Este artículo se propone analizar la propuesta de los saraus de poesía de la periferia de la ciudad de São Paulo (encuentros para leer o declamar poesía en bares de los barrios alejados del centro de la ciudad) en función del cuestionamiento y problematización que establecen respecto del término literatura. La producción literaria, de acuerdo con la lógica de los saraus, es considerada por un lado como un medio facilitador para proyectar ser una “persona” ligada a un “yo” que tiene una conciencia de sí mismo y una valoración específica en el marco de un colectivo que le otorga protección y promueve el desarrollo de un sentimiento de pertenencia. Al mismo tiempo, la producción de los saraus se presenta como un espacio central para repensar los modos de funcionamiento y de legitimación del campo literario brasileño del presente.

This essay reviews the following works:

Connections after Colonialism: Europe and Latin America in the 1820s. Edited by Matthew Brown and Gabriel Paquette. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2013. Pp. vii + 328. $54.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780817317768.

Frontiers of Possession: Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas. By Tamar Herzog. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Pp. i + 377. $35.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780674735385.

Imperial Portugal in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions: The Luso-Brazilian World, c. 1770–1850. By Gabriel Paquette. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. vi + 445. $140.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781107028975.

Revolutions without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World. By Janet Polasky. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Pp. 392. $25.00 paper. ISBN: 9780300219845.

Crisis in an Atlantic Empire: Spain and New Spain, 1808–1810. By Barbara H. Stein and Stanley J. Stein. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 773. $89.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781421414249.

Empire’s End: Transnational Connections in the Hispanic World. Edited by Akiko Tsuchiya and William G. Acree Jr. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 223. $34.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780826520777.

Este ensaio resenha os seguintes filmes:

Justiça/Justice. Dir. Maria Augusta Ramos. Prod. Jan de Ruiter, Luis Vidal, Niek Koppen, and Renée Van Der Grinten. Brazil/Netherlands, 2004, 107’. DVD. Film is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUWZHNWcj7U.

Juízo/Behave. Dir. Maria Augusta Ramos. Prod. Diler Trinidade. Brazil, 2007. 90’. DVD. Film is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UymNRVuilnA.

Morro dos Prazeres/Hill of Pleasures. Dir. Maria Augusta Ramos. Prod. Eduardo Ades and Daniela Santos in association with Imagem-Tempo. Brazil/Netherlands, 2013, 90’. DVD. Film is available by contacting the distributor at atendimento@bretzfilmes.com.br.

O Processo/The Trial. Dir. Maria Augusta Ramos. Prod. Leonardo Mecchi. Brazil, 2018, 100’. Not yet released in DVD. Contact the distributor at http://www.vitrinefilmes.com.br/site/.

This essay outlines the three articles in this dossier, “Latin American Studies and the Humanities: Past, Present, Future.” The authors, working in different disciplines, contribute to debates about how to reconceptualize area studies. Each article considers how area studies might be enriched by considering different spatial scales and incorporating methodologies drawn from ethnic studies disciplines. Our introduction explains how each essay contributes to our understanding of five key issues in Latin American studies: (1) the relationship between the field’s regionally bound framework and emerging conceptual paradigms like the global South; (2) the potential for interdisciplinary, rather than multidisciplinary, research; (3) how to place Latin American studies in dialogue with ethnic studies; (4) how to rethink the origins of Latin American studies by tracing the long history of Latin America–generated knowledge about the region; and (5) how recent indigenous studies approaches might decolonize the field of Latin American studies.

This essay reviews the following works:

Unlocking the Doors to the Worlds of Guaman Poma and His Nueva corónica. Edited by Rolena Adorno and Ivan Boserup. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2015. Pp. 483. $78.00 paperback. ISBN: 9788763542708.

Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Native Archive and the Circulation of Knowledge in Colonial Mexico. By Amber Brian. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 187. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826520975.

Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl and His Legacy. Edited by Galen Brokaw and Jongsoo Lee. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016. Pp. vi + 306. $60.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780816500727.

Inca Garcilaso and Contemporary World-Making. Edited by Sara Castro-Klarén and Christina Fernández. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 373. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822963646.

