Latin America is home to 1.5 million persons of Japanese descent. Combining detailed scholarship with rich personal histories, Daniel M. Masterson, with the assistance of Sayaka Funada-Classen, presents the first comprehensive study of the patterns of Japanese migration on the continent as a whole.When the United States and Canada tightened their immigration restrictions in 1907, Japanese contract laborers began to arrive at mines and plantations in Latin America. The authors exami...

The first full-length study of World War II from the Latin American perspective, this unique volume offers an in-depth analysis of the region during wartime. Each country responded to World War II according to its own national interests, which often conflicted with those of the Allies, including the United States. The contributors systematically consider how each country dealt with commonly shared problems: the Axis threat to the national order, the extent of military cooperation with the ...

"In this ambitious, at times gripping work of historical fiction, Padura re-creates the 1940 assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico." ― Foreign AffairsIn The Man Who Loved Dogs, Leonardo Padura brings a noir sensibility to one of the most fascinating and complex political narratives of the past hundred years: the assassination of Leon Trotsky by Ramón Mercader.The story revolves around Iván Cárdenas Maturell, who in his y...

Named one of the best true crime books of all time by TimeIn the last six years, more than eighty thousand people have been killed in the Mexican drug war, and drug trafficking there is a multibillion-dollar business. In a country where the powerful are rarely scrutinized, noted Mexican American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. A paramilitary gr...

Did the Maya really predict that the world would end in December of 2012? If not, how and why has 2012 millenarianism gained such popular appeal? In this deeply knowledgeable book, two leading historians of the Maya answer these questions in a succinct, readable, and accessible style. Matthew Restall and Amara Solari introduce, explain, and ultimately demystify the 2012 phenomenon. They begin by briefly examining the evidence for the prediction of the world's end in ancient Maya texts and ...

In this compelling block-buster guide discover hard-hitting facts about American History, The 22nd Amendment, The Bill of Rights, The Boston Tea Party, The Civil War, The Cold War, The Declaration of Independence and more.

On a hot and dusty December day in 1980, the bodies of four American women-three of them Catholic nuns-were pulled from a hastily dug grave in a field outside San Salvador. They had been murdered two nights before by the US-trained El Salvadoran military. News of the killing shocked the American public and set off a decade of debate over Cold War policy in Latin America. The women themselves became symbols and martyrs, shorn of context and background.In A Radical Faith, jo...

Smallpox, measles, and typhus. The scourges of lethal disease—as threatening in colonial Mesoamerica as in other parts of the world—called for widespread efforts and enlightened attitudes to battle the centuries-old killers of children and adults. Even before edicts from Spain crossed the Atlantic, colonial elites oftentimes embraced medical experimentation and reform in the name of the public good, believing it was their moral responsibility to apply medical innovations to cure and preven...

Once described as the ‘prime minister who wanted to be a priest’, George Price was one of the most enigmatic and secretive leaders of the modern Caribbean and Central American sub-region. Little is known of his personal life and his long political career was often mired in controversy. Now, his autobiography George Price: A Life Revealed, written by a former political acolyte, Godfrey Smith, promises to shed light on Price’s unusual personality, unearth previously unknown facts and provide...

This edited volume explores political violence and genocide in Latin America during the Cold War, examining this in light of the United States’ hegemonic position on the continent.Using case studies based on the regimes of Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Peru and Uruguay, this book shows how U.S foreign policy – far from promoting long term political stability and democratic institutions – has actually undermined them. The first part of the book is an inquiry into the larger historica...

Capture the spirit of an industrial, social and cultural revolution through this invigorating collection of historical portraits from the dawn of the industrialised world!Though it feels like an era marooned almost irretrievably in the distant past, the 1840s &ndash a decade of blistering social and cultural change – is only two lifetimes removed from the present day. There are, in other words, people alive today who knew and associated with people for whom the Gold Rush and the Great Fami...

Violence in Central America, especially when directed against Indian populations, is not a new phenomenon. Yet few studies of the region have focused specifi cally on the relationship between Indians and the state, a relationship that may hold the key to understanding these conflicts. In this volume, noted historians and anthropologists pool their considerable expertise to analyze the situation in Guatemala, working from the premise that the Indian/state relationship is the single most imp...