Suchergebnisse

"During the 1970s, the South African Department of Information attempted to manipulate and neutralise the international media treatment of South Africa. This programme was later exposed in what became known as the 'Information' scandal." "Foreign correspondents in South Africa numbered little more than a dozen in 1972. By the end of the decade, however, they had become a formidable force. This was directly related to the events on the ground: the Angolan war and the Soweto uprising. In general, American journalists tended to represent South Africa as a metaphor for the racial problems of the United States, whereas British commentators discussed the country in the context of a decolonisation story that had somehow gone wrong."--Jacket

Republics of the New World: The Revolutionary Political Experiment in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, by Hilda Sabato, Princeton University Press, 2018.

This article argues that the Age of Revolution and the abolition of slavery do not adequately mark the termination of the Atlantic world's political processes, at least concerning Latin America. Employing archival evidence from Colombia as a case study (as well as evidence from Mexico and Uruguay), the article explores how during the nineteenth century in Spain's former colonies, subalterns, especially popular liberals, and elites debated the meanings of nation, citizen, and democracy. These struggles over visions of republicanism and democracy that racked the region throughout most of the nineteenth century cannot be understood outside of an Atlantic context, nor can the full history of the Atlantic Age of Revolution be complete without taking into account the democratic and republican developments of mid nineteenth-century Spanish America.

This essay explores why some groups of women in nineteenth–century Colombia were able to engage in public, political action but others were not. Elite conservative women (mostly white) and popular liberal women (mostly black and mulatta) found ways to participate publicly in republican politics, but elite liberal women (mostly white) and some popular conservative women (mostly Indian) were largely absent from the public sphere. I argue that colonial gender roles, elite and popular visions of citizenship, the contest between the Liberal and Conservative Parties, the structure of indigenous communities, and popular liberal women's access to independent economic resources all helped shape women's abilities to publicly practice republican politics. Instead of asserting that the rise of republicanism in nineteenth–century Latin America reduced women's political space, I propose that race, class, and partisan ideologies acted in complex and locally determined ways to both create male political subjects and open or close possibilities for women to forge political discourses and practices for themselves.

This essay explores why some groups of women in nineteenth–century Colombia were able to engage in public, political action but others were not. Elite conservative women (mostly white) and popular liberal women (mostly black and mulatta) found ways to participate publicly in republican politics, but elite liberal women (mostly white) and some popular conservative women (mostly Indian) were largely absent from the public sphere. I argue that colonial gender roles, elite and popular visions of citizenship, the contest between the Liberal and Conservative Parties, the structure of indigenous communities, and popular liberal women's access to independent economic resources all helped shape women's abilities to publicly practice republican politics. Instead of asserting that the rise of republicanism in nineteenth–century Latin America reduced women's political space, I propose that race, class, and partisan ideologies acted in complex and locally determined ways to both create male political subjects and open or close possibilities for women to forge political discourses and practices for themselves.

Contentious Republicans explores the mid-nineteenth-century rise of mass electoral democracy in the southwestern region of Colombia, a country many assume has never had a meaningful democracy of any sort. James E. Sanders describes a surprisingly rich republicanism characterized by legal rights and popular participation, and he explains how this vibrant political culture was created largely by competing subaltern groups seeking to claim their rights as citizens and their place in the political sphere. Moving beyond the many studies of nineteenth-century nation building that focus on one segment of society, Contentious Republicans examines the political activism of three distinct social and racial groups: Afro-Colombians, Indians, and white peasant migrants. Beginning in the late 1840s, subaltern groups entered the political arena to forge alliances, both temporary and enduring, with the elite Liberal and Conservative Parties. In the process, each group formed its own political discourses and reframed republicanism to suit its distinct needs. These popular liberals and popular conservatives bargained for the parties' support and deployed a broad repertoire of political actions, including voting, demonstrations, petitions, strikes, boycotts, and armed struggle. By the 1880s, though, many wealthy Colombians of both parties blamed popular political engagement for social disorder and economic failure, and they successfully restricted lower-class participation in politics. Sanders suggests that these reactionary developments contributed to the violence and unrest afflicting modern Colombia. Yet in illuminating the country's legacy of participatory politics in the nineteenth century, he shows that the current situation is neither inevitable nor eternal.

"All that belong to the Liberal Party in the Cauca are people of the pueblo bajo (as they are generally called) and blacks," observes an 1859 letter written by Juan Aparicio, a local political operative who had undertaken the unenviable task of recruiting these same "lower classes" to support the powerful caudillo Tomás Mosquera's new National Party. Aparicio tried to explain his failure in this assignment, arguing that "this class of people will not listen to anyone that is not of their party."1 How had the local Liberal Party—controlled at the national level by wealthy white men—become associated with blacks and the poor in the Cauca region of southwestern Colombia? Or, more to the point, how did Afro-Colombians and other lower-class people transform elite political organizations into "their party"?

In the nineteenth century, Latin America was home to the majority of the world's democratic republics. Many historians have dismissed these political experiments as corrupt pantomimes of governments of Western Europe and the United States. Challenging that perspective, James E. Sanders contends that Latin America in this period was a site of genuine political innovation and popular debate reflecting Latin Americans' visions of modernity. Drawing on archival sources in Mexico, Colombia, and Uruguay, Sanders traces the circulation of political discourse and democratic practice among urban elites, rural peasants, European immigrants, slaves, and freed blacks to show how and why ideas of liberty, democracy, and universalism gained widespread purchase across the region, mobilizing political consciousness and solidarity among diverse constituencies. In doing so, Sanders reframes the locus and meaning of political and cultural modernity.