Books

A new addition to the Pitt Latin American Studies series

In Comparing Socialist Approaches, Carmelo Mesa-Lago examines the two main socialist models across Cuba, China, and Vietnam to compare central planning and socialist markets. Under the Cuban central plan, large state enterprises have been unable to generate economic growth, even with mild structural market reforms and a small controlled private ...

During the crucial period of its formation, the opposing forces of corruption and anticorruption shaped Venezuela’s new national state and its relationship with society. National strongman Juan Vicente Gómez, who ruled from 1908 to 1935, fastened control over key areas of the economy, extracted wealth from the Venezuelan people, and ...

Despite democratization at the national level, local political bosses still govern many municipalities in Latin America. Caudillos and clans often use informal political practices—ranging from clientelism and patronage to harassment of political opposition—to control local political dynamics. These arbitrary and, at times, abusive practices pose important challenges to ...

In the two largest countries in South America, successive waves of structural reforms adopted in the name of development invariably have ended in disappointment. The promise of development never seems to materialize. Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentinaexamines why. Instead of looking for policy failures, F. Antunes de Oliveira’...

Panama is a country whose geopolitical importance outweighs its size because of the volume of trade that passes the Central American isthmus through the canal. For nearly a century, the United States occupied and controlled the Panama Canal Zone and its shipping operations. In 1999, control was passed to Panama’s ...

Staging Buenos Aires centers theater as a source of historical inquiry to understand how nonelites experienced and shaped a city undergoing dramatic transformations. Commercial theater constituted the core of the city’s public sphere, one in which middle-class playwrights and audiences assumed the leading role. Audiences and critics often disagreed ...

Winner, 2024 RMCLAS Thomas McGann Award Argentine women’s long resistance to extreme rightists, tyranny, and militarism culminated in the Junta de la Victoria, or Victory Board, a group that organized in the aftermath of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in defiance of the neutralist and Axis-leaning government in ...

Winner, 2024 Best Book Prize, LASA Ecuadorian Studies Section The Ecuadorian Public Health Service was founded in 1908 in response to the arrival of bubonic plague to the country. A. Kim Clark uses this as a point of departure to explore questions of social history and public health by tracing how the ...

From majestic Amazonian macaws and highland Andean hawks to tiny colorful tanagers and tall flamingos, birds and their feathers played an important role in the Inka empire. Claudia Brosseder uncovers the many meanings that Inkas attached to the diverse fowl of the Amazon, the eastern Andean foothills, and the highlands. ...

A long history of migration, trade, and shared interests links China to Latin America and the Caribbean. Over the past twenty years, China has increased direct investment and restructured trade relations in the region. In addition, Chinese public sector enterprises, private companies, and various branches of the central government have ...

This coauthored monograph examines how business groups have interacted with state authorities in the three central Andean countries from the mid-twentieth century through the early twenty-first. This time span covers three distinct economic regimes: the period of state-led import substitutive industrialization from the 1950s through the 1970s, the neoliberalism of ...

In Mirrors of Whiteness, Mauro P. Porto examines the conservative revolt of Brazil’s white middle class, which culminated with the 2018 election of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro. He identifies the rise of a significant status panic among middle-class publics following the relative economic and social ascension of mostly Black and ...

Winner, 2024 Barrington Moore Book Award from the Section on Comparative Historical Sociology of the American Sociological Association | Co-winner, 2024 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award from the Political Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association | Honorable Mention, 2024 Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award from the Political Economy of the World-System Section of ...

During Chile’s shift to neoliberalism, the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet passed a swath of probusiness labor legislation. Subsequent labor reforms by democratically elected progressive administrations have sought to shift power back to workers, but this task has proven difficult. In Building Power to Shape Labor Policy, Pablo Pérez ...