent retainers from different parts of the empire and not members of the royal family or their guests. Burger’s insights involving the evaluation of 502 HAHR / August the range of craft production activities conducted at Machu Picchu round out an excellent and exhaustive summary of the current research Machu Picchu’s material remains. Finally, Jorge A. Flores Ochoa discusses the religious, symbolic, and political significance of Machu Picchu to contemporary Quechua communities, local residents, and the Peruvian government. He explores the use of archaeological sites as sacred spaces by modern Quechua communities, where periodic offerings to the Pachamama (Mother Earth) are performed. He provides a historical account of the dynamics of the Inti Raymi, an ancient Inca ceremony on the June solstice originally conducted in the Inca plaza at Cuzco and now celebrated in the vicinities of the ruins of Sacsahuaman. He then provides a critical review of the importance of the Sanctuary of Machu Picchu, aimed at protecting the cultural, historical, and natural biodiversity of the area, along with the emerging image of Machu Picchu as a spiritual and esoteric center attracting an international tourist clientele seeking mystical knowledge. Finally, he analyzes Machu Picchu as an emerging symbol of national identity, as seen in the recent participation of broad segments of the Peruvian society in the struggle to protect the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu, as well as its use by recent governments as a symbol of political legitimization. This book is of fundamental importance to Andean archaeologists, historians, and scholars interested in pre-Hispanic Latin America. It offers an array of contributions drawing from archaeology, history, anthropology, and contemporary politics to understand the ever-changing functions of this site. sonia alconini, University of Texas at San Antonio Journal of a Residence in Chile During the Year 1822, and a Voyage from Chile to Brazil in 1823. By maria graham. Edited by jennifer hayward. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2003. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xxiii, 336 pp. Cloth, $69.50. Paper, $24.50. In the preface to her Journal’s original 1824 edition, Maria Graham expressed a vision of Chile’s future. “There is so much good in that country, so much in the character of the people and the excellence of the soil and climate, that there can be no doubt of the ultimate success of their endeavours.” Just a year earlier, however, an uprising overthrew “supreme director” Bernardo O’Higgins and sharply divided the country. Distressed by this event, she fervently hoped that her journal might “contribute directly or indirectly . . . to smooth those difficulties.” Maria Graham would never have guessed of Chile’s fate 180 years later, nor the enduring value of her own acute observations. This new publication of Graham’s Journal—with its landscapes, Santiago tertulias, and political proclamations—offers this work to a new generation. We are indebted to editor Jennifer Hayward, who includes her own assessment of Graham’s work, two reviews from 1824, and a useful index. Hayward chose to delete six long appendixes and (recognizing the dated nature of Graham’s “Sketch of the History of Chile”) reversed the original order, placing the diary first and the historical sketch second. Book Reviews / Background 503 As an English professor, Jennifer Hayward brings a new perspective to the study of Graham’s diary. She is less interested in the work’s historical content than in Graham’s role in the development of female writers. Hayward compares her to Mary Wollstonecraft and Charlotte Brontë as she discusses Graham’s challenge in creating a narrative persona. Hayward observes that when Graham discusses economics and politics, she uses a masculine narrative persona, but when she discusses personalities and living spaces, she uses a female one. It is this latter persona, which describes human relations and daily life, that gives lasting value to her work. Whereas four contemporary British males’ travel narratives of Chile are no longer in print, Hayward remarks, Graham’s narrative keeps being reissued. In addition to the feminine characteristics that defi ne Graham, Hayward also emphasizes her nationalism and class status. In a nod to postcolonial theorists, Hayward states that “travel narratives became increasingly relevant as colonization became central to British nationalist and industrial ambitions” (p. 291). From this theoretical perspective, Graham’s legacy is similar to that of the British merchants who established prominent commercial houses in Valparaiso. To document Graham’s upper-class bias, Hayward points to the author’s statements about the superiority of English morals over “Spanish corruption and Chilean primitiveness.” In this deconstruction of Maria Graham and her work, Hayward does not evaluate the author’s contribution to Chilean history. She fails to recognize Graham’s unique insights about Chile’s transition from colony to nation. For social historians, Graham’s sketches are like the images of a documentary filmmaker. Her education, as well as her values, shape her observations. Her interpretations of prominent figures such as José Miguel Carrera, Bernardo O’Higgins, José de San Martín, and Lord Cochrane influence historians today. Though Graham is an upper-class British woman, her class, nationality, and gender do not delimit her work. Chileans find her generous, discriminating portraits credible and authentic. They have never erected a statue to her, but perhaps they should consider doing so. Not only did she record their country’s past, but she helped shape its future. john rector, Western Oregon University 504 HAHR / August Historical Atlas of Central America. By carolyn hall and héctor pérez brignoli. Cartography by john v. cotter. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Figures. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. xiv, 321 pp. Cloth, $99.95. All scholars of Central America and the Western Hemisphere will welcome this reference work, the first comprehensive atlas of the region, containing carefully researched maps that provide insights into the history of the Central American isthmus. The volume contains over five hundred full-color maps detailing the region’s locational and physical characteristics, its demography, cultures, and history. Carefully prepared by two geographers and a historian, the oversized volume is organized into two-page sections; each includes several maps and a brief text narrating the events portrayed in the maps, in many cases accompanied by graphs, charts, and photos. The maps were prepared first, with the text designed to complement the maps. The preface states that the work seeks to encompass “a detailed cartographic survey of Central America’s development” and “a text offering a new interpretation” (p. xi). The text’s balanced narration of the historical events reflects prevailing historical interpretations, as is appropriate for a reference work. The authors stress that “the complexity and diversity of Central America exceeds those of many areas that are far larger” (p. xi) and that the isthmus played a central role in global and regional transportation. Reflecting this isthmian outlook, both the maps and accompanying narratives focus on the common elements, regionwide trends, and events of broad significance, rather than events in particular sections or the individual countries. Adopting and laying out clearly a broad definition of the region, the work extends outside the confines of the colonial Captaincy General of Central America to include Belize and Panama. Other areas that at times were governed through and considered part of this colonial jurisdiction (such as portions of southern Mexico and the Yucatán) are also included. Residents of the isthmus do not always include areas beyond the five core countries when discussing Central America. The initial pages use maps, charts, and graphs to provide comparative data on the physical, geological, climatic, and environmental dimensions of the region and place the region in its global setting. Coverage of the colonial era deals not just with the Spanish Empire but also with struggles between competing colonial powers to gain control of the region. Detailed maps cover such aspects as the movements of the conquistadores, settlement and population patterns, towns, encomiendas, land use, haciendas, commercial networks, and trade. Due consideration is also given to the situation of the Indians, the church, and such aspects as pirates, fortifications, transport, and transisthmian routes. The maps of colonial jurisdictions clearly demonstrate the origins of postindependence boundary disputes. The two chapters covering the postcolonial era include maps tracing conflicts and uprisings, as well as economic aspects such as crops, industrialization, shipping lines, transportation routes, and urbanization. Scholars will undoubtedly find the detailed maps tracing the expansion of key crops, the changing balance of the economic Book Reviews / Colonial Period 505 importance of the key urban centers, and such aspects as health and education, poverty, migrants and refugees, agrarian reform, and environmental characteristics, most useful, since they provide unique regional perspectives. Inevitably, a work of this type involves editorial decisions that will surprise some users. Seeing an oversized volume labeled as an atlas, the typical reader is likely to be surprised to fi nd that there are few full-page maps. Rather, there are typically several smaller maps on each two-page spread and relatively few full-page ones. This partly reflects the shape and size of Central America in relation to the page size. There are several regional maps spread over two facing pages, but they overlap rather than fitting together into a single overview. This organization reflects the decision to include narration as well as the maps, charts, and graphs, while limiting each topical section to a single spread. Reflecting the authors’ determination to focus on regionwide perspectives, the volume lacks detailed full-page maps of individual nations. Although some maps show the distribution of items by provinces within different nations, there are no maps labeling provinces by name. While the authors can assume that scholars using the atlas will already be familiar with the provinces, since this is intended as a reference work, some users would undoubtedly have appreciated full-page political maps of each country. This volume constitutes a valuable contribution to the study of Central America and will be useful to both scholars of the region and to general users wishing to learn about Central America. It will become an essential item for all university and research libraries and for scholars in all disciplines who study Central America. kenneth j. grieb, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh Colonial Period Butterflies Will Burn: Prosecuting Sodomites in Early Modern Spain and Mexico. By federico garza carvajal. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. Illustrations. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. xx, 310 pp. Cloth, $55.00. Paper, $21.00. Butterflies Will Burn weaves together criminal, inquisitional, and literary sources to show that attitudes toward so-called sodomites grew as much out of the needs of a burgeoning Spanish Empire as they did out of the religious conviction that male same-sex desire was immoral. Garza Carvajal argues that male homosexuality in the transatlantic Iberian world has been poorly understood within early modern European historiography. He posits that definitions of manliness, at least the manner in which they came to define acceptable male sexuality, resulted from an uneven discourse between the secular and ecclesiastical repressive apparatuses and the “unmanly” homosexuals they repressed. Donna Guy and Eileen Suárez Findlay have fruitfully applied similar methods in understanding the construction of norms of acceptability in Argentina and Puerto Rico, but Garza Carvajal’s application to the study of male homosexuality in Spain and early Mexico is novel. 506 HAHR / August Garza Carvajal musters a formidable knowledge of Golden Age literature and is at his best when dealing with early modern Spain. The book meticulously traces changes in the intellectual articulations of manliness; understanding the discursive elements of manliness and sodomy form a core of the book’s goals. To justify conquest first of the Moors and later of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Spanish discourse juxtaposed the essential qualities of acceptable manliness against supposed effeminacy and propensity for sodomy among these conquered peoples. In a way, the thesis resembles Richard Trexler’s explanations for the justification of conquest (Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas, Cornell Univ. Press, 1995), but Garza Carvajal marshals a stronger array of primary sources, ingeniously buttressing his hypothesis with case studies. Garza Carvajal also uncovers how Spaniards came to view sodomy as a foreign contagion that could infect all men if not for the vigilance of the authorities. Thus, repression and brutality against perceived sodomites represented a small price in exchange for the well-being of the nation. Yet, imposing a single standard against sodomy proved difficult due to the cultural differences within Spain’s dominions. Garza Carvajal uses Catalina de Erauso’s resistance to dress and behavior codes to inform a discussion of the irony in a transvestite woman embodying idealized manliness and also of how notions of manliness spread throughout Spain’s holdings. Erauso, who traveled widely during her remarkable life, serves as the perfect vehicle for the discussion of attitudes throughout the empire. To trace these varied attitudes, Garza Carvajal uses early modern literature and criminal records to such effect that the particular sections could serve as models for the successful blending of apparently disparate sources. Despite its overall strengths, the sections on New Spain prove problematic. For one thing, the number of cases falls far short of the claimed 125 for the years 1657–58 (p. 9). Indeed, only two cases receive substantial discussion. The problem lies not with the number of cases (after all, records dealing with sodomy are notoriously rare) but rather with the author’s claims to the contrary. Garza Carvajal’s discussion of the secondary literature on natives leaves out important sources, most notably the works of Miguel León Portilla and James Lockhart. As well, no mention is made of Jorge CañizaresEsguerra’s work, despite the transatlantic intellectual nature of the book. Natives come across as largely passive: painted as sodomites by Spaniards but without a voice in the resulting colonial discourse. Yet the very cultural changes discussed came about partly as a result of indigenous influences. Perhaps this results from giving too much credit to the criminal and inquisitional sources. Dennis Tedlock’s warnings against the believability of official records notwithstanding, Garza Carvajal at times takes too much at face value the content of the documents. Could individuals discussed in the book, such as Correa, have hosted the alleged parties without at least a blind eye from the authorities (as Luiz Mott argues for Brazil), or does Correa’s testimony simply reflect what the authorities wanted to hear? An in-depth discussion of methodology would have gone a long way toward explaining the use of sources and avoiding confusion over interpretations. The book’s significant contributions far outweigh its minor shortcomings, how- Book Reviews / Colonial Period 507 ever. Garza Carvajal’s study represents the first scholarly work of attitudes toward male homosexuality, sodomy, and transvestites in Spain and its colonies. He skillfully uses often-ignored sources such as literature, chronicles, and art to piece together a hidden history of resistance to antihomosexual repression. The work stands as a testament to what an imaginative scholar can achieve with an ironclad determination to explore new sources. The book would serve excellently for upper-division courses and graduate seminars and should be considered required reading for those interested not only in the fields of sexuality, but also of cultural, intellectual, and empire histories. robinson herrera, Florida State University Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774–1871. By silvia marina arrom. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Photographs. Illustrations. Tables. Figures. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xii, 398 pp. Cloth, $59.95. Paper, $19.95. Silvia Marina Arrom provides a well-researched and thorough picture of the ultimately failed efforts of the state, the church, and private philanthropists to aid Mexico City’s legitimately needy, while forcing undeserving vagrants to either work or face internment. Arrom traces the changes of the Poor House experiment’s goals from the late eighteenth to late nineteenth century and how both its administration and residents influenced its function and the populace it served. Arrom’s study denies the conventional periodization of Mexican history and instead bridges the colonial and national periods. Furthermore, Arrom argues that the differentiation between heroes and villains in Mexican political histories proves overly simplistic. Arrom pieces her study together using archival sources from Seville, Mexico City, and Salt Lake City, as well as various newspapers and secondary materials. Michel Foucault and the social control school influenced her analysis, which was initially meant to serve as a “Latin American example of the state mobilizing its coercive powers against a disorderly populace” (p. 3). The finished book moves beyond the preliminary works of Gabriel Haslip-Viera and Moisés González Navarro, highlighting the differences between the Poor House’s proposed goals and the way it functioned in reality. Although the experiment sought to improve social control in Mexico City, it was less rigid than Foucault’s asylum. Arrom opens with a broad examination of the problem of beggars and vagrants in Mexico City from 1774 to 1871 and within this context details the establishment of the Poor House. The experiment heeded dual and somewhat contradictory initial aims: a campaign against mendicity and a charity project for the deserving poor. The Poor House reflected a late-eighteenth-century watershed, when enlightened reformers sought to transform traditional charity into more rational poverty relief by disciplining beggars and forcing them to work. The Poor House initially flourished, but by 1800 it faced financial difficulties and resistance from the poor. In 1806 it was reorganized into four departments: the Patriotic School, the Department of Worthy Paupers, the 508 HAHR / August Department of Correction, and the Department of Secret Births. This marked a turning point that undermined its original goals. The new departments specifically targeted white paupers and prevented their downward social movement, thus reinforcing a social hierarchy based on white privilege. Additionally, they received fewer adults and more children. Independence and the early republican years brought material hardship and increased attention to the needs of Poor House employees. The Department of Worthy Paupers, guided by the Poor House’s original goals, shrank and became a part of the expanding Patriotic School. This signaled the end of the original social project and an increased focus on educating poor children, who represented potential paupers. While many historians tout the accomplishments of the liberal state, Arrom argues it failed to improve the Poor House and “instead of replacing caridad with beneficiencia, the Reforma merely undermined the already faltering welfare system, and left little in its place” (p. 227). Arrom credits the Second Empire, specifically Charlotte, wife of Maximilian I, with contributing most significantly to the Poor House. Charlotte feminized social welfare and inspired women to expand their roles in caring for the poor. Arrom discredits the notion that the Restored Republic’s liberal reforms helped the Poor House. Benito Juárez’s administration could not accommodate the large numbers of those in need, and the Poor House sank deeper into ruin. Arrom’s study is more than an innovative perspective of a project to eliminate begging in Mexico. It demonstrates the importance of Mexico City’s poor and the persistent problem they posed for leaders in both New Spain and Mexico, a problem that resonates even today. Arrom provides a window into the life of people seldom captured by history. While most of the Poor House residents did not leave personal traces, Arrom’s careful research draws them from the historical record. She uses municipal censuses to detail the ethnicity, gender, and social class of the inmates. She uses a daily register book to describe those forced into the Poor House and those turned away. She describes the work that both inmates and employees performed. When possible, she details the inmates’ opinions of the treatment they received. Her study demonstrates that the Poor House residents not only negotiated the function of the institution but also influenced its demise. The book contributes to an understanding of how different social classes lived and interacted in Mexico City and serves as a model for further studies on experiments of social control, charity projects for the poor, and the negotiations that lower classes used to control their own lives. verónica vallejo, Georgetown University Book Reviews / Colonial Period 509 Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia, 1770–1835. By aline helg. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Illustrations. Maps. Figures. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xiv, 363 pp. Cloth, $59.95. Paper $22.50. It is an interesting paradox that although Colombia has the third largest population of African origin in the Western Hemisphere (after Brazil and the United States), its leaders have consistently portrayed their country as a mestizo nation. On the surface, their historical dismissal of the black population can be explained by the fact that the majority of Afro-Colombians are inhabitants of the Caribbean coast and the Pacific lowlands, which are far away and isolated from the highland capital, and that despite the density of their numbers, they have failed to develop a “collective black- or African-derived identity” (p. 3). However, Aline Helg is not content with these simplistic rationalizations. In an effort to uncover more plausible reasons for Colombia’s neglect of its Afro-Caribbean population, she has written an encyclopedic history of the Caribbean region, which traces its social, cultural, economic, and political development from the late Bourbon era through the early national period. In tackling this intriguing topic, Helg examined an impressive array of archival documents and secondary sources located in Cartagena, Santa Marta, Bogotá, France, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States. More specifically, she wanted to find the answers to three questions: First, why did the lower classes of color on the Caribbean coast not collectively challenge the small white elite during the crucial period of national formation? Second, why did race not become an organizational category in the region? And third, why did the Caribbean coast integrate into Andean Colombia without asserting its Afro-Caribbeanness? In answering these questions, Helg produces a cogently argued monograph that throws light on a multitude of topics, including Bourbon policies, frontiers, Indians, race relations, gender roles, the war of independence, and the sociopolitical views of independence-era leaders such as Simón Bolívar and Francisco de Paula Santander. In her conclusion, Helg summarizes her analysis and returns to her initial questions. She suggests that the Caribbean region’s postcolonial fragmentation and dependency on Bogotá largely “resulted from people’s continuing identification, throughout the war for independence and after 1821, with individual cities, towns, and villages rather than with their province, their region, or New Granada” (p. 238). By opting for legal racial inclusion from the time of the first independence, the new national leaders embraced a vision of a racially mixed majority. The decision to grant legal equality and suffrage to all adult men, regardless of race, helped to erase the “stain of slavery,” even though slavery was not completely abolished until 1852. The acceptance of mulattoes and blacks into the Caribbean militias also promoted “a fuzzy yet enduring racial hierarchy,” and the development of popular support for the Liberal and Conservative Parties further integrated local and regional Caribbean constituencies into the Colombian nation. As a result, nonwhites posed no problems to the elite, as long as they did not challenge the socioracial hierarchy and existing power relations. In the few instances when they did threaten white 510 HAHR / August supremacy, such as mulatto general José Padilla’s challenge to Bolívar in 1828, nonwhites were quickly repressed or, as in the case of Padilla, executed. Finally, Helg argues that “the most abiding reason why the Caribbean region avoided social conflict and remained within New Granada despite its racial distinctiveness was the continuing existence of vast uncontrolled hinterlands and frontiers as well as an unguarded littoral offering viable alternatives to rebellious and free-spirited individuals” (p. 262). In one sense, Helg’s book is only the most recent contribution to the boom in regional studies dealing with Colombia’s Caribbean, which began more than two decades ago with Orlando Fals Borda’s four-volume Historia doble de la costa (Valencia Editores, 1979–86). Her placement of her subject within a comparative perspective of the Americas expands its relevance to researchers beyond those of us who concentrate on Colombian history. Scholars interested in the interaction of elite and popular classes, in mestizaje, in slave systems, in the role of women in the wars of independence, and in frontier societies and Indian resistance will surely fi nd insights that will enhance their understanding of these complex topics regardless of their country specialization. In short, Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia seems certain to become a classic monograph in the literature concerning the development of Latin American nations in the early nineteenth century. jane m. rausch, University of Massachusetts–Amherst Women’s Lives in Colonial Quito: Gender, Law, and Economy in Spanish America. By kimberly gauderman. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xv, 177 pp. Cloth, $35.00. Kimberly Gauderman’s new book raises important questions about a generation of scholarship on gender and colonial Latin American society. Finally, readers have an Englishlanguage monograph devoted to the subject of women as active property owners and economic actors in the seventeenth-century Andes. Gauderman’s work consistently and skillfully challenges the model of patriarchy as appropriate for considering gendered relations in colonial Latin America. She contends that previous scholars’ inspirations in fields such as European gender history or the history of the family have ignored Iberia’s unique legal codes and power structures. By focusing on Iberian distinctiveness, the author finds patriarchy holds little explanatory power for women’s lives in colonial Quito. The book moves from this provocative opening to a detailed analysis of legal codes and judicial cases. For each of her related arguments, Gauderman engages with existing gender scholarship. For instance, Gauderman contends that husbands in colonial Quito did not have absolute power, as heads of households, to control their wives or the property of women household members. Drawing on early scholarship by Clarence Haring and John Leddy Phelan, Gauderman argues that the functioning of Spanish colonial society depended not on the absolute power of husbands, as modeled through patriarchy, but rather on a “system of decentralized authority” (p. 6). Thus, the system functioned to Book Reviews / Colonial Period 511 offer a relative degree of independence for women. Scholars who have harkened to colonial traditions in explaining women’s oppression in the nineteenth century have missed important changes in the application of Iberian law from the seventeenth-century era (Gauderman’s focus) through to the modern era. On the issue of the physical abuse of women, Gauderman alleges that scholars such as Richard Boyer have overstated society’s tolerance of men’s abuse, because they have relied on church records. Judicial records, Gauderman posits, prove that the Iberian legal system offered little tolerance for abuse and that society (as glimpsed through the testimony of witnesses) viewed such behavior as inappropriate. If scholars have portrayed the legal realm as one where patriarchy historically limited women’s power, the economic realm is another case. Gauderman allows that earlier scholarship established the preeminence of women as actors in the colonial economy; however, she charges that this work did not provide explanations for this unusual finding. Gauderman focuses on the decentralized nature of power relations in the Iberian model to show that society in textile-rich Quito not only allowed, but even needed, women to be economic actors. Further, through in-depth research of Quito’s market women (gateras), Gauderman argues that race was more important than gender or marital status in determining their economic opportunities and achievements. She provides and excellent reconstruction of the decades-long legal battles between indigenous market women and Spanish grocers as the former (presumed to be the underdogs) succeeded in gaining rights to expand their commercial activities in Quito’s markets. Gauderman’s work will undoubtedly influence debate on gender and Latin American history, and thus a couple of caveats are in order. Gauderman is at the forefront of a set of scholars who are recasting urban colonial history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through frameworks combining gender and ethnicity. The field thus far lacks the depth to assess when and why women’s lives in Quito are distinct from other cities. What set of circumstances, for example, made market women rise to the fore as aggressive litigators here and not elsewhere? Moreover, while Gauderman cautions against bringing outside assumptions to bear on the Spanish American case, her decision to reject the explanatory power of patriarchy in its entirety should not pass without critical examination. Questions linger, for example, as to why women and not men appear as the majority who seek satisfaction for divorce, adultery, and abuse through judicial or ecclesiastical channels. Further, the strict definition of patriarchy employed in the analysis limits consideration of significant factors, such as access to official power structures. Ultimately, Gauderman has produced a must-read book for both Latin Americanists and scholars of women’s history. Her work offers an important and dynamic account of seventeenth-century Quiteño history in a book, while filling a significant gap for undergraduate teaching in terms of geographical and chronological focus. Her subject matter lends itself to the colonial survey, as well as specialized courses on the Andes, gender, law, economy, and comparative women’s history. The writing is accessible, and her rendering of impressive research, especially in the latter chapters, provides anecdotes that will make for good classroom discussion. Gauderman’s main contention—that 512 HAHR / August women’s ability to achieve degrees of independence was not exceptional, but rather integral to the functioning of colonial society—helps the field continue to integrate gender into the broad stream of Latin American history. jane e. mangan, Davidson College Bourbon Peru, 1750–1824. By john r. fisher. Liverpool Latin American Studies: New Series, no. 4. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. xix, 224 pp. Paper, $26.95. In his most recent book, John Fisher has come, in some ways, full circle to examine the final decades of Spanish rule in Peru. Over 30 years ago, he published Government and Society in Colonial Peru: The Intendant System 1784–1814 (Athlone, 1970). Although it contains important information about economic life in the late colonial Andes, the book was chiefly an analysis of how the Bourbon reformers instituted the Peruvian intendancies and their impact in the viceroyalty. Bourbon Peru covers some of the same ground but ranges far more widely, both in terms of the themes and the period analyzed. It synthesizes the conclusions Fisher has reached over an eminent career studying the impact of the Bourbon century on Peru. Bourbon Peru, it should be noted, is essentially the same as Fisher’s El Perú borbónico, 1750–1824 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2000) but lacks the illustrations contained in the latter. Although the book concentrates on the period after 1750, on the grounds that the change in ruling dynasty had comparatively little impact in the Andes prior to that date, Fisher does provide a chapter that sketches the characteristics of the Peruvian viceroyalty prior to that date. The next three chapters analyze the political, economic, and social structures of Peru and the influence of Bourbon policy on them. Fisher is particularly good in summarizing the impact of changes in commercial policy, a subject that he has written about elsewhere in considerable detail. His previous study on the late colonial mining industry provides the foundation for his contention that, despite pessimism about Peru’s future following the viceroyalty’s dismemberment in 1776, the expansion of silver production at Cerro de Pasco and other mines in Lower Peru financed commercial expansion and a somewhat unexpected prosperity. These ideas are, of course, not new, having been argued by Fisher and others previously, but they are succinctly and clearly elaborated here. Fisher’s evaluation is dependent, of course, on his perspective. He is most interested in Spain’s relationship with the colony. What seemed prosperous to the royal treasury (the revenues of which increased rapidly) or to the merchants importing European goods did not necessarily equate to economic well-being for the growing population of Indians and castas. The imperial reforms tightened metropolitan control over the colony and extracted more profit from it. It is less clear what impact they had on the health of economic sectors such as agriculture, which received less attention from Bourbon officialdom. Book Reviews / Colonial Period 513 Chapters 4–6 focus on colonial social structures, with an eye toward how they affected the Great Andean Rebellion of the early 1780s and then the movement for independence. Creoles may have helped provoke the Túpac Amaru revolt, but they quickly concluded that “preservation of their stratified and unequal social order” depended “upon the exploitation of indigenous labour through a variety of semi-coercive institutions” (p. 84). They accepted the oppression of the Bourbon reforms as the cost required to maintain the colonial order. Heightened imperialism contributed to the Great Rebellion and to the 1813–14 revolt spearheaded by Mateo García Pumacahua, but it was insufficient to provoke widespread creole support for independence. Much of the turmoil of the final years of colonial rule stemmed from attempts by the elites of Cuzco and Arequipa to assert their autonomy from Lima rather than from Spain. Unlike in Mexico, in Peru no sense of nationalism developed uniting racial and regional groups. Fisher contends, in fact, that Peru retained its colonial social and economic structures until 1850, long after political independence had been imposed. The book does reflect certain idiosyncrasies. For example, although the previous chapters are chiefly synthetic interpretations of existing research, Fisher builds the chapter dealing with independence on his own new primary research. Those who do not read Spanish will have some difficulty, as the quotations have not been translated into English. The book also contains the occasional idiosyncratic comment that should delight historians familiar with research in Lima. Fisher recounts, for example, his initial experience as a graduate student in the City of the Kings. A prominent Peruvian historian invited the young British scholar to his home for dinner. Also present were the historian’s gaggle of students, who were invited to listen to the conversation and observe the meal but to participate in neither. Bourbon Peru is a thoughtful, mature synthesis that makes rewarding study for all those interested in the late colonial Andes. It marks a relatively brief but valuable starting point for anyone interested in eighteenth-century Peru, both in terms of interpretation and bibliography. kendall w. brown, Brigham Young University 514 HAHR / August Slavery and the Economy of São Paulo, 1750–1850. By francisco vidal luna and herbert s. klein. Social Science History. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Tables. Figures. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xii, 273 pp. Cloth, $60.00. Paper, $24.95. This important book should be on the reading list of anyone planning to write or teach about the history of Brazilian agriculture, landholding, or slavery. Containing research on the economy and society of the Brazilian province of São Paulo prior to the development of its famous coffee economy, it might well have been entitled São Paulo before Coffee. It demonstrates that between 1750 and 1850, farmers in São Paulo produced food crops and sugar for local and regional consumption on large, small, and medium-sized properties using family and slave labor. It shows that the vast majority of these farmers owned no slaves, and that 90 percent of those who did owned fewer than five. This was far from the famous plantation society economy of the second half of the nineteenth century that made São Paulo the largest producer of coffee in the world. In fact, Luna and Klein argue that the coffee economy gradually emerged from this diverse earlier society and economy, as farmers used the income from selling food crops to invest in coffee and the slaves to tend it. The original coffee farmers were not, therefore, a group of people totally separate from the producers of the earlier period, but people who, over time, chose to focus more resources on coffee. The book is based on extensive documentation. Klein and Vidal analyzed data from manuscript population and production censuses taken in 56 different São Paulo communities between 1777 and 1829, lists of which are included in the book’s appendix. The decision to cover all of São Paulo allows Luna and Klein to demonstrate significant differences among and between the province’s various districts, as Bert Barickman did for the Recôncavo (A Bahian Counterpoint: Sugar, Tobacco, Cassava, and Slavery in the Recôncavo, 1789-1910, Stanford, 1998). It also allowed the authors to avoid the frequent criticism of detailed community studies: that of whether or not the fi ndings can be generalized. This study makes a major contribution to the historiography of Brazilian agriculture, landholding, and rural labor. The authors show that latifundia did not dominate São Paulo from the beginning and that food crop production was an important part of the São Paulo economy prior to 1850. This leads to the hypothesis, never explicitly stated, that the latifundia was not everywhere in Brazil a legacy of the colonial period but rather the product of the second half of the nineteenth century. São Paulo’s large plantations, with their large gangs of slaves, developed over time, as people already there, many of whom were family farmers, chose to use the profits from their domestically oriented farms to purchase African slaves and plant coffee. Despite the significance of its argument, Slavery and the Economy of São Paulo is a book for specialists. The text would be too technical for most advanced undergraduates, and the authors do not frame their important arguments in an easily accessible way. Their close attention to descriptive data analysis requires an understanding of the Book Reviews / Colonial Period 515 methodology and language of social science statistics, including ratios, rates, means, and Gini coefficients. Their decision not to include the kinds of exemplary stories of peoples’ experiences—the stuff that provides texture and richness to history—means that the text will not appeal to a wide audience. Finally, scholars of social and cultural history—whether proponents of “cultural studies” or not—will find this text frustrating. Those interested in the census as a cultural and historical artifact with much to teach us about the societies that produced them will find no discussion of the history of the census in São Paulo or the ways census categories changed over time. The authors do not even tell us why government officials spent so much time counting the people and the production of a region that they considered relatively marginal. Equally, historians of family and property will remark the absence of a discussion of the relationship between property ownership, marriage, and inheritance law. The authors seem to assume that the heads of households were the owners of all the property belonging to the household, when the reality was, at least technically, quite a bit more complicated. Similarly, those historians interested in slave life and slave conditions will find little new beyond sex and reproduction ratios. There is much to applaud in Society and Economy in São Paulo, however, not least the important effort to document social and economic patterns across space and time. The authors’ insistence that there was much more to Paulista history than coffee and large estates is a significant contribution to the historiography of Brazilian agriculture. It is perhaps because the study is potentially revolutionary that the reader is left frustrated by its failure to go beyond the detailed discussion of the data to describe what life was like for the people who lived in São Paulo before coffee. mary ann mahony, Central Connecticut State University Ya es otro tiempo el presente: Cuatro momentos de insurgencia indígena. By forrest hylton, felix patzi, sergio serulnikov, and sinclair thomson. La Paz: Muela del Diablo Editores, 2003. 