Mathew C. Gutmann & Félix V. Rodriguez 
Perspectives on Las Américas [PDF ebook] 
A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation

Perspectives on Las Américas: A Reader in Culture, History,
and Representation charts new territory by demonstrating the
limits of neatly demarcating the regions of ‘Latin
America’ and the ‘United States’. This landmark
volume presents key readings that collectively examine the
historical, cultural, economic, and political integration of
Latina/os across the Americas, thereby challenging the barriers
between Latina/o Studies and Latin American/Caribbean Studies.

* * Brings together key readings that collectively examine the
historical, cultural, economic, and political integration of
Latina/os across the Americas.

* Charts new territory by demonstrating the limits of neatly
demarcating the regions of ‘Latin America’ and the ‘United
States’.

* Challenges the barriers between Latina/o Studies and Latin
American/Caribbean Studies as approached by anthropologists,
historians, and other scholars.

* Offers instructors, students, and interested readers both the
theoretical tools and case studies necessary to rethink
transnational realities and identities.

Table of Content

List of Contributors.

Editors’ Acknowledgements.

Acknowledgment to Sources.

Introduction: Understanding the Américas: Insights from
Latina/o and Latin American Studies (Lynn Stephen, Patricia
Zavella, Matthew C. Gutmann, and Félix V. Matos
Rodríguez).

Part I: Colonialism and Resistance.

1. Traddutora, Traditora: A Paradigmatic Figure of Chicana
Feminism (Norma Alarcón).

2. From the Plantation to the Plantation (excerpt) (Antonio
Benítez Rojo.

3. New Approaches to the Study of Peasant Rebellion and
Consciousness: Implications of the Andean Experience (Steve J.
Stern).

4. The Real ‘New World Order’: The Globalization of
Racial and Ethnic Relations in the Late Twentieth Century
(Néstor P. Rodríguez).

5. The Americans: Latin American and Caribbean Peoples in the
United States (Rubén G. Rumbaut).

Part II: Global Political Economy.

6. ‘¿Quién trabajará?’: Domestic Workers, Urban
Slaves, and the Abolition of Slavery in Puerto Rico (Félix V.
Matos Rodríguez).

7. A Central American Genocide: Rubber, Slavery, Nationalism,
and the Destruction of the Guatusos-Malekus (Marc Edelman).

8. Transnational Labor Process and Gender Relations: Women in
Fruit and Vegetable Production in Chile, Brazil and Mexico (Jane I.
Collins).

9. Inequality near and far: International Adoption as Seen from
a Brazilian Favela (Claudia Fonseca).

Part III: Identities, Practices, Hybridities.

10. History, Culture, and Place-Making: ‘Native’ status and Maya
Identity in Belize (Laurie Kroshus Medina).

11. The Carnivalization of the World (Richard Parker).

12. ‘Playing with Fire’: The Gendered Construction of
Chicana/Mexicana Sexuality (Patricia Zavella).

13. Returned Migration, Language, and Identity: Puerto Rican
Bilinguals in Dos Worlds/Two Mundos (Ana C. Zentella).

14. A Place Called Home: A Queer Political Economy of Mexican
Immigrant Men’s Family Experiences (Lionel Cantú).

15. Dominican Blackness and the Modern World (Silvio
Torres-Saillant).

Part IV: Popular Cultures.

16. Jennifer’s Butt (Frances Negrón-Muntaner).

17. La Quinceañera: Making Gender and Ethnic Identities
(Karen Mary Davalos).

18. Two Sides of the Same Coin: Modern Gaúcho
identity in Brazil (Ruben George Oliven).

19. The United States, Mexico and Machismo (Américo
Paredes).

20. Spectacular Bodies: Folklorization and the Politics of
Identity in Ecuadorian Beauty Pageants (Mark Rogers).

Part V: Regional, National, and Transnational Political
Cultures.

21. Gender, Politics, and the Triumph of Mestizaje in the Early
20th Century Nicaragua (Jeffrey Gould).

22. The Construction of Indigenous Suspects: Militarization and
the Gendered and Ethnic dynamics of Human Rights Abuses in Southern
Mexico (Lynn Stephen).

23. For Whom the Taco Bells Toll: Popular Responses to NAFTA
South of the Border (Matthew C. Gutmann).

24. Immigration Reform and Nativism: The Nationalist Response to
the Transnationalist Challenge (Leo R. Chávez).

25. The Process of Black Community Organizing in the Southern
Pacific Coast Region of Columbia (Libia Grueso, Carlos Rosero, and
Arturo Escobar).

Index.

About the author

Matthew C. Gutmann is the Stanley J. Bernstein Assistant
Professor of the Social Sciences – International Affairs at
Brown University, Providence, RI.

Félix V. Matos Rodríguez is the Director of the
Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (City University
of New York).

Lynn Stephen is Professor and chair of Anthropology at
the University of Oregon, Eugene.

Patricia Zavella is Professor of Latin American and
Latino Studies and Co-Director of the Chicano/Latino Research
Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz.