A Culture of Stone. Inka Perspectives on Rock by Carolyn Dean

BOOK REVIEWS

LATINAMERICANISM AFTER 9/11. By John Beverley. Durham: DukeUniversity Press, 2011, 166 pp., $22.95.

Sherman Alexie has observed that on September 11, 2001, his identityas a Spokane Indian came to an end because the attacks on the twin towersin New York City made him realize the dangers of embracing tribal iden-tities. For many Latin Americanists, September 11, 1973 represents a moresignificant watershed in our intellectual and political development thando the events 28 years later in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington,D.C. Cultural theorist John Beverley notes the linkages of these two datesin that, under the control of a brutal military dictatorship in Chile, the firstrepresented the introduction of unbridled neoliberal economic policies inLatin America; the second date introduced a period of decline and hope-fully the eventual collapse of what came to be known as the WashingtonConsensus.

Beverley argues that despite how scholars might present what he terms“Latinamericanism,” no clear line separates the embrace of identities (suchas those Alexie cautions against) and politics as represented by the “pinktide” governments that have arisen in Latin America in the aftermath of thedecline of the Washington Consensus. Despite attacks that Charles Haleand others have launched against multicultural neoliberalism, Beverley isnot ready to discard the liberating power of identities, whether they take apersonal, ethnic, racial, class, gender, civic, or national form. He challengesboth those from the right, who criticize identity politics as a misguidedpolitical correctness, and those from the left, who complain about theessentialization of identities into what marxists perhaps once would havecalled false consciousness. Beverley attempts to build an argument thatidentity politics should be seen as a precondition rather than obstacle tothe reemergence of the left.

Beverley notes the paradox of a neoconservative turn in LatinAmerican literary and cultural criticism that comes not only in the contextof the reemergence of a new Latin American left, but also largely from theleft itself. He positions this historically in terms of a series of people in-cluding Regis Debray, Teodoro Petkoff, and Jorge Castaneda who turnedon their previous political positions to become part of the center right.Beverley is concerned that a neoconservative turn could potentially di-vide a newly emergent left and hinder its growing hegemonic presence inLatin America.

Just when it appears that the issues that Beverley raises are a politicalnot cultural question, he turns his attention directly to issues of rethinkingarmed struggles and the relationship between subalterns and the state.While armed struggle has largely moved from the realm of current politi-cal debate to a historical curiosity in Latin America, the issue of state power

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is as pressing as it ever has been. Beverley discusses the tension playedout between the Zapatistas and the Partido de la Revolucion Democratica(PRD) in the 2006 Mexican presidential elections, and exhibited more re-cently between social movements and the Bolivian government (as wellas other pink tide leaders). He criticizes a shared anti-statist position ofneoconservative and ultraleftist forces. In contrast, Beverley argues for thepersistent relevance of state structures to realize the noble objectives ofcontemporary pink tide governments in Latin America.

This short book is a compilation of previously published essays thathave been rewritten for inclusion in this volume. Beverley writes from aposition which I suppose one could term post-subaltern or perhaps post-post colonial studies. Beverley comments as some length about the tensionof writing desde (from) verses sobre (about) Latin America, and his primaryaudience remains other cultural theorists most concerned about these ten-sions in the field. Beverley acknowledges that a golden age of academictheory has faded, but still contends that a meaningful connection can bemade between scholarly discourses and the lived realities of politics onthe ground in Latin America. Through his decades of work and numerouspublications in the field, Beverley remains as a shining example of a polit-ically engaged scholar as seriously engaged with current politics as livedand practiced in Latin America.

Marc BeckerDepartment of History

Truman State University

BARTOLOME DE LAS CASAS AND THE CONQUEST OF THE AMERICAS. By LawrenceA. Clayton. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, 188 pp., $23.95.

Bartolome de Las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas, is a short, effective,student-oriented history of the period and major issues of the Spanishpresence in the New World that Las Casas confronted. The basic premiseof this book, to use the life of Las Casas as a “gateway into the historyof the Conquest” (12), works quite well. The fact that his subject was acontemporary and near eyewitness to most of the major events of the firsthalf-century of Spanish exploration and conquest in the Americas allowsClayton to effectively contextualize the career of Las Casas. Much as theSpanish presence unfolded slowly, from the small, economically marginalislands of the Caribbean to the dramatic conquests of central Mexico andthe Andes, so Clayton traces the life of Las Casas from his relatively obscurebeginnings as a merchant to his frenetic and spectacular religious career.

This is an especially successful approach for discussing the develop-ment of the Dominican’s advocacy for the Indian peoples caught by thecreation of the vast new Spanish Empire. Clayton effectively narrates theslow awakening of Las Casas to the plight of the Indians, from his briefownership of a Taino slave, to his experience with the brutality of the

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encomienda system on Hispaniola. The unregulated, unsupervised expan-sion became increasingly disturbing to the young Las Casas as more andmore land and Indians were brought under Spanish control. The courseof Las Casas’s ensuing public career is similarly contextualized withinthe larger political and ideological developments in Spain, Europe, andthe world. At each encounter with the monarchy, Clayton describes thecompeting agendas and concerns that shaped the official governmentalresponse to the crisis of the Indies that Las Casas was bringing to light.In doing so, this book not only highlights the difficult mission which LasCasas undertook, but also shows how impressive it was that he was ableto make as much progress as he did in the name of protecting the nativepeoples of Spain’s American conquests.

The book is equally effective in describing the complexity of Las Casas’sthought and theology. Clayton reminds the reader that Las Casas was notsimply concerned with the humane treatment of the Indians, and theirevangelization; rather, the Dominican denied entirely the legitimacy of theConquest. He did so both in terms of just war, as understood by contem-porary Christian thought, as well as in the name straightforward justiceand natural law. While politically, Las Casas worked to protect Indiancommunities from the abuses of the Conquistadors in the name of properevangelization, in his writings Las Casas denounced the dispossessionand enslavement he witnessed unequivocally. That he regretted entirelythe Spanish arrival in the New World, even if without it the Indians couldnever be Christians, was an important aspect of his thought.

