Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 86 - June 2020): Latin American Politics

Aesthetics and the Revolutionary City engages in alternative ways of reading foreign visual representations of Havana through analysis of advertising images, documentary films, and photographic texts. It explores key narratives relating to the projection of different Havana imaginaries and focuses on a range of themes including: pre-revolutionary Cuba; the dream of revolution; and the metaphor of the city "frozen-in-time." The book also synthesizes contemporary debates regarding the notion of Havana as a real and imagined city space and fleshes out its theoretical insights with a series of stand-alone, important case studies linked to the representation of the Cuban capital in the Western imaginary. The interpretations in the book bring into focus a range of critical historical moments in Cuban history (including the Cuban Revolution and the "Special Period") and consider the ways in which they have been projected in advertising, documentary film and photography outside the island. 

This book presents an ethnographic case study of the personal motivations, advocacy, and activation of social capital needed to create and sustain the Immortelle Children's Centre, a private school that has served children with disabilities in Trinidad/Tobago for four decades. Based on narratives by parents from the 1980's, current parents, teachers, community advocates, and the author, who was the founder of Immortelle in 1978, the study views the school within the context of a nation standing in a liminal space between developed and developing societies. It argues that the attainment of equity for children with disabilities will require an agenda that includes a legal mandate for education of all children, increased public funding for education, health and therapeutic services, and an on-going public awareness campaign. Relating this study to the global debate on inclusion, the author shows how the implementation of this agenda would have to be adapted to the social, cultural, and economic realities of the society.

This book is the newest and one of the very few existing examinations of the full nature of corruption throughout Central and South America. In detailed chapters written by experts with extensive in-country experience, it reveals the political and economic roots and consequences of corruption in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru. The editor's introduction and conclusion texts synthesize their work and provides an over-arching view of corrupt practices and anti-corruption initiatives throughout Latin America. Corruption in Latin America shows the extent to which corrupt practices engulf each of the countries discussed, the involvement of political and corporate entities in the pursuit of ill-gotten gains, and the drag on development caused by corruption in each political entity. The book will be of interest for social scientists, political actors and social activists involved in the fight against corruption in Latin America by providing in-depth analyses of the topic and discussing how best to pursue anti-corruption efforts through civil society actions, judicial endeavors, legal shifts, or elections.