Revolutionary movements in Latin America
Introduction
This curated
collection of The Americas explores revolution and revolutionary movements in
Latin American history from the colonial period to the present. This theme
embraces events and processes contributing to the courses, outcomes, and
reactions to both moments conventionally labeled “revolutions” in Latin
American history, such as large-scale events like the Mexican Revolution, and
more disparate efforts to secure—or resist—sociopolitical change.
The choice
of this theme is designed to spotlight the ways in which articles appearing in
The Americas have engaged with, and intervened in, the historiography on
revolution in Latin America.
Revolutionary movements in Latin America
The
compilation takes a broad geographic and temporal approach, and includes
scholarship devoted to a variety of Latin American countries in the
late-colonial and national periods. This collection highlights how conceptual
and analytical trends— the cultural turn, for instance—and
methodologies—material or visual culture studies, for example—have contributed
to historians' different approaches to the study of revolution over the years,
influencing the questions asked and the conclusions drawn.
In addition
to citing journal articles published from the late 1940s to the 2010s, we
include references to monographs and articles published elsewhere, to give
readers a sense of other historical scholarship produced contemporaneously with
a given article. In this introduction, I draw out three main themes—resistance,
reaction, and solidarity—that flow out of a reading of the articles included in
this collection and may be useful frameworks for orienting readers' engagement
with the curated compilation's contents.
Revolutionary movements in Latin America
In his
classic study of the Haitian Revolution, C. L. R. James outlined the
multiplicity of factors to which historians might direct their critical
attention when unraveling the intricacies of revolutionary movements. To
excavate the “subsoil” from which revolution emanated at “moments when society
is at a boiling point and therefore fluid,” James advised scholars to attend to
a plethora of interacting forces: economics, society and politics, and the actions
of both individuals and “the masses.” Mapping these causal factors and their
connections would render the apparently “meaningless chaos” of revolutions
legible.
This curated
collection of The Americas works in the tradition of James's approach, spotlighting
scholarship published since the journal's inception in 1944 that has explored,
from a variety of methodological and analytical approaches, the constellation
of forces that have propelled moments at which Latin American societies have
been exceptionally fluid.
This
compilation embraces an expansive definition of the term “revolution,”
attending to study of diffuse instances of popular mobilization and events
conventionally labelled “revolutions” by placing scholarship dedicated to
movements that sought to alter fundamental characteristics of Latin American
societies in the colonial and national periods into dialogue. The collection
thus illuminates the roots of resistance, reaction, and solidarity that
animated the origins, processes, and outcomes of revolutionary currents.
This curated
collection of The Americas works in the tradition of James's
approach, spotlighting scholarship published since the journal's inception in
1944 that has explored, from a variety of methodological and analytical
approaches, the constellation of forces that have propelled moments at which
Latin American societies have been exceptionally fluid. This compilation
embraces an expansive definition of the term “revolution,” attending to study
of diffuse instances of popular mobilization and events conventionally labelled
“revolutions” by placing scholarship dedicated to movements that sought to
alter fundamental characteristics of Latin American societies in the colonial
and national periods into dialogue. The collection thus illuminates the roots
of resistance, reaction, and solidarity that animated the origins, processes,
and outcomes of revolutionary currents. Simultaneously, the collection
demonstrates The Americas’ critical interventions into the
historiography of revolution. The selected articles, ordered by date of
publication, provide a snapshot of how pivotal historiographic shifts—the rise
of women's history, the cultural turn—and transformative moments—the Cuban
Revolution of 1959 or the proliferation of reactionary military dictatorships
in the 1970s and 1980s—in Latin American history shaped historians’ questions
and conclusions regarding revolution's nature, and conditioned the
methodological strategies through which they attempted to access the histories
of revolutionary moments.
Revolutionary movements in Latin America
The first trio of articles illustrates an early tendency to examine revolution through its leaders. Bernard Bobb's (Reference Bobb1947) study of José Artigas's Independence-era exploits in the Banda Oriental, William H. Gray's (Reference Gray1950) analysis of José San Martín's social reforms, and Mary Aquinas Healy's (Reference Healy1953) discussion of Toussaint L'Ouverture's contributions to independence movements in the Americas reflect a slant toward “great-man histories.” These biographic accounts foregrounded leaders’ personalities, thought, and goals. Overlaid with the contemporary emphasis in the United States on opposing dictatorships in the post World War II and early Cold War periods, these studies veered close to adulation of Independence-era leaders as heroic champions of liberty. Bobb, for example, praised Artigas as “the most gaucho among all gauchos” and admired his “adherence to ideals and tenacity of purpose.”Footnote 2 Healy's portrait of L'Ouverture as a pragmatic liberator and advocate of raceless nationhood countered former colonial powers’ nationalist histories, many of which maligned L'Ouverture. Amid decolonization's rising tide and an embryonic civil rights movement in the United States, L'Ouverture's rehabilitation aimed at an “objective interpretation of Haitian history” and focused on a man who, Healy speculated, “would have been surprised if he had known that even in 1953 race barriers still exist, though fortunately they are gradually breaking down.”
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