#latin american history
“Costa Rica After Coffee explores the political, social, and economic place occupied by the coffee industry in contemporary Costa Rican history. In this follow-up to the 1986 classic Costa Rica Before Coffee, Lowell Gudmundson delves deeply into archival sources, alongside the individual histories of key coffee-growing families, to explore the development of the co-op movement, the rise of the gourmet coffee market, and the societal transformations Costa Rica has undergone as a result of the coffee industry’s powerful presence in the country.”
“As a journalist visiting El Salvador during its brutal civil war, I met Ana Margarita Gasteazoro in the women’s prison of Ilopango. I was struck by her passion for justice, her honesty, and her compassion for what the people of her country have suffered. The same qualities shine through in this book. Judy Blankenship and Andrew Wilson have done a great service in making this remarkable woman’s story available to readers. I hope they will be as inspired and moved by it as I am.”
“Unequal Encounters: A Reader in Early Latin American Political Thought by Katherine Hoyt is an excellent anthology of "encounter writings” of the Americas. It brings together pre-Columbian and post-encounter documents from indigenous writers and Europeans working at the margins, painting a rich and full picture of the problematic of the European conquest of the New World. Hoyt’s social and political involvement in Latin America spans decades. She is as close as it gets to an organic intellectual working in this field in the US. Her judicious collection is a welcome addition to the literature, filling an existing gap in the area of Latin American thought, history, and culture.“