Despite these successes, Clayton’s book is less effective at appreciatingthe longer arc of Las Casas’s career and writings. The Black Legend is nec-essarily referenced numerous times throughout the book, though not ina particularly useful way. This creation of Protestant propagandists whowere Las Casas’s contemporaries relied heavily on his writings to make thecase for Spanish brutality. Clayton presents the Black Legend alongsidethe so-called White Legend, constituted of apologetic works by Spaniardscombating the cultural black-eye which the successful propaganda effortcreated. The author presents these two competing approaches in a weak“we report, you decide” fashion. However, by repeating the most dramaticof Las Casas’s accounts, the book creates an atmosphere in which it wouldbe easy for students to conclude that the Black Legend was more or lessaccurate. Clayton reinforces this poor presentation with inaccurate and es-sentializing comments on Spanish history: “the Reconquest stamped Spainwith a martial culture” (12), for example, or simplifying the 1492 expulsionof the Jews to a “spate of religious zealotry” (13). In so doing, he not onlyreinforces negative stereotypes, he also misses the most important lessonthat Las Casas demonstrates. What was impressive about the Dominicanwas not that he documented brutality, because such was the nature ofsixteenth century society. But his inexhaustible efforts produced real re-sults: again and again the Spanish government took steps to codify Indianrights and protect them from the abuses of the Conquistadors. It was this

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achievement, which was unprecedented for the time, and certainly notrepeated by other European nations competing with Spain for control ofthe Americas, that defines Las Casas and negates the Black Legend. Thisomission mars what is otherwise an effective little book.

Miguel GomezDepartment of History

University of Tennessee

A CULTURE OF STONE. INKA PERSPECTIVES ON ROCK. By Carolyn Dean.Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010, 297 pp., $23.95.

The Inka were not the only group in the Andes to build relationshipswith sacred rocks, as this practice predates them by millennia and spans theentire area incorporated by their empire. So what made Inka relationshipto stone so special? And why should one read another book on the subject?Art historian Carolyn Dean’s comprehensive response to the first questionmakes the second one easy to answer. Indeed, many scholars have devotedthemselves to the study of Inka rock, but Dean’s book is original insofar asit reconstructs pre-Hispanic Inka visual culture from an Inka point of view.This means, for instance, that Dean focuses not only on carved stones –the most prominent subject matter in studies of Inka rock ‘art’ – but on allkinds of stones that the Inka valued. She refuses to take the Western viewon Inka stone which has led scholars to analyze Inka rocks according toWestern categories – including that of art itself. In other words, this bookis an attempt to present Inka rocks in Inka terms.

If the introduction sets the tone of the discussion, the first chapter goesdirectly into the subject matter: how did the Inka perceive rock? From theoutset, Dean puts aside the idea that stones represented something, becausein fact stones were that very thing themselves ‘in a lithic guise’ (26). Theauthor approaches Alfred Gell’s theory of object agency, but regrettablydoes not take the discussion to its full potential. Likewise, a comparison be-tween the elements of Inka cosmology discussed in this chapter – namely,the relationship between form, essence and transubstantiation – with otherAndean and, why not?, Amazonian indigenous perspectives on the sameissues would be extremely appealing. But this is not the aim of Dean’s book:she chooses to follow the path of the Inka to illuminate the issues that mat-tered most to them. Hence, there follows a detailed (and at some pointsmonotonous) description of how Inka differentiated and identified rocks.

Dean employs three different types of sources throughout the book: therocks themselves; colonial accounts of Inka rockwork; and contemporaryethnographic studies, or ‘the thoughts of Indigenous Andeans today’ (19).The author supports her use of contemporary oral history by drawing onthe example set by modern-day ethnoarchaeological scholarship, whichoften uses ethnography combined with more traditional archaeologicalmethods. The ethnographic sources are featured specially in the second

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chapter, which starts with an Andean narrative about the origins of theInka recorded in the early 1970s. While some scholars would prefer todeconstruct such an account and explain it in the light of recent eventsin indigenous history, Dean claims they are continuations of Inka waysof thinking, and as such should be taken seriously. She thus proceedsto an analysis of the relationship of the Inka with the natural and builtenvironments departing from elements in that account.

The second half of the book is certainly the most stimulating. The thirdchapter focuses on how the Inka culture of stone was deeply associatedwith Inka imperialism – or how their culture of stone symbolically ‘trans-formed Andean space into Inka territory’(105). By placing outcrops andwalls of nibbled stone in strategic points of the landscape, the Inka em-pire signaled its presence and its power over that particular area. Theanalysis of how and where integrated outcrops and nibbled walls wereconstructed is particularly interesting, for the author sensibly focuses onthe subtleties of strategic choices such as leaving protuberances in nibbledwalls as ‘reminders of the labor inscribed in them’ (117).

The attention drawn to Inka labor is one of the most important featuresof this book, and it is presented in full force in the last chapter, whichdeals with two different historical settings: the immediate post-conquestdestruction of Inka temples and modern-day reconstruction of the pre-Hispanic Inka world. As for the first moment, Dean shows that while thedestruction of the temple of Saqsaywaman became a symbol of conquestfor the Spanish Crown, for the Andeans this same event materially repre-sented their own choice of converting to Christianity. When dealing withmodern-day Peru, the author makes a very strong point by denouncingcontemporary Andean tourist scene, its quest for authenticity, and themystification that surrounds Andean achievements. Instead of valoriz-ing Inka culture and history, these two phenomena actually result in ‘aseparation of the Inka from the products of their labor’ (159).

Although the last chapter is surely the most engaging one, the strengthof this book lies in the combination of the four chapters. Their finelydetailed explanations and descriptions fit each other to form a coherentwhole – much like Inka masonry itself. This book will appeal to archaeol-ogists, anthropologists and art historians, as well as to those interested inSouth American indigenous cultures.

Mariana FrancozoFaculty of Archaeology

Leiden University, The Netherlands

THE ALLURE OF LABOR: WORKERS, RACE, AND THE MAKING OF THE PERUVIAN

STATE. By Paulo Drinot. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011, xi+311pp., $24.95.

In The Allure of Labor, Paulo Drinot argues that labor became fun-damental to both the formation and functioning of the state in early

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twentieth-century Peru. The nation’s progressive elite perceived two se-vere challenges to its plan to industrialize, which it believed was the pathto modernity. First, in order to industrialize, factories would need workers,many of whom, the elite feared, followed subversive ideologies or soughtto create social unrest. The second challenge came from the workers aswell: the vast majority of those seeking work were indigenous migrantsfrom the highlands. The white Peruvian elite imagined modernity to bemany things (i.e., hygienic, coastal, and literate), but definitely it wouldnot be indigenous. Drinot argues that by incorporating and controllinglabor, the state eliminated racial barriers by effectively “de-Indianizing”workers, thereby making them modern, urban “agents of progress.” Laborbecame the answer to both the Indian and modernity questions, and assuch became a central feature of state formation. The ability of labor toresolve the elite’s concerns is what Drinot calls “the allure of labor.”

