Gilbert M. Joseph and Mark D. Szuchman, eds.. I Saw the City Invincible: Urban Portraits of Latin America. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1996.
Christopher H. Lutz. Santiago de Guatemala, 1541-1773: City, Caste, ant the Colonial Experience. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
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A Sample Author
Latin American history, culture and society is delineated by its urban centres. Both during pre-Colombian times and after European colonization, cities and towns in Latin America have served as benchmarks in the historical development of the region. The great empires of the Inca and Aztecs radiated out of highly developed urban centres and the European conquerors dotted their empire with recreations of the cities they left on the other side of the Atlantic. Despite the importance of cities in the history of the region, much of the existing literature on the urban centres of Latin America tends to be antiquarian in nature and has not kept up with recent trends in historical writing. For this reason, I Saw the City Invincible and Santiago de Guatemala offer something new to students of Latin American history and society.
The editors of I Saw the City Invincible present a chronological survey of the city in Latin America. Mark Szuchman introduces the book with a chapter outlining the history of the city in Latin America. He argues that the vision of the city, both to its inhabitants and to historians, has changed over the last five hundred years. The chapters in the book reflect the changes by offering views of the Latin American city from a variety of angles. The study focuses on Latin America's largest cities and attempts to provide different perspectives on everyday life in these centres. From colonial accounts to modern descriptions of cities past and present, the collection makes a valuable contribution to the field of urban history in Latin America.
Santiago de Guatemala is a monograph on the demographic and social history of the most important urban centre in colonial Central America. The city was founded by Spanish conquerors who settled in the heart of indigenous Guatemala. Christopher H. Lutz traces the evolution of Santiago as a multiethnic community where Africans, Indigenous peoples and Spaniards intermingled. The author uses parish and tributary records to examine marriage patterns to demonstrate the growth of the ladinos as an intermediate group that came to dominate Guatemalan society. The author's preoccupation is with the evolution of the domination of indigenous peoples by ladino society.
Lutz sees in Santiago a history of the entire region. For the author the trajectory is clear, like the other important urban centres of Central America, the development of Santiago was a threat to indigenous society. Unlike other centres, Santiago de Guatemala's transformation was "delayed and probably averted" by natural disaster. The author concludes that indigenous Guatemala was therefore preserved because colonial officials move their capital to the site of present day Guatemala City.
Both books illustrate the importance of urban centres in the history, culture and society of Latin America. Santiago de Guatemala and I Saw the City Invincible are well worth the purchase price and are suitable for classroom use. Santiago de Guatemala can be used at the undergraduate level while I Saw the City Invincible is more suited to advanced seminars where students have some appreciation for Latin American history.
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