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University of California Press

About the Book

Latin America is home to emerging global powers such as Brazil and Mexico and has important links to other titans including China, India, and Africa. Global Latin America examines a range of historical events and cultural forms in Latin America that continue to influence peoples’ lives far outside the region. Its innovative essays, interviews, and stories focus on insights from public intellectuals, political leaders, artists, academics, and activists from the region, allowing students to gain an appreciation of the global relevance of Latin America in the twenty-first century.

About the Author

Matthew Gutmann is Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI), and Faculty Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Jeffrey Lesser is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Emory University. 
 
 

Table of Contents

List of Figures

INTRODUCING THE GLOBAL SQUARE BOOK SERIES
Matthew Gutmann and Jeffrey Lesser

Acknowledgments

Chasing Che: Introduction to Global Latin America
Jeffrey Lesser and Matthew Gutmann

PART ONE: THE LATIN AMERICAN PAST IN THE GLOBAL PRESENT
Introduction

1 • Looking at the Past and the Future without Fear: An Interview with Ricardo Lagos
Matthew Gutmann

2 • The Conversion of Francis: The First Latin American Pope and the Women He Needs
Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Jennifer Scheper Hughes

3 • Fidel Castro: The First Superdelegate
Greg Grandin

Poem: “Cruces de fronteras / Border Crossings”
Renato Rosaldo

4 • From Illustrating Problems to Offering Solutions: Latin America as a Global Source of Social Innovation
Gabriel Hetland and Peter Evans

Manga: “Che Guevara”
Kiyoshi Konno and Chie Shimano

PART TWO: TONGUES AND FEET

Introduction

5 • Borges’s Library: Latin America, Language, and the World
Paja Faudree and Daniel Suslak

6 • Love, Protest, Dance, Remix
Michelle Bigenho

Poem: “Lo prohibido”
Renato Rosaldo

7 • Breaking the Machine: South American Fútbol
Brenda Elsey

8 • Roy Choi, Ricardo Zárate, and Pacific Fusion Cuisine in Los Angeles
Sarah Portnoy and Jeffrey M. Pilcher

PART THREE: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND HEALTH

Introduction

9 • The Rise of Brazil’s Globally Connected Amazon Soybean Agriculture
Christopher Neill and Marcia N. Macedo

10 • Constructing Parallels: Brazilian Experts in Mozambique
Wendy Wolford and Ryan Nehring

Poem: “Perfecto Flores”
Renato Rosaldo

11 • A Long Strange Trip: Latin America’s Contribution to World Drug Culture
Paul Gootenberg

PART FOUR: COMMUNITIES

Introduction

Introduction to Rigoberta Menchú Tum

12 • Nobel Lecture
Rigoberta Menchú Tum

13 • Sex Worker Activism and Labor
Denise Brennan

Poem: “Ajustes familiares / Family Adjustments”
Renato Rosaldo

14 • Latin American Travel: The Other Side of Tourism Encounters
Florence E. Babb

15 • Brazil Circles the Globe
Ruben George Oliven

PART FIVE: ART MOVES THE WORLD

Introduction

16 • The Latin American Novel as International Merchandise
Ilan Stavans

17 • Traveling Melodrama: Telenovelas and Exporting Southern Moralities; or, How Can Something So Bad Still Be So Good?
O. Hugo Benavides

Poem: “Los invisibles / Invisibility”
Renato Rosaldo

18 • The Girl from Shinjuku: How a Japanese Brazilian Diva Keeps Bossa Nova Alive in China
Fabiano Maisonnave

19 • “More than a Nationality”: An Interview with Gael García Bernal about Latin American Cinema and the World
Alma Guillermoprieto

About the Editors and Contributors
Index

Reviews

The topics range from the colonial legacy and the historical underpinnings of globalization, the creation and consumption of Latin American culture, and communities as dynamic entities not bounded by space, to how the digital revolution is reshaping the creation and decentralization of social movements, as well as the function of art in the making of a global Latin America. This volume greatly benefits from an interdisciplinary method, providing readers with a more complete, holistic, nuanced, and complex view of Latin America’s understanding of globalization in a local manner, and the role this region plays in the creation of an increasingly connected globalized society.
CHOICE
"Latin America is rarely at the center of conversations about globalization, but this book may change that. Global Latin America is an interdisciplinary, border-defying anthology that explores the politics and poetics of globalization from a Latin American perspective. With its ties to both the Atlantic and Pacific worlds, Latin America has long been a cultural crossroads, and this volume demonstrates in a most compelling way that region is also a crucial site for understanding our global present."—Barbara Weinstein, author of The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil
 
"Matthew Gutmann and Jeffrey Lesser are a dream team: senior scholars with international reputations who are among the most innovative in their disciplines. Global Latin America offers a superb sampling of the cutting edge in connecting approaches across subfields, such as gender studies, Latin American Studies, ethnic studies, and area studies."—Jerry Dávila, Jorge Paulo Lemann Chair in Brazilian History, University of Illinois, and author of Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the Challenge of African Decolonization, 1950–1980

"The list of authors included in Global Latin America is incredibly impressive and offers the book considerable luster. From two top-notch editors, the volume is the perfect book for class use in a variety of settings—both as a foundational text in Latin American Studies courses as well as for journalists, policy-makers, and anyone else interested in the region."—Miguel Angel Centeno, author of State Making in the Developing World