Given the importance of labor to the state’s modernizing project, Drinotproposes that Peru became a “labor state,” mutually constituted by thestate and the working class. The first three chapters look at the establish-ment of the labor state, focusing on the development of a bureaucratic andlegislative system for labor. The actions of the state towards labor, like therepression of the labor movement, and the workers’ acceptance or rejec-tion of these actions contributed to the strengthening of the labor state byreiterating the importance of labor as an agent of progress and as a toolto deracinate. Chapter one looks at racial and gendered aspects of laborrelations, focusing on how elite policymakers used industrial work and en-acted legislation aimed at redeeming the ‘Indians’ by transforming theminto mestizo coastal dwellers, in an approximation of the elite’s idealizedimage of a modern Peruvian. The second chapter surveys the growth of theSeccion de Trabajo within the Development (Fomento) Ministry. Createdby initiative of the state and with the participation of labor, the Seccionmediated labor disputes and collectively bargained, effectively institution-alizing the labor state by excluding the claims of the indigenous from labordisputes. The newly created Seccion de Asuntos Indígenas, also a part ofthe Development Ministry, considered indigenous claims. The Ministry’sactions emphasized the idea of “labor as an agent of progress whose con-tribution to progress would result from its protection and improvement”(81). In chapter three, Drinot examines labor relations, especially duringthe dictatorship of Augusto B. Leguía (1919–1930), when the state used(violent) repression to strengthen the labor state by debilitating unionsonly to later incorporate them into the labor state. The final three chaptersstudy a broad spectrum of state-provided workers’ benefits, including thecreation of worker housing projects (barrios obreros), popular restaurants,and hospitals. By providing workers with access to low-cost housing, food,and health care, the state was able to incorporate workers, while domes-ticating and controlling the labor movement and its emerging challengeto party politics. Drinot argues that, while ostensibly populist initiatives,these policies also operated as social laboratories for providing the values

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and material conditions to create the model workers (i.e., not indigenous)that would help usher in modern Peru (192).

Drinot’s history is impressively detailed and complex, based on a closereading of archival sources, government publications, and Peru’s laborhistory, a nearly dormant field this book boldly reinvigorates. He paysclose attention to how issues of gender and class influenced the nation’sracially biased history. This focus does not come without some hiccups:it is not made clear whom precisely the elite or the state considered anIndian, undeniably a contentious issue throughout Peruvian history. Like-wise, Drinot focuses almost exclusively on Peru’s indigenous population,with the exception of a fascinating discussion of the omnipresent chifas(inexpensive Chinese food restaurants that competed with the state’s pop-ular restaurants) in Chapter 5. Peru’s significant populations of peoplefrom Asian (primarily Chinese and Japanese immigrants) and African(primarily the descendants of former slaves) ancestry do not receive sig-nificant coverage. Greater consideration of these other minority groupsmight have provided a more complete vision of the state’s attempts toderacinate the working class in order to create a modern Peru. Aside fromthese minor critiques, The Allure of Labor is an extremely important bookthat should be read by anyone interested in labor history and the historyof populism in the Americas, as well as the social and cultural history ofPeru.

Nathan ClarkeDepartment of History

Minnesota State University Moorhead

THE DRAGON IN THE ROOM: CHINA & THE FUTURE OF LATIN AMERICAN

INDUSTRIALIZATION. By Kevin P. Gallagher and Roberto Porzecanski.Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010, 200 pp., $18.95.

The Dragon in the Room provides an expansive analysis of the impact thatChina’s economic ascent is having on Latin America and the Caribbean(LAC), and its implications for the future. The authors investigate theproblem from several angles, focusing attention on three particular areas:(1) China’s bilateral economic relations with LAC, (2) the effects of China’seconomic rise for LAC export markets, and (3) differing approachesto development adopted by China and LAC countries. Gallagher andPorzecanski conclude that China’s rise has both positive and negativeimplications for LAC countries. On the positive side, Chinese demand forLAC-produced goods is providing a boost for LAC export markets, as arethe recent increases in commodity prices, which may be partly attributableto the increase in Chinese demand. On the negative side, Chinese exportsare outcompeting LAC export markets across sectors and as such consti-tute a serious threat to LAC exporters now and in the future; moreover,Latin America and the Caribbean is becoming gradually more dependent

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on primary commodity exports, a development that may induce “Dutchdisease”—the so-called resource curse—in the future.

The authors provide a well-sequenced investigation of the impacts onLAC-export markets that are accompanying China’s economic rise, in theprocess providing the reader with a progressively greater understand-ing of pertinent macroeconomic developments, as well as their manynuances. They begin with an analysis of bilateral trade between Chinaand LAC, demonstrating that Chinese demand has stimulated LAC ex-ports, while noting that demand has reached a few countries and involvesonly a handful of primary commodities within those countries. Gallagherand Porzecanski then argue that Chinese exports are out-competing theirLAC counterparts in the global market, using export-structure compari-son method and sector-by-sector comparison methods adopted from Lalland Weiss (2005) to demonstrate that Chinese exports are increasinglythreatening to displace LAC manufacturing exports across sectors, bothamong importers in the United States and in LAC countries themselves.The outlook for LAC high-tech exports is particularly bleak, as the “com-petitiveness of LAC in high tech is stagnating or rapidly deterioratingfor an overwhelming majority of high-tech products [. . .] in compari-son with China’s impressive performance in the opposite direction” (58).Gallagher and Porzecanski next focus on the contrasting approaches todevelopment that have been embraced by China and its LAC counter-parts, arguing that China’s advantage is in large part a function of its“neodevelopmental” economic policy paradigm, which stands in contrastto the inferior neoliberal model adopted across Latin America and theCaribbean during the Washington Consensus era. In the closing chap-ters, the authors narrow their scope to analyze China’s impressive perfor-mance relative to neoliberal Mexico, and offer policy suggestions for LACdevelopment.

The Dragon in the Room contributes to existing bodies of literature ina number of theoretical and empirical areas. Most notably, the book pro-vides an extensive, in-depth, and up-to-date analysis that ties togethervarious research threads to form a coherent, complete, and empirically-grounded investigation. Secondly, the authors use rich data to analyze thesuccess rates of contrasting development paradigms, and in doing so buildon developmental theories. Lastly, this study provides a general method-ological blueprint for conducting similar studies on economic relationsbetween other countries and regions.

