Steve J. Stern

Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995

Shining and Other Paths offers the first systematic account of the social experiences at the heart of the war waged between Shining Path and the Peruvian military during the 1980s and early 1990s. Confronting and untangling the many myths and enigmas that surround the war and the wider history of twentieth-century Peru, this book presents clear and often poignant analyses of the brutal reshaping of life and politics during a war that cost tens of thousands of lives. The contributors—a team of Peruvian and U.S. historians, social scientists, and human rights activists—explore the origins, social dynamics, and long-term consequences of the effort by Shining Path to effect an armed communist revolution. The book begins by interpreting Shining Path’s emergence and decision for war as one logical culmination, among several competing culminations, of trends in oppositional politics and social movements. It then traces the experiences of peasants and refugees to demonstrate how human struggle and resilience came together in grassroots determination to defeat Shining Path, and explores the unsuccessful efforts of urban shantytown dwellers, as well as rural and urban activists, to build a “third path” to social justice. Integral to this discussion is an examination of women’s activism and consciousness during the years of the crisis. Finally, this book analyzes the often paradoxical and unintended legacies of this tumultuous period for social and human rights movements, and for presidential and military leadership in Peru. Extensive field research, broad historical vision, and strong editorial coordination enable the authors to write a coherent and deeply humanistic account, one that draws out the inner tragedies, ambiguities, and conflicts of the war. Providing historically grounded explication of the conflicts that reshaped contemporary Peru, Shining and Other Paths will be widely read by Latin Americanists, historians, anthropologists, gender theorists, sociologists, political scientists, and human rights activists. Contributors . Jo-Marie Burt, Marisol de la Cadena, Isabel Coral Cordero, Carlos Ivan Degregori, Ivan Hinojosa, Carlos Basombrio Iglesias, Florencia E. Mallon, Nelson Manrique, Hortensia Munoz, Enrique Obando, Patricia Oliart, Ponciano del Pino H., Jose Luis Renique, Orin Starn, Steve J. Stern

Paradigms of Conquest: History, Historiography, and Politics

The Quandary of 1492 The year 1492 evokes a powerful symbolism. 1 The symbolism is most charged, of course, among peoples whose historical memory connects them directly to the forces unleashed in 1492. For indigenous Americans, Latin Americans, minorities of Latino or Hispanic descent, and Spaniards and Portuguese, the sense of connection is strong. The year 1492 symbolises a momentous turn in historical destiny: for Amerindians, the ruinous switch from independent to colonised history; for Iberians, the launching of a formative historical chapter of imperial fame and controversy; for Latin Americans and the Latino diaspora, the painful birth of distinctive cultures out of power-laden encounters among Iberian Europeans, indigenous Americans, Africans, and the diverse offspring who both maintained and blurred the main racial categories. But the symbolism extends beyond the Americas, and beyond the descendants of those most directly affected. The arrival of Columbus in America symbolises a historical reconfiguration of world magnitude. The fusion of native American and European histories into one history marked the beginning of the end of isolated stagings of human drama. Continental and subcontinental parameters of human action and struggle, accomplishment and failure, would expand into a world stage of power and witness. The expansion of scale revolutionised cultural and ecological geography. After 1492, the ethnography of the humanoid other proved an even more central fact of life, and the migrations of microbes, plants and animals, and cultural inventions would transform the history of disease, food consumption, land use, and production techniques. 2 In addition, the year 1492 symbolises the beginnings of the unique world ascendance of European civilisation.

Latin America's Colonial History

appealing in discussion of post colonial history (see Halperin Donghi, 1969; Stein and Stein, 1970). The colonial experience has also proved critical in political and theoretical debate about Latin America’s contemporary and future condition. Controversial theorists of dependency and world systems such as Andre Gunder Frank (1969) and Immanuel Wallerstein (1976) have used the colonial period as a fundamental point of departure for the argument that Latin America has long been &dquo;capitalist&dquo; rather than &dquo;feudal.&dquo; Critics of these theorists have, in turn, used the colonial period as a &dquo;feudal&dquo; benchmark (Laclau, 1971). Every vision of the present and future includes a vision of the past; in the Latin American case, the colonial experience and its &dquo;neocolonial&dquo; repercussions are at the core of this charged and still unresolved past. On any of the grounds just mentioned-sheer proportional weight in postconquest history, importance as a source of legacies conditioning postcolonial trajectories, or significance as a point of departure in contemporary polemics-one might expect the colonial Latin American experience to have produced a mature, thick corpus of Marxist scholarship and debate. It has not. I do not mean to denigrate the achievements

The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men and Power in Late Colonial México

In this study of gender relations in late colonial Mexico (ca. 1760-1821), Steve Stern analyzes the historical connections between gender, power, and politics in the lives of peasants, Indians, and other marginalized peoples. Through vignettes of everyday life, he challenges assumptions about gender relations and political culture in a patriarchal society. He also reflects on continuity and change between late colonial times and the present and suggests a paradigm for understanding similar struggles over gender rights in Old Regime societies in Europe and the Americas. Stern pursues three major arguments. First, he demonstrates that non-elite women and men developed contending models of legitimate gender authority and that these differences sparked bitter struggles over gender right and obligation. Second, he reveals connections, in language and social dynamics, between disputes over legitimate authority in domestic and familial matters and disputes in the arenas of community and state power. The result is a fresh interpretation of the gendered dynamics of peasant politics, community, and riot. Third, Stern examines regional and ethnocultural variation and finds that his analysis transcends particular locales and ethnic subgroupings within Mexico. The historical arguments and conceptual sweep of Sterns book will inform not only students of Mexico and Latin America but also students of gender in the West and other world regions. |An illustrated history of the hurricanes known to have struck North Carolina from the days of the first European settlers to the present. This edition takes into account the three major storms--Bonnie, Dennis, and Floyd--that have hit North Carolina since the last edition was published in 1998.