The arrival of Europeans and Africans in the New World created new racial identities – including that of “Indian”–and new social classes, and it redefined relations between men and women. This course examines 500 years of conflict along the fault lines of race, class and gender in the history of Latin America and the Caribbean. Why were colonial officials, landlords and mineowners never completely successful in their attempts to order society on the basis of strict hierarchy and separate spheres? How did female and male slaves, peasants, peons, peddlers, and eventually wage workers respond to the growth of Atlantic capitalism? How does the historian weigh cultural continuity against cultural change in the context of massive human migration, both forced and voluntary? What role did women play in resistance and rebellion–from slave uprisings to millenarian movements to urban riots and revolutionary wars? We will use a variety of sources to look at the tangled and ever-changing web of racial, class, and gender identities (both imposed and self-created) : political and social history, autobiography and biography, letters and manifestos, fiction and film. The course covers the period from the Conquest to today, with the Spring semester focusing on the twentieth century.

Required books
The following books are for sale at the bookstore and also on reserve at the library. Other assigned readings will be on reserve and/or passed out in class.
Joe Kane, Savages
Rigoberta Menchu, I Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala
Maria de los Reyes Castillo Bueno, Reyita: The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in the Twentieth Century.
Deborah Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists Against Terror
Ernesto Che Guevara, Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58

Recommended: If you are joining this course mid-year and have not studied Latin American history before, it is strongly recommended that you look through John Charles Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, 15-211, in the first few weeks of class.

Web board
A web board has been set up for this course and an orientation session scheduled for the regular class time on Wednesday, Jan. 29. You will be posting short (a couple paragraphs or about 1 double-spaced page) commentaries on most of the readings. These should be posted by 6 pm the evening before the class where we discuss the reading, and you need to read everyone’s contribution by the time the class meets the following morning at 9:30. You can “pass” on 3 of the postings, but not before the third week of class.

Class Schedule

Introduction: The colonial heritage

Week 1 (B week). Jan. 22

Part I – Ethnicity and environment

Week 2 (A week). Jan. 27 and 29
Wednesday, Jan. 29, 9:30 am, web board orientation in library
Reading: Joe Kane, Savages, all; post comments on web board by Friday, 6pm.

Week 3 (B week). Feb. 3 and 5
Reading: José María Arguedas, Deep rivers, pp. 24-63 (handout); web board by Tuesday, 6pm
Interview with Francisco “Chico” Mendes, Xapurí, Brazil, November 1988, in Biorn Maybury-Lewis, The Politics of the Possible, pp. 221-240 (handout)
recommended: Wolfgang Gabbert, “Social Categories, Ethnicity and the State in Yucatán, Mexico,” JLAS, 33 (2001), 459-484 (reserve)

Part 2. Testimonio – voice of the people?

Week 4 (A week) Feb. 10 and 12
Mon. reading. Rigoberta Menchú, I Rigoberta Menhcú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, Intro, pp. 1-162; web board Sun. 6pm
Wed. reading. Menchú, pp. 163-247; web board Tues. 6pm

Week 5 (B week). Feb. 17 and 19
Conference project: post 1-paragraph conference proposal to web board by 6pm Sunday, Feb. 16. no other web board postings this week.
Wed. reading. Stoll, pp.
recommended: Chasteen, 213-243

Part 3. Race, work and culture

Week 6 (A week). Feb. 24 and 26
Mon. reading. Maria de los Reyes, Reyita, all; web board Sun. 6 pm
Conference work: preliminary bibliography due in class Wed. Feb. 26

Week 7 (B week). March 3 and 5
Mon. reading: Samuel Martínez, “From Hidden Hand to Heavy Hand: Sugar, the State, and Migrant Labor in Haiti and the Dominican Republic,” LARR, 34, 1 (1999): 57-84.
Richard Lee Turits, “A World Destroyed, A Nation Imposed: The 1937 Haitian Massacre in the Dominican Republic,” HAHR, 82:3 (2002): 591-635; web board Sun. 6 pm

Part 4. Peasants and politics

Week 8(A week). March 10 and 12
Mon. reading. Michael F. Jimenez. "Class, Gender, and Peasant Resistance in Central Colombia, 1900?1930" in Forrest Colburn (ed.), Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (handout); web board Sun. 6 pm
Wed. reading. Jeffrey L. Gould, To Lead as Equals, pp. 85-146 (reserve); web board Tues. 6 pm

Have a nice spring vacation!

Part 5. Revolution

Week 9 (B week). March 31 and April 2
Wed. reading: Ernesto Che Guevara, Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58, all; web board Tues. 6pm
recommended: Chasteen, 245-305

Week 10 (A week). April 7 and 9
Mon. reading. Margaret Randall, Women in Cuba, pp. 21-47 and photographs; web board Sun. 6pm
Wed. reading. Margaret Randall, Sandino’s Daughters Revisted, choose one of the following interviews: Doris Tijerino, Dora Maria Tellez, Sofia Montenegro; web board Tues. 6pm

Part 6. Human rights and inhuman wrongs

Week 11 (B week). April 14 and 16
Mon. reading. Deborah Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists Against Terror, 1-141; web board Sun. 6pm
Wed. reading. Levenson-Estrada, 142-233, web board Tues. 6pm

Week 12 (A week). April 21 and 23
Mon. reading. Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, chapters 1 and 3 (reserve); web board Sun. 6pm
Wed. assignment: See the video “The Official Story” (on reserve); web board Tues. 6pm

Part 7. Neoliberalism and its discontents

Week 13 (B week). April 28 and 30
Reading: selected newspaper articles, no web board postings this week
recommended: Chasteen, 307-321
Rough draft of conference paper due in class April 30

Week. 14 (A week). May 5 and 7
Wed. assignment: See video “Like Water For Chocolate” (on reserve); final web board posting Tues. 6 pm

Week. 15 (B week). May 12 and 14
Conference paper presentations
All conference papers due in class May 14