The Dragon in the Room is highly readable. The research questions, re-sults, and conclusions are laid out in a clear and straightforward man-ner; the methods are detailed in a technical appendix. Gallagher andPorzecanski present their major conclusions early and reiterate them often,giving the reader a clear understanding of their major arguments and con-clusions throughout the work. A notable weakness lies in the country-to-region comparison. China has a centralized government, LAC as a regionobviously does not, meaning that comparisons are not always apt; this

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problem is mitigated to some extent by the Mexico-specific analysis ofthe concluding chapters. Along similar lines, the authors focus too littleattention on the exogenous factors that have compelled LAC policy.

Despite these minor weaknesses, The Dragon in the Room is a must-readtext for researchers and policymakers, Latin Americanists, Caribbeanistsand China watchers. Indeed anyone interested in China’s rise and theimplications for global economy and development will find it useful.Gallagher and Porzecanski make a convincing and compelling series ofarguments about the meaning of China’s economic growth for LAC, aswell as implications for policymaking.

Jonas GamsoGraduate School of Public and International Affairs

University of Pittsburgh

THE LATINO MIGRATION EXPERIENCE IN NORTH CAROLINA: NEW ROOTS IN THE

OLD NORTH STATE. By Hannah Gill. Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press, 2010, 208 pp., $18.95.

The Latino Migration Experience in North Carolina examines migration tothe U.S. South by focusing on the experience of Latinos seeking to make aplace for themselves in a traditionally Black-White state, and on commu-nity reactions to an increasing Latino presence. Gill’s contribution helpsfill a research gap on the growing migration of Latinos to new destinationsin the U.S., especially the New South, and brings to the foreground theeffects of global forces on local communities. Gill states that she hopes thebook will be particularly useful to people living in North Carolina. Becausemany of the conditions examined are found regionally and nationally, herfindings are certainly also significant more broadly as they may help de-bunk myths within, and add needed data to, national discussions of Latinoimmigrants.

To underscore the state’s significance for national immigration debates,Gill provides several statistics throughout the book. While the individ-ual stories she tells are particularly effective in humanizing immigrants(for example, through stories of the difficulties undocumented Latinostudents face in pursuing higher education and of living in fear of de-portation), these statistics may be especially necessary to place NorthCarolina, and more broadly the U.S. South, as worthy of significant at-tention in discussions of immigration. A few points that may interestreaders include that between 1990 and 2000 North Carolina’s Latino pop-ulation grew faster than the Latino population in any other state; todayof the approximately half million Latinos living in North Carolina 41%are native-born US citizens; the state has more agricultural guest work-ers than any other state; and it has a very young Latino population, withthree-fourths under thirty-four years old. It is also the state with the ninth

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largest undocumented population in the country. While Latinos are con-centrated in construction and service work in urban areas, in rural areasmany Latinos work in agriculture and meat and poultry industries. As isthe case nationally, within North Carolina Latinos cannot be considereda local-only issue, but rather a widespread and diverse population thatcontributes to all aspects of society in a range of contexts.

One of the strengths of the book is that Gill discusses (albeit briefly)the history of migration to North Carolina as a way to underscore thatLatinos are not the only immigrants to the state. This simple fact of historyis too often overlooked not only in national debates on immigration butalso in scholarly works. Latino migration, which began as a result of jobsin agriculture in Alamance County in the late 1970s and 1980s, is betterunderstood in the context of a much longer history of immigration to thestate: from Spaniards in the 1500s to the forced migration of Africans asslaves from the 1660–1800s to the waves of English, French, Swiss, andGerman immigrants to the arrival of Vietnamese, who now make up thelargest East Asian group in the state.

Perhaps also little known is that North Carolina has been at the forefrontof deportation policy. In 2006, the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Depart-ment became the first to implement the 287(g) program, which allows locallaw enforcement offices to check the immigrant status of anyone arrestedand to begin the process of deportation. The Department of Homeland Se-curity has used Mecklenburg County as a model for implementing similarprograms across the country. This is especially significant in the context ofan increasing number of states (in the South, for example, Kentucky andAlabama) attempting to implement—and fight against—anti-immigrationlegislation.

North Carolina has not been the exception to the national trend ofmisinformation and myths that inform immigration debates. For example,Gill notes that in 2006 a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s office in AlamanceCounty publicly stated that “eighty percent of all our drug traffickingarrests are illegal aliens. Most are Hispanics” (28); in reality, “statisticsfrom the Administrative Office of the Courts . . . . showed that Latinosmade up only 12 percent of the county’s criminal cases” (29). Given themyths of Latinos as criminal, immoral, corrupt, and over-sexualized (toname just a few stereotypes) that pervade media coverage of Latinos andimmigration, many more studies such as this one are needed. And, whilethe book’s focus on North Carolina is one of its main strengths, I wouldargue that it may also be one of its weaknesses, as the connections toregional and national immigration debates may not be as clear as somemay wish they were.

Overall, this is a very good book on a topic (Latino immigration to theU.S. South) that continues to be understudied, and I am hopeful that itmay encourage similar studies in other states in the region. It will be use-ful for undergraduate and graduate classes in anthropology, sociology,

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immigration, Latino and Latin American Studies, as well as to policy mak-ers, and, as Gill hopes, in general to those living in North Carolina.

M. Cristina AlcaldeDepartment of Gender and Women’s Studies

University of Kentucky

INDELIBLE INEQUALITIES IN LATIN AMERICA: INSIGHTS FROM HISTORY, POLITICS,AND CULTURE. By Paul Gootenberg and Luis Reygadas (eds.). Durham:Duke University Press, 2010, 248 pp., $22.95.

The life of Latin Americans is strongly conditioned by their class, gen-der, ethnicity and birthplace. Someone that is born poor–or rich–is likely toremain as such for the rest of her life. This inequality has endured throughseveral generations and strongly conditions Latin Americans´ style andquality of life. Several studies have documented how state-society inter-actions and economic mechanisms have generated structures and institu-tions that perpetuate inequality. However, most of this previous researchprovides economic or political-economic explanations that tend to over-look more subtle mechanisms. Indelible Inequalities contributes to fillingthis vacuum, tracing processes that reinforce social disparities throughnon-evident channels in day-to-day lives.

As a multidimensional phenomenon, inequality is difficult to embraceanalytically. Acknowledging this, the contributors examine inequality bybuilding on sociologist Charles Tilly’s relational framework. Tilly arguesthat groups can be conceptually differentiated through “bounded cate-gories” that operate through discursive and material mechanisms produc-ing and reproducing inequality over time. The authors use their expertisein history, political science, anthropology and cultural studies togetherwith statistics, ethnographic research and historical and aesthetic analysisto illustrate how inequality is sustained in the region.

