This book surveys Argentina's development from the establishment of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata within the Spanish-American empire to the building of the first railways in the independent nation. Two aspects of Argentina's development receive special attention. First, the author examines the international markets for Argentina's products, taking into account the industrial revolution then under way in Europe and the United States. Second, he discusses the influence of traditional native technology on Argentine production and transport. In addition to describing commercial development at the port of Buenos Aires, the study discusses the expansion of ranching and farming onto the virgin pampas. Although the prosperity of Buenos Aires was not duplicated in the interior provinces, the export trade did permit commercial recovery from depression and civil war throughout Argentina. The author concludes that the conventional dependent or neo-colonial theory of Latin American development does not apply to Argentina's economic expansion. The staple theory of economic growth proves to be more accurate, for the linkages produced by the export trade actually diversified domestic economic activity and broadened entrepreneurial and labour opportunities in Argentina.

On January 2, 1959, Fidel Castro, the rebel comandante who had just overthrown Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, addressed a crowd of jubilant supporters. Recalling the failed popular uprisings of past decades, Castro assured them that this time "the real Revolution" had arrived. As Jonathan Brown shows in this capacious history of the Cuban Revolution, Castro's words proved prophetic not only for his countrymen but for Latin America and the wider world. Cuba's Revolutionary World examines in forensic detail how the turmoil that rocked a small Caribbean nation in the 1950s became one of the twentieth century's most transformative events. Initially, Castro's revolution augured well for democratic reform movements gaining traction in Latin America. But what had begun promisingly veered off course as Castro took a heavy hand in efforts to centralize Cuba's economy and stamp out private enterprise. Embracing the Soviet Union as an ally, Castro and his lieutenant Che Guevara sought to export the socialist revolution abroad through armed insurrection. Castro's provocations inspired intense opposition. Cuban anticommunists who had fled to Miami found a patron in the CIA, which actively supported their efforts to topple Castro's regime. The unrest fomented by Cuban-trained leftist guerrillas lent support to Latin America's military castes, who promised to restore stability. Brazil was the first to succumb to a coup in 1964; a decade later, military juntas governed most Latin American states. Thus did a revolution that had seemed to signal the death knell of dictatorship in Latin America bring about its tragic opposite.

Mexico's petroleum industry has come to symbolize the very sovereignty of the nation itself. Politicians criticize Pemex, the national oil company, at their peril, and President Salinas de Gortari has made clear that the free trade negotiations between Mexico and the United States will not affect Pemex's basic status as a public enterprise. How and why did the petroleum industry gain such prominence and, some might say, immunity within Mexico's political economy?

The Mexican Petroleum Industry in the Twentieth Century, edited by Jonathan C. Brown and Alan Knight, seeks to explain the impact of the oil sector on the nation's economic, political, and social development. The book is a multinational effort--one author is Australian, two British, three North American, and five Mexican. Each contributing scholar has researched and written extensively about Mexico and its oil industry.

The years between 1930 and 1979 witnessed a period of intense labor activity in Latin America as workers participated in strikes, unionization efforts, and populist and revolutionary movements. The ten original essays AEMDNMOin this volume examine sugar mill seizures in Cuba, oil nationalization and railway strikes in Mexico, the attempted revolution in Guatemala, railway nationalization and Peronism in Argentina, Brazil's textile strikes, the Bolivian revolution of 1952, Peru's copper strikes, and the copper nationalization in Chile--all important national events in which industrial laborers played critical roles. Demonstrating an illuminating, bottom-up approach to Latin American labor history, these essays investigate the everyday acts through which workers attempted to assert more control over the work process and thereby add dignity to their lives. Working together, they were able to bring shop floor struggles to public attention and--at certain critical junctures--to influence events on a national scale. The contributors are Andrew Boeger, Michael Marconi Braga, Jonathan C. Brown, Josh DeWind, Marc Christian McLeod, Michael Snodgrass, Andrea Spears, Joanna Swanger, Maria Celina Tuozzo, and Joel Wolfe.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.