279 pp. Paper. This work makes an important contribution to our understanding of the continuity of indigenous resistance in Alto Peru/Bolivia in the colonial and national periods. It offers case studies of native insurrection and mobilization between the 1740s and 2003, highlighting the elements and dynamics that inspired and bound together such movements: historical memory, methods and tactics, and the political and economic dynamics both within the indigenous communities and between them and their adversaries. The work also underscores the range of actions and goals of resistance, of which violent insurrection is only one expression. In a contribution analyzing anticolonial movements in La Paz from 1740 through 1781, Sinclair Thomson demonstrates that insurrectionary goals ranged from a desire for equality between Indians and non-Indians to the desire to subordinate or even eliminate the latter. In the case of the Chulumani siege of 1771, he also demonstrates how 516 HAHR / August rebel successes could both embolden the Indians and stimulate more radical desires. This is a critical point, as it highlights the ideologically dynamic, and factional, nature of many insurrections, especially that of 1780–82. Sergio Serulnikov examines the political effects of the Bourbon reforms in rural areas of Chayanta. The decline of the curacazgo as a vehicle for representing community interests was inherent to the regalist objective of increasing revenues, and efforts to contain clerical abuses within communities were an important component of the crown’s desire to restrict the power of the Catholic Church. At the village level, however, the result was increasing exploitation of the Indians and the combination and strategic interconnection of litigation and violence. This chapter’s strength is its micro-level analysis and its insight into the little-studied clerical-community relations during this period. With the increasing social and economic differentiation of the early twentieth century, modern ideologies such as communism and anarchism influenced the planning and expression of indigenous resistance. Forrest Hylton’s chapter emphasizes the linkages between largely urban radicals and the leaders of the 1927 Chayanta Rebellion. While these groups shared a desire for rural education, community lands, and a redistribution of political and economic power, according to Hylton, it was not so much ideological affinities that united them but rather the assistance provided by the artisans and intellectuals who supported publications and legal assistance for participants in the rebellion. On the basis of the linkages between these social groups, Hylton argues that the dawn of the revolutionary period of Bolivia was not the Chaco War but rather the 1927 Chayanta Rebellion. Political alliances and frictions are also the focus of Félix Patzi Paco’s chapter on recent indigenous mobilization. Unlike the earlier chapters based on documentary research, Patzi’s is more polemic in nature. Emphasizing the overlapping nature of class and ethnicity and the continuity of native demands, Patzi offers a detailed account of the events leading to the overthrow of former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada. While noting the fractious nature of relations between indigenous leaders Felipe Quispe and Evo Morales, he is critical of both for what he sees as their failure to develop political or economic plans or structures that are substantively different from the status quo and for their deviance from traditional community structures. While this work demonstrates the continuity and common features of indigenous resistance, it would clearly have benefited from additional chapters. There is almost no discussion of the Great Rebellion of 1780–82, and coverage then leaps forward to 1927. Thomson’s chapter has been published elsewhere (albeit in English), while Serulnikov’s very closely follows another similarly titled article. There is, however, no doubt that this work will have lasting value for scholars and students of indigenous rebellion, due to its emphasis on and exploration of the continuities of indigenous resistance in Alto Peru/Bolivia. nicholas a. robins, Duke University Book Reviews / Colonial Period 517 Escenas de la vida conyugal: Los conflictos matrimoniales en la sociedad colonial virreinal rioplatense. By viviana kluger. Buenos Aires: Editorial Quórum, 2003. 301 pp. Paper. Historians understand that in the midst of “fighting the good fight” for history, in which we are often confronted with unequal forces, one finds, almost inevitably, the impulse to desert, to flee, to disappear. This impulse to give up, to abandon the eventual encounter with the past, is more or less hidden in the composition of a type of account of the familiar, inscribed in the reconstruction of the traces of the mentality of an era. Many years after having been initiated into the field of Latin American family history by the pioneering works of Asunción Lavrín and the impulse of the Journal of Family History, edited by Tamara Hareven, attempts to explain this resistant social organization now demonstrate a certain tiredness. Today there are few theoretical innovations within a collective social subject constructed by means of structures, intimacy, and imagination. Escenas de la vida conyugal is a late arrival in this itinerary. The dilemma between models and practices cannot be resolved by means of a pseudotheory concerning matrimonial rights and duties, as the author proposes. It is a matter, instead, of an analytical operation already known to all: that of deciphering the specific conditions of possibility and the dynamic of different meanings of family. This is a task certainly completed by the historiography that oriented its questions toward matters connected to the idea of family at its cultural aspects, in a line of interpretation initiated by Donzelot and continued by Foucault and Bourdieu. In my opinion, this is a line of analysis that has been fully explored, and the book in question is evidence of this statement. This is not a matter of some specific problems within Escenas: a lack of basic historiographic references, the narrow concept of “social history” the author employs, or her curious way of incorporating opinions, citations, and contemporary testimony into a single narrative plane. No, I refer more broadly to the fact that the best of family history in recent decades, and that which has breathed fresh air into the field, has been that which incorporates two perspectives completely unknown to the author. The first rests in the deepening of an anthropological vision of the various family types and grounded in a long-range interpretive perspective in which demographic phenomena are converted into the subject of analysis. This perspective is notable in the work of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Barbara Todd, and Joan Bestard. The second perspective involves the application of the model of social networks capable of situationally describing the articulation of family behaviors in invisible strips of social domination, invisible to the analytic eye following traditional functionalist approaches. This excellent approach has been consolidated by regional economic history. My comments thus reflect my discomfort with fi nding here a holistic story, with little specific to the Río de la Plata, traditional in the sense of rewarding that magical perspective of justice so particular to legal historians, and believing to have found something called “reality,” stripped of all discursive operation. Books such as Kluger’s invite us to reaffirm some ideas. The historical account of marital conflict during the viceroyalty is the same thing as with the history of derecho indiano. Archival work must in 518 HAHR / August something more than the mere rescue of valuable documents. And, of course, it underscores the ominous conditions of intellectual production imposed by the current tragedy facing Argentina. Allow me a brief final commentary. Knowing firsthand the challenge implied in conducting research and publishing in Argentina today, where any academic work fi nds itself goaded by the crisis of the universities, the lack of libraries, and the monopoly exerted by Spanish publishing houses who exist solely to produce future bestsellers, Escenas deserves recognition for the effort the author must surely have made in bringing forth these reflections. ricardo cicerchia, CONICET / Universidad de Buenos Aires / University of Auckland National Period Sacrificed at the Alamo: Tragedy and Triumph in the Texas Revolution. By richard bruce winders. Military History of Texas Series. Abilene, TX: State House Press, 2004. Illustrations. Maps. Appendixes. Notes. Index. 167 pp. Cloth, $24.95. Fans of Bruce Winders now have another book to place on their shelves, one that certainly matches, in quality and clarity, other works by the noted historian and curator of the Alamo. Unlike most studies of the famous siege and capture of the Alamo in 1836, Winders spends little time or effort in detailing who exactly was in the fort, where they were when the final assault took place, what their last words must have been, and whether they fell fighting or fleeing. Not that these are not interesting and worthy issues to many, but this author attempts a macro history to explain what brought a small Mexican army and a still smaller Texas one fatefully to San Antonio in February and March of 1836. In doing so, Winders enriches our understanding of the Alamo in dozens of ways. The author first looks at the meaning of republicanism as an ideology, in order to explain how the Anglo-Texans thought war was to be fought. If ever Jacksonian democracy ran amok, it was among these Anglo-Texans attempting to organize a government, pick civilian and military leaders, craft the war’s objectives, and raise an army of military equals. It did not work, which explains much about the strange indecisiveness of those who defended the Alamo. At the same time, the conduct of the Mexican army under Santa Anna sprang from a different historical environment—one that allowed it to move much faster and more decisively than its northern opponents. No nineteenth-century war among those of European descent was complete without homage to Napoleon’s shade. Winders finds the Corsican’s influence everywhere in the Texas revolt, with deference to the unique Gulf Coast environment of flat, hot land sloping toward the ocean. Line and column, volley and bayonet, infantry versus cavalry, and traditional tactics for assaulting a fortified stronghold were common subjects in the training of all military officers, and Texas events followed standard military practices hammered out and honed in the long European wars of the first decades of the century. Book Reviews / National Period 519 Winders’s macro approach considers many other topics; among the most interesting is that of the Mexican civil war between centralists and federalists. Regardless of what some Texans might have thought, they were very much a part of this. Sacrifi ced at the Alamo demonstrates that what happened in San Antonio was merely a smaller version of what had happened to defeated federalists in the north a year earlier, in the so-called Rape of Zacatecas. If Mexican military leadership was consistent about anything, it was in its consensus on proper treatment toward defeated rebels. Giving quarter to traitors never seemed to produce the right results. No historical work on the Alamo will escape criticism, and Winders’s book will certainly receive some. His treatment of Santa Anna, for example, still has elements of an older view of the Mexican leader as a bombastic, inept Latin American caudillo. While acknowledging grave and tragic flaws in his character, modern scholarship has moved toward a more charitable view of the Mexican general, one that finds consistency in his political actions, patriotism in his approach to national problems, and decisiveness in pressing a military campaign. For a good and provocative read about the most famous event in Texas War of the 1830s, scholars on both side of the Rio will find Winders’s book well worth the time. james a. lewis, Western Carolina University Mexican Masculinities. By robert mckee irwin. Cultural Studies of the Americas. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Illustration. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xxxvi, 282 pp. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $19.95. In Mexican Masculinities, Robert McKee Irwin explores the “homoerotics of nation”— that is, how literary representations of social relationships between men defined what it meant to be a man and, he argues, to be from Mexico between the early 1800s and the middle of the twentieth century. The study builds on, and then departs from, Doris Sommer’s contention in Foundational Fictions (Univ. of California Press, 1991) that “the symbolic construction of nation as an imagined community occurred in nineteenthcentury Latin America through romantic literature’s use of heterosexual bonds as an allegory for national integration” (p. xxvii). Regarding Mexico, Irwin asserts that “national brotherhood,” as opposed to marriage, “came to symbolize national coherence.” Indeed, he notes that “male homosocial bonding is the key allegory of national integration in literature” (p. xxx). Irwin explores such themes as criminal male sexuality, the gendering of literature, and the homosexual panic of the 1940s and 1950s. To support his thesis, Irwin mines an impressive variety of well-known literary texts, broadsheets, novels, and popular science fiction to produce a discussion of the links between masculinity, sexuality, nation, and power that historians interested in issues of gender in contemporary Mexico will find thought-provoking. McKee Irwin clearly articulates the book’s goals, arguments, and operating assumptions. He distinguishes between maleness and masculinity, noting that maleness refers to 520 HAHR / August common, “natural” physical characteristics, whereas masculinity references learned or acquired attributes and behaviors. The first chapter explores ideas about masculinity and male sexuality across the nineteenth century, a period during which, Irwin argues, heterosexuality was viewed as the only natural form of sexual expression. Yet at the same time, intimate friendships among men were depicted everywhere in the national literature, even if they were not recognized as homosexual relationships by the reading public. He reviews such texts as Vicente Riva Palacios’s Los piratas del Golfo, Florencio M. del Castillo’s Hermana de los ángeles, and José Joaquin Fernández de Lizardi’s well-known El Periquillo Sarniento. Irwin argues that this nineteenth-century focus on male characters points toward virility as “a key concept in laying a foundational framework of national identity” and that “ubiquitous homosocial (and often homoerotic) bonding between men is the foundational trope in nineteenth-century Mexican literature” (p. 47). Irwin’s examination of the ways in which gender and sexuality were understood and represented during the Porfiriato will resonate with recent work by historians such as Pablo Piccato, Robert Buffi ngton, and Cristina Rivera-Garza. The second chapter focuses on representations of criminal male sexuality and scandals such as the dance of the “Famous 41.” The author turns to amateur criminologist Carlos Roumagnac’s studies of criminality and sexuality, as well as novels such as Federico Gamboa’s Santa, which portrays the life of a prostitute in late Porfirian Mexico City. The scandal (provoked by a police raid on a dance at which 20 of the 41 attendees were in drag) set the stage, Irwin argues, for a new discourse linking homosocial behavior and same-sex desire at the beginning of the twentieth century. Irwin’s discussion of virile versus effeminate literature in the context of the Mexican Revolution is the basis for the longest and perhaps most accessible chapter for readers not specialists in Mexican literature. Here Irwin analyzes male relationships in such renowned novels as Martín Luis Guzmán’s La sombra del caudillo and Mariano Azuela’s Los de abajo, as well lesser-known novels and texts, including Eduardo Urzaiz’s Eugenia, a futuristic science fiction account of a society in which men bear children. Describing what he calls the “great virility” debates in the 1920s, he notes that writers rejected the elitist modernism of the Porfiriato and portrayed virility through a nationalist literature that dealt with such gritty revolutionary themes as warfare, social conditions, and class struggle. In a provocative reading of Los de abajo, Irwin locates homoerotic images within the passages treating soldier Demetrio Macías and city slicker Luis Cuevas, arguing that the era’s so-called virile literature was nevertheless compatible with images of male same-sex desire. Irwin concludes with an examination of the publications and public image of the openly homosexual group of writers known as the Contemporáneos, who defied nationalist prescriptions regarding appropriate masculine behavior. In the last chapter, Irwin argues that by the 1950s, “homosexual desire and homophobic paranoia of homosexual desire are crucial aspects of Mexicanness” (p. 228). Mexican Masculinities complements a growing body of work on sexuality in Mexico and builds on recent examinations of gender and sexuality in Mexican literature, including work by Claudia Schaefer and Debra Castillo. The volume may, at times, prove alienating for readers not deeply familiar with the texts under discussion. For the most part Book Reviews / National Period 521 Irwin takes care to introduce the authors and themes, but occasional lapses makes for frustrating reading. Finally, some readers may disagree with his identification of homoerotic themes in specific passages or his downplaying of the roles of women—as mothers, daughters, teachers, prostitutes, soldaderas, and so on—in literature and political discourse regarding the Mexican nation. Analytically sophisticated and ambitious in the range of topics it treats, this book offers an intriguing study of both famous and lesserknown texts. Its arguments regarding gender representation and nation are well worth consideration by historians of society, culture, and lo mexicano. katherine elaine bliss, University of Massachusetts–Amherst Beware the Great Horned Serpent! Chiapas under the Threat of Napoleon. By robert m. laughlin. Studies on Culture and Society, no. 8. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. Plates. Illustrations. Map. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xiii, 302 pp. Paper, $28.50. The emergence of interdisciplinary approaches is a positive development in Latin American studies. The exchange of ideas between historians, political scientists, economists, sociologists, and other scholars drives some of the most creative contemporary research and sparks some of the most groundbreaking discoveries. Yet, the blending of disciplines can prove to be as problematic as it is fruitful. Here, Robert M. Laughlin attempts an anthropological, linguistic, and historical analysis of a unique independence-era document in the hopes of better illuminating the links between Spain, Spanish America, and indigenous America at the close of the colonial period. The result, however, is a work whose anthropological and linguistic merits outshine its historical value. Laughlin recounts his discovery of a Tzotzil-Maya text that proved to be an anonymous translation of an 1812 decree from the Spanish Council of Regency to the inhabitants of the colonies. The original version reads as a relatively straightforward, liberal-leaning appeal for the support of the Americas at a time when the loyalist Spanish government—well into its second year under siege at Cádiz at the hands of Napoleon’s armies—worked to implement a progressive constitution for the empire. As Laughlin demonstrates, however, the Chiapas-based author of the Tzotzil version transformed the tone, language, and mindset of the regency proclamation into a terrifying, apocalyptic morality play suffused with Mayan symbols and Catholic imagery. Here, the Tyrant Napoleon is reinterpreted as the Great Horned Serpent and the Antichrist in an effort to reformulate the regency agenda along more culturally relevant lines and to better convey to the native population the magnitude of the crisis facing the empire. Laughlin seeks to make sense of a confusing mix of ideals, motivations, images, and worldviews. In part 1, he places the decree in its historical context by sketching the individuals, events, and trends in early nineteenth-century Spain, New Spain, Guatemala, and Chiapas that shaped the promulgation of the decree. In part 2, he draws on anthropological and linguistic tools to delve deeper into its meaning. Here he focuses on the two versions of the proclamation and, through comparative analysis, builds a compelling case for the authorship of the Tzotzil version. An extensive and valuable appendix repro- 522 HAHR / August duces the proclamation in the original Spanish, the original Tzotzil, a revised Tzotzil, and an English translation. Beware the Great Horned Serpent! makes important contributions to anthropological and linguistic scholarship on indigenous communities at the close of the colonial period and illuminates the vast divide between the worldviews of the colonial Maya and of creole and peninsular Spaniards. The inability of church and state, after three hundred years, to penetrate effectively the indigenous mentality is remarkable testimony to the limitations of the Hispanization of Maya culture. At the same time, as one of the longest and thus rarest examples of colonial-era Tzotzil-Maya in existence, the proclamation also has great intrinsic value; Laughlin deserves credit for making it public. From a historical perspective, this study is most noteworthy for its attention to the Napoleonic threat to the Americas, an important but understudied aspect of the independence period. Yet, despite these particular recommendations, the book falls short as history, a failing I attribute to the author’s relative inexperience with modern historical analysis. Laughlin clearly appreciates the dramatic side of history, and he is drawn to this period by its operatic qualities. He takes pride in the fact that this study does not burden the reader with “an historical ‘argument’” (p. 11) and seems most concerned, in part 1, with telling a broadly appealing story. However, specialists (undoubtedly the majority of his audience) will question his reliance on a small number of suspect and out-of-date sources for the historical context and his indiscriminate use of quotations—a propensity which leads to the repetition of a surprising number of dubious interpretations and errors of fact. Did four-fifths of the Mexican creole clergy really hate the Spaniards (p. 47)? Was Viceroy Iturrigaray really imprisoned because peninsulares feared he wanted to become king (p. 48)? Was Prince Ferdinand “condemned to death” for his involvement in a plot to poison his mother, Queen María Luisa (p. 18)? Laughlin makes such statements as if they were unquestioned truth, often without direct reference to his sources, though a careful review of recent histories of the period would suggest otherwise. For example, I was surprised not to see reference to such works as Douglas Hilt’s The Troubled Trinity (Univ. of Alabama Press, 1987), Gabriel Lovett’s Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain (New York Univ. Press, 1965), Brian Hamnett’s La política española en una época revolucionaria (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1985), Timothy Anna’s The Fall of the Royal Government in Mexico City (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1978), or the many works by Kevin Gosner on colonial Chiapas. The result is a historical context tainted by inaccuracies. To choose one example, Captain General José de Bustamante of Guatemala was only a first ensign at 17, not a brigadier; his promotion to vice admiral came almost two decades after the Malaspina expedition; he took power in Guatemala on March 14, 1811, not July 16; and he did not die in a shipwreck, but rather in Madrid. Overall, Beware the Great Horned Serpent! is a well-intentioned effort at interdisciplinary analysis. However, it proves to be one of those rare cases where the whole is not greater than one of its parts. timothy hawkins, Indiana State University Book Reviews / National Period 523 Troubled Harvest: Agronomy and Revolution in Mexico, 1880–2002. By joseph cotter. Contributions in Latin American Studies, no. 22. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Bibliography. Index. xxi, 393 pp. Cloth, $89.95. This is a book about agricultural development, the green revolution and its aftermath, and the role of agronomists in the history of Mexico’s rural development. Finding something new to say on a topic that has received so much scholarly attention over the years is a significant achievement. Some 25 years ago, I faced the same challenge in writing my dissertation and subsequent book on Mexican land reform. Cotter’s book, also based on his dissertation, stems from a deep appreciation of Mexico and an interest in economic development and the role of technological change in the development of Mexican agriculture. The central theme is how Mexico’s extensive land reform, agricultural development policies, and the green revolution shaped the profession of agronomy from the prerevolutionary period through 2002. The author makes extensive use of both primary and secondary resources, including the Mexican agricultural journal Agicultura, expressing the views of agronomists on the politics of rural development, and the rich records of the Rockefeller Archive Center. In attempting to understand more deeply the development of this important profession, Cottler’s book sheds new light on Mexico’s agricultural and agrarian policies and the role played by scientists and agricultural specialists in its evolution. Given the more that century-long span covered by the book, this is no simple task. Cotter presents the perspectives of the agronomists who attempted to bring more technical and scientific principles to Mexico’s crop production. During the turbulent decades following the revolution, members of the profession variously supported and opposed land redistribution. He details the efforts of the Rockefeller-sponsored scientists who spawned the green revolution and the impact of that effort, both positive and negative, on the Mexican countryside. Chapters 4 and 5 tell the story of the response to the corn and wheat shortages at the end of the Cárdenas period and the battle for public opinion over how to manage agricultural development. The backdrop for these developments is Cárdenas’s agricultural policy in the late 1930s, emphasizing land reform and agricultural development that favored smallholders. Cotter describes the initial U.S. involvement in joint pest control efforts along the border and the partnership that developed during the war years when Mexicans helped bring in the U.S. harvest under the bracero program. Subsequent public and private efforts to promote agricultural cooperation and development were stimulated by the cold war. Many Mexican agronomists studied in the United States and were influenced by U.S. agricultural technologies and practices. Moreover, Mexican public policy after Cárdenas emphasized agricultural production and low-cost food production at the expense of rural welfare. Presidents Avila Camacho, Alemán, and Ruiz Cortines were more interested in providing cheap food for urban markets than in rural development per se, and it is in this environment that the technologies of the green revolution were developed. Chapter 6 does a good job in describing the first phase of the green revolution, as scientists and agronomists focused on the development of hybrid wheat that mainly benefited farmers on irrigated land. 524 HAHR / August Chapter 7 is perhaps the strongest in the book. It focuses on the aftermath of the green revolution and on the most recent attempts to balance environmental and welfare concerns with agricultural production. Cotter is at his best in summarizing the outcomes of various development experiments, both successful and unsuccessful, and in highlighting new efforts in sustainable agriculture that may point the way to the future. He briefly discusses how biotechnology may affect future efforts and therein introduces a rich topic for future scholarly research. Published posthumously, this book makes a significant contribution to the academic literature on agricultural development and may stimulate new interest on Mexico’s fascinating and unique agricultural history. susan walsh sanderson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Simón Bolívar’s Quest for Glory. By richard w. slatta and jane lucas de grummond. Texas A&M University Military History Series, no. 73. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Appendix. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. xii, 344 pp. Cloth, $39.95. In recent years, English-language biographies of Simón Bolívar have become more numerous; with the approach of the bicentenary of Spanish America’s wars of independence, doubtless more will be forthcoming. Some may offer groundbreaking or novel interpretations of the Liberator’s life. Others may simply recapitulate familiar episodes, perhaps amplifying on features of his infuriatingly complex character or providing us with more detail of a career impressive for his military accomplishments and controversial for his role in the political life of the new republics. In this unusual collaborative effort—a project begun by the late Jane Lucas De Grummond and completed by Richard Slatta—the authors have elected to focus on Bolívar’s military career, a choice that explains the book’s inclusion in Texas A&M University’s military history series. Given the continuing public fascination with Bolívar (particularly in president Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) and the persistent academic debates over virtually every aspect of his life, the authors have tried to bridge the ever-widening gap between the hagiographic literature of Bolivarian cultists and the modern scholarly assessments that properly emphasize popular movements, the role of women, or the place of the Spanish American wars of independence within the broader context of revolution in the transatlantic world. Not surprisingly, Bolívar’s reputation does not fare so well in the latter accounts. Though the authors acknowledge Bolívar’s flaws, notably his authoritarian and egotistical personality, their judgments about the Liberator’s life and career are more often in accord with the older, celebratory literature than with the more critical analyses of recent scholarship. In their recounting of some of the most controversial episodes in Bolívar’s career—for example, his putative “betrayal” of Francisco de Miranda to the Spanish or his bitter disputes with Francisco de Paula Santander—the authors are generally apologetic for Bolívar’s actions. In other places, they raise issues that beg for more detail—for Book Reviews / National Period 525 example, the suggestion that the Liberator may have suffered from bipolar disorder—yet do not fully explore their implications for understanding Bolívar’s career. Not surprisingly, the biography commences with some familiar comparisons between the Liberator and George Washington (who was more aristocratic in his demeanor than Bolívar), but the authors do not fully explain why the legendary hero of the British American War of Independence has fared so much better in revolutionary-age biographies. In completing De Grummond’s manuscript, Slatta has done an able—even exemplary—job. Certainly, this account of the Liberator’s career will occupy an important niche in the literature. But its contribution is principally one of reaffirmation of what we know about Bolívar and his place in the history of the Spanish American struggles for independence and not a challenging or insightful reappraisal of either the man or his times. lester d. langley, University of Georgia Colombia años 50: Industriales, política y diplomacia. By eduardo sáenz rovner. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2002. Plates. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. 265 pp. Paper. This book is a thorough and resourceful contribution for scholars interested in Latin American, and particularly Colombian, economic history. Sáenz offers a detailed, wellsupported, and richly documented account of the years from 1950 to 1957, a crucial period in Colombia’s recent history. Beginning with the presidency of Conservative Laureano Gómez and ending with the ousting of Colombia’s only twentieth-century military ruler—Gustavo Rojas Pinilla—the book describes the evolution of the relationship between the powerful industrial association ANDI (Asociación Nacional de Empresarios de Colombia) and successive Colombian governments. It highlights key moments in the economic history of that decade, such as the first World Bank exploratory visit (under the leadership of economist Lauchlin Currie) to Latin America and the creation of the national oil company, ECOPETROL. It also emphasizes key issues that have consistently marked not only Colombian but also Latin American political debate, such as the extent and nature of state intervention in the domestic economy. As the author suggests in the epilogue, the book is not only a description of the dealings between a powerful lobbying group and the Colombian state. It also provides a background on how liberalism—political and economic—survived state intervention, partisan confrontation, and institutional breakdown. Sáenz’s rigorous archival work, complemented by a review of newspaper sources and academic literature on the period, allow him to shed light on the influence of business interests on domestic and external policy making, by the virtue of their power to produce, invest, divest, hire, and fire. The book fills an important void in the Latin American literature on business and politics and, like the author’s earlier Ofensiva empresarial: Industriales, politicos y violencia en los años 40 en Colombia (Tercer Mundo Editores / Ediciones 526 HAHR / August Uniandes, 1992), integrates the underexplored perspective of private sector interests and political capacity into our understanding of Colombian economic history. While the focus of the book is the manufacturing agenda of ANDI, Sáenz also pays attention to other sectoral interests. Chapter 9, for example, describes splits within the business community over trade liberalization and the management of the exchange rate, setting retail and coffee interests against industrialists. This helps counterbalance the book’s occasional overemphasis on business autonomy versus, and complete control over, the policy-making process. In fact, business sectors experience varying degrees of success in gaining access to the policy-making process and getting their interests represented. More importantly, business occasionally loses, as demonstrated by the state’s ability to impose taxes. One such example is the controversial fiscal reform during Rojas Pinilla’s rule, which taxed stock dividends. In the end, this measure helped alienate business from Rojas Pinilla’s government and, as Sáenz accurately points out, partially explains the leading role of business in ousting the general. However, had Rojas better withstood the temptation of corruption and negotiated his populist agenda (both of which fueled business discontent), he might well have gotten away with the tax increase. The book will be useful to students of U.S.-Colombia relations, as most of the domestic debates between business and the state described in Sáenz’s book were shaped by U.S. foreign policy mandates. This is neatly reflected in the description of the debate over the transfer of oil exploitation from Tropical Oil to ECOPETROL and in the negotiations over the degree of national ownership of the company. Remarkably, Sáenz manages to illustrate how these debates were shaped by the interaction of commercial and political interests on both sides, providing a needed domestic perspective to the formation of U.S. interests in Latin America. Readers may find that Sáenz’s attention to detail occasionally obscures the thread of his argument. Exhaustive biographical descriptions of major and minor figures, for example—while important from a historiographic perspective—distract from the central points. In addition, Sáenz’s emphasis on the executive as the main source of policy making neglects the role of the legislature in shaping the policy process, even in a presidentialist system such as Colombia. In fact, the legislature provides a crucial space for negotiations and highlights one aspect that an executive focus will fail to grasp: the extent and nature of regional variations and negotiations, which have historically marked Colombian political processes and business-politics relations. Finally, for a book dealing with the 1950s in Colombia, surprisingly little is said about La Violencia, the widespread bipartisan violence that not only cost thousands of lives but also helped spark the mutual understanding among political and economic elites that set the stage for the National Front, which curtailed political competition in exchange for a stable investment environment. Despite these minor flaws, Sáenz’s book represents a milestone in the documentation not only of a key historical period but also of a crucial and understudied social actor and provides a solid foundation for future work. angelika rettberg, Universidad de los Andes Book Reviews / National Period 527 Caetana Says No: Women’s Stories from a Brazilian Slave Society. By sandra lauderdale graham. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Bibliography. Index. xxii, 183 pp. Cloth, $50.00. Paper, $18.00. This book is the story of two women linked by time and participation, albeit in dramatically different ways, to the system of slavery in Brazil’s coffee zone. Sandra Lauderdale Graham uses these two stories to paint a picture of life in the Paraíba Valley during the middle of the nineteenth century. This short work evidences the author’s deep knowledge of the coffee zone and the Brazilian slave system. In fact, a part of the joy of this book is the author’s willingness to expose the process of research and analysis. Graham describes this process as “something closer to archaeology than full-blown biography” (p. xxii). What emerges is an excellent example of social history—one that uses the specific as a vehicle to illuminate the general. The book’s two sections are constructed around the experiences of Caetana, a slave woman fighting to escape an unwanted marriage to another slave, and Inácia Delfina Werneck, an unmarried member of the powerful Werneck coffee dynasty, who in her will reaffirms the manumission of a slave woman and her five children and additionally bequeaths them several of her slaves. The stories, told in a very nuanced and sympathetic fashion, function as bookends that illuminate a culture characterized by its flexibility. Neither story ends clearly, and Graham uses that uncertainty to discuss the nature of the documents and of writing history. Graham’s sources—court documents, wills and estate inventories, censuses, parish records, and period publications—are familiar to social historians. She also uses secondary literature to expand the implications of the cases far beyond the coffee zone. In the first story, what emerges is the complexity of the master/slave relationship. The master, coercing his slave into an undesired marriage, is then convinced by the slave to support her efforts to have the marriage annulled on the basis of this very coercion. In this saga, we can see both the paternalistic power of the master and the patriarchal power of Caetana’s enslaved godfather, who exerts additional pressure. Graham uses this case to explore the broader context: the construction and workings of power at the local level, the household structure within slave communities (building on recent research emphasizing the significance and frequency of slave marriage and the importance of the slave family), the lives of slaves, the privileges based on trust but subject to the whim of the master, and the crushing impact of the master’s death on slave families. All these are seen in very human terms. Graham also discusses the issue of the slave master’s legitimacy, the circumscribed agency of slaves, the ambiguity of Brazilian slavery, and the structure of the master/slave relationship as shaped by the larger community. The crucial themes of patriarchy and patronage that undergird Caetana’s story continue into that of Inácia Delfina Werneck, a woman whose life epitomized the ideal of upper-class female respectability. Graham deconstructs the last will prepared by Werneck and then uses “thick description” to illuminate a number of important issues. Graham describes the will as primarily a “legal document that disposes of and distributes 528 HAHR / August property,” as well as a cultural document that provides insights into a person’s relationship with God and family (p. 83). I suspect this reflects a transition in the nature of wills from being primarily part of a spiritual process of salvation to one, in the nineteenth century, that distributed property. This approach permits Graham to explore in great detail three generations of Werneck family history. Perhaps the story’s most important contribution is its interweaving of family history, marriage strategies, in-family purchase of property, and inheritance laws to show how the family patrimony was created, distributed through inheritance, and then recreated via “near-relative marriages” (p. 92) and re-purchase. Different behaviors are documented through the wills. Thus her younger sister’s recognition of her natural (illegitimate) child becomes an opportunity to explore the status of natural children. Graham uses the options available to this sister to explore the dilemmas faced by historians and to bring the reader into the world she has created and the world of writing history. To explore Inácia’s efforts to secure the future for her former slaves, Graham delves into inheritance and debt liability laws, the role of the executor, landholding and tenancy practices, and the worldview of slave owners. This is not an easy section to read, but it provides some important insights, such as the specific mechanisms used to reconstruct a family patrimony constantly threatened with disruption through inheritance rules. This book will be useful to specialists, but it will be of special interest for the classroom. These engaging accounts will allow students to see the process of researching history at work. Graham reproduces some of her documentation, which will permit students to reexamine the issues she raises. The book is also vivid and well written, in places elegantly so. Its style will draw the reader in as it moves easily from the story to how and why it was recorded and how it is being interpreted. Since the stories are used as vehicles to explore a range of specific questions, their uniqueness is not a liability. Their importance is not based on typicality but on their use by the author to explore larger issues. Graham is to be thanked for crafting this delightful and very successful example of social history. donald ramos, Cleveland State University Book Reviews / National Period 529 Coisas para o povo não fazer: Carnaval em Porto Alegre (1870–1915). By alexandre lazzari. Coleção Várias Histórias, vol. 10. Campinas, Brazil: UNICAMP, 2001. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. 247 pp. Paper. Carnival in Porto Alegre? Tourists and historians alike might be surprised to find the two linked, given that Rio Grande do Sul is generally best known for more rustic entertainments. Alexandre Lazzari’s book offers a valuable look at the development of Carnival in what was still a small town of roughly 40,000, in the era when it began to be a national institution. Brazil’s southernmost state and its capital have made more important contributions to Brazilian economic and political history than they have to cultural history, but this revised master’s thesis is more than just a helpful reminder of how national cultural phenomena took on local manifestations prior to the development of radio. It is also a useful corrective to the notion that in the history of Carnival, long-term popularization was always the dominant trend. Historians will profit by using its insights in problematizing the historical development of Rio-centered “national” cultures and identities. Lazzari examines the important role that young men of the middle and upper classes played in creating the Esmeralda and Venezianos Carnival societies in the 1870s. While nationalists at roughly the same time tried to eliminate bullfighting in Cuba, these Brazilian founding brothers hoped to modernize Porto Alegre by eliminating another symbol of backwardness—the traditional Luso-Brazilian practice of entrudo. Moralizing reformist critics associated the practice of spraying friends, family, and total strangers with fair and foul liquids with both the decline of patriarchal authority and the spread of germs. Spontaneity, variety, and social disorder (according to the “progressive youth”) were to be replaced by elaborate planning and elegant justifications of hierarchy in allegorical floats. Lazzari makes clear that the Golden Age of Carnival remembered at the turn of the twentieth century was quite short-lived and that the attempt to replace entrudo with Carnival had begun to fail already by the 1880s. The popular classes resisted this assault on their favored means of diversion. Carnival society members themselves were guilty of holding onto old practices while ostensibly exemplifying new ones. Indeed, entrudo survived among rich and poor alike, while the societies themselves soon suffered from internal disputes and a general loss of direction before dying out. Lazzari also examines how involvement in Carnival by German immigrants and their descendants, as well as those of African descent, helped these groups assert their own citizenship identities. As elite Carnival declined, popular variations became more visible, varied, and “shameless”—and, therefore, a renewed target of journalistic complaint. Other people’s habits continued to need reforming, to paraphrase Mark Twain. Dominant groups were concerned with the loss of direct control over people of color that had accompanied abolition. To counter these trends, societies displaying more dignified, tamer subjects, and idealized female images were revived in an attempt to regain control of the unruly streets. Like many works of this type, this book is often more a study of attitudes regarding 530 HAHR / August Carnival than of cultural practices themselves, and one is not always convinced that the newspaper columnists cited are necessarily representative (and of what). It is somewhat puzzling that the author did not make more of the fact that the vast majority (23 of 28 identified out of 30) of those involved in creating the Esmeralda society were public functionaries, agents of a centralizing monarchical state. Even though residents of the Court were obviously themselves trying to imitate foreign models, those in Brazil’s southernmost province had no doubts that to be modern meant to be more like Rio. Lazzari also could have done more with the changing political and ideological contexts in a state that endured more unrest than any other in the transition from monarchy to republic, and in which positivism flourished. One is tempted to suggest that the virtual invisibility of Porto Alegre’s Carnival in more recent years is due to the unfortunate success of the elite’s attempts to reassert control. Despite all of the changes that have taken place in Rio’s Carnival over the past century, there is no doubt that the creative center remains in the city’s favelas. Porto Alegre’s elites succeeded all too well in making Carnival something “for the people not to do,” as Lazzari suggests, and it is now of limited interest to most of the city’s inhabitants. Why the elite were so successful in a state known in recent years for the strength of the Partido dos Trabalhadores is a question for others to address. andrew j. kirkendall, Texas A&M University Artes e oficios de curar no Brasil. Edited by sydney chalhoub, vera regina beltrão marques, gabriela dos reis sampaio, and carlos roberto galvão sobrino. Coleção Várias Histórias, vol. 15. Campinas, Brazil: UNICAMP, 2003. Notes. 428 pp. Paper. In recent decades, the history of medicine has undergone deep transformations. Until the 1950s, a certain “whiggish” point of view was hegemonic in the field. According to that vision, medical knowledge and practices evolved in a linear fashion, with the endpoint being the inevitable triumph of science over the evil forces of ignorance and superstition. Since the 1960s, in part under the influence of Michel Foucault’s works, a new historiography emerged that emphasized the disciplinary character of the “clinical glance” and of the “medicalization of societies” that took place toward the end of the nineteenth century. The medical profession, and more generally the practice of medicine, were crucial components of the broader apparatus of social discipline that emerged together with modern capitalism. This vision has been complemented most recently by newer approaches that place the focus more on the ambiguities and problematic aspects in the development and professionalization of medicine than on the outcome of that process. Such studies show that the constitution of modern medicine was far from a lineal progression. Rather, it was the consequence of the convergence of complex social, scientific, political, and cultural developments. This collection of articles, analyzing the complicated process of construction of scientific medicine in Brazil from the colonial times through the turn of the twentieth Book Reviews / National Period 531 century, is a fine example of this approach. The authors, however, do not limit the scope of their study to “official medicine.” Artes e ofícios de curar no Brasil—as its title indicates—sheds light on the multidimensional nature of the multiple arts of curing evolving from a combination of European, African, and native elements. The volume shows that Brazilian “official medicine” evolved at the crossroad of different conceptualizations of disease and cure. The book’s 12 articles are grouped in five parts. The first part, “Ciéncia e ideologia,” deals with literary approaches to scientific concepts and is perhaps the least successful of the collection. Its two articles discuss how social Darwinism, madness, and psychiatry appeared in the works of writers Machado de Assis and Lima Barreto but do not really address the literary nature of the works analyzed. Sidney Chalhoub and Magai Gouveia Engel discuss fictional works as if they reflected, without mediation, the ideology of their authors. Particularly enlightening are, on the other hand, the chapters dealing with colonial times—especially Vera Regina Beltrão Marques’s “Medicinas secretas: Magia e ciência no Brasil setentista” and María Leônia Chaves de Resende’s “Entre a cura e a cruz: Jesuítas e Pajés nas missões do Novo Mundo.” Both focus on the intersection of official and unofficial forms of curing. The process of constructing accepted forms of dealing with disease involved a large amount of negotiation. In “Entre a cura e a cruz,” for instance, the author argues that seventeenth-century Jesuits wanting to attract Indians to Catholicism, and therefore to delegitimize native healers and magicians, had to adopt and adapt to elements of the imaginary world they were trying to eradicate. Other chapters, particularly Luiz Otávio Ferreira’s “Medicina impopular: Ciência médica e medicina popular nas páginas dos periódicos,” Liane Maria Bertucci’s “Remédios, charlatanices . . . e curandeirices: Práticas de cura no período da gripe espanhola em São Paulo,” and Aldrin Moura de Figueiredo’s “Pajelança e medicina na Amazônia no limiar do século XX,” convincingly show how official medicine and the medical profession continued to battle for legitimacy with traditional forms of curing into the twentieth century. Gender and race perceptions played a central role in the process of constructing official medicine and excluding alternatives. These and other articles discuss the strategies (mostly repressive) used by (mostly white and male) medical doctors to exclude and displace (mostly black, and sometimes female) traditional healers. Artes e ofícios de curar is a good example of the fruitful new analytical approaches to the history of medicine in a particularly complex Latin American society. Undoubtedly, it will become a mandatory reference for anyone interested in history of science or medicine in Brazil. mariano ben plotkin, IDES/CONICET, Buenos Aires 532 HAHR / August Em guarda contra o “perigo vermelho”: O anticomunismo no Brasil (1917–1964). By rodrigo patto sá motta. Coleção Estudos. São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, 2002. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xxviii, 297 pp. Paper. Brazil has experienced two important moments of anticommunist mobilization. The first took place in the 1930s and culminated in the creation of the Estado Novo. The second, in the early 1960s, prompted the coup of 1964. Scholars have examined these events and the principal movements behind them but have not compared them in detail. Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta explores the history of Brazilian anticommunism in these two periods, analyzing the motives, ideas, and actions of groups and individuals, as well as the rhetorical and iconographic representations of communism they produced, to reveal both continuity and change over time. Not long after the Bolshevik Revolution, criticisms of communism appeared infrequently in the local press. The political flux that accompanied the revolution of 1930, however, sparked considerable fear that this leftist tendency might spread through Brazil. The Catholic Church, the military, and business circles became the main exponents of such concerns. These institutions helped spawn a host of ephemeral groups, such as the Liga da Defesa Nacional of the 1930s and Cruzada Brasileira Anticomunista of the 1950s and 1960s (both tied to the military), as well as the longer-lasting ultra-Catholic Tradição, Família e Propriedade, founded in 1960. The diverse roots of anticommunism sparked an imagery incorporating Catholic, nationalistic, and liberal elements. Yet the Catholic ingredients predominated, especially in the 1930s, when the church propaganda depicted a demonic communist menace—at times hideously ugly, at times seductively immoral. Such notions led newspapers in this era to post news on communists in the crime section. Communists were partly responsible for sparking negative images; down to the 1960s their enemies exploited the memory of the failed rebellion of 1935 to remind Brazilians of the communist threat. Opposition to communism transformed itself into an industry of fear that whipped up publicity, votes, and power for its cunning engineers. However exaggerated their claims, these activists laid the groundwork for two dramatic ruptures in Brazilian political life. By the 1960s, anticommunism had changed. The church’s impact declined, while that of business groups increased. Anticommunism became less anti-Semitic in character; in fact, rabbis (and Protestant ministers) joined priests in demonstrations. Civilian groups were more numerous and active than in the 1930s, and women seemingly played more visible roles. Motta, however, underestimates women’s participation in the fascist Ação Integralista Brasileira (AIB) of the earlier period. This points to a larger problem. Motta did not analyze the AIB in his chapter on anticommunist organizations, because the AIB did not concentrate exclusively on this mission. Nor did he treat the business-oriented Instituto Brasileiro de Ação Democrática (IBAD) and Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais (IPES) of the 1960s, preferring to discuss lesser-known groups. Motta’s choices are understandable, and he addresses these movements later in the book. Still, these were the most influential anticommunist Book Reviews / National Period 533 organizations, and one feels their absence. This gap leads to the questionable conclusion that groups of the 1930s generally were tied to the government and had little interest in attracting a broad base. Neither statement applies to the AIB. Motta groups together all anticommunist images, organizations, and fear-mongering tactics of 1930–64 and discusses each topic as a whole. Separate chapters explore the two periods in detail. A purely chronological approach might have clarified the distinctions between the 1930s and the 1960s, as well as change over time. The author goes to extraordinary lengths to examine anticommunist activity in an evenhanded manner. While admirable, this effort led to some debatable judgments. He believes that the vigor of anticommunism reflected the vitality of local communism, but this seems unconvincing. Although anticommunism was strongest in the mid-1930s and early 1960s, repression after 1935 destroyed the party itself, which also was tiny in the early 1960s. Motta concluded that anticommunists had some reason to fear their opponents in the 1930s, given the seriousness of the communist-led uprising of 1935. As he himself pointed out, however, most of the casualties were on the rebel side. Motta also insisted that president Getúlio Vargas was not as anticommunist as other voices. In the wake of the Intentona, for example, the press pressured the government to treat the rebels even more harshly than it was already doing. Yet one wonders how independent the press was during this period of censorship and to what extent it attempted to curry official favor. Still, Motta provides a fresh and bold look at opposition to the Left. He has combed a large number of archives, periodicals, and other sources, and his focus on representation and memory is unique. The book also adds to our knowledge of Catholic Church activity on the right, a critical topic neglected by historians. sandra mcgee deutsch, University of Texas at El Paso Indigenismo y nación: Los retos a la representación de la subalternidad aymara y quechua en el “Boletín Titikaka” (1926–1930). By ulises juan zevallos aguilar. Lima: Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos / Banco Central de Reserva del Perú, 2002. Notes. Bibliography. 