Book, "The Rise of the Left" by Ronaldo Munck

The Rise of the Left 
by Ronaldo Munck

Book Review of:
The New Mole: Paths of the Latin American Left
by Emir Sader
London and New York: Verso, 2011.

Book, "The New Latin American Left: Cracks in the Empire" Edited By Jeffrey R. Webber and Barry Carr

The New Latin American Left 
Cracks in the Empire 
EDITED BY JEFFERY R. WEBBER AND BARRY CARR 
Hardback Paperback eBook

Book, "Revolution and State in Modern Mexico" by Adam David Morton

Revolution and State in Modern Mexico
The Political Economy of Uneven Development, Updated Edition
by ADAM DAVID MORTON

Book(s), Gender, Body, and Medicine in Urban Ecuador: Ethnographic Explorations of Women’s Embodiment by Erynn Masi de Casanova

Gender, Body, and Medicine in Urban Ecuador. Ethnographic Explorations of Women’s Embodiment 
by Erynn Masi de Casanova

Book Reviews of:
Casandra Paola Herrera Caicedo Cuerpos en re-construcción: El consumo de cirugía estética en la ciudad de Ambato. Quito: FLACSO Ecuador, 2012.
Elizabeth F. S. Roberts God’s Laboratory: Assisted Reproduction in the Andes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
Ann Miles Living with Lupus: Women and Chronic Illness in Ecuador. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. London and New York: Zed Books, 2013.

Book, "The Topsy-Turvy Path to Twenty-first-Century Socialism The Limitations of the New Left in Latin America" by Nicole Fabricant

The Topsy-Turvy Path to Twenty-first-Century Socialism. The Limitations of the New Left in Latin America 
by Nicole Fabricant

Book Review of:
Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions: The Future of Twenty-first-Century Socialism.
by Roger Burbach, Michael Fox, Federico Fuentes
London and New York: Zed Books, 2013.

Book, "Activist Scholarship and Urban Land Invasions" by Marc Becker

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Book Review:  "Activist Scholarship and Urban Land Invasions." 

Paul Dosh Demanding the Land: Urban Popular Movements in Peru and Ecuador, 1990–2005. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.

By Marc Becker

Book, "Neighborly Adversaries Readings in U.S.–Latin American Relations", Edited By Michael J. Larosa, and Frank O. Mora

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Book:  "Neighborly Adversaries Readings in U.S.–Latin American Relations"

Edited By Michael J. Larosa, and Frank O. Mora

Interview with BILL NICHOLS by Tomás Crowder-Tarraborreli

Bill Nichols is one of the most influential historians and theorists of documentary film...

Interview with BILL NICHOLS by Tomás Crowder-Tarraborreli

He is widely cited in articles across the world. Some of his most important works are: Ideology and the image: social representation in the cinema and other media (Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1981), Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Indiana University Press, 1991), Blurred Boundaries (Indiana University Press, 1994) and Introduction to Documentary (Indiana University Press, 2001). He teaches film at San Francisco State University. His enthusiasm for documentary film comes through even in casual conversations and especially during this interview in Tijuana, in the first week of BorDocs, the documentary film forum. http://bordocs.com/?lang=en. A few minutes before the interview, Mr. Nichols had given a two-hour master class on the ethical challenges of documentary filmmakers.

Editor Ronald H. Chilcote on expanding the digital presence of an academic journal

Editor Ronald H. Chilcote on expanding the digital presence of an academic journal

Posted on August 12, 2015

With a revamped website and increased social media engagement, Latin American Perspectives marked 47 years of circulating discussion and debate on the political economy of capitalism, imperialism and socialism in the Americas. Intrigued by these digital innovations, we reached out to Managing Editor Ronald H. Chilcote to learn more about the journal’s evolving online presence.

Research Journal about Latin America Expands Digital Presence: Latin American Perspectives based at UC Riverside, has international reach

Research Journal about Latin America Expands Digital Presence 
Latin American Perspectives based at the University of California Riverside, has international reach

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Latin American Perspectives, a bimonthly journal now in its 43rd year, is reaching out with a new website, latinamericanperspectives.com, and expansion of social media.

With its editorial offices on the University of California, Riverside, campus, LAP distributes to some 8,000 subscribers, including 2,300 institutions scattered around the world, especially in the United States and Latin America. It is considered one of the leading journals on Latin American studies.

