Voices of Latin America is published in the US by Monthly Review Press, in partnership with LAB and Practical Action Publishing.
The US launch event:
Thursday, May 16, 6:30-9pm
Verso Books
20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
There will be a lively debate and a glass of wine with panelists, including
Voices of Latin America editor,
Tom Gatehouse;
Brooklyn Museum Director of Education,
Adjoa Jones de Almeida;
Land is Life Executive Director,
Casey Box; political sociologist
Gabriel Hetland; and feminist and NYC Latin American activist,
Camila Valle.
More details
here.
Individual copies can be ordered from
Monthly Review Press at US$32.00 each.
Review copies can be ordered
here (on the same page there is a link labelled ‘desk copies’, for professors who have already ordered a book for a class).
Ingram Book Ordering
here.
Here is what US academics have said about Voices:
Anthony Bebbington, Higgins Professor of Environment and Society, Clark University, Worcester, MA; Member of the Board of Directors, Oxfam America; Professorial Fellow, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester
Voices of Latin America is a very distinct sort of book. While it deals with the types of issue that one might expect to encounter in other textbooks or pieces of investigative journalism on Latin American politics and social change, it addresses these themes primarily through the words of the people who live them. The key voices in this collection are not those of the authors or the editor but rather of the seventy or so people who were interviewed in the course of preparing the book. Here the reader listens to activists, community authorities, public intellectuals, popular journalists, NGO workers and movement leaders as they talk of issues about which they care passionately and that affect their everyday lives and being. Voices of Latin America reflects the human experience of everyday oppressions, struggles, resistances, and hopes that animate so much day to day conversation and grassroots politics in the region. It will be tremendously helpful for teaching as well as being an important and inspiring read in its own right.
Louise Fortmann, Professor Emerita of Natural Resource Sociology, University of California at Berkeley:
Voices of Latin America is a gem. At its heart are extensive excerpts from powerful interviews across multiple subjects with Latin American activists and scholars such as Alicia Cawiya, vice-president of the Huaorani people, Ecuador; Tania Montalvo,
Animal Político, Mexico; and Eva Sánchez, director of the Lenca Women’s Rights Organization,
Las Hormigas (The Ants), Honduras.
Editor Tom Gatehouse’s introductory essay lays out the political terrain for readers unfamiliar with contemporary Latin American politics and social activism. The format of organizing interview excerpts around ten themes allows for comparisons across themes and across fourteen countries. Activists everywhere will find much to learn from this readable text. It will certainly be a significant addition to courses on social movements, political ecology, gender, indigeneity, and development.
and an academic working in Mexico:
Rachel Sieder, Senior Research Professor at the Center for Research and Graduate Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City:
Voices of Latin America brings us urgent dispatches from the front line of struggle against the violent, racialized and gendered forms of dispossession that characterize the continent today. From the mothers of the disappeared in Mexico’s cartel wars fighting against state impunity, to indigenous and afro-descendant leaders organizing to defend their territory against the predations of global capital, to women resisting policies that criminalize them for exercising their reproductive rights, this book provides a vital overview of contemporary social movements in Latin America. Essential reading.
