Argentina and Latin America reading list I

EN/ES. My challenge to Rob Ashlar

People often ask me what to read about Argentina:

… so, here is a list. It pretends to be about the region in general, but will have an overwhelming bias towards Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Sorry. Honestly, I find it a little embarrassing to play Twitter’s designated “Argentina guy” over the many wonderful people who actually live there. But my mother’s homeland, its fascinating neighbor, and the country where I have a weird gambling addict cousin who lives in Israel now, are the countries I know by far the best.

Second apology. There will be a lot of books in Spanish on this list. If you can’t read Spanish just scroll past them. it would be a much shorter, and less interesting list if I didn’t include these. Also, I am constitutionally bilingual and like inhabiting this space even when it decreases the potential audience for a given piece of writing. See, e.g., my foray into Phillip Roth-esque fiction about being horny.

Now, the challenge. I started writing this post when I was snowed-in to my apartment over the weekend, but pretty tired. Reading lists are the lowest-effort, highest-reward type of content to produce — people appreciate them, they make you look smart, but don’t involve actually having to write anything. I have tons of books to recommend on non-LatAm topics — general political economy/Marxism, or other parts of the world I happen to know a bit more about than a lot of people like the Balkans. However, I was beaten to this fantastic innovation in substacking by my friend Rob Ashlar, whose own “Third Worldism Reading List” would make any produced by myself look like copying. This is a ruthless enterprise, and it turns out that Schumpeter’s mythical entrepreneur is a one-eyed Kandahari.

If there is sufficient interest I will make a more general reading list to compete with that of Rob. And may the reader not be prejudiced by my far better music taste.

Edit: this is part I. I realized after publishing that I forgot to add books on the Chaco War, Stroessner, Menem, anything by Atilio Borón, etc., so stay tuned for part II.

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Key:

Spanish and English title means that a book is available in translation.

An asterisk (*) means that a text has a liberal or non-Marxist leaning, but I still consider it helpful for the non-specialist, English-speaking reader.

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Theoretical approaches:

• Marx — Capital, especially Vol. I

• Galeano — Venas abiertas de América Latina / Open Veins of Latin America

• Marini — Dialectica de la dependencia / Dialectics of Dependency

• Furtado — Economic Development of Latin America

• Bagú — Economía de la sociedad colonial

• Katz — Dependency Theory after Fifty Years

• Hobsbawm — Age of series, especially Age of Capital

• World-systems and Annales:

  • Wallerstein — Modern World-System, 1-3

  • Braudel — Civilization and Capitalism, 1-3

  • Amin — Unequal Development

  • Frank (duh) — Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America and World Accumulation

• Other Marxist approaches:

  • Juan Iñigo Carrera — Formación Económica De La Sociedad Argentina, 1-5

  • Laclau — “Feudalism and Capitalism in Latin America”

  • Steve Stern — “Feudalism, Capitalism, and the World-System”

  • Sempat Assadourian — El sistema de la economía colonial

  • Zeitlin — Civil Wars in Chile

  • Wolf — Europe and the People Without History

• Agrarian studies

  • Otter — Diet for a Large Planet

  • Crosby — Ecological Imperialism and Columbian Exchange

  • Patel — Stuffed & Starved

  • Friedmann and McMichael — “Agriculture and the state system”

  • Baraibar Norberg — Political Economy of Agrarian Change

• Neo-Weberian or state-formation theory:

  • Centeno — Blood & Debt*

  • Mazzuca — Latecomer State Formation*

  • Benedict Anderson — Imagined Communities

History:

• Pink Tide:

  • Jepson — In China’s Wake

  • Petras & Veltmeyer — Social Movements and State Power

  • Webber, Gaudichaud, & Mondonesi — Impasse of the Latin American Left

• Caribbean:

  • Mintz — Sweetness and Power

  • Moore — “Sugar and the expansion of the early modern world-economy”

  • Tomich — Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar

  • James — Black Jacobins

  • Cuba:

    • Ancien régime:

      • Fraginals — Ingenio / Sugarmill

    • 1959-present:

      • Gleijeses — Conflicting Missions and Visions of Freedom

• Mexico

  • Tutino — Making a New World

  • Guerra — Expansión territorial de los Estados Unidos / Territorial Expansion of the United States

  • Womack Jr. — Zapata and the Mexican Revolution

  • Paley — Drug War Capitalism

• Central America:

  • Sklar — Washington’s War on Nicaragua

  • Levenson-Estrada — Trade Unionists Against Terror

• Brazil:

  • Baronov — Abolition of Slavery in Brazil

  • Anderson — Brazil, Apart

• Andean Region:

  • Mariátegui — Siete ensayos / Seven Essays

  • Moore — “‘This lofty mountain of silver could conquer the whole world’”

  • Webber — Red October

• Paraguay

  • Pre-war/Dr. Francia era:

    • Sarreal — Guaraní and their Missions

    • White — Paraguay’s Autonomous Revolution

    • Williams — Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic*

    • Batou — “Nineteenth-century attempted escapes from the periphery”

    • Whigham — “Iron Works of Ybycui”

  • Triple Alliance:

    • Whigham — Causes and Early Conduct* and Road to Armageddon*

    • Pomer — La guerra del Paraguay

    • Chiavenato — Genocidio americano

• Uruguay:

  • Machado — Historia de los orientales

• Argentina:

  • Peña — Historia del pueblo argentino

  • Abelardo Ramos — Revolución y contrarrevolución en la Argentina, 1-5

  • Rock — Argentina, 1516-1982

  • Independence:

    • Adelman — Republic of Capital

    • Halperín Donghi — Revolución y guerra and Guerra y finanzas

  • Civil wars and state-consolidation:

    • José Hernández — Martín Fierro

    • de la Fuente — Children of Facundo

    • Rock — State-Building and Political Movements

    • Rosa — Guerra del Paraguay y las Montoneras Argentinas

    • Pomer — Cinco años de guerra civil (1865-1870)

  • Industrialization and economic growth:

    • Scobie — Revolution on the Pampas

    • Hora — Landowners of the Argentine Pampas

    • Barsky and Gelman — Historia del agro argentino

    • Ferns — “Britain’s Informal Empire in Argentina”

    • Scalabrini Ortiz:

      • Historia de los Ferrocarilles Argentinos

      • Política Británica en el Río de la Plata

  • Peronism:

    • Daniel James — Resistance and Integration

    • Adamovsky — Historia de las clases populares

    • John William Cooke — Peronismo y revolución

  • State terror:

    • Verbitsky — Ezeiza

    • Timerman — Preso sin nombre / Prisoner Without a Name

    • Armony — Argentina, the United States, and the anti-Communist Crusade

  • AMIA and Argentine deep politics:

    • Sanz — La larga sombra de Yabrán

    • Young — Código Stiuso

    • Lutzky — Brindando sobre los escombros

    • Salinas — AMIA: el atentado and InfAMIA

    • Duggan — ¿Quién mató a Nisman?

  • Misc.

    • Leguizamón — Seeds of Power

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