In Before the Flood Jacob Blanc traces the protest movements of rural Brazilians living in the shadow of the Itaipu dam—the largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world. In the 1970s and 1980s, local communities facing displacement took a stand against the military officials overseeing the dam's construction, and in the context of an emerging national fight for democracy, they elevated their struggle for land into a referendum on the dictatorship itself. Unlike the broader...

This biography of Brazilian journalist and activist Aluízio Palmar (b. 1943) tells the remarkable story of a revolutionary who, after surviving torture as a political prisoner during his country’s military dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, would devote the second half of his life to investigating human rights abuses. With an eye to the intricacies of how Palmar has narrated his life across interviews, writings, and public engagement, Blanc offers an innovative window into how former act...

A new history of Brazil told through the lens of the often-overlooked interior regions.In colonial Brazil, observers frequently complained that Portuguese settlers appeared content to remain “clinging to the coastline, like crabs.” From their perspective, the vast Brazilian interior seemed like an untapped expanse waiting to be explored and colonized. This divide between a thriving coastal area and a less-developed hinterland has become deeply ingrained in the nati...

Transnational Communism across the Americas offers an innovative approach to the study of Latin American communism. It convincingly illustrates that communist parties were both deeply rooted in their own local realities and maintained significant relationships with other communists across the region and around the world. The essays in this collection use a transnational lens to examine the relationships of the region’s communist parties with each other, their international counter...