Making the Revolution: Histories of the Latin American Left

by Kevin A. Young

Overview

Many treatments of the twentieth-century Latin American left assume a movement populated mainly by affluent urban youth whose naïve dreams of revolution collapsed under the weight of their own elitism, racism, sexism, and sectarian dogmas. However, this book demonstrates that the history of the left was much more diverse. Many leftists struggled against capitalism and empire while also confronting racism, patriarchy, and authoritarianism. The left's ideology and practice were often shaped by leftists from marginalized populations, from Bolivian indigenous communities in the 1920s to the revolutionary women of El Salvador's guerrilla movements in the 1980s. Through ten historical case studies of ten different countries, Making the Revolution highlights some of the most important research on the Latin American left by leading senior and up-and-coming scholars, offering a needed corrective and valuable contribution to modern Latin American history, politics, and sociology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108423991
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/11/2019
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.87(d)

About the Author

Kevin A. Young is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of Blood of the Earth: Resource Nationalism, Revolution, and Empire in Bolivia (2017).

Table of Contents

List of figures; List of contributors; List of abbreviations; Introduction: revolutionary actors, encounters, and transformations Kevin A. Young; 1. Common ground: Caciques, artisans, and radical intellectuals in the Chayanta rebellion of 1927 Forrest Hylton; 2. Identity, class, and nation: Black immigrant workers, Cuban communism, and the sugar insurgency, 1925–34 Barry Carr; 3. Indigenous movements in the eye of the hurricane Marc Becker; 4. Friends and comrades: political and personal relationships between members of the Communist Party USA and the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, 1930s–40s Margaret Power; 5. Total subversion: interethnic radicalism in La Paz, Bolivia, 1946–7 Kevin A. Young; 6. 'Sisters in exploitation': the 1959 Congress of Latin American women and the transnational origins of Cuban state feminism Michelle Chase; 7. Revolutionaries without revolution: regional experiences in the forging of a radical political culture in the Southern Cone of South America (1966–76) Aldo Marchesi; 8. Nationalism and Marxism in rural Cold War Mexico: Guerrero, 1959–74 O'Neill Blacker-Hanson; 9. The ethnic question in Guatemala's armed conflict: insights from the detention and 'rescue' of Emeterio Toj Medrano Betsy Konefal; 10. 'For our total emancipation': the making of revolutionary feminism in insurgent El Salvador, 1977–87 Diana Carolina Sierra Becerra; Index.

Editorial Reviews

'This powerful collection of essays compels us to rethink the relationship of the Latin American Left to indigenous and African descendant communities. For decades, scholars have sharply criticized the Left's unconscious and conscious racism and sexism. These finely wrought and well-researched essays reveal the grassroots dynamics that pushed back against the ideological rigidity that promoted such tendencies. From Bolivian anarchists to peasant insurrecionists in Guerrero to Cuban feminists, this volume presents a variegated, often anti-authoritarian Left that cannot be pigeonholed into the inherited categories of sectarian Stalinists and middle-class guerrilleros.' Jeffrey Gould, Rudy Professor of History, Indiana University and author of Solidarity Under Siege: The Salvadoran Class Struggle, 1970-1990

'A fascinating collection of essays that challenge conventional interpretations of the Left in Latin America. Spanning the period from the Russian Revolution to the rise of Neoliberalism, the authors dispute the view that Latin American Left movements did not grapple with overlapping forms of oppression such as racism against the indigenous and people of African descent, or patriarchal domination of women. Grounded in rich examples of popular struggles throughout the hemisphere, the authors provide new insights on the history of radicalism in Latin America.' Miguel R. Tinker Salas, Leslie Farmer Professor of Latin American Studies, Pomona College, California

From the Publisher