144 pp. Paper. Many Latin American intellectuals and politicians of the early twentieth century grappled with the “Indian problem” as a central element in their national projects. In Peru, as in other countries, capital-city elites dominated the debate. Provincial actors participated as well. Cuzco, with its Incaic heritage and continuing role as educational and administrative center, was one focal point. So too was Puno, the isolated capital of a heavily populated and overwhelmingly indigenous highland department. Indigenismo y nación examines one progressive, yet problematic, manifestation of provincial discourse: Puno’s Boletín Titikaka. The Boletín reflected the artistic, social, and political proclivities of the “Grupo Orkopata,” an informal cluster of local intellectuals that included about half a dozen core members and as many again less regular participants. The Grupo published 34 issues of this four-page, reasonably regular monthly journal between 1926 and 534 HAHR / August 1930. The original title, Boletín Editorial Titikaka, persisted for two years and reflected an initial emphasis on publicity for the Grupo’s “Editorial Titikaka.” The contents always included laudatory national and international reactions to Editorial Titikaka’s limited output, plus an increasing quantity of original articles, artwork, and poems. Zevallos Aguilar’s study in particular probes the tensions inherent in the Grupo Orkopata’s unstated multiple agenda. It begins with a lengthy conceptual exploration of the contradictions that emerged as a group of provincial mestizo intellectuals sought at once to describe indigenous customs and beliefs, represent Indian priorities and needs, and prescribe public policy. The Grupo, moreover, laid claim to this multifaceted vanguard role as indigenous leaders and groups were themselves acting ever more assertively. Zevallos Aguilar also discusses divergent concepts of nation and nation building, both as perceived by different groups in early twentieth-century Puno and with reference to those who would today assess subaltern representation and agency. Zevallos Aguilar rehearses his theoretical landscape with detailed clarity. Nonetheless, at least two questions arise as he fleshes out his case: Was the Grupo Orkopata sufficiently coherent, productive, and distinct for its Boletín to sustain so close an analysis? And is Zevallos’s textual commentary sufficiently informed by the broader contexts of contemporary Puno to support his conceptual contentions? Indigenismo y nación draws upon intense and, at times, overly intentioned readings of some 22 short pieces from the Boletín. Only 7 of these articles were produced by individuals that Zevallos identifies as core members of the Grupo Orkopata (p. 24). Moreover, these brief contributions provide very sketchy representations of positions that their authors, in almost all cases, developed elsewhere at far greater length. A single-page piece by Cuzco’s Luis E. Valcárcel, to cite only one example, reflects but poorly that intellectual’s massive scientific, political, and polemical output. The presumed alignment between the Boletín Titikaka and the Grupo Orkopata may, for all these reasons, be too tenuous to sustain an argument that presupposes the Grupo’s programmatic (or participatory) coherence. The book’s cursory acknowledgements of Puno’s historical and intellectual contexts are problematic as well. The text only mentions in passing the arguably transformational impacts of (for instance) rail links to Cuzco and the coast, the pioneering missionary and social activity of the Seventh-Day Adventists (whose local consequences included a proliferation of Indian private schools and whose persecution catalyzed national legislation for religious tolerance), a host of Indian “rebellions” with widely varying goals, scale, and leadership patterns, and structured programs to make Puno’s core livestock industry more productive and profitable. These shifts, and others as well, helped to delimit the range of programmatic and analytical possibilities apparent to the provincial indigenistas who sponsored the Boletín Titikaka, as well as for their contemporaries. The work similarly overlooks the Boletín’s intellectual and literary environment. For example, Peru’s southern highlands were, at this time, awash in educational initiatives, most associated with nation-building projects and many preoccupied with Indians. A teacher-training program geared to indigenous education had been launched at Puno’s Colegio Nacional “San Carlos”; several members of the Grupo Orkopata were Book Reviews / National Period 535 themselves normalistas. North American educator Albert Giesecke was, in the 1910s, appointed rector of Cuzco’s national university, sparking both institutional reform and a burst of academic and social activism. Arequipa, the urban hub of Puno’s hinterlands, continued its own strong traditions of political independence and sporadic radical commentary. Zevallos simply fails to acknowledge this local and regional context of intense intellectual effervescence. Indigenismo y nación promises provocative insights into a complex interplay of aspirations, agendas, projects, and events. Unfortunately, the focus is narrow, and the work’s historical and documentary groundings are weak. With barely one hundred pages of text, this study is in all respects slim. dan hazen, Harvard University La voluntad encarcelada: Las “luminosas trincheras de combate” de Sendero Luminoso del Perú. By josé luis rénique. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2003. Bibliography. 177 pp. Paper. I would gladly use this book in an introductory class on Latin American politics and history. It manages to convey, in 150 pages, the historical roots of Sendero Luminoso, the Maoist guerrilla movement responsible for more than half of all politically motivated deaths in Peru between 1980 and 2000, while also providing a concise history of its emergence, evolution, and defeat after the 1992 arrest of its main ideologue and strategist, Abimael Guzmán. Rénique also analyzes the shifts in Sendero strategy after Guzmán’s arrest, which is important to help us understand present concerns of a resurgence of guerrilla activity in this troubled Andean nation. The book is more than just another retelling of Sendero’s emergence and defeat. First, it emphasizes the historical continuities between Andean radicalism and Sendero. It also explores Sendero’s voluntarism—seen nowhere more clearly than in its efforts (largely successful) at turning Peru’s prisons into key fronts in its struggle against the “bureaucratic-capitalist state.” Rénique visited two of Peru’s most notorious prisons— Canto Grande, on the outskirts of Lima, and Yanamayo, the infamous prison built by the Fujimori government in the inhospitable altiplano, whose single purpose was to break the will of its inmates. He also studied numerous Sendero documents, human rights reports, and journalistic accounts of Sendero in the prisons. He weaves this diverse material into an engaging and readable text that will interest both specialist and nonspecialist. This solid analytical text seeks to understand the historical context in which Sendero emerged, the power of its ideology and its dogmatism, and the political will of its leaders and militants in their struggle first to lead a “popular war” in Peru and now, with most if the key leadership in prison, to survive the calamity of Guzmán’s 1992 arrest. While much of the book covers known territory, this provides necessary context. Some of the historical material also yields new insights: for example, Rénique details the history of Andean radicalism, arguing that Sendero is the legitimate child of this 536 HAHR / August political trajectory and explaining why the movement never took up the banner of ethnic struggle. Some comparative reference would have been helpful: this was the case with much of the Latin American Left in the 1960s and 1970s, and Sendero was no exception (though perhaps more extreme) in its emphasis on class and its denigration of culture in its revolutionary strategy. Rénique successfully conveys how Sendero’s rigid ideology, collective organization, and persistent voluntarism have allowed its members to not only survive draconian prison conditions, but indeed to thrive in them, using the prison as a space to reaffirm their ideological commitments and continue their struggle. Foucauldian scholars have examined prisons as spaces both for the exercise of power and as spaces of resistance. In this case, prisons were, additionally, sites of explicit political struggle, from which Sendero could challenge and highlight the failings of the state and from which it sought to provoke state violence and demonstrate the moral superiority of its struggle. As one might suspect, a book about Peru’s prisons during the height of the internal conflict includes harrowing stories that reveal perhaps more about the state than about the insurgents themselves. The infamous prison massacres of 1986, for example, in which some two hundred prisoners were killed (many after surrendering), reveal the willingness of civilian leaders to cede power to the military in order to stop the insurgency. The “forgotten massacre” of May 1992 in Canto Grande prison, where, a month after Fujimori’s autogolpe, security forces killed some 30 Sendero leaders, highlights the regime’s stunning arrogance, as well as its utter indifference to human rights. The book offers insights into a little-told story: the rearticulation, from behind prison walls, of Sendero’s political strategy post-1992. That this was facilitated by the Fujimori regime itself (briefly but incisively discussed by the author) is less shocking than the fact that this new strategy may be bearing fruit. Perhaps the one analytical weakness of the book is its sidestepping of the question of the political significance of this rearticulation and of Sendero’s new strategy of “doing politics without the spilling of blood,” as Guzmán described it in 1993. It may be too soon to tell, but I would have liked to see more commentary from the author, given his intimate knowledge of Sendero’s ideology, organization, and political praxis on the ground. Instead, he merely implies—by way of comparison with APRA, which itself survived a period of persecution and incarceration—that it is possible. If Sendero’s recomposition is confined to the prisons and has little echo in society, it would be an interesting, but largely anecdotal, story. But if it is able to connect with larger movements in society now or in the near future, then this is the story, and we want to—we need to—know more. jo-marie burt, George Mason University Book Reviews / National Period 537 Modernity in the Flesh: Medicine, Law, and Society in Turn-of-the-Century Argentina. By kristen ruggiero. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ix, 244 pp. Cloth, $49.50. Kristen Ruggiero tackles an important and thorny issue in this well-written and intriguing, yet perplexing, book: what was the relationship between the physical modernization of Buenos Aires, the development of liberal democracy, and the mediation of modernity by the symbolic immigrant body? Using criminal court cases, Ruggiero explores how the law articulated these interrelated but distinct issues. Although the book explicitly concerns modernization, the concept of modernity itself is never defined. Physical modernization provides the backdrop, although not the cause, of the problem. Ruggiero is reluctant to link liberal democracy—which “showcased individual rights”—to a modernity that “raised consciousness of the public good and a commitment to science as the warranty of progress” (p. 2). She cleverly uses the concept of carne, flesh, which appears repeatedly in the court records, as the embodiment of the conflict within “liberal democracy between individual rights and the social good” (p. 3). Passion becomes a way to express these rights. This approach shows the legal preoccupation with flesh in court testimony but does little to firm her definition of modernity. Ruggiero exposes the tensions of turn-of-the-century Argentina, portraying the battle between patriarchy and state sovereignty as one of liberal democracy defending itself against issues of ego. This novel approach exposes the inconsistencies of a liberal constitution that gave lip service to the basic rights of Argentina’s inhabitants at the same time that legal codes stripped them from minors, married women, and the poor—particularly through the use of ever-changing honor concepts. A perfect example of this is the wonderful 1899 legal debate over whether haircutting by a rejected lover should be considered a crime of “inflicting lesions” or of actual damage to carne. Ruggiero does not explain, however, that haircutting was a traditional female shaming practice, one that could no longer be articulated as such. People of Mediterranean culture could find new voices for old honor crimes, and thus ego intruded upon the changing concepts of law. In modern Argentina, men could not only still shame women but could also force them into “houses of deposit” while awaiting hearings about marital separation. Intellectuals supported patriarchy by providing scientific explanations for the inherent weaknesses of women and the immigrant poor. Argentines worried about the egos and passions of immigrants of Latin heritage, particularly Spaniards and Italians. Criminologists, following racist notions of criminal anthropology, feared the effect of so many passionate and potentially criminal newcomers in the capital city. Should they move them to other locations? One response was to improve the science of criminal investigation, including the most modern use of fingerprinting to identify both inhabitants and criminals. The specter of immigrant criminality also promoted Lamarckian fears of southern European immigrants’ genetic deterioration in Argentina. Was the so-called Argentine race on the verge of degeneration? Race, in the Argentine worldview, encompassed not only differences between whites and 538 HAHR / August others but also between different nationalities. How could the liberal state deal with this threat? Ruggiero points to Víctor Mercante’s 1899 study of children of mixed marriages, supposedly proving that immigration caused degeneration, along with stories of crimes committed by neurotic and psychotic immigrants. While intellectuals pondered these problems, Argentine liberal democracy did little to address them, a fact documented by a variety of scholars not cited by Ruggiero. It also did its best to reduce the impact of notions of honor, particularly sexual honor, within the law at this time. This fact is borne out by the paucity of court cases involving honor, particularly sexual honor, as compared with Mexico and Brazil. Ruggiero’s cases reveal that only some 10 percent dealt with sexual honor, consistent with Sandra Gayol’s Sociabilidad en Buenos Aires: Hombres, honor y cafés, 1862–1910 (Ediciones del Signo, 2000). The book’s narrow focus is perplexing, however. Law is perceived as the give-andtake of the courtroom, legal opinions of a number of intellectuals, and the passions of immigrants. These, however, showcase the views of those who adhere most dogmatically to positivist principles. Yet even positivists like José Ingenieros had doubts about the usefulness of genetic, as opposed to environmental, explanations for crime. This is particularly true among juvenile delinquency specialists, who increasingly believed that children were neither responsible for their passions nor necessarily genetically defective. Rather, they were the product of dysfunctional families, whose problems could be cured by treating the group and not just the individual. Troublingly, Ruggiero pays little attention to the existing literature on the concept of honor and its change over time. This implies a cultural continuity unaffected by modernity. Were the racists correct, or were Southern European immigrants simply unable to cope with modernity? Finally, the reader is left wondering what modernity meant in modern Argentina. Were there physical transformations without cultural adaptations? Was the problem really a battle between liberal democracy and old cultural habits or a liberalism that only had specific acknowledgements of individualism that were constantly threatened by an equally honored tradition of patriarchy and class difference? While readers will be highly pleased by the stories, the analysis is less satisfying. donna j. guy, Ohio State University Book Reviews / National Period 539 Doña María’s Story: Life History, Memory, and Political Identity. By daniel james. Boulder: Westview Press, 2001. Photographs. Notes. Index. xv, 316 pp. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $18.95. I picked up Daniel James’s Doña María’s Story not long after reading Robert Holden’s warning that we need to “reconsider ‘the political’ in the writing of history.” Holden relies on two senses of political, the first synonymous with big political processes, ideologies, and actors—what he suggests should be the proper focus of political history—and the second, referring to “politically committed history” or a history that is not “objective” (“The Perversion and Redemption of Latin American Political History,” Journal of the Historical Society 3: 25–44). Doña María’s Story—which takes place over a halfcentury before today’s dismantling of Peronista state protections and Argentina’s neoliberal debacle—implicitly takes up both parts of Holden’s call. It explores the power of mid-twentieth-century working-class politics and practice in Argentina by examining the life story of labor activist María Roldán. James finds in oral history an invaluable tool for understanding the impact of nonelite actors on governmental policy and actions—in other words, the nuts and bolts of political history that Holden so fervently insists the field currently lacks. Thus, he directly counters Holden’s assertion that only some histories are political and makes visible the explicit political nature of all history writing. The book opens with a brief history of Berisso, a meatpacking town about 50 miles from Buenos Aires and the primary scene of Doña María’s story. Founded in 1873 as a center for beef salting, the advent of refrigeration brought giant meatpacking plants that were a magnet for immigrants (especially southern and eastern European) and made Berisso a hotbed of union and Peronista activism. Anchoring this four-part manuscript are its two middle sections: the translated and edited transcript of conversations Doña Maria and James held in 1987–88, and James’s careful analysis of these conversations. In publishing the transcript, James takes an important risk: because the reader can see his responses to her account, he cannot claim the status of flawless researcher. What instead comes through in his analysis is his complicated relationship with Doña María. The transcript (although I wished for more explicit indications of his editing) reveals—in conjunction with the analytical section—much about the contradictions of Peronista ideology, the inconsistencies and tensions within the party, and the fruits and poignant disappointments of Argentine politics at this mid-twentieth-century moment. By exploring these contradictions and negotiations, James implicitly answers Holden’s appeal to return the political to history. James begins his analysis by calling attention to the production of Doña María’s story and his integral part in it, using the act of reading to question the assumptions and failings that he brought to this process. This is an uncomfortable chapter to read, especially for those who have done or even thought of conducting oral histories. James’s analysis lays bare—and (admirably) does not try to resolve or paper over—the competing tensions, purposes, and positions that oral historian and interviewee bring to this process. Arguing for the ambiguity, performance, and constructedness of Doña María’s 540 HAHR / August story—indeed, all oral history—he contends that we must see it as “a form of storytelling that organizes events and gives meaning to personal experiences in the context of broader, more powerful narratives” (p. 248). Thus, we are reminded that oral narrative is not the sum total of unmediated experiences but a performance given meaning only within and against larger cultural narratives. I most applaud James’s refusal to abdicate his position as researcher: he does not ignore, discount, or collapse the distance between himself as researcher and Doña María as historical subject/actor. Regardless (or maybe because) of his acknowledged workingclass roots and connection to a certain (even shared) political project, he instead recognizes the different motivations and perspectives that he as scholar, and Doña María as meatpacker and activist, bring to the same project. He declines to stake his ability—and right—to analyze Peronista Argentina solely in the approximation of his experience and position to hers. For James, unlike for many researchers, the fact that he can never fully know her life does not take away what he, as a scholar of Peronista Argentina, can bring to its analysis. Rather, he owns up to the differences in class (and nationality) between Doña María and himself and refuses to overlook how these power imbalances affect the production of oral histories of less-educated, non-middle-class people. Given his recognition of these power imbalances and his use of gender as a prominent analytic lens, I was thus quite surprised that he did not explicitly analyze how gender might have shaped their relationship and thus the story Doña María told. This oversight aside, we scholars would be well served to apply his principles to our analysis of all documents. As a non-Argentine specialist, I would have advocated for more explicit context and historical background, and, most importantly, for a fuller explanation of the relationship between Doña María’s story and the larger questions of twentieth-century Argentine history. Despite these weaknesses, however, I heartily recommend this book as a significant contribution to the gendered history of Latin American working people and political practices. I also welcome Doña María’s Story as testimony to oral history as a valuable methodology for investigating the ways that non-elite actors shape and constraint the broader political processes of interest to political history. deborah cohen, University of Missouri, St. Louis Book Reviews / National Period 541 Mitos, paradojas y realidades en la Argentina peronista (1946–1955): Una interpretación histórica de sus decisiones políticas-económicas. By noemí girbal-blacha. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2003. Tables. Bibliographies. 