Pitt Latin American Series
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Series Editor: Catherine M. Conaghan, Queen’s University (Ontario)

The Pitt Latin American Series began in 1968. Since then the series has grown to include a wide array of distinguished books from a variety of disciplinary, ideological, and methodological perspectives on every aspect of Latin American history, politics, society, economics, and culture. The series continues to thrive as it enters its sixth decade with a renewed sense of purpose.

Electing Chavez Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9780822960645
Pub Date: 30 Apr 2010
Description:
Venezuela\u2019s Hugo Ch\u00e1vez was the first anti-neoliberal presidential candidate to win in the region. Electing Ch\u00e1vez examines the circumstances that facilitated this pivotal election. By 1998, Venezuela had been rocked by two major scandals—the exchange rate incidents of the 1980s and the banking crisis of 1994—and had suffered rising social inequality.
Unequal Partners Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 184
ISBN: 9780822960584
Pub Date: 28 Mar 2010
Description:
Since Mexico\u2019s defeat in the Mexican-American War of the 1840s, the United States has continued to dominate Mexico economically, militarily, and politically. This long history of asymmetry has created a Mexican distaste for \u201cAmerican arrogance,\u201d and an American vision of Mexico as its \u201cbackyard.\u201d The imbalance has damaged political negotiations, trade pacts, and capital flows, as suspicions and protectionism have undermined diplomacy.
Workers and Welfare Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9780822960454
Pub Date: 28 Feb 2010
Description:
After the revolutionary period of 1910-1920, Mexico developed a number of social protection programs to support workers in public and private sectors and to establish safeguards for the poor and the aged. These included pensions, healthcare, and worker's compensation. The new welfare programs were the product of a complex interrelationship of corporate, labor, and political actors.
Politics of Motherhood, The Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9780822960430
Pub Date: 06 Dec 2009
Description:
With the 2006 election of Michelle Bachelet as the first female president and women claiming fifty percent of her cabinet seats, the political influence of Chilean women has taken a major step forward. Despite a seemingly liberal political climate, Chile has a murky history on women's rights, and progress has been slow, tenuous, and in many cases, non-existent.Chronicling an era of unprecedented modernization and political transformation, Jadwiga E.
Corruption and Democracy in Latin America Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780822960232
Pub Date: 19 Jul 2009
Description:
Corruption has blurred, and in some cases blinded, the vision of democracy in many Latin American nations. Weakened institutions and policies have facilitated the rise of corrupt leadership, election fraud, bribery, and clientelism. Corruption and Democracy in Latin America presents a groundbreaking national and regional study that provides policy analysis and prescription through a wide-ranging methodological, empirical, and theoretical survey.
Struggles of Voice Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780822959984
Pub Date: 24 Oct 2008
Description:
Over the last two decades, indigenous populations in Latin America have achieved a remarkable level of visibility and political effectiveness, particularly in Ecuador and Bolivia. In Struggles of Voice, Jos\u00e9 Antonio Lucero examines these two outstanding examples in order to understand their different patterns of indigenous mobilization and to reformulate the theoretical model by which we link political representation to social change. Building on extensive fieldwork, Lucero considers Ecuador's united indigenous movement and compares it to the more fragmented situation in Bolivia.
Unresolved Tensions Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9780822960065
Pub Date: 20 Sep 2008
Description:
The landslide election of Evo Morales in December 2005 pointed toward a process of accelerated change in Bolivia, forging a path away from globalization and the neoliberal paradigm in favor of greater national control and state intervention. This in turn shifted the power relations of Bolivia's internal politics-beginning with greater inclusion of the indigenous population-and altered the nation's foreign relations. Unresolved Tensions engages this realignment from a variety of analytical perspectives, using the Morales election as a lens through which to reassess Bolivia's contemporary political reality and its relation to a set of deeper historical issues.
Piety, Power, and Politics Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9780822960225
Pub Date: 18 Aug 2008
Description:
Douglass Sullivan Gonzalez examines the influence of religion on the development of nationalism in Guatemala during the period 1821-1871, focusing on the relationship between Rafael Carrera amd the Guatemalan Catholic Church. He illustrates the peculiar and fascinating blend of religious fervor, popular power, and caudillo politics that inspired a multiethnic and multiclass alliance to defend the Guatemalan nation in the mid-nineteenth century.Led by the military strongman Rafael Carrera, an unlikely coalition of mestizos, Indians, and creoles (whites born in the Americas) overcame a devastating civil war in the late 1840s and withstood two threats (1851 and 1863) from neighboring Honduras and El Salvador that aimed at reintegrating conservative Guatemala into a liberal federation of Central American nations.