The first two essays set the theoretical framework of the book, providea general examination of what is and is not inequality, and explore howethnicity and class help to explain the social distance between the elitesand the masses. The other essays trace the continuance of inequality in dif-ferent settings. One chapter relates how inequality shapes the aspirationsand worldview of the slum dwellers of Pamplona Alta, in the outskirts ofLima. It reveals how extremely poor people feel and think about them-selves, and argues that anti-poverty programs do not target the necessitiesof the have-nots due to their top-down design. Another chapter discusseshow the deployment of two healthcare systems in Peru divided along so-cial and cultural categories – one for urban workers and the other for ruralpopulations – has become a mechanism that reinforces gender and ethnicinequality. An essay on Brazil shows that political information is asymmet-rically absorbed according to the neighborhood, income and gender of thereceiver. The evidence provided in this chapter suggests that since poor

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people, blacks and females are less informed and less likely to participate inpolitics, their ability to influence public policy is further reduced. A chap-ter on Cuba adds to the discussion of inequality by analyzing how blackhip-hop singers and a painter express the racism that permeates a societyorganized under a government that is proud of its antiracist and egali-tarian policies. The final chapter traces how Latin American inequality isprojected in upstate New York through undocumented Latino farm work-ers, who have become a powerless rural underclass in the United States.

Indelible Inequalities is an illuminating volume for scholars interestedin innovative approaches to inequality, or for readers familiar with LatinAmerican history interested in how inequality is perpetrated through less-conspicuous means. Readers will gain from both individual chapters andthe volume as a whole.

The collective effort to unify different research methods and approachesthrough Tilly´s relational framework, however, has limits. Some contrib-utors are more skilled than others in using the framework, and in someessays the framework seems forced. Additionally, the chapters are notequally compelling. For instance, it is not clear if the artistic production ofa few hip-hop groups and a painter in Cuba are substantial evidence ofthe alleged racism on the island.

The case selection also works against the generalizability of the collec-tive endeavor. The essays only examine three countries–Peru, Brazil, andCuba–providing a narrow geographical approach to a work that refers toa region composed of approximately 20 countries. It is not clear why Perudeserves two chapters, nor how representative is an essay about one of themost equal societies in the region (Cuba). Moreover, the essay on the laborconditions of Latino farmworkers in New York seems misplaced despitethe fact that it is well-written and grounded in solid research.

Indelible Inequalities differs from works that treat inequality in strictlyeconomic or political terms, providing an innovative fine-grained ap-proach to a multidimensional concept of high relevance in Latin America.This book shows that treating inequality as “relational” opens research to abroader set of analytical strategies. However, it also reminds readers of thepotential limits that an edited volume has when the logic underlying thecase selection is not evident, and when the chapters are not homogenousregarding their adherence to the theoretical framework.

Ignacio Arana ArayaDepartment of Political Science

University of Pittsburgh

CONTEMPORARY TRAVEL WRITING OF LATIN AMERICA. By Claire Lindsay.New York: Routledge, 2010, 176 pp., $125.

Publications like Roberto Gonzalez Echevarría’s Myth and Archive andMarie L. Pratt’s Imperial Eyes conferred to travel writing a visibility it

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did not previously have in literary and cultural studies of Latin America.Gonzalez Echevarría, through the notion of “simulacrum of legitimacy,”argued that literary texts assumed the form and style of a document posit-ing meaningful characteristics for a society in a specific point in time. Thisidea, along with the previous centrality of the chronicles of discovery andconquest during the 16th and 17th centuries in Latin America, implied thattravel narrative was one of the most influential subgenres for the emer-gence of the novel. Whenever writers were committed to depict their localworld, they appealed to travel narrative as a text that, to use GonzalezEchevarría’s words, was “endowed with truth-bearing power.”

But this simulacrum also suggests that the gaze of the native writer hadto differ from that of the European explorer. Latin America was, as NeilWhitehead has already explained, a depository of myths that offered “thediscovery of the fantastic, the survival of the anachronistic, and the promiseof the marvelous monstrosity.” Latin American thinkers were endowedwith the difficult mission of unmasking those myths and through thisprocess discovering what had previously been revealed.

Contemporary Travel Writing of Latin America, written by ClaireLindsay, a Senior Lecturer at University College London, departs fromthe significance of travel writing as a basis for the creation of a LatinAmerican consciousness. Although Lindsay relies on notions of subalter-nity and voice, her theoretical foundations are multiple, and her goal isto establish a fruitful dialogue among disciplines such as literature, polit-ical science, cultural studies, and history. She uses a variety of theoreticalframeworks, from a reading of Foucault’s “heterotopic space” and GeorgSimmel and Jacques Derrida’s ideas of the “spectral adventurer,” to JudithButler’s concepts of “vulnerability and mourning.”

But the major achievement of this book may be the analysis of the exclu-sion that titles like “travel literature,” focused mainly on novels, may poseto the understanding of more fragmentary travel texts. Marie L. Pratt’sImperial Eyes revealed how works written by Europeans in Latin Americaentailed the existence of a “monopoly on knowledge and interpretation”centered on the imperial enterprise. Lindsay is interested in revealing thatthe criticism construed around travel writing has privileged novels, there-fore condemning more empirical narratives to be understudied. Her goal,which she achieves to a certain extent, is to bring such narratives to thecenter. But since the novel still possesses a privileged view of the plas-ticity of the human condition and remains a discourse in which relevantquestions about society and identity are discussed, a total departure frompurely literary texts becomes difficult, and she ends up including novelslike Luis Sepulveda’s Patagonia Express and Mempo Giardinalli’s Final denovela en Patagonia.

Notwithstanding, one perceives that the chapters of her book areconstructed from a dialectic in which the fiction cedes its position toa non-fiction type of narrative–documentaries, travel accounts, diaries,and ethnographic studies. Her evaluation of these issues provides a new

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understanding of relevant topics for contemporary Latin American stud-ies, especially in terms of the cost and consequences of the adoption of a latemodernity. In Chapter 1, she studies Sepulveda’s and Giardinelli’s novelsin relation to the appearance of a new sublime–waste–as a byproduct ofthe neoliberal production machine. Chapter 2 deals with America en bici-cleta, by Andres Ruggeri, in which he recounts the experiences of his tripthroughout the continent. Lindsay analyzes Ruggeri’s text based on therelationship the book traces with a similar journey carried out years beforeby Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Ruggeri’s own social position as an intellec-tual. The third chapter revolves around Mexico and three female writers,María Luisa Puga, Silvia Molina, and Ana García Bergua, while studyingthe influence of femininity and fiction. The last chapter revises two texts,which resemble an ethnographic study, in which Ruben Martínez andLuis Alberto Urrea write about the mobility of undocumented immigrantsalong the United States-Mexico border.