Epics of Empire and Frontier: Alonso de Ercilla and Gaspar de Villagrá as Spanish Colonial Chroniclers. By Celia López-Chávez. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 293. $29.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780806152295.

Annals of Native America: How the Nahuas of Colonial Mexico Kept Their History Alive. By Camilla Townsend. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 313. $35.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780190628994.

Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500–1800. By Peter B. Villella New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 337. $120.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107129030.

This essay contributes to a fuller understanding of the history and future of area studies by tracing Latin American studies back to the early twentieth century, when it took form within academic disciplines that sought to contribute to state policy-making. The essay focuses on a set of intellectual exchanges between the United States and Mexico around Native American affairs. In an era in which new inter-American scientific venues and the Good Neighbor policy attenuated the inevitable and ever present intellectual hierarchies that divided the United States from Mexico and the rest of Latin America, some scholars found resemblances and parallels between North and South America. These scholars envisioned a cosmopolitan Americanist intellectual sphere based on horizontal forms of sharing, and they looked for novel ways of reconciling the avowed need for generalization with the particulars that they confronted at home and abroad. They found themselves unable to fully escape epistemological binds that positioned the North as a model of modern nationhood and a locus of universal knowledge, and that relegated non-Western nations like Mexico to the category of the particular. They could not overcome the difficulties spawned by hierarchies among nations and, concomitantly, among their own scholarly communities.

This essay reviews the following works:

Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico. By Christopher R. Boyer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. xix + 337 pages. $27.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822358329.

Dictablanda: Politics, Work, and Culture in Mexico, 1938–1968. Edited By Paul Gillingham and Benjamin T. Smith. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. vii + 444. $28.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822356370.

The War Has Brought Peace to Mexico: World War II and the Consolidation of the Post-Revolutionary State. By Halbert Jones. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 296. $55.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780826351302.

Mexico’s Once and Future Revolution: Social Upheaval and the Challenge of Rule since the Late Nineteenth Century. By Gilbert M. Joseph and Jürgen Buchenau. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. $23.95 paper. Pp. x + 252. ISBN: 9780822355328.

Instituting Nature: Authority, Expertise, and Power in Mexico’s Forests. Andrew S. Mathews. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011. Pp. xii + 304. $32.00 paper. ISBN: 9780262516440.

The Logic of Compromise in Mexico: How the Countryside Was Key to the Emergence of Authoritarianism. By Gladys I. McCormick. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. xiv + 284. $32.95 paper. ISBN: 9781469627748.

Myths of Demilitarization in Postrevolutionary Mexico, 1920–1960. By Thomas Rath. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Pp. vii + 256. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780807839294.

This essay reviews the following works:

Heaven, Hell, and Everything in Between: Murals of the Colonial Andes. By Ananda Cohen Suarez. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 304. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781477309551.

Of Love and Loathing: Marital Life, Strife, and Intimacy in the Colonial Andes, 1750–1825. By Nicholas A. Robins. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Pp. x + 280. $60.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780803277199.

Revolution in the Andes: The Age of Túpac Amaru. By Sergio Serulnikov. Translated by David Frye. Foreword by Charles F. Walker. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 155. $22.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822354987.

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion. By Charles F. Walker. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 341. $29.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780674058255.

This essay reviews the following works:

Enhancing Democracy: Public Policies and Citizen Participation in Chile. By Gonzalo Delamaza. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. Pp. vi + 296. $99.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781782385462.

The Politics of Local Participatory Democracy in Latin America: Institutions, Actors, and Interactions. By Françoise Montambeault. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 265. $65.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780804795166.

Participatory Democracy in Brazil: Socioeconomic and Political Origins. By J. Ricardo Tranjan. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 269. $30.69 paperback. ISBN: 9780268042400.

Activating Democracy in Brazil: Popular Participation, Social Justice, and Interlocking Institutions. By Brian Wampler. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2015. Pp. xi + 297. $39.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780268044305.

This essay reviews the following works:

Side Effects: Mexican Governance under NAFTA’s Labor and Environmental Agreements. By Mark Aspinwall. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 209. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780804782302.

Toxic Injustice: A Transnational History of Exposure and Struggle. By Susanna Rankin Bohme. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 343. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9780520278998.

Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction. By Gastón R. Gordillo. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 315. $26.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822356196.

Unearthing Conflict: Corporate Mining, Activism, and Expertise in Peru. By Fabiana Li. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 265. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822358312.

Engineering Mountain Landscapes: An Anthropology of Social Investment. Edited by Laura L. Scheiber and María Nieves Zedeño. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 201. $45.00 paper. ISBN: 9781607814337.

1970s Latin America was a hotbed of theoretical and methodological innovation in the social sciences and the arts, developing novel approaches to studying social reality to support social movements. This article uses Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda’s field notes and his four-volume work Historia doble de la Costa to analyze how he and his colleagues, working in collaboration with the Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos on the Caribbean coast, developed the methodology of participatory action research, which attempted to erase the distinction between researchers and researched, and to rewrite the history of the peasantry from below using novel formats.

This essay reviews the following works:

The Lima Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Edited by Carlos Aguirre and Charles Walker. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017, Pp. xv + 272. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822363484.

Perú. 5 tomos. America Latina en la historia contemporánea. Dirigido por Carlos Contreras Carranza. Madrid: Fundación MAPFRE, 2013–2015.

Tomo 1, Crisis imperial e independencia, 1808–1830. Coordinado por Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy. Madrid: MAPFRE, 2013. Pp. 11–336. ISBN: 9788430607884.

Tomo 2, La construcción nacional, 1830–1880. Coordinado por Carlos Contreras Carranza. Madrid: MAPFRE, 2014. Pp. 2–360. ISBN: 9788439607884.

Tomo 3, La apertura al mundo, 1880–1930. Coordinado por Oscar Gonzales. Madrid: MAPFRE, 2015. Pp. 11–304. ISBN: 9788430607884.

Tomo 4, Mirando hacia dentro, 1839–1960. Coordinado por Marcos Cueto. Madrid: MAPFRE, 2015. Pp. 13–312. ISBN: 9788430607884.

Tomo 5, La búsqueda de la democracia, 1960–2010. Coordinado por Antonio Zapata. Madrid: MAPFRE, 2015. Pp. 13–367. ISBN: 9788430607884.

This essay reviews the following works:

The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America. Edited by Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Paul Freston, and Stephen C. Dove New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xii + 830. $250.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780521767330.

Native Evangelism in Central Mexico. By Hugo G. Nutini and Jean F. Nutini Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014. Pp. vii + 197. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780292744127.

New Centers of Global Evangelicalism in Latin America and Africa. By Stephen Offutt. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. viii + 192. $80.18 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107078321.

The Roots of Pope Francis’s Social and Political Thought: From Argentina to the Vatican. By Thomas R. Rourke Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. Pp. vii + 220. $80.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781442272712.

From the coloniality of power to the decolonial swerve, US-centered decolonial academics concur with the foundational points introduced by Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano. Nevertheless, they seldom cite Latin American Indigenous or Native American intellectuals’ decolonial perspectives, or examine specific bodies of critical thinking emerging in hemispheric Indigenous communities. In turn, a diversity of Indigenous paradigms and methods are appearing in the Americas, either as literary texts or critical works. Indigenous or Native American writers and theorists are often political actors, working within their respective grassroots movements, or writing to advance specific goals of their own communities. This article will emphasize Native American and Indigenous decolonial issues framed from a critique of contemporary Indigenous narratives. Their views both enrich and complicate Western decolonial theorists’ assumptions. Examining their production provides continuity to the political and epistemological searches of both, while also contributing to breaking down those invisible walls separating them.

This essay reviews the following works:

Upriver: The Turbulent Life and Times of an Amazonian People. By Michael F. Brown. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Pp. vii + 321. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780674368071.

In Search of the Amazon: Brazil, the United States, and the Nature of Region. By Seth Garfield. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 343. $26.96 paper. ISBN: 9780822355854.

Rainforest Cowboys: The Rise of Ranching and Cattle Culture in Western Amazonia. By Jeffrey Hoelle. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. viii + 196. $45.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780292761346.

Tracks in the Amazon: The Day-to-Day Life of the Workers on the Madeira-Mamoré Railroad. By Gary Neeleman and Rose Neeleman. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 195. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9781607812753.

