Real World Latin America

How a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world. After the Second World War demolished the old order, a group of economists and policymakers from across Latin America imagined a new global economy and launched an intellectual movement that would eventually capture the world. They charged that the systems of trade and finance that bound the world’s nations together were frustrating the economic prospects of Latin America and other regions of the world. Through the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL, the Spanish and Portuguese acronym, cepalinos challenged the orthodoxies of development theory and policy. Simultaneously, they demanded more not less trade, more not less aid, and offered a development agenda to transform both the developed and the developing world. Eventually, cepalinos established their own form of hegemony, outpacing the United States and the International Monetary Fund as the agenda setters for a region traditionally held under the orbit of Washington and its institutions. By doing so, cepalinos reshaped both regional and international governance and set an intellectual agenda that still resonates today. Drawing on unexplored sources from the Americas and Europe, Margarita Fajardo retells the history of dependency theory, revealing the diversity of an often-oversimplified movement and the fraught relationship between cepalinos, their dependentista critics, and the regional and global Left. By examining the political ventures of dependentistas and cepalinos, The World That Latin America Created is a story of ideas that brought about real change.

An engaging, important text calling for the reform of economics and pushing for the discipline to become an honest and effective tool for democracy.

This book details many aspects of Latin American culture as experienced by millions of people living in Central and South America. The author argues that despite early and considerable European influences on the region, indigenous Latin American traditions still characterize much of the social and artistic heritage of the Latin American countries. Several chapters provide detailed accounts of daily life, including descriptions of contemporary dress, mealtime traditions, transportation, and traditional ways of conducting business. Other chapters focus on the cultural significance of the popular music, art, and literature prevalent in each Latin American country. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America is an anthology of stories of largely ordinary individuals struggling to forge a life during the unstable colonial period in Latin America. These mini-biographies vividly show the tensions that emerged when the political, social, religious, and economic ideals of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial regimes and the Roman Catholic Church conflicted with the realities of daily living in the Americas. Now fully updated with new and revised essays, the book is carefully balanced among countries and ethnicities. Within an overall theme of social order and disorder in a colonial setting, the stories bring to life issues of gender; race and ethnicity; conflicts over religious orthodoxy; and crime, violence, and rebellion. Written by leading scholars, the essays are specifically designed to be readable and interesting. Ideal for the Latin American history survey and for courses on colonial Latin American history, this fresh and human text will engage as well as inform students. Contributions by: Rolena Adorno, Kenneth J. Andrien, Christiana Borchart de Moreno, Joan Bristol, Noble David Cook, Marcela Echeverri, Lyman L. Johnson, Mary Karasch, Alida C. Metcalf, Kenneth Mills, Muriel S. Nazzari, Ana María Presta, Susan E. Ramírez, Matthew Restall, Zeb Tortorici, Camilla Townsend, Ann Twinam, and Nancy E. van Deusen.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This edited volume examines how economic processes have worked upon social lives and social realities in Latin America during the past decades. Through tracing the effects of the neoliberal epoch into the era of the so-called pink tide, the book seeks to understand to what extent the turn to the left at the start of the millennium managed to challenge historically constituted configurations of inequality. A central argument in the book is that in spite of economic reforms and social advances on a range of arenas, the fundamental tenants of socio-economic inequalities have not been challenged substantially. As several countries are now experiencing a return to right-wing politics, this collection helps us better understand why inequalities are so entrenched in the Latin American continent, but also the complex and creative ways that it is continuously contested. The book directs itself to students, scholars and anyone interested in Latin America, economic anthropology, political anthropology, left-wing politics, poverty and socio-economic inequalities.