Perhaps assessing Lindsay’s study from a perspective that dwells onthe radical distinction between fiction and non-fiction, represented in moresociological or ethnographic accounts, is the wrong direction. Lindsay, al-though she mentions this idea at the beginning of her book, seems to forgetabout it halfway through the first chapter. And she does so intentionally.Current literary critics, though some might disagree, treat contemporarynon-fiction as they would novels since novels nowadays adopt the barestyle of a newspaper account – some others maintain more traditionalstyles and look like novels. Lindsay, with her book, certainly opened theanalytical scope of travel writing and chose well to confide in the hybridcharacteristics of the aesthetics of these times. The title of her book callsfor the inclusion of contemporary texts. Her reading of travel writing is,from this perspective, truly contemporary.

Julio QuinteroWaynesburg University

Department of English and Foreign Languages

TRACKING THE CHUPACABRA: THE VAMPIRE BEAST IN FACT, FICTION, AND

FOLKLORE. By Benjamin Radford. Albuquerque: University of NewMexico Press, 2011, 216 pp., $24.95.

For more than fifteen years, reports of the chupacabra—a blood-suckingbeast of varying descriptions—have captured the imagination of peoplearound the world. First “sighted” in Puerto Rico in 1995, subsequent claimshave occurred all over the Americas. Intrigued by the phenomenon, man-aging editor of Skeptical Inquirer, Benjamin Radford, set out on a five-year journey to discover the truth about the creature. The result, Track-ing the Chupacabra, is an insightful and entertaining book in which Rad-ford sets the record straight, debunking many of the myths about thegoatsucker.

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The book tackles a number of themes and secondary goals. Radfordstrives to expose the sloppy scholarship of previous authors, especiallyScott Corrales, who wrote Chupacabras and Other Mysteries (1997). Radforddiscusses the origins of the chupacabra myth, its connection to past repre-sentations of vampirism, its personification as a Christian symbol of endtimes, and its place in conspiracy theories involving the United States.In the end, Radford argues that the chupacabra is mostly the product ofmagical thinking stemming from the influence of science fiction movies.

Because of the multiple angles that Radford approaches the topic from,his book exhibits a greater level of intricacy than provided by previousauthors. However, the book reads somewhat disjointed at times. Transi-tions are not always smooth as Radford goes from “A Brief History ofVampires,” to “Chupacabras in Popular Culture,” to his research trips,then back to an analysis of the influence of popular culture on humanpsychology (23, 39). He also tends to change his writing style, switchingback and forth between a concise and analytical word structure to a veryjournalistic and descriptive prose about his personal actions and feelings.Sometimes this works well, other times it does not.

Similarly, some of Radford’s arguments are stronger than others. Hisclaim that chupacabra vampirism is a manifestation of U.S. exploitationof Puerto Rico is largely unfounded. The author states the Puerto Ricans“feel that their cultural and social riches have been exploited and takenfrom them often by external forces, including the U.S. government. Thevampires may be metaphorical, but they are no less real” (33). He continuesthat “In a land where vampirism was perceived to take many forms, literalblood may have seemed an unsurprising next step” (33). While there is ahistory of exploitation on the island, that does not make it a direct cause ofchupacabra sightings. Radford takes this causal link too far with too littleevidence. He unfairly paints Puerto Ricans solely as objects of vampiricexploitation, ridding the islanders of agency and over generalizing PuertoRican beliefs.

His concluding arguments, on the other hand, are more viable. Hemakes a strong case that cinema greatly influenced the chupacabra phe-nomenon. Radford shows that there is an “uncanny similarity” betweenthe chupacabra and the main character “Sil” in the sci-fi thriller Species,which came out a month before the first sightings (129). The resemblance israther amazing. Radford argues, and with good supporting evidence, thatmuch of the original chupacabra hysteria boiled down to confabulation,the psychological term for confusing events seen on television or on themovies as actual experiences.

To explore whether there is any truth to the myth, Radford treks toNicaragua in search of the animal and to Texas in order to examine “chu-pacabra” carcasses. Radford interviews a number of wildlife and med-ical experts who destroy claims about chupacabras draining the bloodfrom their victims. In fact, in the animals alleged to have been killed bythe beast, the blood was not drained at all. In almost all of the cases in

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the United States, the animal attacks fall very much in line with coyoteand dog predation. This backs up the DNA evidence gathered by spe-cialists on supposed chupacabras, which showed that they were indeedcanines, often Mexican hairless or Xolo dogs, or coyotes with a bad case ofmange.

In the introduction of the book, Radford concedes that “some maythink it was a fool’s errand” to go off tracking the chupacabra (viii). Butas the author reflects in the last pages, his research is not only aboutthe chupacabra but about “folklore made ‘real,’ about how ancient su-perstitions inherent in the human mind gave the European vampire afearsome new face,” and about how people’s imaginations can be shapedby popular mediums such as cinema (176–77). The book will likely receivea greater readership among a popular audience and monster enthusi-asts but this fascinating work merits the attention of cultural scholars aswell.

J. Justin CastroDepartment of History

University of Oklahoma

ANTROPOFAGIA HOJEX? OSWALD DE ANDRADE EM CENA. Por Jorge Ruffinellie Joao Cezar de Castro Rocha (organizadores). Sao Paulo: E RealizacoesEditora, 2011, 688 pp., $61.41.

Em 1928, no “Manifesto Antropofago,” Oswald de Andrade proposum tipo de rebeliao artística que envolvia a “absorcao do inimigo sacropara transforma-lo em totem” (30), ou seja, a ingestao das culturas norte-americanas e europeias para alimentar uma nova identidade brasileira.

Embora o movimento modernista se desenvolvesse no Brasil comoreacao a circunstancias historicas específicas de ha quase um seculo, aantropofagia como teoria continua sendo relevante. Na introducao dolivro, Castro Rocha anuncia que o objetivo de Antropofagia Hoje? Oswaldde Andrade em Cena e “estimular novas abordagens da obra de Oswaldde Andrade”, ja que estas analises representam “um exercício de pensa-mento cada dia mais necessario nas circunstancias do mundo globalizado,pois a antropofagia permite que se desenvolva um modelo teorico deapropriacao da alteridade” (12). Castro Rocha, organizador de Antropofa-gia Hoje? Oswald de Andrade em Cena, juntamente com Jorge Ruffinelli,concebe a antropofagia em termos políticos.