275 pp. Paper. Economic nationalism was an integral part of Perón’s repertoire of populist politics. It remains one of the most enduring images of that era and among the most important of Perón’s legacies to Argentine political culture. In Mitos, paradojas y realidades, Noemí Girbal-Blacha demonstrates the extent to which Peronist discourse was often contradicted in practice. The Perón governments of the 1940s and 1950s did represent a rupture in Argentine economic policy in some ways but also a continuation of the liberal tradition in others. Girbal-Blacha makes use of the recent opening of archives of public banks, such as the Banco Industrial (later the Banco Nacional de Desarrollo, or BANADE), to study Peronist economic policies through the avatars of the nationalized banking system and public credit. A recognized authority on Argentine agrarian history, Girbal-Blacha devotes an early chapter to the history of industrial credit in the “Nueva Argentina.” Though interested readers are advised to consult Marcelo Rougier’s more thorough and authoritative study on the topic, Girbal-Blacha does echo Rougier’s findings on banks’ preferential treatment of large, established industrial firms. Perón may have extolled the “small and medium bourgeoisie” in speeches, but the state-controlled banking system showed no reluctance to favor SIAM–Di Tella and other large industrial firms—holdovers from the liberal era so reviled in Peronist discourse. In addition, despite Perón’s boisterous claims of “economic independence,” Girbal-Blacha (like Rougier) offers a devastating indictment of Perón’s policies. The overwhelming majority of these loans, to large and small industrial firms alike, were not intended to increase economies of scale or to improve technology and efficiency—thereby establishing the foundations of a genuine economic independence—but rather to pay off debts and to cover wage bills and bonus payments (aguinaldo). Similarly, Girbal-Blacha’s painstaking study of loans to the agrarian sector demonstrates that, despite publicly excoriating the landed oligarchy, big agriculture did not fare badly under Perón. Indeed, it was favored with the “vuelta al campo” begun in the early 1950s to contend with declining agricultural productivity and the bottlenecks this created for the industrial sector. Yet Perón’s government also represented change in the countryside. The most original and interesting chapter deals with the financial support for agricultural cooperatives. Emerging in the late nineteenth century, largely to circumvent the speculative behavior of the commercial firms and middlemen, the cooperative movement was greatly strengthened under Perón. A movement originally centered in the pampean provinces of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe, cooperativismo under Perón took on national dimensions. The author presents a fascinating and well-documented case study of the financial support offered to Chaco cotton cooperatives, undoubtedly one of the most important factors (though not the only one) in cementing the Chaqueña bourgeoisie’s support for Perón’s government. 542 HAHR / August The book’s focus on the banking system is a powerful one, and it offers an important and illuminating new angle on the history of the Peronist state’s economic policies. Perhaps a weakness of the book is the failure to consider this history from the side of business. When it does, on occasion, address entrepreneurial history, the book suffers from a certain glibness. It castigates the Argentine bourgeoisie for failing to take advantage of a lost opportunity of immediate postwar economic prosperity without analyzing why (if true) it failed to do so. Her book actually reveals that the bourgeoisie, rather than failing, simply worked the system and took advantage of policies to deal with the constraints and opportunities established by Perón’s government. Plant modernization and the search for foreign markets were difficult, if not impossible, with economic policies coming from the top that worked against them. The book contains some factual errors—for example, the description of CGE president Jose Ber Gelbard as the onetime “president of the powerful Federación Económica de Tucumán” (p. 45), an organization that Gelbard never even belonged to, let alone presided over. This indicates, to me, that the author did not approach the study of business with anything like the rigor that she employed in investigating the state policies that affected business. But given our rudimentary knowledge of business and business history for these years, such errors (and there only a few) are understandable and do not detract from the overall worth of the volume. The final picture she leaves us is of a Peronist government that represented both continuity and change. Large, established industrial firms continued to monopolize the lion’s share of credit, but small industry also had unprecedented access to the banking system. The big estancieros represented in the Sociedad Rural Argentina benefited most from the reoriented priorities of the second administration, although regional agrarian economies also flourished through financial support for the cooperatives. The frequent disconnect between Peronist economic nationalism as a discourse and as an actual policy perhaps explains the lavish credit bestowed on mass communications—the press, radio, and film—making possible the funding of the Peronist state’s elaborate propaganda machinery. The subject of the book’s final chapter, such support came at the expense of public investment in the economy and serves as a nice metaphor for Peronism’s fundamentally contradictory nature. james brennan, University of California, Riverside Book Reviews / International and Comparative 543 International and Comparative The Mafia in Havana: A Caribbean Mob Story. By enrique cirules. Translated by douglas e. laprade. New York: Ocean Press, 2004. Plates. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. viii, 177 pp. Paper, $17.95. Judging from the photograph of Meyer Lansky that graces the cover of The Mafi a in Havana, the mobster was not an attractive guy. Nevertheless, he was an extremely powerful man who—in cahoots with an assortment of other organized criminals, businessmen, the Cuban government, and U.S. intelligence officials—ruled over the infamous “Empire of Havana” from 1933 until the triumph of the 1959 revolution. They ran a vast criminal operation that operated a variety of tourist venues (hotels, casinos, nightclubs, and cabarets), smuggled cocaine, heroin, and other drugs, managed assorted gambling operations (horse and dog racing, jai alai, boxing, numbers, slots, bingo), traded precious gems, facilitated widespread prostitution, trafficked in contraband (furs, gold, electronics), and involved itself in mass communication, international finance (including money laundering), and a range of other dubious business operations too numerous and complex to account for. The history of organized crime in Cuba is a dark and fascinating topic. The subject of numerous films and page-turning novels, Havana during this “golden age” of corruption was full of intrigue: violence, sex, drugs, and nightclub rumba. Although we will probably never know the full details, this history often implicates in the illegal doings of the powerful Mafia bosses not only the highest-ranking Cuban officials but also U.S. politicians. A close working relationship between the U.S. government and the Mafia in Cuba crystallized, Cirules writes, during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s term, “with the unrestricted support of General Batista” (p. 28). Complementing Rosalie Schwartz’s fine Pleasure Island (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1997), Cirules concentrates his detailed analysis on the close ties between the U.S. Mafia and the Cuban government. Using material available in the Cuban National Archive, he documents U.S. control over Cuba’s banking, hotel, and sugar industries. Cirules discusses rising concerns about organized crime in the United States generated by the 1950–52 Kefauver Commission. In response, Mafia operations in a number of cities moved to protect their interests. Meanwhile in Cuba, dissident member of the Auténtico Party and aspirant to the presidency Eduardo R. Chibás initiated a reform campaign to expose government corruption and Mob connections. Soon, however, a successful conspiracy was hatched to discredit him. With Chibás out of the way and political forces on the island splintered into a number of competing factions, Cirules describes how “the alliance of U.S. financial-Mafia-intelligence groups” orchestrated the coup d’état of March 10, 1952, which brought Batista to power (p. 75). Explaining U.S. backing for Batista at this time is a challenging undertaking. Cirules asserts that secretary of state John Foster Dulles, along with his brother Allen Dulles (who ran the newly established CIA), had financial ties to Cuban nickel and other 544 HAHR / August businesses in the eastern provinces. Sensing that growing instability on the island posed a threat to U.S. investment, the brothers “exercised a decisive role in the arrangements for Washington’s authorization of the coup d’état, taking advantage of situations that provided them with the pretext for their covert operations” (p. 79). According to Cirules, the CIA engaged in many activities attempting to manipulate the situation in Cuba and help Batista assume power. At their most basic was a desire to promote an atmosphere of confusion, fear, and violence—to which the coup would then present a strong-arm solution. Following the relatively bloodless 1952 coup, the Mafia enjoyed an unprecedented period of prosperity in Cuba. As Cirules writes, “The empire of Havana functioned as a giant corporation, with multiple specialized departments, which differed greatly from the traditional structures of the Sicilian Mafia during its early establishment in the United States” (p. 95). Batista played a critical role in working to legalize many of the Mafia businesses; Cirules uses the Banco de Desarrollo Económico y Social (BANDES) as a detailed case to document this claim. He presents continued evidence for U.S. meddling in nearly all Cuban political and economic affairs, even as the revolutionary movement gained ground in late 1958. Despite the near-desperate maneuverings of the CIA and U.S. ambassador Earl E. T. Smith to stave off a rebel victory, their efforts proved too little, too late. Cirules occasionally remarks on the still relatively unknown and difficult nature of much of this dark history. For future historians with the necessary courage, there is much still to uncover. In the meantime, The Mafi a in Havana provides an interesting overview of U.S.-Cuban criminal collaboration—an imperial con game played at the expense of the Cuban people. andrew g. wood, University of Tulsa Yankee No! Anti-Americanism in U.S.–Latin American Relations. By alan mcpherson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Photographs. Illustrations. 257 pp. Cloth, $39.95. The horrors of September 11, 2001, thrust the subject of “anti-Americanism” into bold relief across the news media, the Internet, and the minds of people all over the world. Since then, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the abuse of prisoners in Baghdad have fanned the flames of anti-Americanism to their highest level in history. Therefore, the urgency of Alan McPherson’s excellent book increases daily during these tumultuous and sanguinary times. The United States would do well to heed his conclusion, that “arrogance in the face of aggression eventually produce[s] more aggression” (p. 169). Uncovering the roots of the thing called “anti-Americanism” in Latin America, McPherson identifies the primary factors that shaped its development, such as ambivalence toward the combined promise and threat of the United States. His account goes back to the nineteenth century, when the love-hate pattern of inter-American relations first emerged. José Enrique Book Reviews / International and Comparative 545 Rodó’s turn-of-the-century critique, Ariel, articulated the opposition to expanding U.S. imperialism to the south. But the event that showed how thin Latin America’s patience with U.S. domination had worn was Richard Nixon’s 1958 baptism by fire (or rather, by saliva and rocks) in Venezuela. There, Vice President Nixon’s goodwill tour of South America backfired when mobs spit on him at the airport, then assailed his motorcade in an impoverished section of Caracas. That close call made Dwight Eisenhower take urgent notice of a region largely ignored by U.S. policy since Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy of the 1930s. All of this history is covered concisely in the book’s introduction. Close on the heels of the debacle in Venezuela came the triumphant entry of Fidel Castro into Havana, the fi rst of McPherson’s three case studies. The rise of Castro precipitated a dramatic spike in anti-American policy. Following a brief wait-and-see honeymoon, the relationship with the new Cuban regime soured as 1959 wore on and as “interventions” by government-inspired groups of Yankee-weary Cubans led to the expropriation of U.S-owned property. However, although the Cuban Revolution has received much attention in the historiography of U.S.–Latin American relations, the 1964 Panama riots that McPherson takes as his second case study have been largely ignored. The display of the Stars and Stripes at a high school in the Canal Zone sparked the outrage, which the Panamanian elite subsequently stoked but eventually extinguished when they had achieved goals of their own. The 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic, McPherson’s final case study, dwarfed the scale of previous run-ins with Latin American antagonism. The massive U.S. airborne landings in Santo Domingo served Lyndon Johnson’s policy of preventing “another Cuba.” The intervention stymied an uprising in the Dominican capital that demanded the restoration of leftist president Juan Bosch, recently ousted by a military coup. U.S. troops hemmed in these “Constitutionalists” and wore them down over the course of a year. They then orchestrated an election that brought Joaquín Balaguer, former puppet president to dictator Rafael Trujillo, to power for a long period of authoritarian rule. Mission accomplished. McPherson’s taxonomy of anti-Americanism identifies three variants: revolutionary (Cuba), conservative (Panama), and episodic (the Dominican Republic). The respective U.S. responses to these challenges were panic, pragmatism, and containment. These are cogent categories that come across clearly in the three detailed case studies, and they can be applied to other manifestations of anti-Americanism in other places at other times. The research that went into this volume is impressive, requiring wide travel on the part of the author. Comprising sources from archives in four countries, the study is a model of multiple-archive research. Oral history also plays an important role in reconstructing and lending color to the account. McPherson interviewed more than 50 participants, including subjects such as Napoleón de Bernard, who threw the first punch in the 1964 Panama riots. The resulting narrative is written in a direct and witty style that makes the book accessible to a wide audience, while still being of great interest to specialists. Yankee No! is a timely call to form a new genre of scholarly inquiry into the global phenomenon of anti-Americanism, which has not been treated widely heretofore. It is 546 HAHR / August high time to examine the origins and outcomes of these negative sentiments, ranging from vague dislike to visceral hatred of the United States, and not just for citizens of this country. As anti-American feelings have found increasingly violent forms, people of many other nations have been bloodily impacted by terrorism that attacks not only the traditional targets of anti-American aggression, such as embassies, but also the allies of the United States. eric roorda, Bellarmine College Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama. By john lindsay-poland. American Encounters/Global Interactions. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Notes. Index. x, 265 pp. Paper, $18.95. U.S.-Panamanian relations have been a traditional focus of Panamanian historiography, quite logically given the strategic location of the isthmus and its legacy of North American interventions. In 1953 Ernesto Castillero Pimentel published one of the earliest and most complete studies of the problematic interactions between the two countries. Walter LaFeber followed with his important work in 1978, and more recently John Major and Michael Conniff offered their assessments of this difficult relationship, tracing it from the construction of the transisthmian railroad in the 1850s to the late twentieth century and the U.S. exit from Panama. In contrast, John Lindsay-Poland’s book does not provide an all-inclusive study of the disputes and ties between the two nations. “It is not,” as he writes, “a comprehensive military or diplomatic history” (p. 3). Nevertheless, in this impressive work, Lindsay-Poland extends significantly our understanding of U.S. influence in Panama, by examining the impact of the U.S. military. While political and economic conflicts have been focus of earlier studies, LindsayPoland’s topic is what he describes as the isthmus’ “hidden history”: “the environmental effects of the U.S. military’s presence in Panama” (p. 2). Lindsay-Poland moves beyond the concerns of older studies, including treaty negotiations and Panama’s national sovereignty, and brings attention to this previously neglected consequence of U.S. imperialism. This novel approach arises from the author’s own life. In the 1990s, Lindsay-Poland became deeply involved in grassroots efforts to pressure the United States to clean up its bases in Panama before their return to local jurisdiction. As the author himself recounts, these efforts were unsuccessful, and innumerable toxins and explosives remained in Panama following the U.S. departure. Emperors in the Jungle is thus the work of a committed activist who argues for U.S. compensation for severe environmental damage. Not withstanding this advocacy, the book offers a convincing history. Written in a clear and fluid style, the text is based primarily on government documents and interviews and provides some of the most innovative ideas regarding U.S.-Panamanian relations, particularly in regard to imperialist thinking and its environmental impact. Lindsay-Poland begins his study in the mid–nineteenth century and traces the mil- Book Reviews / International and Comparative 547 itary’s involvement from its first landings in Panama to its eventual withdrawal from the isthmus in December 1999. Through this extended period, the author describes “several key episodes” to illustrate his central thesis regarding the effects of U.S. interventionism (p. 3). Topics include the racist segregation and sanitation of the Canal Zone, the decades-long testing and disposal of chemical weapons, and U.S. plans to use nuclear weapons to build a sea-level canal. Lindsay-Poland also treats the U.S. campaign to topple Noriega, as well as the 1999 withdrawal and its aftermath. Drawing on these historical moments, the author paints a picture of U.S. arrogance and suggests that Panamanians, to some degree, have internalized North American attitudes, as reflected in their neoliberal “mania” for redeveloping the former bases (p. 172). Today Panamanian authorities “prioritize the interests of the international shipping industry over those of . . . Panama’s tropical environment and marginalized communities” (p. 174). This manner of thinking, the author posits, is a legacy of the U.S. presence, specifically the military’s mindset and identity. Drawing on the ideas of George Black and Fredrick Pike, Lindsay-Poland argues that U.S. officers saw themselves as “rational and scientific” actors and thought of the Panamanian environment as an “obstacle to civilization.” From their arrival, they viewed tropics as a dangerous “enemy” whose riotous qualities they would have to subdue with their superior knowledge. At the same time, they identified Panama’s population with the surroundings, “so that perceptions of one were often conflated with the other” (pp. 3, 4). Especially important in this regard was the influence of scientific racism, so prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and which slandered people of color as inferior and incapable of progress. Given the central role of the military, these attitudes were of enormous consequence. Lindsay-Poland suggests that the officers were like “emperors in the jungle,” the “dominant U.S. actor in bilateral relations,” and regarded as nearly “untouchable” by the Panamanians (p. 7). The result was a series of morally dubious policies, described as both “environmentally and socially destructive” (p. 3). Particularly alarming is the book’s most convincing section, which documents U.S. attempts to conceal dangerous materials left behind on its former bases. The book concludes with a fascinating afterword by Panamanian scholar Guillermo Castro, who calls on his fellow citizens to reexamine their culture and confront the legacies of the U.S. militarism. “On that path toward ourselves,” he insists, “John Lindsay-Poland has been and will be a welcome friend” (p. 210). peter szok, Texas Christian University 548 HAHR / August Latin American and Caribbean Foreign Policy. Edited by frank o. mora and jeanne a. k. hey. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Table. Figure. Notes. Glossary. Bibliographies. Index. Cloth, $75.00. Paper, $29.95. These essays on the foreign policies of 16 Latin American countries and an additional article covering the Caribbean Community and Common Market (written specifically for this volume) all follow a common format based on three levels of analysis: the system, the state, and the individual. The editors and authors adopt James Rosenau’s conceptual framework in an attempt to provide a useful comparative look at a wide variety of countries. The volume is by and large successful in this goal. Intended principally as a text, it should be very useful in that role. Although the relationship with the United States is an important part of the system-level analysis, the authors take the perspective of individual countries looking out—a valuable corrective to U.S.-centric scholarship that may not do justice to the internal dynamics of foreign states, including the personalities and policies of significant individuals. Furthermore, the editors have selected authors who are quite knowledgeable about their individual cases, including several Latin American authors. While the articles address no major new theoretical issues, the volume provides a useful basis for country-to-country comparisons. The book’s only real drawback is that the discussion questions at the end of each chapter are not particularly challenging. A more interesting approach to discussion might have been a series of overarching questions, either at the end of specific sections or at the end of the book, that would encourage students to integrate the different essays and make fruitful use of the comparative format. The geographic scope includes all of the major countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as several smaller but significant cases. Peter M. Sanchez, in his interesting contribution on Panama, points out that despite its tiny size, population, and economy and its location as a significant passage between two oceans, Panama has nevertheless been able to establish a certain amount of autonomy and sovereignty vis-à-vis the United States. Sanchez credits strong leadership—first under the military regime of Omar Torrijos (and to some degree that of Manuel Noriega) and then under the democratic regimes that have followed them—for Panama’s able to negotiate the 1977 Panama Canal Treaties and later to forestall a continued U.S. military presence after taking control of the canal. Although, as Sanchez correctly points out, “Panama was able to achieve foreign policy goals only when international conditions encouraged the United States to accept Panamanian demands” (p. 81), its ability to achieve these goals at all is worth noting. The power relationship was clearly asymmetrical, but particular circumstances (including the end of the cold war and the lessening need on the part of United States for the military bases there) provided Panamanians the opportunity to assert their independence from the United States and make it stick. Arlene B. Tickner’s article on Colombia offers another much-needed and very cogent discussion. Tickner acknowledges that the Colombian state is heavily influenced by the tendency to align its interests (particularly economic ones) with United States. Yet she sees the emergence of a countervailing tendency, beginning in the post-1966 Book Reviews / International and Comparative 549 period with the presidency of Carlos Lleras Restrepo and reaching its height when his minister of relations, Alfonso López Michelsen, succeeded him in office. These leaders recognized that relations with countries in similar positions would be fruitful and began to pay more attention to neighbors in the region. Later presidents—faced first with cold-war pressures from the Reagan administration and later with major problems from drug trafficking—pulled back closer to U.S. positions. Nevertheless, in the early 1980s the country defied U.S. policies in Central America and joined the Contadora group that sought to resolve conflicts in that region. Given the tendency of most discussions to focus only on Colombia’s role in drug trafficking, this more historical view is an important corrective. Two other excellent articles, in a book full of them, are Ana Covarrubias’s contribution on Mexico, largely focused on economic issues, and Damían Fernández’s piece on Cuba, which convincingly explains how such a little country attained such a heavy degree of attitude and was able to exercise it globally. In the latter case, Fernández goes beyond the levels-of-analysis framework to include issues of political culture, and he does so with grace and wisdom, not to mention wit. Although the volume might have been somewhat more useful to students had the editors included an overview of U.S. policy toward Latin America, surely such material is available elsewhere and could be included by the instructor. The discussions of personality and leadership with system and state frameworks is welcomed; this gives an important explanatory dimension to the essays and makes them more readable and interesting. The materials here are well presented for classroom use and will be welcomed by scholars as a quick and convenient reference. linda b. hall, University of New Mexico The U.S. Catholic Press on Central America: From Cold War Anticommunism to Social Justice. By edward t. brett. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2003. Notes. Index. iii, 265 pp. Cloth, $45.00. Paper, $22.00. The topic of this book could bring skepticism. What makes the Catholic press different or relevant enough for us to be interested in it? What could we learn about the Central American crisis from the Catholic press that we do not already know? Well, plenty. This book’s sources provide a unique perspective on, among other things, the evolution of the Central American and U.S. Catholic churches, and it shows the relevance of relations between the United States and Central America outside of the framework of the state. A study of press coverage can be approached by tedious summarizing article after article, going from publication to publication and country to country. Unfortunately, this book has some of this. It is at times more descriptive than analytical, and the author can be consumed by the decision of whether each article was “fair and balanced.” But the story is intrinsically interesting, and the author’s treatment of it is an excellent contribution to the field. What made the Catholic press move away from its uncritical cold-war coverage? 550 HAHR / August The response to this question includes topics familiar to the Latin Americanist, such as the impact of Vatican II, the Alliance for Progress, and liberation theology, but the rich material of this book brings these stories into interaction in unexpected ways. As Pope John XXIII sent an emissary to plea to American priests to go as missionaries to Latin America, John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps was at the same time appealing to the idealism of young Americans. One senses that, initially, American missionaries went to Central America (particularly Guatemala) not only to help their church but also to encourage evolution in order to avoid revolution. There was nothing more natural than for pious Catholic magazines to publish stories about these eager missionaries. But as they evolved, so did the publications. For young priests and nuns, charity works with the poor led to an understanding of the structural injustice that pervaded the region. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that they were influenced by Paulo Freire, the Latin American bishops meeting in Medellín, liberation theology, and Ivan Illich. Many missionaries were transformed by their experiences, and so was the Catholic press coverage. As time passed, the missionaries were only one of many sources offering the Catholic press a distinct perspective on Central America. A Jesuit magazine like America, for example, had access to first-rate local interpreters of the Central American reality, such as scholars in the Jesuit colleges in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Faith-based fact-finding trips visited distant parishes and interviewed human rights advocates associated with the church. The author also shows that the Central American story was tailor-made for the constituency of the Catholic press. From the political protagonism of Sandinista priests, to their conflicts with the hierarchy, to the martyrdom of Archbishop Romero and the persecution of the church in El Salvador, the drama was full of interest for Catholics. Stories that were intermittently covered by the secular media merited article after article in the Catholic press. Still, not all Catholic publications shared exactly the same perspective. The author is careful to point out differences and changes over time, as happened when admiration for the Sandinistas weakened after 1985. A vociferous conservative press stood firmly on the side of the Reagan administration at all times, but the author makes a good case that its shrill tone and unwillingness to consider other perspectives made it ineffective. The resonance of the Central American story helps us understand the role of the Catholic press in galvanizing religious opposition to Reagan policies, a big part of the 1980s story. The press not only covered but also encouraged marches, letters to representatives, and different expressions of outrage. The book includes many telling examples of why the “Catholic angle” could be particularly powerful, as when the Catholic press wondered why the administration was able to “find” even nonexistent weapons smuggled into El Salvador but unable to investigate the perpetrators of the murder and rape of four American nuns in 1980. The Catholic press was an important and particularly energized sector in the United States, and it was a source of energy, support, and even resources for Book Reviews / International and Comparative 551 progressive Catholics in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The book’s conclusion contextualizes the evolution of press coverage within the history of Catholic political participation in the United States. This is a bit of a surprise, since the theme is not developed elsewhere, but it adds a useful dimension. It also reminds us of a side of the story not discussed with as much detail as I would have liked: the extent of U.S. Catholic activism. Small complaints aside, the richness of the material and the abundance of insights suggest that this book will find its way into many a syllabus. héctor lindo-fuentes, Fordham University Frontera y diplomacia: Las relaciones Mèxico–Estados Unidos durante el Porfiriato. By maría jesús duarte espinosa. Mexico City: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2001. Bibliography. Index. 147 pp. Paper. “Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos” (so far from God and so close to the United States): this is a famous Mexican phrase that characterized the binational relations between the two countries for a good part of the nineteenth century. In 1876, a military hero of 5 de Mayo of 1863 and former Liberal, Porfirio Díaz, took power in Mexico, retaining it until 1911. Díaz became a symbol of tyranny, corruption, violation of constitutional principles, and church appeasement, but also of national formation, economic and industrial success, and political sagacity. He strengthened governmental institutions and placed them in the hands of capable and trusted men so that the system worked toward success. The Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (Foreign Affairs Secretariat) was a major player in Díaz’s overall policies to take Mexico to its place among the nations of the world. By 1910, Díaz had become a highly respected and acclaimed figure among world leaders, although despised and hated by millions of his countrymen. Duarte’s volume is a brief and valuable addition to the historiography on Mexican diplomatic relations, especially those between the two federal republics of North America during the Porfiriato. This monograph, written as requirement for the bachelor’s degree in diplomatic history, covers the most important primary and secondary sources; it is nicely written, although repetitive. It won the Matías Romero Award from the Secretariat of Foreign Relations for 1998–99 (hence its publication) and is outstanding for a first-level publication from a young author. The study is divided into five chapters in chronological order, yet each emphasizes specific issues relative to the diplomatic problems between Mexico and the United States. The closing chapter repeats the same conclusions of each early chapter, also mentioned in the introduction. Brevity limits the scope of its main theme. The author states that her objective is to analyze the policies and actions of the man who headed the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores for most of the Porfiriato. Ignacio Mariscal was secretary first between 1880 and 1882 and then later from 1885 to 1910. The author uses his correspondence and U.S. documents seeking Mexican policies as directed by Mariscal. She also includes actions by Mexican ambassadors to the United States, especially those of Matías Romero, one of 552 HAHR / August the regime’s most trusted members. Mariscal’s most important action was the creation of a strong consular body, especially in areas where the number of Mexican immigrants was on the rise. They would carry out assistance to their compatriots and espionage. The major diplomatic events discussed include the creation of treaties relating to problems along the border; water issues on the rivers Bravo, Gila, and Colorado; the chasing of bandits and Indians; and the delimitation of the frontier between both countries. It also gives preeminence to the consular and political activities carried out by Mexican consuls and ambassadors to protect the Díaz regime from enemies across the border, especially in two periods: Catarino Garza in the 1890s and the Flores Magón Brothers after 1906. The author also mentions Díaz’s attempt to create a counterhegemonic policy toward the United States after 1898. She states that it was a constant in Mexican diplomatic policies since the Juárez presidency. The nation was to maintain a policy of strict equality among nations and a constant defense of national interests. The Porfirian regime, attacked and denounced in previous works, has come under new view in the past few years. Díaz moved Mexico from a country of regions to a national entity that became more relevant after the revolution. He freed Mexico of its foreign debt and brought economic success, although with high social costs. He made Mexico an important country and, although happy with U.S. and European investments, could not allow its neighbor’s hegemonic interests to bring his country to its knees. Therefore, the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores was used to make Mexico a partner in commercial affairs and international interests. The study is limited to some of the diplomatic activities and includes briefly Díaz’s directives only on the protection of his regime. It does not mention the Científicos’ possible concerns about U.S. relations or the weight that economics might have played on diplomatic policies. One last note: the term Frontera in the title is not incorporated in the text. Overall, the study is useful as a first reader on the Porfiriato’s diplomacy. It opens various lines of research on Mexico’s foreign relations and on the possibilities for further study of the Porfiriato. Somehow, Díaz made the U.S. border less dangerous for Mexicans. marcial ocasio-meléndez, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Book Reviews / International and Comparative 553 Cuba mexicana: Historia de una anexión imposible. By rafael rojas. Mexico City: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2001. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. 478 pp. Paper. Recent scholarship has questioned the widespread notion that nineteenth-century Mexico pursued a foreign policy of survival—a policy designed to survive a brutal halfcentury of civil war, foreign intervention, and territorial annexation (1810–67), followed by liberal modernization unilaterally oriented toward the United States and western Europe. Instead, scholars have reexamined Mexican archival sources in the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores to conclude that nineteenth-century Mexican foreign policy was multilateral and surprisingly engaged with relations with other Latin American nations. Following in the footsteps of recent work on Mexican–Central American and Mexican–South American relations, Rojas has examined Mexican diplomatic sources to provide a long-range view of Mexican-Cuban relations between the early 1800s and the War of 1898 that ended Spanish colonial rule over Cuba and brought indirect U.S. rule. The result is a book that pays close attention to diplomatic and cultural ties between two areas of Latin America that shared important linguistic and political similarities, even as they were dissimilar in terms of economy, ethnicity, and race. The reader attracted by the exciting title and expecting to fi nd an account of a Mexican attempt to annex Cuba will be disappointed. The book deals more with the complex Mexican diplomatic attempts to limit great powers in the Caribbean than with efforts to form a Greater Mexico that included Cuba. Rojas traces a careful and modest Mexican diplomacy in three long chapters dealing with New Spain’s financing of the Havana economy, Mexican policy toward Cuban independence movements, and Mexican attitudes vis-à-vis what the author calls the “Cuban nation”—a cultural construct that, according to Rojas, existed almost a century prior to the war of independence that ended in the U.S. intervention of 1898. As the author acknowledges, the Mexican government displayed an ambivalent attitude toward Cuba’s political future, balancing an abstract preference for independence against the potential of a U.S. military presence in an independent Cuba that could be harmful to Mexican national interests as construed by the governing elite. While Mexican officials discussed an outright annexation of Cuba, Rojas acknowledges that such an undertaking was always a most unlikely political project for a government that fought for the survival of the Mexican state during most of the period analyzed here. In the end, the author reinforces the scholarly consensus on Mexican policy toward Latin America in the nineteenth century. While Mexican policy makers stressed their country’s cultural ties to the rest of Spanish America and occasionally defied the imperialist ventures of the European powers and the United States, they were geopolitical realists who recognized the relative weakness of a Mexican projection over an area that was a target of intense imperial rivalry. In the same vein, in the early 1960s, the Mexican government defended the Cuban Revolution in international forums as an exercise of national self-determination, while falling in line with the United States in denouncing communism and Soviet 554 HAHR / August policy. As in the 1800s, the outcome was a tepid defense of Cuban sovereignty against the backdrop of a realistic assessment of Mexico’s weak position in Great Power politics. The specialist in Mexican foreign relations will therefore find much of interest in this book, while noting the absence of any European archival material and even most English-language documents and scholarly literature. Nonspecialist readers who seek an understanding of the foreign policy of nineteenth-century Mexico will be confused by the absence of a clear thesis or even a set of conclusions at the end of the volume. jürgen buchenau, University of North Carolina, Charlotte