Writing a general textbook that covers any of the periods of Latin American history is an enormously daunting task, so anyone who ventures into the field deserves the gratitude of undergraduate teachers everywhere as well as their admiration. The writer must tread carefully, however, because this is a potential minefield with the enormous amount of material that has to be covered and the consequent inevitability of choosing a route that, despite every good intention, does not fit every teacher's exact requirements and leads almost assuredly to some sort of criticism. Teresa Meade, a specialist in Brazilian history and gender studies at Union College, New York, is the latest to try her hand, in this case examining Latin America's modern history from independence to the present day. The book has its good points, but the final package is not as successful as one might wish.
Like Lawrence Clayton and Michael Conniff in their similarly titled (though somewhat more detailed) textbook, Meade presents her history by focusing primarily on themes rather than geographical areas. In the process, she manages to touch on most areas and gives some idea of how they were affected by the overarching developments of the period. Her opening, background chapter is a rather extensive account of the colonial period, although she skips over the vital role that silver mining played in the Spanish American economy, concentrating instead on the emergence of the big estate, which is one of the subjects that she subsequently pursues. The independence period is situated in a chapter on slavery and the Haitian Revolution; this is an interesting approach, but it results in a rapid and frequently inaccurate survey of the actual independence movements that existed at the time. Meade then deals with the rise of caudillismo and the emerging liberalism and nationalism in the new states. An examination of different commodities that were central (or ‘key’, as she tends to write) to the economies of different nations in the mid-nineteenth century opens the door to the topic of US interventionism in Latin America and the story of the Panama hat. This, in turn, leads to late nineteenth-century immigration, urban and rural life, British investment and positivism. Examples from Mexico establish the background for a separate chapter on the Mexican Revolution, although some historians now question whether this really was the transformative event that many have claimed. The rise of socialism and the labour movement provides the framework for details of the Tenente movement, Modern Art Week in Brazil and Mariátegui of Peru, while the next chapter on populism covers the careers of the usual suspects – Vargas, Perón and Cárdenas, along with Gaitán of Colombia, Haya de la Torre of Peru, Sandino of Nicaragua and Farabundo Martí of El Salvador. Meade's survey of the Second World War and its aftermath, entitled ‘Struggles for Sovereignty’, covers, not surprisingly, the nationalist revolutions in Guatemala and Bolivia; the inclusion of Rafael Trujillo seems somewhat out of place, however. The Cuban Revolution provides the second geographically specific chapter, and in this case with obvious justification. Meade then examines post-Cuban Revolution developments under the title ‘Progress and Reaction’, although the military takeovers and subsequent repression that occurred almost everywhere from the 1970s seem to indicate that there was more of the latter occurring than the former. ‘Revolution and its Alternatives’ interweaves liberation theology, the Central American revolutionary movements and the war on drugs. The final chapter, on Latin America in the twenty-first century, underlines many recent examples of progress while pointing to problems that remain unresolved and will continue to affect the region well into the future. Numerous photographs and maps illustrate Meade's selections, while occasional boxed inserts provide opportunities for brief primary documents, literary comments, biographies and the like. A list of further reading is provided at the end of the book.
Running through the text are a number of themes. One of the most obvious is foreign intervention in its various forms, which Meade seems to hold responsible for most of Latin America's problems, including the defects of even the more notorious leaders. The United States attracts particular attention in this regard, which may be somewhat surprising in view of the fact that the book is designed largely with US undergraduates in mind. To that end it includes frequent references to developments that have affected the United States, such as the Iran-Contra affair, anti-Latino legislation and Latino immigration, which tell us more about the history of the United States than of Latin America. Gender issues and cultural developments attract separate sections in the book's earlier chapters and, in the case of the former, make a renewed appearance at the end. With the amount of material that now exists for both, these could perhaps have been more smoothly integrated into the text.
The overview is thus comprehensive, although with some occasional oversights. One is the absence of any mention of Peru's revolution of 1968–75, led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado. As a result, the section that Meade provides on the Shining Path lacks an essential explanatory context. Of greater concern is the fact that there are several historical errors that detract from the narrative and ultimately undermine confidence in the analysis. For example, the British government did not finance the War of the Triple Alliance; Eva Perón was Juan Domingo's second wife, not his first; Anastasio Somoza Debayle was the son, not the grandson, of Anastasio Somoza García; the city associated with Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre is Trujillo, not Cuzco, and he was very much alive in the 1960s when Hugo Blanco was leading land invasions; Emiliano Zapata was a mestizo, not an Indian; the journalist murdered by Nicaragua's National Guard was an ABC television reporter, not a correspondent for Newsweek; and despite the accompanying picture, Túpac Amaru II was not executed by being torn apart by horses. The section on South American independence is particularly notable for its errors, perhaps the most egregious being the assertion that ‘after Bolívar's death, San Martín despaired of leading recalcitrant Creoles to carry out reforms’ (p. 72). These and the others will no doubt be corrected in the book's second edition, but until then I think I shall continue to assign the Keen and Haynes textbook to my undergraduate class.
