Central America Books

Confederate Settlements in British Honduras is a concise but detailed history of the former Confederates who went into exile to British Honduras (today Belize) after the War Between the States. It's easy reading, highly interesting, and provides illustrations throughout the book. The book discusses in depth the conditions in Belize and the South before, during, after the War, explaining the circumstances of the Southern immigration or exile. Many prominent Southerners immigrants are named. It also talks about the trials and difficulties of the exiles in their new country, including the different climate that had such a major impact on their agriculture pursuits, and the clash of cultures. The book also provides information up to the present time regarding the descendants of those Confederates who chose to stay in Belize and tough it out.

This is a great collection of insightful essays, showing many dimensions of change in Latin America's churches. We have stories of husband-wife evangelical teams in the slums of Brazil, Catholic lay catechists in Peru, or activists for Mother Mary, inspired more by the ministrations of local grandmothers than church fathers.

The contributors document growing movements among both the poor and the rich. They show declining interest in contests over religious power, and a rise of more positive kinds of competition. While progressives offer their services in the impoverished barrios, conservatives offer formal education and high ritual to the affluent. As contributor Brian Froehle explains, "in the final analysis, the Venezuelan church simply goes in many directions at once, and the most compelling result of the struggles between conservatives and progressives has been that both the winners and the losers are stronger than ever today". (p.113)

I found the both book realistic and respectful in describing local people's efforts to move their communities in new directions.

--author of "Different Visions of Love"

If you REALLY want to know about the USA involvement in Nicaragua read this book. One comes away with a clear picture of the years 1912 through 1933 in Nicaragua. To be even better the book could have explored the position of the middle and worker class but information is scarce. All in all one of the best books written on this era in Central America

Jeff Brauer, et al, have given us an insight into the real guts of El Salvador. The detail regarding real people - artisans, shopkeepers, workers and characters - is just what one needs to have a truly great adventure in El Salvador. We were in El Salvador in 1993, travelling on our own. We had some great adventures - but this book would have been an ideal travel companion.

This book is an absolute must for any academic working in highland Guatemala. Probably not very good for the casual tourist though.

This book is an unrivalled source on the appearance, weapons, backgrounds, and experiences of the brutal Spanish veterans who brought several great American Empires to their knees in the 16th Century.

The author, John Pohl, has already written several titles for Osprey on the subject of Mexican-Conquistador warfare, and has extensive experience in the study of American civilizations from Canada to Central America. The illustrator, Adam Hook, is also known for his knowledge of the 'Indians' and their material culture and appearances, and is well established with his father and sister as one of Osprey's best artists.

The Conquistador era began in 1492. In that year, Columbus famously 'discovered' the New World while Ferdinand and Isabella were taking the surrender of Moorish-held Granada and cruelly expelling all the Jews, Moors, and other ethnic and religious minorities from Spain. The very aura of the time was one of warfare, intolerance, and greed, and would soon spread into the Americas. As early as 1493, the Spanish explorers had made leathal enemies amongst the natives for their cruel, drunken, and lustful behavior. In the end, however, the superior fighting styles, politics, and brutality of the Spaniards would win. By 1547, when Hernando Cortez died, the Spaniards had conquered the New World and many of its tribes and kingdoms from New Mexico to Peru, and had campaigned against some of the same tribes the Americans would fight in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

The Spanish conquest of Mexico in the 1520's is understandably the focus of a good chunk of the 64 page book. The success the Spaniards had against the formidable Mexicans ('Aztecs') can be attributed to many factors-though firearms are not one of them. The highly chivalrous and ritualistic military methods of the Indians against the professional brutality of the Europeans was definitely a factor, though superior training, fencing skills, Indian superstition and disunity, and maybe even luck all played their roles as well-oh, and let's not forget Cortez's army of at least 150,000 Indian allies!

The book follows the usual Warrior format-chronology, recruitment, organization, training, tactics, clothing/armor/weapons, diplomacy, campaigning, experience of battle, and a conclusion based on the last years of the Conquistadors. The book follows the experiences of a hypothetical Conquistador called Miguel, and at times reads almost like a novel. Overall, the text is an excellent source on the Conquistadors and is really a decent source for the elite of all the contemporary European armies.

The plates add lots of color to the book. Along with four spirited depictions of battle with Indian tribesmen, they also flesh out the appearance and gear of the Conquistadors along with their priests, women, and Indian allies.

In short this book is one of the best on this small but tenacious group of merciless killers-and the equally brutal Mexican Empire they toppled.

The author succiently (204 pages) uses the ongoing Indo-Pakistani conflict as a study to compare and evaluate deterrence theory and non-proliferation theory. Hagerty also adepty explaines the major focal points for this crisis. Perfect for students examining South Asia or aspects of nuclear proliferation.

Exceptional

Using the later 20th/early 21st century as her canvas, Linda Faye Williams paints a disturbing and all too true portrait of American social policy's inherently racialized construct. Our formal declarations of `equal opportunity' are undercut by the cultural reality of racist social policy. Like Dorothy Roberts, she argues that gender and racial hierarchies intersect to specifically disadvantage black women.

Unlike Robert's earlier work, this book goes all the way back to the emancipation era and covers many more issue areas beyond reproduction. When the federal government has intervened for racial equality, it has only done so in periods which are relatively fleetingly in comparison to the magnitude of the problem.

Williams has her most provocative research in a chapter on the black community's consistent support for President Bill Clinton (1993-2001). Blacks had consistently supported the Clinton administration at levels which easily overshadowed the total support simultaneously received from white voters. Although she does not provide a detailed analysis of intra- African American socioeconomic issues, Williams does ask us to consider how goals and stereotypes subtly but pervasively co-exist in public policy programs.