Among its 110 editors are UCR scholars Ronald Chilcote; Edward A. Dickson, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Political Science; Jennifer Hughes, associate professor of history; Jonathan Ritter, associate professor of music; and Latin American librarian, Rhonda Neugebauer.

“Our emphasis on a powerful website and active social media is unique for an academic journal, but it is also important in drawing a large readership of researchers, students, and the general public into a deeper understanding of the rapidly changing events in Latin America,” said Chilcote, the journal’s managing editor.

The journal publishes primarily in English, but blog entries on the website appear in English, Spanish or Portuguese.

The new website and social media effort are being launched in conjunction with the XXXIII International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association May 27 to 30 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The website was designed by Charles Murray, CMM Studio of Laguna Beach, and the comprehensive social media by RR Bernet, Little Bear Productions in San Francisco.

Film Review(s): El último Elvis, Las acacias, and El Estudiante, by Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli

Three recent Argentine films explore the social reality of marginalized communities.                                                                          

                                                                                    

Homo artis, Homo laborans, and Homo politicus

The Pursuit of Redemption in Three Recent Argentine Films

by

 Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli

El último Elvis, directed by Armando Bo; 
Las acacias, directed by Pablo Giorgelli; 
El Estudiante, directed by Santiago Mitre

Film Review: 'La vida útil' ('A Useful Life') by Kristi Wilson

On the Decay of the Art of Going to the Movies

by Kristi M. Wilson

1. Federico Veiroj, La Vida Útil, Uruguay/Spain, 2010

In their imaginations they saw the cinema as a total and complete representation of reality; they saw in a trice the reconstruction of a perfect illusion of the outside world in sound, color, and relief.  ~Andre Bazin 

It is in the nature of analogical worlds to provoke a yearning for the past...The digital will wants to change the world. ~D. N. Rodowick

'La vida útil' ('A Useful Life') is simultaneously a cinephile’s dream picture, in its stylized look back at the history of cinema, and a biting satire about the fact that in the digital age of reproduction even the art of filmmaking has lost its aura. Uruguayan film buffs will recognize the film enthusiast and regular film festival patron Jorge Jellinek as the film’s central protagonist, Jorge, and the legendary film critic and real-life Cinemateca director Manuel Martínez Carril as a version of himself. Veiroj’s film captures the dying urban experience of going to the neighborhood movie theater—a collective encounter with celluloid and film history that, all over the world, is slowly but surely being replaced by private, digital, on-demand, and Hollywood multiplex practices of viewing. In this dark comedy about one man’s attempt to save Montevideo’s Cinemateca, an independent theater he has managed for 25 years, we get a glimpse of the many traditions that have helped shape the New Latin American cinema, a distinct film movement of which La vida útil can be considered a recent shining example.

Interview with Bill Nichols by Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli

Bill Nichols is one of the most influential historians and theorists of documentary film.                                                        
He is widely cited in articles across the world. Some of his most important works are: Ideology and the image: social representation in the cinema and other media (Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1981), Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Indiana University Press, 1991), Blurred Boundaries (Indiana University Press, 1994) and Introduction to Documentary (Indiana University Press, 2001). He teaches film at San Francisco State University. His enthusiasm for documentary film comes through even in casual conversations and especially during this interview in Tijuana, in the first week of BorDocs, the documentary film forum. http://bordocs.com/?lang=en. A few minutes before the interview, Mr. Nichols had given a two-hour master class on the ethical challenges of documentary filmmakers. 

*This interview appears courtesy of Revista Cine Documental:
http://revista.cinedocumental.com.ar/5/teoria_01.html

Transcribed by January J. Coleman-Jones and Jake Nevrla

Observations from Venezuela: July 31, 2009: by LAP Editor Miguel Tinker Salas

Observations from Venezuela: July 31, 2009 

by Miguel Tinker Salas

LAP Editor 

I would submit that events in Honduras are not isolated, but rather part of a right wing counterattack taking shape in Latin America. I have been arguing for sometime that the right is rebuilding in Latin America, and has decided to act with Obama / Clinton in the White House. Bush / Cheney and company did not give them any coverage and had become of little use to them. A “liberal” in the White House, with extensive ties to the conservative forces gives them the kind of coverage they had hoped for. It is no coincidence that Venezuelan right wing commentators applauded the naming of Clinton to the White House indicating “now we have an ally in a position of power.” The old cold-warrior axiom that the best antidote against the left is a liberal government in Washington gains new meaning under Obama with Clinton at the State Department.