Amazonian Routes: Indigenous Mobility and Colonial Communities in Northern Brazil. By Heather F. Roller. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 342. $70.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780804787086.

This essay reviews the following works:

The Invention of the Brazilian Northeast. By Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Jr. Translated by Jerry Dennis Metz. Foreword by James N. Green. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 277. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822357858.

Brazil and the Dialectic of Colonization. By Alfredo Bosi. Translated by Robert Patrick Newcomb. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 373. $35.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780252080845.

Revolt of the Saints: Memory and Redemption in the Twilight of Brazilian Racial Democracy. By John F. Collins. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 463. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822353201.

The Economic and Social History of Brazil since 1889. By Francisco Vidal Luna and Herbert S. Klein. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. vi + 439. $27.03 paperback. ISBN: 9781107616585.

The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil. By Barbara Weinstein. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 458. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822357773.

The Rio De Janeiro Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Edited by Daryle Williams, Amy Chazkel, and Paulo Knauss. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 390. $20.73 paperback. ISBN: 9780822360063.

This essay reviews the following works:

Private Wealth and Public Revenue in Latin America: Business Power and Tax Politics. By Tasha Fairfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. viii + 333. $99.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781107088375.

Evo’s Bolivia: Continuity and Change. By Linda C. Farthing and Benjamin H. Kohl. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 227. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780292758681.

The State and the Private Sector in Latin America: The Shift to Partnership. By Mauricio A. Font. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Pp. vii + 291. $100.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780230111400.

Partisan Investment in the Global Economy: Why the Left Loves Foreign Direct Investment and FDI Loves the Left. By Pablo M. Pinto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 288. $34.99 paper. ISBN: 9781107617360.

Enduring Reform: Progressive Activism and Private Sector Responses in Latin America’s Democracies. Edited by Jeffrey W. Rubin and Vivienne Bennett. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015. Pp. xi + 261. $15.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822963165.

Reinventing the Left in the Global South: The Politics of the Possible. By Richard Sandbrook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 294. $34.99 paper. ISBN: 9781107421097.

Democratic Chile: The Politics and Policies of a Historic Coalition, 1990–2010. Edited by Kirsten Sehnbruch and Peter M. Siavelis. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2014. Pp. vii + 375. $69.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781588268730.

This essay reviews the following works:

Brazil in Transition: Beliefs, Leadership, and Institutional Change. By Lee J. Alston, Marcus André Melo, Bernardo Mueller, and Carlos Pereira. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 262. $39.50 hardcover. ISBN: 9780691162911.

The Political Construction of Brazil: Society, Economy, and State since Independence. By Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. Pp. x + 419. $85.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781626373075.

Making Brazil Work: Checking the President in a Multiparty System. By Marcus André Melo and Carlos Pereira. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. xiii + 212. $100.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781137310835.

New Order and Progress: Development and Democracy in Brazil. Edited by Ben Ross Schneider. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 307. $31.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780190462895.

This essay reviews the following works:

The Ch’ol Maya of Chiapas. Edited by Karen Bassie-Sweet, with Robert M. Laughlin, Nicholas A. Hopkins, and Andrés Brizuela Casimir. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 251. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780806147024.

Wellness beyond Words: Maya Compositions of Speech and Silence in Medical Care. By T. S. Harvey. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013. Pp. vii + 256. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826352736.

Maya Market Women: Power and Tradition in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala. By S. Ashley Kistler. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 160. $44.68 paperback. ISBN: 9780252079887.

Southern Eastern Huastec Narratives: A Trilingual Edition. Translated and edited by Ana Kondic. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 197. $24.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780806151809.

Indigenous Bodies, Maya Minds: Religion and Modernity in a Transnational K’iche’ Community. By C. James MacKenzie. Boulder: University Press of Colorado; Albany: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, 2016. Pp. ix + 368. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781607325567.

Songs That Make the Road Dance: Courtship and Fertility Music of the Tz’utujil Maya. By Linda O’Brien-Rothe. Forewords by Allen J. Christenson and Sandra L. Orellana. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 244. $72.93 paperback. ISBN: 9781477305386.

Language and Ethnicity among the K’ichee’ Maya. By Sergio Romero. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 123. $50.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781607813972.