Those ultimately racialized voter patterns were established and then further solidified even as Clinton signed `welfare reform' which specifically built off the specter of the `welfare queen'; a presumably African American woman who lived off of the government instead of having a `job' and then raising her kids `right'. Ironically, before the federal welfare program became racially integrated in the 1960's, the white welfare recipients were intentionally supposed to stay at home with their children and not work outside of the home specifically so that their children would grow up `right'.

Williams correctly recognizes that any `universal' public policy does fact take on racial connotations because of our society's fundamentally racialized nature. People who prefer the status quo (and the ensuing racial constructs) are not going to be happy with a program which then attempts to equalize the playing field for all Americans. Talking about democracy is one thing, but sharing it with somebody who looks different from the self still makes many Americans and our public officials uncomfortable in spite of their `tolerant' public demeanor.

This book is an essential read for people studying race/ethnicity, but I also think it needs to be at the top of public administration reading lists. Conceeding that public policy is not value neutral is the first step in making a society which truly is equal.

The humorous title to this review is from page 130 of Dvora Yanow's book and is an excerpted interview between a policeman and a crime suspect. Yanow's serious book is a timely historical overview of the use of racial and ethnic categories by government bureaus. Her book contains example government affirmative action forms, college applications, vendor certification forms, housing fair lending notices, job training forms, and police department statistical crime report forms. Perhaps most amusing is a Matrix for Generating Race/Ethnicity of a Child by the California Department of Health Services that is reminiscent of something out of a Rube Goldberg cartoon.

Her thesis is that race and ethnicity have always been state-constructed categories and are an (quote) anthropological and scientific joke (end quote). Her book points out the absurdity of trying to categorize people of mixed race or who can pass as white, of categorizing criminals by eye-balling, of lumping groups that have nothing in common, such as Asian-Pacific Islanders, and of obscuring more important groupings such as poor whites. She believes racial and ethnic categories are proxies for group origin identity stories. But Yanow asks (quote) why are identity stories largely confined to race-ethnic terms, especially when those terms aren't real? (end quote). She states that the continuing use of such categories runs against the grain of classical liberalism and what it means to be American. She reminds us that the public has apparently largely forgotten the Nazi regime in which population control and genocide depended on race-ethnic labeling and marking by central government.

In a closing Yanow minces few words when she states that racial and ethnic categories have become the (quote) foundations for the redistribution of wealth in the form of various publicly funded programs and eligibilities for their services (end quote). She emphatically states:

(start quote) Yet we cannot - I cannot conceive of a way in which we can - achieve a socially egalitarian society when we constantly remind ourselves, almost daily, of differences of the sort that are built - conceptually, cognitively, linguistically - into the race-ethnic language that we use. The categories "sell" concepts of race and ethnicity through dispassionate documents and administrative means that most people would not give a second thought to, but that have material consequences...It seems to me, in light of the preceding case examples, quite evident that in order to achieve a socially just society, we need to give up these ways of counting ourselves and find others....Yet perhaps it is time to stop using race-ethnicity as a proxy for
economic and behavioral problems, lest our very language continue to perpetuate inequality...Race and ethnicity data, as established under the OMB (Federal Office of Management and Budget) definitions and Guidelines, provide ways of naming discriminatory practices and seeking legal redress, and they legitimate and provide credibility for claims for
governmental assistance (funds for schools, hospitals, health services, Housing, jobs, etc.) and political representation (end quote).

Yanow believes that we need to rethink and reframe racial and ethnic categories, but points out that the process won't be easy.

However, a weakness of Yanow's book for politicians is that she avoids devising any new categories that might eliminate some of the abuses of the widely accepted five category system presently used on government forms (e.g., White, Black, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific Islander, and American Indian-Alaskan Native). Yanow's book would have been complemented by recent sociological research on how Italian Americans were once considered as Non-White, but eventually became White (see Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno, Are Italians White? How Race is Made in America, Routledge Publishers, 2003). Not widely known in academia or the media is that 600,000 Americans of Italian-American descent were forced to carry identification cards during World War II, were restricted from freedom of movement, 10,000 were forced to relocate, and even baseball hero Joe DiMaggio's mother was deported to Italy (see Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment during World War II, Heyday Books, 2001). How did Italian-American immigrants assimilate without all the redistribution programs of today even though many were identifiably different by skin color and other physical attributes? How did Italian Americans avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades so many groups that immigrate to the United States today? Why haven't Italian Americans come forward with claims for special treatment under Affirmative Action programs? Perhaps the reason that the Italian-Americans have been largely ignored is that their story contradicts the victimology paradigm prevalent in most of academia and enshrined in government programs.

Yanow's book is a nuanced and balanced contribution and, as such, perhaps does not lend itself to being used as ammunition for the proponents or the opponents of perpetuating the current racial and ethnic categories. Says Yanow:

(quote) I am convinced that we must stop giving accounts of ourselves in terms of the five gross, lumpy race-ethnic categories (White, Black, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific Islander, American Indian-Alaskan Native): they create, impose, and maintain identities that are, by and large, not embracing of individuals' lived experiences and, because of the baggage of meaning that they carry, detrimental to human dignity. And yet, as convinced as I am of that position, I am equally convinced of the fact that we need modes of storytelling for collective and individual identity purposes, including a story of national origins (end quote).

Dvora Yanow's book contains some interesting quotes at the beginning of each chapter. It is perhaps fitting that we close this book review with the following excerpted quote from a noted Black scholar:

(quote) The mistake is to assume that birth
certificates and biographical sketches and all the
other documents generated by the modern bureaucratic
state reveal an anterior truth - that they are merely
signs of an independent existing identity.
But in fact they constitute it.
The social meaning of race is established
By these identity papers - by certificates...
And all the other verbal artifacts that proclaim race
to be real and, by that proclamation, make it so (end).
--- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.