South American History

This article discusses the conditions of the genesis of the nineteenth century Wayana whip-dance, aiming for what Terence Turner coined “ethno-ethnohistory”, through the method of Neil Whitehead’s “ethnography of historical consciousness”. This study outlines an indigenous historical consciousness of the social present in Guiana as related to events from the past, by means of the entanglement of things, places, and people related to this whip-dance ritual. The article discusses the Eastern Guiana whip-dance as a social field of interaction in three regions and three time periods: (1) the Upper Maroni Basin (French Guiana and Suriname) in the early twenty-first century; (2) the Franco-Brazilian Contested area (today’s Brazilian Amapá) in the nineteenth century; and (3) a posited origin of this ‘mythstory’ at the Lower Amazon in the sixteenth century. Rather than conducting a study of a ‘lost tradition’, these three case-studies will provide insight into the process of how Wayana indigenous people have managed their histories of first contact in Guiana through ritual performance and the materialization of the evil spirit Tamok.

After the split with Stalin (1948), Yugoslavia took a turn in its internal and external policies which meant developing its own road to socialism. In foreign relations, Belgrade adopted a policy of neutrality in the competition between the West and the East. Within this context, alliances in the Global South became vital to make Yugoslav socialism a viable alternative to bloc politics. As one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement, Yugoslavia gained leverage in international negotiations and created opportunities to bolster economic cooperation which could reduce its dependence on the superpower blocs.

This contribution offers insight into Yugoslav attempts to establish cooperation in South America in the 1950s and 1960s, a topic which remains largely under-researched. Drawing mainly from archival sources, from the economic press and from technical reports, this contribution will investigate (the effectiveness of) Yugoslav policies towards old and new diasporas in the country’s pursuit of cooperation in the Southern Cone. Old diasporas were often constituted by economic migrants who arrived in the New Continent in search of economic opportunities, mostly at the turn of the century, while new diasporas included many political emigres who arrived after the Second World War and developed a strong oppositional activity from abroad to Yugoslav Communist authorities. Besides these, the contribution will also identify contemporary migration patterns that arose directly out of the forms of cooperation that Yugoslavia did manage to establish in the Southern Cone in the early Cold War.

Bartolomé Mitre’s election as president in 1862 commenced a series of political, economic, and demographic developments that radically altered Argentine culture. Immigration fueled exponential population growth and rapid urbanization, and British capital drove a pattern of railroad construction that concretized Buenos Aires’ primacy as the political and financial capital of Argentina. The British also imported soccer, a sport that gradually gained purchase among the various immigrant groups as well as the extant population. Politics created the conditions by which the sport proliferated through the capital and the nation; in turn, soccer became an anchor in the political process after the 1912 enactment of universal, compulsory suffrage for all adult male citizens. Soccer clubs, already expanding in number throughout the country, became focal points for the construction of power bases for aspiring politicians. The dynamic processes that contributed to the development of modern Argentinian national identity molded and were molded by soccer’s evolution from a wholly British enterprise into a multiethnic national pastime. Through an evaluation of newspapers from the period as well as official publications from the various soccer federations of the sport’s early years, this paper builds upon previous studies that have evaluated facets of this subject to illuminate the inextricable push-pull factors linking soccer, immigration, and politics as essential elements in the formation of patriotic sociocultural identity through the second presidency of Hipólito Yrigoyen and the end of the amateur era in 1931.

Resumen Este artículo pretende criticar la perspectiva política que la historiografía contemporánea ha usado hasta hoy para estudiar a las revoluciones históricas. Para ello, en él se estudian cuatro de las revoluciones más importantes de la contemporaneidad (la revolución rusa, la americana, la francesa y la colombiana) a través de la teoría conocida como La matemática de la historia. Este nuevo paradigma creado por el historiador catalán Alexandre Deulofeu nos permitirá analizarlas de forma absolutamente diferente y predecir el estado futuro de sus naciones. Para cerrar el artículo, se ofrece a los lectores una clasificación general de los diferentes tipos de revoluciones atendiendo a su estructura, y no su ideología. Palabras clave: revolución, Alexandre Deulofeu, matemática de la histo-ria, historiografía.

Understandably, most research on Venezuela in the last decade has focused exclusively on Chávez; oscillating between hagiographies and condemnations, commentators have mostly ignored the ideological ramifications of his credo. Although the
militaristic bent of the chavista government has been noticed, a more probing analysis of the political, social and cultural dimension of militarism and praetorianism in Venezuela after Chávez’s death remains a desideratum. My dissertation explores these topics, focusing on the presidential terms of Chávez himself (1999-2012) and Nicolás Maduro (2013-present), within a historical context spanning from Venezuela’s independence from the Spanish Empire to its forty-year democratic period (1958-1998). My arguments are based on the premise that Chávez’s most important legacy was neither the “socialism for the XXI century” nor the “dismantling of democracy”, but rather the institutional and ideological basis for the ongoing militarization of Venezuela.

