Notre Dame Press has been publishing scholarly work in Latin American studies for over fifty years, and we have over two thirds of Latin American countries represented on our list. Many of our titles are part of the Kellogg Institute Series on Democracy and Development, which was launched in 1985 with an emphasis on Latin America.
Below is a list of select Latin American Studies titles throughout the decades. Starting with our earliest Latin American Studies titles and leading up to five years ago, this selection is only a fraction of the incredible scholarship we have available. These books are the foundation for continued research as well as the responses; together they create a complex dialogue about Latin America and its politics, places, and people.
1973
Chile and the United States 1880-1962
The Emergence of Chile’s Social Crisis and the Challenge to United States Diplomacy
The key to the future of the United States relations with its sister republics in South and Central America may well be found in this exhaustive study of Chile-United States relationships. The South American nation’s relatively small population belies the powerful influence it wields in all American Hemisphere councils.
1992
Issues in Democratic Consolidation
The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective
Since 1974 there has been an unprecedented wave of democratization in the world. This trend has been particularly extensive in South America. But the problems confronting these new democracies are staggering, and the prospects for building consolidated democratic regimes are far from uniformly good. Focusing primarily on recent South American cases, Issues in Democratic Consolidation examines some of the difficulties of constructing consolidated democracies and provides a critical examination of the major issues involved.
1999
Counterpoints
Selected Essays on Authoritarianism and Democratization
Counterpoints is a successful mix of personal experience and meticulous scholarship—a trajectory of O’Donnell’s work that starts with the critique of authoritarianism and ends with a close examination of presently existing democracies in Latin America. His discussion of the flaws of the new democracies originating from defective institutionalism and extreme social inequalities is especially valuable for scholars of democracy and democratization, comparative politics, and Latin American politics.
2003
Origins of Argentina’s Revolution of the Right
The Origins of Argentina’s Revolution of the Right traces the ideological roots and political impact of Argentine right-wing nationalism as it developed in the 1930s and 1940s. In this spirited book, Alberto Spektorowski focuses on the attempt by a new brand of nonconformist intellectuals to shift the concept of Argentine nationalism from its liberal incarnation to an integralist-populist one and, simultaneously, to change Argentina’s path of development from liberalism to a “third road” of economic autarky.
2007
Looking Forward
Comparative Perspectives on Cuba’s Transition
In Looking Forward, Marifeli Perez-Stable and her colleagues imagine Cuba’s future after the “poof moment”—Jorge I. Domínguez’s vivid phrase—when the current regime will no longer exist. Written in an accessible style that will appeal to all interested readers, this volume does not try to predict how and when the Castro regime will end, but instead considers the possible consequences of change. Each chapter—prepared by an expert in the field—takes up a basic issue: politics, the military, the legal system, civil society, gender, race, economic transition strategies, social policy and social welfare, corruption, the diaspora, memory, ideology and culture, and U.S.-Cuba relations.
2010
Death and Conversion in the Andes
Lima and Cuzco, 1532-1670
Ramos argues that understanding the relation between death and conversion in the Andes involves not only considering the obvious attempts to destroy the cult of the dead, but also investigating a range of policies and strategies whose application demanded continuous negotiation between Spaniards and Andeans. Drawing from historical, archaeological, and anthropological research and a wealth of original archival materials, especially the last wills and testaments of indigenous Andeans, Ramos looks at the Christianization of death as it affected the lives of inhabitants of two principal cities of the Peruvian viceroyalty: Lima, the new capital founded on the Pacific coast by the Spanish, and Cuzco, the old capital of the Incas in the Andean highlands. Her study of the wills in particular demonstrates the strategies that Andeans devised to submit to Spanish law and Christian doctrine, preserve bonds of kinship, and cement their place in colonial society.
]2011
Political Careers, Corruption, and Impunity
Panama’s Assembly, 1984–2009
In Political Careers, Corruption, and Impunity: Panama’s Assembly, 1984–2009, Carlos Guevara Mann systematically examines the behavior of the members of Panama’s Legislative Assembly between 1984 and 2009, an arena previously unexplored in studies of Panamanian politics. He challenges fundamental aspects of scholarly literature on democratic legislatures, with important consequences for understanding democratic politics in Latin America and other parts of the world. The current literature on legislatures assumes that legislators single-mindedly seek reelection or the advancement of their political careers, and that they pursue these goals through acceptable democratic means. Guevara Mann shows, however, that in Panama many legislators also pursue less laudable goals such as personal enrichment and freedom from prosecution, often reaching their goals through means—widespread clientelism, party switching, and electoral manipulation—that undermine the quality of democracy.
2012
The New Orleans Sisters of the Holy Family
African American Missionaries to the Garifuna of Belize
The Sisters of the Holy Family, founded in New Orleans in 1842, were the first African American Catholics to serve as missionaries. This story of their little-known missionary efforts in Belize from 1898 to 2008 builds upon their already distinguished work, through the Archdiocese of New Orleans, of teaching slaves and free people of color, caring for orphans and the elderly, and tending to the poor and needy.
2013
Power and Regionalism in Latin America
The Politics of MERCOSUR
In Power and Regionalism in Latin America: The Politics of MERCOSUR, Laura Gómez-Mera examines the erratic patterns of regional economic cooperation in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), a political-economic agreement among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and, recently, Venezuela that comprises the world’s fourth-largest regional trade bloc. Despite a promising start in the early 1990s, MERCOSUR has had a tumultuous and conflict-ridden history. Yet it has survived, expanding in membership and institutional scope. What explains its survival, given a seemingly contradictory mix of conflict and cooperation?
2014
Authoritarian El Salvador
Politics and the Origins of the Military Regimes, 1880-1940
In Authoritarian El Salvador: Politics and the Origins of the Military Regimes, 1880-1940, Erik Ching seeks to explain the origins of the military regime that came to power in 1931. Based on his comprehensive survey of the extant documentary record in El Salvador’s national archive, Ching argues that El Salvador was typified by a longstanding tradition of authoritarianism dating back to the early- to mid-nineteenth century. The basic structures of that system were based on patron-client relationships that wove local, regional, and national political actors into complex webs of rival patronage networks. Decidedly nondemocratic in practice, the system nevertheless exhibited highly paradoxical traits: it remained steadfastly loyal to elections as the mechanism by which political aspirants acquired office, and it employed a political discourse laden with appeals to liberty and free suffrage. That blending of nondemocratic authoritarianism with populist reformism and rhetoric set the precedent for military rule for the next fifty years.
2018
Indigenous Languages, Politics, and Authority in Latin America
Historical and Ethnographic Perspectives
This volume makes a vital and original contribution to a topic that lies at the intersection of the fields of history, anthropology, and linguistics. The book is the first to consider indigenous languages as vehicles of political orders in Latin America from the sixteenth century to the present, across regional and national contexts, including Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, and Paraguay.
2019
From Revolution to Power in Brazil
How Radical Leftists Embraced Capitalism and Struggled with Leadership
From Revolution to Power in Brazil: How Radical Leftists Embraced Capitalism and Struggled with Leadership examines terrorism from a new angle. Kenneth Serbin portrays a generation of Brazilian resistance fighters and militants struggling to rebuild their lives after suffering torture and military defeat by the harsh dictatorship that took control with the support of the United States in 1964, exiting in 1985.