Suggested Reading List
Film: Even the Rain
Author: Director: Icíar Bollaín
Description: As a director and his crew shoot a controversial film about Christopher Columbus in Cochabamba, Bolivia, local people rise up against plans to privatize the water supply.
Dignity and defiance: stories from Bolivia's challenge to globalization
Author: Jim Shultz and Melissa Draper
Description: Dignity and Defiance is a powerful, eyewitness account of Bolivia's decade-long rebellion against globalization imposed from abroad. Based on extensive interviews, this story comes alive with first-person accounts of a massive Enron/Shell oil spill from an elderly woman whose livelihood it threatens, of the young people who stood down a former dictator to take back control of their water, and of Bolivia's dramatic and successful challenge to the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Featuring a substantial introduction, a conclusion, and introductions to each of the chapters, this well-crafted mix of storytelling and analysis is a rich portrait of people calling for global integration to be different than it has been: more fair and more just.
Bolivia: revolution and the power of history in the present : essays
Author: James Dunkerley
Description: This volume brings together essays written over three decades on Bolivian history and politics. The book opens with a contemporary survey of the new government of the MAS headed by Evo Morales. Subsequent chapters review the neoliberal experiments of the 1980s and 1990s, the strategic and intellectual failures of Che Guevaras guerrilla foco; the origins of the Revolution of 1952; explanations for the dominance of the caudillos of the 19th century; and the extraordinary story of Francisco Burdett OConnor, whose life combined liberation struggles on both sides of the Atlantic.
Bolivia: the evolution of a multi-ethnic society
Author: Herbert S. Klein
Description: The Evolution of a Multi-Ethnic Society.The history of the peoples of Bolivia is one of the more complex and fascinating of historical evolutions. A society created by imperial conquests and native adaptations, it remains today a nation dominated by its peasantry, yet fully participating in the world economy.
Cochabamba!: water war in Bolivia
Author: Oscar Olivera and Tom Lewis
Description: A book of essays about the successful fight against water privatization and corporate-globalization in Bolivia.
Whispering in the giant's ear: a frontline chronicle from Bolivia's war on globalization
Author: William Powers
Description: An intimate and powerful account of living in Bolivia during a time of crisis and change.
Long the obscure “Tibet of South America,” Bolivia emerged as a world flashpoint during the four years William Powers lived there as an aid worker. CNN and the New York Times have shown images of Aymara women in bowler hats standing down tanks; citizen protests have ousted multinationals and two pro-globalization presidents. In A Natural Nation, Powers breathes life into the recent struggles of the Bolivian people. When he arrives in the rainforest, he meets an extraordinary Chiquitano Indian named Salvador who is fighting the extinction of his people. At the same time, the clock ticks for three multinational energy companies forced to curb global warming. Both goals depend upon the survival of a stretch of pristine jungle. But as Indians and oil giants join to launch the world’s largest Kyoto Protocol project—using forests to absorb dangerous planetary greenhouse gasses—Salvador’s life is threatened by loggers collaborating with a racist Bolivian oligarchy. The quest for a single rainforest is subsumed in a movement of national liberation. A Natural Nation goes beneath the headlines, gracefully weaving memoir, travel, history and reportage into an unforgettable chronicle of a “poor little rich country” attempting to engage the world without losing its soul.
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
Author: Eduardo Galeano
Description: Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx.
Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe.
Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably.
This classic is now further honored by Isabel Allende's inspiring introduction. Universally recognized as one of the most important writers of our time, Allende once again contributes her talents to literature, to political principles, and to enlightenment.
Multiculturalism in Latin America: indigenous rights, diversity, and democracy
Author: Rachel Sieder
Description: During the last 15 years Latin American governments reformed their constitutions to recognize indigenous rights. The contributors to this book argue that these changes pose fundamental challenges to accepted notions of democracy, citizenship, and development in the region. Using case studies from Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Peru, they analyze the ways in which new legal frameworks have been implemented, appropriated and contested within a wider context of accelerating economic and legal globalization, highlighting the key implications for social policy, human rights, and social justice.
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