Subject: History / Latin America / South America

Subject: History / Latin America / South America

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Spatial Theories for the Americas

|9780822968535|Counterweights to Five Centuries of Eurocentrism| Longlist, 2025 Architecture Book Awards – Architectural Theory To study the built environment of the Americas is to wrestle with an inherent contradiction. While the disciplines of architecture, urban design, landscape, and planning share the fundamental belief that space and place matter, the overwhelming majority of canonical knowledge and the vernacular used to describe these disciplines comes from another, very different, continent. With this book, Fernando Luiz Lara discusses several theories of space—drawing on cartography, geography, anthropology, and mostly architecture—and proposes counterweights to five centuries of Eurocentrism. The first part of Spatial Theories for…

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The Dictator Dilemma

|9780822968481|The United States and Paraguay in the Cold War|The Dictator Dilemma tells the story of US bilateral relations with the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship (1954–1989). Tyvela focuses on how and why that diplomatic relationship changed during the Cold War from cooperation, based on mutual opposition to communism, to conflict, based on clashing expectations concerning democratic reforms and human rights. The policy debates by officials in Washington and in Asunción brought out a tension that has defined US diplomacy for more than a century: how can the United States partner with tyrants while credibly proclaiming to advance a democratic mission in the…

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Modernity at the Movies

|9780822968467|Cinema-Going in Buenos Aires and Santiago, 1915-1945|Cinema can both reflect the world as it is and offer escape from it. In Modernity at the Movies, Camila Gatica Mizala explores the ideas of reflection versus escapism and examines how modes of understanding the current moment emerged through the practice of going to the movies in Santiago and Buenos Aires between 1915 and 1945. Using cinema and variety magazines published in both cities, she analyzes the technology, architecture, attendance, behavior, language, censorship, and overall experience of cinema-going. Gatica Mizala brings together the perception and reception of cinema as a modern art form,…

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Spatial Solidarities

|9780822968313|Architecture and Resistance in 1970s Chile|Between 1973 and 1990, the authoritarian military dictatorship of Chile maintained its control through a network of detention and torture centers designed to create fear and isolation. Spatial Solidarities illuminates how architects, artists, activists, and other political agents resisted the Chilean regime through spatial practices. Within these spaces, prisoners responded creatively: producing drawings, performances, and architectural projects; rearranging their bodies and living areas; and connecting through songs, shadows, and mutual care. They collected resources, created systems of mutual aid, and smuggled out site plans and names to expose the regime’s crimes. Some imagined their detention…

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Spatial Solidarities

|9780822949213|Architecture and Resistance in 1970s Chile|Between 1973 and 1990, the authoritarian military dictatorship of Chile maintained its control through a network of detention and torture centers designed to create fear and isolation. Spatial Solidarities illuminates how architects, artists, activists, and other political agents resisted the Chilean regime through spatial practices. Within these spaces, prisoners responded creatively: producing drawings, performances, and architectural projects; rearranging their bodies and living areas; and connecting through songs, shadows, and mutual care. They collected resources, created systems of mutual aid, and smuggled out site plans and names to expose the regime’s crimes. Some imagined their detention…

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