O lancamento da antologia aconteceu em junho de 2011, durante aFesta Literaria Internacional de Paraty (FLIP), uma vez que este ano a FLIPhomenageou Oswald de Andrade. Esta e uma edicao bastante ampliadade um livro publicado em 1999, como um numero especial de NuevoTexto Crítico. Da primeira edicao, existem versoes em ingles, espanhol,e italiano. O volume atual inclui o “Manifesto Antropofago” e uma obraanterior de Andrade, o “Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil”, assim como

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outras obras literarias- de diferentes países e períodos- que dialogam coma antropofagia. Varios contos, como “Bertram”, de Alvares de Azevedo e“Um Jantar Muito Original”, de Alexander Search (um dos heteronimos deFernando Pessoa) contem episodios literais de antropofagia. Outros, emparticular os contos contemporaneos, tem claros propositos ideologicos:em “Regurgitofagia”, por exemplo, Michel Melamed propoe “vomitar osexcessos” herdados de outras culturas (70).

Tambem se inclui um ensaio sobre a vida de Oswald de Andrade (es-crito por uma de suas filhas), uma entrevista com o diretor de teatro ZeCelso (cuja peca teatral Macumba Antropofaga encerrou a FLIP deste ano),e artigos sobre a arte de Tarsila do Amaral. Como o “Manifesto” mesmo,os ensaios desta antologia abordam temas muito diversos: se analisa, porexemplo, o papel da antropofagia na cultura italiana contemporanea, natelevisao brasileira, no jornalismo, em Ulisses e nas obras de Albert Ca-mus (quem conheceu Oswald). Pode-se dizer que a maioria dos ensaioscumpre com o objetivo principal do livro: trazer a tona uma reflexao sobrea antropofagia para tentar entender a sociedade brasileira atual, pois exis-tem pontos de intersecao entre o contexto historico da publicacao originaldo “Manifesto” e a sociedade hoje. Carlos Rincon, por exemplo, nota quea procura duma nova identidade nacional brasileira no comeco do seculoXX foi contraria a uma “tendencia homogeneizadora ocidental” (551).

Para alguns dos críticos cujos ensaios aparecem neste livro, o“Manifesto Antropofago” representa um sonho fracassado. Hans UlrichGumbrecht, o qual nao so desafia a visao de Oswald como tambem ques-tiona o valor literario do “Manifesto,” argumenta que o texto oferece“um futuro que nunca se tornou realidade” (297). Joao Almino tambemacha que o “Manifesto” era “demasiado otimista” porque na realidade aglobalizacao implica um processo desigual e “o verdadeiro antropofagosera sempre aquele com mais poder” (60). Evando Nascimento assinalacertas contradicoes na obra e argumenta que o “Manifesto” nao podeservir como modelo duma cultura nacional (352).

Outros críticos enfatizam o valor revolucionario do texto. EduardoSterzi reconhece que Andrade representou um ideal que nunca se poderiarealizar, mas nota que, como todas as visoes utopicas, e uma visao subver-siva. Benedito Nunes argumenta que o “Manifesto” serve como ligacaoentre o político e o artístico, K. David Jackson examina a antropofagia emtermos de debates sobre a globalizacao, e Luis Madureira, cujo ensaio re-sponde a Gumbrecht, usa como fundo o conceito de Walter Mignolo de“uma hegemonia epistemica” (301).

O livro esta dividido em cinco secoes organizadas mais ou menos tem-aticamente: “Manifestos e Manifestacoes,” “Antecipacoes e Ruminacoes,”“Genealogias,” “Releituras,” e “Repercussoes.” Entretanto, ja que os temasse entrecruzam e os textos nao se agrupam nem cronologicamente nempor genero, a organizacao do livro atenta para uma leitura contemporaneanao linear. Por exemplo, cita-se a aparente nao sistematizacao dos tex-tos, na segunda secao, que mistura contos contemporaneos, um poema de

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Machado de Assis, e um ensaio de 1874 sobre a origem da pratica (literal)da antropofagia.

Nao se deve pensar a literatura como uma evolucao pautada numalinha temporal. E mais produtivo estabelecer paralelos entre diferentesmomentos para entender melhor nosso presente. Assim, Antropofagia Hoje?Oswald de Andrade em Cena ajuda-nos a refletir sobre o mundo globalizado.Como nota Roberto Fernandez Retamar na quarta parte da antologia,Oswald de Andrade “ainda tem muito para nos ensinar” (330).

Victoria LivingstoneDepartment of Romance Studies

Boston University

LA LUZ Y LA GUERRA: EL CINE DE LA REVOLUCION MEXICANA. By FernandoFabio Sanchez and Gerardo García Munoz, eds. Mexico City: ConsejoNacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 2010, 688 pp., $21.00.

2010 was an important year for Mexico, as the country celebrated thebicentennial of the opening of Independence and the centennial of itsRevolution with great pomp and circumstance amidst an atmosphere ofviolence the country had not seen since, well, the Revolution. Neverthe-less, 2010 was a year of festivals, parades, art exhibitions, and publicationscelebrating the uniqueness of Mexican culture. It is in this context that Laluz y la guerra: el cine de la Revolucion mexicana by Fernando Fabio Sanchezand Gerardo García Munoz appeared. This excellent volume gathers adozen essays by scholars from Mexico, the US and Canada to explore therelationship between the Revolution and cinema. The Revolution has beenof central importance for Mexico because of its principles of social justice,but mostly because of the mythology of its popular heroes and the vibrantculture it produced that was popularized by photography and cinema.Since the Revolution happened at a time when photography had alreadyestablished itself as a medium and an art form and when cinema wasbecoming the most important way of communication and entertainment,both photography and film helped shape the movement and how it wasperceived.

Unfortunately, as Felipe Cazals writes in the “Preamble” to this book,the cinema of the Revolution was sequestered by private television stationsand shown based on commercial interests, resulting in the perception ofthe Revolution as something remote, cartoonish, and grandiloquent (100).The importance of this book, therefore, resides in part in that it offers amore complex view of the Revolution by reviewing its abundant filmedmaterials. The task is not easy because many of these materials are inac-cessible, incomplete, and fragmented. Nonetheless the collection of essaysgathered here offers a comprehensive yet fresh view of the Revolution asit was represented on film, challenging in the process the view that theRevolution, as a narrative, had exhausted itself.