Under the Flags of Freedom Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 312
ISBN: 9780822959922
Pub Date: 10 Jun 2008
Description:
During the wars for independence in Spanish South America (1808-1826), thousands of slaves enlisted under the promise of personal freedom and, in some cases, freedom for other family members. Blacks were recruited by opposing sides in these conflicts and their loyalties rested with whomever they believed would emerge victorious. The prospect of freedom was worth risking one's life for, and wars against Spain presented unprecedented opportunities to attain it.
The Conquest of History Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 296
ISBN: 9780822959908
Pub Date: 23 Dec 2007
Description:
As Spain rebuilt its colonial regime in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines after the Spanish American revolutions, it turned to history to justify continued dominance. The metropolitan vision of history, however, always met with opposition in the colonies.The Conquest of History examines how historians, officials, and civic groups in Spain and its colonies forged national histories out of the ruins and relics of the imperial past.
Myths of Harmony Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9780822959656
Pub Date: 06 Aug 2007
Description:
This book centers on a foundational moment for Latin American racial constructs. While most contemporary scholarship has focused the explanation for racial tolerance-or its lack-in the colonial period, Marixa Lasso argues that the key to understanding the origins of modern race relations are to be found later, in the Age of Revolution.Lasso rejects the common assumption that subalterns were passive and alienated from Creole-led patriot movements, and instead demonstrates that during Colombia's revolution, free blacks and mulattos (pardos) actively joined and occasionally even led the cause to overthrow the Spanish colonial government.
Fujimori's Peru Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 328
ISBN: 9780822959434
Pub Date: 30 Jul 2006
Description:
Alberto Fujimori ascended to the presidency of Peru in 1990, boldly promising to remake the country. Ten years later, he hastily sent his resignation from exile in Japan, leaving behind a trail of lies, deceit, and corruption. While piecing together the shards of Fujimori’s presidency, prosecutors uncovered a vast criminal conspiracy fueled by political ambition and personal greed.
Xuxub Must Die Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9780822959441
Pub Date: 15 Jul 2006
Description:
Today, foreigners travel to the Yucatan for ruins, temples, and pyramids, white sand beaches and clear blue water. One hundred years ago, they went for cheap labor, an abundance of land, and the opportunity to make a fortune exporting cattle, henequen fiber, sugarcane, or rum. Sometimes they found death.
Newsrooms in Conflict Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 296
ISBN: 9780822959281
Pub Date: 30 Jun 2006
Description:
Newsrooms in Conflict examines the dramatic changes within Mexican society, politics, and journalism that transformed an authoritarian media institution into many conflicting styles of journalism with very different implications for deepening democracy in the country. Using extensive interviews with journalists and content analysis spanning more than two decades, Sallie Hughes identifies the patterns of newsroom transformation that explain how Mexican journalism was changed from a passive and even collusive institution into conflicting clusters of news organizations exhibiting citizen-oriented, market-driven, and adaptive authoritarian tendencies. Hughes explores the factors that brought about this transformation, including not only the democratic upheaval within Mexico and the role of the market, but also the diffusion of ideas, the transformation of professional identities and, most significantly, the profound changes made within the newsrooms themselves.
State and Society in Conflict Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9780822959229
Pub Date: 26 Jun 2006
Description:
State and Society in Conflict analyzes one of the most volatile regions in Latin America, the Andean states of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. For the last twenty-five years, crises in these five Andean countries have endangered Latin America's democracies and strained their relations with the United States. As these nations struggle to cope with demands from Washington on security policies (emphasizing drugs and terrorism), neoliberal economics, and democratic politics, their resulting domestic travails can be seen in poor economic growth, unequal wealth distribution, mounting social unrest, and escalating political instability.
Enforcing the Rule of Law Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 376
ISBN: 9780822958963
Pub Date: 30 Apr 2006
Description:
Reports of scandal and corruption have led to the downfall of numerous political leaders in Latin America in recent years. What conditions have developed that allow for the exposure of wrongdoing and the accountability of leaders? Enforcing the Rule of Law examines how elected officials in Latin American democracies have come under scrutiny from new forms of political control, and how these social accountability mechanisms have been successful in counteracting corruption and the limitations of established institutions.