Cuban Exceptionalism by Ken Cole

Cuban Exceptionalism: A Personal View 
by Ken Cole
Ken Cole is a member of the International Institute for the Study of Cuba at London Metropolitan University. 

January 1, 2009, marks the fiftieth anniversary of victory in Cuba’s third war of independence. In his first speech of the Cuban Revolution, given in Santiago de Cuba on January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro declared that for the first time in four centuries Cubans were free. Whereas Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and José Martí had led the previous wars, in 1868 and 1895, against Spanish colonial dominion, Castro’s July 26th Movement (named after the day in 1953 when the attack on the Moncada barracks marked the commencement of the revolution) challenged the economic domination of Cuba by the United States.

The Municipal University Centers: Past, Present, and Future by Jorge González Corona

The Municipal University Centers:  Past, Present, and Future
by Jorge González Corona
Translated by Mariana Ortega Breña
Jorge González Corona is Professor of Political Science at the Manuel Bisbé Municipal University. Mariana Ortega Breña is a freelance translator based in Canberra, Australia. 

The development of education in Cuba since January 1, 1959, has gone through several phases. The 1960's witnessed the National Literacy Campaign of 1961, the implementation of universal access to elementary education, the adult post-literacy programs, the massive training of teachers, and the University Reform of 1962. In the next period, 1970–1980, universal access to secondary education was achieved, as was a nationwide university network. These efforts were accompanied by substantial investment in the creation of the necessary material base for education and the accelerated training and upgrading of teachers and professors.

Reflections on the Cuban Revolution by Gary Prevost

Reflections on the Cuban Revolution

by Gary Prevost

Gary Prevost has been Professor of Political Science at St. John’s University since 1977.

When I visited Cuba in the first few days of 1992, it was not clear that the revolution would survive. Food was in relatively short supply and electricity blackouts were common. Even long-time supporters of the revolution were pessimistic about the future. Everything that had been accomplished in its first 32 years seemed in jeopardy when the Soviet Union went out of existence

at the end of 1991 and canceled most of its trade deals with Cuba. The country’s gross domestic product was in the process of shrinking by 50 percent.

Cuban Solidarity and Disaster Response by August Nimtz

Cuban Solidarity and Disaster Response 
by August Nimtz
August Nimtz is Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota and the author of Marx, Tocqueville, and Race in America (2003). A more detailed version of the argument presented here can be found in “Natural versus Social Phenomena: Cuba and the Lessons of Katrina” (The Black Scholar, 2006, 36 [4]). 

How is it that an underdeveloped country that is incessantly alleged to be under a dictatorship can do a far better job of saving the lives of its citizens when a hurricane strikes than a rich country with all the trappings of liberal democracy? The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina demonstrates that this is not just an interesting academic question but a matter of life and death. Even before then, international bodies such as the United Nations and the International Red Cross often cited Cuba for its exemplary practices in dealing with hurricanes. Measured in terms of preparation, loss of lives, and recovery, the differences between Cuba and the United States Gulf Coast persist. Even in the 2008 season, when Cuba was assaulted by the most powerful hurricanes on record, it experienced the loss of only five lives.

Cuba! Cuba! Cuba! by William I. Robinson

Cuba! Cuba! Cuba! 
by William I. Robinson 
William Robinson is Professor of Sociology, Global Studies, and Latin American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His most recent book is Latin America and Global Capitalism: A Critical Globalization Perspective, published in 2008. 

It was Fall 1980. I had recently returned to New York from a three-year stint in Africa and would shortly be heading to Nicaragua, where I would spend the next 10 years. At the time I did not know much about the Cuban Revolution, but my political awakening had taken place on a continent that was still in the process of overthrowing the shackles of colonialism.

The Cuban Revolution. Half a Century. by Saul Landau

The Cuban Revolution. Half a Century.
by Saul Landau
Saul Landau is a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He has produced 10 books and more than 40 films on social, political, and historical issues and worldwide human rights and is the recipient of Chile’s Bernardo O’Higgins award for human rights. 

Five Cuban intelligence agents sit in federal penitentiaries across the United States because they infiltrated anti-revolutionary groups in Miami intent on doing violence in Cuba. These five men represent a long line of those who have acted from an understanding of their roles in the long human historical drama.