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Following a chronological order, the first chapter of the volume centerson documentaries and other materials produced before and during theRevolution, mostly film footages by the Alba brothers, Jesus H. Abitia,and particularly Salvador Toscano. Chapter two is an excellent analysisof the adventure of Eisenstein in Mexico and his unfinished film iQueViva Mexico! This brief chapter by Aurelio de los Reyes is an informative,well-documented, and engaging account of Eisenstein’s time and work inMexico. Chapter three examines Fernando de Fuentes’s acclaimed trilogyof the Revolution (iVamonos con Pancho Villa!, El compadre Mendoza, andEl prisionero 13). It argues that unlike most films about the Revolution, DeFuentes’ work avoided presenting the movement in the folkloric view thatdominated Mexican cinema. Chapter Four centers on the adaptations of Losde abajo, Mariano Azuela’s seminal novel of the Revolution, discussing howthe movement was perceived through time. Chapter five, an interestingaccount of the image of Pancho Villa, traces the presence of the hero inthe silver screen from the beginning to his official acceptance into thepantheon of heroes of the Revolution, which came late in the 1960s, andbeyond. (The last chapter of the book centers on the other popular hero,Emiliano Zapata, a less represented figure.)

The following three chapters give special attention to the role of womenin the Revolution and the ways in which they were represented on filmas wives, mothers, lovers, and even symbols of glamour. Of particularinterest is Jean Franco’s “La Revolucion domesticada,” which analyzeshow superstars María Felix and Dolores del Río were used by cinema toadvance the official view of the Revolution during the 1940s, mostly as anevent in which all social classes interacted in harmony, and that aspiredto achieve a much needed national unity. Franco reads Flor Silvestre andEnamorada as clear evidence of what she calls the “domestication of therevolution” that returned women to their traditional roles of mothers andwives. Chapters nine and ten focus on how the Revolution was representedin Hollywood and through censorship, respectively. Chapter eleven, “Larevolucion del echeverrismo” by Gerardo García Munoz, offers a detailedand fascinating review of the films of the administration of Luis Echeverría,one of the most populist presidents after the Revolution, and is also oneof the best chapters in the volume. García Munoz’s commentaries aboutthe cinema produced during this period are illuminating. These twelvechapters are accompanied by an interesting, if long, introduction and aconclusion as well as by a superb collection of photographs.

To embark on a book about the Mexican Revolution on film is not asimple undertaking, yet the authors of this volume succeed in adding onemore indispensable book to the bibliography of both Mexican cinema andthe Mexican Revolution.

R. Hernandez RodriguezDepartment of World Languages and Literatures

Southern Connecticut State University

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POLICING DEMOCRACY: OVERCOMING OBSTACLES TO CITIZEN SECURITY IN

LATIN AMERICA. By Mark Ungar. Washington & Baltimore: The WoodrowWilson Center Press & The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011,330 pp., $30.00.

Latin America is a region famous for many reasons, but to the averageoutsider one of its most distinctive characteristics has been its high levelsof violence. From carjacking to armed robberies, kidnapping to murder,insecurity has reduced investment, (over)filled prisons, resulted in laborshortages and eroded democratic values. From Mexico to Venezuela, Braziland El Salvador, citizen security, often encouraged by the media’s constantfocus on crime stories, is now a leading priority in national polls and theoverall regional agenda. Hopes were high that the democratization processaway from military and authoritarian rule, where the judiciary and policewere used predominantly to suppress the population and persecute thosewho sought to subvert the state, would bring increased public security.However, crime rates have continued to rise to create a citizen securitycrisis and prevent democratic consolidation.

In light of this, Policing Democracy is a publication of great importance.Ungar argues that, in spite of a ‘cycle of violence’, Latin American po-lice and criminal and justice systems have failed to implement effectualand long-term reforms. The author posits that the ongoing citizen securitycrisis has demonstrated the limitations of Latin America’s long-standingapproach to law enforcement, which he states is “based on a centralized,standardized, and forceful response to crime” (1). Due to a growing aware-ness, both in the public policy and academic fields, that a community andproblem-oriented approach enables a more effective and accountable formof policing, governments have attempted various structural reforms. How-ever, these reforms have become highly politicized and experienced muchresistance from the judiciary and police forces themselves. Governmentsfind themselves stuck between the dilemma of choosing between com-prehensive reforms and the population’s demand for immediate, heavy-handed action. The rule of law and the protection of fundamental citizenrights are central to a consolidated democracy. Yet the state often uses theneed to protect its population from violence and crime to skirt the law andlimit these rights, often manifesting in so-called ‘Mano Dura’ policies ofzero tolerance witnessed in such countries as Honduras, El Salvador andGuatemala.

Using a methodology based on interviews with gang members andkey policy and ministerial figures, statistics, policy analysis, criminal jus-tice theory and fieldwork observation, Policing Democracy examines thetheory of potential reform and through an in- depth examination of threecase studies Ungar shows both why reforms have failed and what can beimproved in order to break the current impasse. The author’s choice ofHonduras, Bolivia and Argentina provides a fascinating and overarchinganalysis within a cross-national analytical framework. The specific choice

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of these three countries enables an examination of the spectrum of bothopportunities available for and impediments to security reform, withina range of diverse economic, societal and demographic contexts. Whilstmany authors largely focus on the comparatively poorer countries suchas El Salvador, incorporating the under-examined case of Argentina al-lows the author to focus on a federalized and wealthier nation where eachprovince has an individual police force and to show that the federal systemcan be at odds with both national policy and inequality. Policing Democracydoes what much of the expanding literature on regional citizen securityfails to do, namely analyze the political relationships that determine boththe design and implementation of reforms. The three case studies also en-able Ungar to pose critical questions on the relationship between citizensecurity and democratization, and how the comparative range of transi-tions towards democracy and authoritarian roots can shape changes to thesecurity system.

The book offers some vital reflections on the topic of security policiesand crucially encourages analysis that does not just examine specific poli-cies, which are often abandoned by governments due to partisanship andpolitical factors. Instead the book argues that policies must not be viewedin a binary fashion as either a success or failure, but within a long-term con-text that will enable democratic strengthening through what Ungar terms“one of the last frontier’s in Latin America’s political evolution” (330).With an incredible amount of footnotes and references, Policing Democracyoffers a vital resource for anyone looking to understand why crime figuresare so high in the region and how governments and civil society can workto lower their causes. A comprehensive read that examines a plethora offactors within the history of the region’s systems of citizen security, itis without doubt an outstanding piece of scholarship that will provide avital resource for academics and policy practitioners for one of the mostpressing policy challenges of the present.

Benedict HayesIndependent Researcher

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Documents

A Culture of Stone. Inka Perspectives on Rock by Carolyn Dean