Synopses & Reviews
This collection brings together innovative historical work on race and national identity in Latin America and the Caribbean and places this scholarship in the context of interdisciplinary and transnational discussions regarding race and nation in the Americas. Moving beyond debates about whether ideologies of racial democracy have actually served to obscure discrimination, the book shows how notions of race and nationhood have varied over time across Latin America's political landscapes.
Framing the themes and questions explored in the volume, the editors' introduction also provides an overview of the current state of the interdisciplinary literature on race and nation-state formation. Essays on the postindependence period in Belize, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, and Peru consider how popular and elite racial constructs have developed in relation to one another and to processes of nation building. Contributors also examine how ideas regarding racial and national identities have been gendered and ask how racialized constructions of nationhood have shaped and limited the citizenship rights of subordinated groups.
The contributors are Sueann Caulfield, Sarah C. Chambers, Lillian Guerra, Anne S. Macpherson, Aims McGuinness, Gerardo R„nique, James Sanders, Alexandra Minna Stern, and Barbara Weinstein.
Review
"The collection is well conceived, and the essays themselves represent some of the best work on the topic in an impressive range of Latin American and Caribbean contexts."
-- Ada Ferrer, author of Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898
Review
"[An] ambitious compilation of scholarly articles. . . . A noteworthy contribution to Latin American historiography. . . . A commendable effort."
-- Caribbean Studies Newsletter
Review
"Well-written."
-- The Latin Americanist
Synopsis
Based on cutting-edge research, these 12 essays examine connections between race and national identity in Latin America and the Caribbean in the post-independence era. They reveal how notions of race and nationhood have varied over time and across the region's political landscapes.
About the Author
Nancy P. Appelbaum is assistant professor of history at the State University of New York at Binghamton. Anne S. Macpherson is assistant professor of history at the State University of New York at Brockport.Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt is associate professor of history at Syracuse University.
Table of Contents
Racial nations / Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt -- Little middle ground : the instability of a mestizo identity in the Andes, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries / Sarah C. Chambers -- Belonging to the great Granadan family : partisan struggle and the construction of indigenous identity and politics in Southwestern Colombia, 1849-1890 / James Sanders -- Searching for "Latin America" : race and sovereignty in the Americas in the 1850s / Aims McGuinness -- Imagining the colonial nation : race, gender, and middle-class politics in Belize, 1888-1898 / Anne S. Macpherson -- From revolution to involution in the early Cuban Republic : conflicts over race, class, and nation, 1902-1906 / Lillian Guerra -- Interracial courtship in the Rio de Janeiro courts, 1918-1940 / Sueann Caulfield -- From mestizophilia to biotypology : racialization and science in Mexico, 1920-1960 / Alexandra Minna Stern -- Race, region, and nation : Sonora's anti-Chinese racism and Mexico's postrevolutionary nationalism, 1920s-1930s / Gerardo Râenique -- Racializing regional difference : Säao Paulo versus Brazil, 1932 / Barbara Weinstein -- Race and nation in Latin America : an anthropological view / Peter Wade.