This book is about Bolivia, but links the struggles in that country to similar struggles throughout Latin America. Bolivia provides an archetypal case study of the region’s recent “leftward drift,” in terms of the social movements on the ground, struggles over natural resources like oil and water, grassroots opposition to US foreign policy, and the recent election of Evo Morales as President. As things heat up in Bolivia (and Latin America in general), as they are bound to do, this book wi...

After centuries of colonial domination and a twentieth century riddled with dictatorships, indigenous peoples in Bolivia embarked upon a social and political struggle that would change the country forever. As part of that project activists took control of their own history, starting in the 1960s by reaching back to oral traditions and then forward to new forms of print and broadcast media. This book tells the fascinating story of how indigenous Bolivians recovered and popularized histories...

Grassroots social movements played a major role electing left-leaning governments throughout Latin America. Subsequent relations between these states and "the streets" remain troubled. Contextualizing recent developments historically, Dangl untangles the contradictions of state-focused social change, providing lessons for activists everywhere.

Written from street barricades and train rides under Andean stars, this is a book that celebrates a world where many worlds fit. Journalist Benjamin Dangl has reported on revolutions and social justice movements around the globe. This collection of vivid photography and lucid writing depicts street scenes, cityscapes, and night jungles from the margins of his reporting. These are dispatches from beyond the homogenizing forces of global capitalism, from decolonized mountain markets, scatter...

Among the top ten oil exporters in the world and a founding member of OPEC, Venezuela currently supplies 11 percent of U.S. crude oil imports. But when the country elected the fiery populist politician Hugo Chavez in 1998, tensions rose with this key trading partner and relations have been strained ever since. In this concise, accessible addition to Oxford's What Everyone Needs to Know® series, Miguel Tinker Salas -- a native of Venezuela who has written extensively about the coun...

Over the past few years, something remarkable has occurred in Latin America. For the first time since the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua in the 1980s, people within the region have turned toward radical left governments - specifically in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Why has this profound shift taken place and how does this new, so-called Twenty-First-Century Socialism actually manifest itself? What are we to make of the often fraught relationship between the social movements and go...

In this compelling and comprehensive look at the rise of Evo Morales and Bolivia’s Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), Linda Farthing and Benjamin Kohl offer a thoughtful evaluation of the transformations ushered in by the western hemisphere’s first contemporary indigenous president. Accessible to all readers, Evo’s Bolivia not only charts Evo’s rise to power but also offers a history of and context for the MAS revolution’s place in the rising “pink tide” of the political left. Farthi...

With a population of 40 million and growing, the United States witnessed Latinos becoming the largest minority in America in 2003—creating a voting bloc with the potential to determine the outcome of elections throughout the nation.
In The Latino Wave, award-winning journalist Jorge Ramos argues that the political party that can correctly understand the wants and needs of Hispanics will triumph at the polls. Ramos deftly clarifies these points, among many others, and explains why i...

A scholarly analysis of the origins, evolution, and enduring impact of populism in Latin American political life.This updated edition of Populism in Latin America discusses new developments in populism as a political phenomenon and the emergence of new populist political figures in Mexico, Argentina, and Venezuela in particular.For more than one hundred years—from the beginning of the twentieth to the early twenty-first century—Latin Ameri...

Five freshly decapitated human heads are thrown onto a crowded dance floor in western Mexico. A Mexican drug cartel dismembers the body of a rival and then stitches his face onto a soccer ball. These are the sorts of grisly tales that dominate the media, infiltrate movies and TV shows, and ultimately shape Americans' perception of Mexico as a dangerous and scary place, overrun by brutal drug lords. Without a doubt, the drug war is real. In the last six years, over 60,000 people have been m...

Since Evo Morales was elected president in 2006 as leader of the MAS, the first social movement to achieve political power in Latin America, Bolivia has seen radical changes and continues to generate huge interest worldwide. In this revealing new book, Crabtree and Chaplin show how ordinary people have responded to the processes of change that have taken place in the country over the last few years.Based on a wealth of interview material and original reportage, the book enters the ...

Until the Rulers Obey brings together voices from the movements behind the wave of change that swept Latin America at the turn of the twenty-first century. These movements have galvanized long-silent—or silenced—sectors of society: indigenous people, campesinos, students, the LGBT community, the unemployed, and all those left out of the promised utopia of a globalized economy. They have deployed a wide range of strategies and actions, sometimes building schools or clinics, sometim...