This book offers new perspectives on Latin American history by tracing continuity and change in important colonial legacies through two hundred years of postcolonial history. Geographically, it includes all the countries in the Western Hemisphere that Spain and Portugal colonized, from the U.S.–Mexico border to the southern tip of South America plus Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. As it is customary to consider the former French colony of Haiti, which was originally Spanish, as part of Latin America, it is covered as well. Chronologically, the book begins with background to the initial contact between Spaniards and Native Americans in 1492 and then examines the three-plus centuries of European colonial rule. Its primary focus is the period from 1804, when the first Latin American country secured its independence from European rule, to the present.
During Latin America’s colonial period, many cultural traits, attitudes, values, practices, and institutions were formed and persist today in modified form. Five of these colonial legacies have been at the center of political life since independence. These include
Chapter 1 examines the origins of these five important colonial legacies. The remaining eleven chapters interpret Latin America’s history since independence by analyzing continuity and change in those legacies. Over the past two centuries, progressives have sought to modify or abolish them, while conservatives for the most part have sought to preserve them. Different legacies have been important political issues at different times. For example, the status of the Roman Catholic Church was passionately contested during the half-century following independence, the large landed estate first arose as a political matter in early twentieth-century Mexico, and economic dependency became an important matter at the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s. The outcomes of this political contestation over the colonial legacies have been central to molding today’s Latin America.
By examining change and continuity in the colonial legacies over time, the book analyzes Latin America’s political, economic, social, and religious history and aspects of its cultural history. In covering the broad sweep of Latin American history, it also provides a framework for further exploration. If this story awakens your interest in the history of a particular country, you will find that books are available on every country. If you care to learn more about popular culture, women, art, sports, cinema, the environment, music, sexuality, folklore, wars, or almost any other aspect of historic or contemporary Latin America, you will find books on those topics, too.
The book is organized chronologically and divided into six parts and twelve chapters. At the end of Parts II–VI, brief essays labeled “Reflections on the Colonial Legacies” assess the state of the colonial legacies at different times between independence and the present. The conclusion offers a comprehensive overview of how Latin America has evolved over the past two hundred years.
Interspersed through the book are country fact boxes. Each is placed to coincide with a discussion of the country it describes. The statistics provided in these boxes are from the current CIA World Factbook, which you can access on the Internet. Some of the data presented are based on statistics provided by the Latin American governments, each of which determines its own criteria for gathering and presenting data. Other data are based on estimates, and some information is a bit dated. In some cases, aggregate percentages do not come out to exactly 100 percent due to rounding.
These factors make precise comparisons difficult, particularly in the areas of ethnic composition, religious affiliation, and population living in poverty. Keep in mind also that poverty in Argentina is not the same as poverty in Haiti. Despite these limitations, the country fact boxes should help you to assess the current levels of development, ethnic and social composition, and quality of life of the peoples of each Latin American country. A country fact box for the United States is included to allow for comparison.
Finally, a couple of words on terminology. The term “Indian” is used in this book interchangeably with “native” and “indigenous.” But in Latin America, the term “indio” is disrespectful, even pejorative; “indígena” is the best word to use when referring to native people in Spanish. Latin Americans can be sensitive to the words “America” and “Americans,” which they correctly believe include them along with the United States and Canada. Therefore, the book refers to the United States as “the United States,” or abbreviated as “the U.S.,” not as “America.” When Latin Americans are quoted in the text using the term “America,” they are normally referring to Latin America, not the United States.