Drawing on a rich, interdisciplinary collection of U.S. and Mexican sources, this volume explores the conflict that redrew the boundaries of the North American continent in the nineteenth century. Among the many period texts included here are letters from U.S. and Mexican soldiers, governmental proclamations, songs, caricatures, poetry, and newspaper articles. An Introduction, a chronology, maps, and suggestions for further reading are also included.

A searing novel of the post-1910 Mexican revolutionary era that itself challenged the Mexican political establishment, Guzman's The Shadow of the Strongman ( La Sombra del Caudillo ) stands beside Azuela's The Underdogs ( Los de abajo ) in the pantheon of Mexican fiction. Unmasking the years of political intrigue and assassination that followed the Revolution, the novel was adapted in the 1960 film La Sombra del Caudillo , which was banned in Mexico for thirty years.

Drawing on a rich, interdisciplinary collection of U.S. and Mexican sources, this volume explores the conflict that redrew the boundaries of the North American continent in the nineteenth century. Among the many period texts included here are letters from U.S. and Mexican soldiers, governmental proclamations, songs, caricatures, poetry, and newspaper articles. An Introduction, a chronology, maps, and suggestions for further reading are also included.

In addition to a fresh translation of Los de Abajo , Azuela's classic novel of the Mexican Revolution, this volume offers both a general Introduction to the work and an extensive appendix setting the novel in its historical, literary, and political context. Related texts include contemporary reviews of Azuela's book, an excerpt from Anita Brenner's Idols Behind Altars (1929), and selections from John Reed's Insurgent Mexico (1914).

A searing novel of the post-1910 Mexican revolutionary era that itself challenged the Mexican political establishment, Guzman's The Shadow of the Strongman ( La Sombra del Caudillo ) stands beside Azuela's The Underdogs ( Los de abajo ) in the pantheon of Mexican fiction. Unmasking the years of political intrigue and assassination that followed the Revolution, the novel was adapted in the 1960 film La Sombra del Caudillo , which was banned in Mexico for thirty years.

In addition to a fresh translation of Los de Abajo , Azuela's classic novel of the Mexican Revolution, this volume offers both a general Introduction to the work and an extensive appendix setting the novel in its historical, literary, and political context. Related texts include contemporary reviews of Azuela's book, an excerpt from Anita Brenner's Idols Behind Altars (1929), and selections from John Reed's Insurgent Mexico (1914).

Even before the arrival of Europeans to the Americas, the practice of taking captives was widespread among Native Americans. Indians took captives for many reasons: to replace--by adoption--tribal members who had been lost in battle, to use as barter for needed material goods, to use as slaves, or to use for reproductive purposes. From the legendary story of John Smith's captivity in the Virginia Colony to the wildly successful narratives of New England colonists taken captive by local Indians, the genre of the captivity narrative is well known among historians and students of early American literature. Not so for Hispanic America. Fernando Opere redresses this oversight, offering the first comprehensive historical and literary account of Indian captivity in Spanish-controlled territory from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Originally published in Spanish in 2001 as Historias de la frontera: El cautiverio en la America hispanica, this newly translated work reveals key insights into Native American culture in the New World's most remote regions. From the "happy captivity" of the Spanish military captain Francisco Nunez de Pineda y Bascunan, who in 1628 spent six congenial months with the Araucanian Indians on the Chilean frontier, to the harrowing nineteenth-century adventures of foreigners taken captive in the Argentine Pampas and Patagonia; from the declaraciones of the many captives rescued in the Rio de la Plata region of Argentina in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to the riveting story of Helena Valero, who spent twenty-four years among the Yanomamo in Venezuela during the mid-twentieth century, Opere's vibrant history spans the entire gamut of Spain's far-flung frontiers. Eventually focusing on the role of captivity in Latin American literature, Opere convincingly shows how the captivity genre evolved over time, first to promote territorial expansion and deny intercultural connections during the colonial era, and later to romanticize the frontier in the service of nationalism after independence. This important book is thus multidisciplinary in its concept, providing ethnographic, historical, and literary insights into the lives and customs of Native Americans and their captives in the New World.

Cuba's Jose Lezama Lima became the most controversial figure in the flowering of the Latin American novel with the 1966 publication of Paradiso. Hailed as a seminal writer of breathtaking originality by Julio Cortazar, Octavio Paz, and Mario Vargas Llosa, Lezama was also attacked by the Castro regime and others for his stylistic obscurity, erotic descriptions, and violation of literary norms. Indeed, his experimental fiction, written on the very boundaries of the novelistic genre, resists classification. Jose Lezama Lima's Joyful Vision, a much-needed critical study of Paradiso, Oppiano Licario, and Lezama's essays, is thus an exploration in reading, one that highlights and preserves the essential and persistent contradictions in Lezama's theory and practice of literature. Gustavo Pellon focuses his study on Lezama's search for equilibrium, clarifying such oppositions in Lezama's writings as the mystical quest for illumination through obscurity, the calculated cultivation of naivete, the Proust-like fascination with yet ultimate condemnation of homosexuality, and a modernist (even postmodernist) narrative style that conveys a mystical (essentially medieval) worldview. Above all, Pellon shares his wonder at Lezama who, in an age of pessimism, maintained his joyful vision of art and existence.