This paper aimed at providing a glimpse at the background negotiations between the late
Hungarian People’s Republic and Costa Rica, the Central-American small state, that was taking
place in UN Palace of New York. Zoltán Szilágyi who was a member of the Hungarian Permanent
Mission to the UN and a co-optee of the state security tried to form and maintain a friendly
relationship with Jose Louis Redondo deputy leader of the Costa Rican UNO-representation.
The Ministry of External Affairs and III/I. (Intelligence) Directorate of the Ministry of Internal
Affairs tried to exploit the potential Anti-American sentiments of Redondo in the hope of a later
recruitment. The purpose of the latter would have been to reconnoiter the foreign policy of the
Unites States toward Latin-America through the ‘backdoor’ at the Soviets requests and, on the
other hand, to influence the Costa-Rican political sphere for the sake of an approach to Hungary
and the Eastern Bloc in general.

Narrative evidence contained within historical documents and inscriptions provides an important record of climate variability for periods prior to the onset of systematic meteorological data collection. A common approach used by historical climatologists to convert such qualitative information into continuous quantitative proxy data is through the generation of ordinal-scale climate indices. There is, however, considerable variability in the types of phenomena reconstructed using an index approach and the practice of index development in different parts of the world. This review, written by members of the PAGES (Past Global Changes) CRIAS working group – a collective of climate historians and historical climatologists researching Climate Reconstructions and Impacts from the Archives of Societies – provides the first global synthesis of the use of the index approach in climate reconstruction. We begin by summarising the range of studies that have used indices for climate reconstructi...

Throughout the past 20 years, Amazonian archaeology conceptualized new perspectives on past tropical forest cultures due to a deepening engagement of archaeologists with local indigenous communities. In a recent article, Tim Murray reviewed the maturing relationship between archaeologists and indigenous people over the past 25 years, wherein he mainly addressed the decolonization of archaeology in Australia, New Zealand, and North America. Examples from South America will enhance Murray’s argument, particularly the ongoing integration of indigenous knowledge and archaeological practices in Amazonia, whereby both knowledge and knowledge production are shared. This article elaborates on deep-historical research, situated along a continuum of participation and collaboration
in the Upper Maroni Basin (French Guiana and Suriname, northern Amazonia); explicating five categories of collaboration.

A Fronteira Oeste gaúcha configura uma região com uma história, tradições e cultura características que a diferenciam significativamente de outras regiões brasileiras. Como todo espaço sociogeográfico, a Fronteira Oeste é uma construção social, sendo o passado de guerras e batalhas contra os castelhanos um traço formador de sua identidade. Sua história está intimamente ligada à presença de destacamentos militares estabelecidos para a defesa contra possíveis invasores estrangeiros. Não por acaso essa parte do território gaúcho se encontra em uma área considerada de segurança nacional pela legislação brasileira. Ainda que a presença de um grande número de destacamentos militares em cidades da Fronteira Oeste seja uma realidade antiga, nos últimos anos, a região vem sofrendo os impactos da política do governo federal destinada à faixa de fronteira do Brasil. Uma política que destaca as antigas funções da fronteira – segurança e controle – por meio de operações como a denominada Ágata. Essas operações, onde o Exército trabalha em conjunto com uma série de órgãos federais, alteram o cotidiano dos habitantes da zona de fronteira. O presente trabalho busca apresentar os principais eventos bélicos e os tratados dos séculos XVIII e XIX que contribuíram à formação do folclore e do imaginário coletivo na Fronteira Oeste gaúcha, bem como analisar o papel do Exército na política contemporânea do governo brasileiro voltada para a fronteira.

[En español] This final paper for a class on 20th century Uruguayan history in analysis of the minutes of the Federación de Cooperativas de Producción del Uruguay (Uruguayan Federation of Production Cooperatives), 1963-1965. It includes an overview of the history of cooperatives in Uruguay. The heart of the paper is an analysis of the document, highlighting mentions of the historical context, tenets of the cooperative movement, the relationship with the unions, interpersonal relations in the meeting and the Congreso del Pueblo. In an annex there is an analysis of cooperatives in Uruguay during the dictatorship (1973-85), tracing some of the people mentioned in the minutes in later years.

Narrative evidence contained within historical documents and inscriptions provides an important record of climate variability for periods prior to the onset of systematic meteorological data collection. A common approach used by historical climatologists to convert such qualitative information into continuous quantitative proxy data is through the generation of ordinal-scale climate indices. There is, however, considerable variability in the types of phenomena reconstructed using an index approach and the practice of index development in different parts of the world. This review, written by members of the PAGES (Past Global Changes) CRIAS working group – a collective of climate historians and historical climatologists researching Climate Reconstructions and Impacts from the Archives of Societies – provides the first global synthesis of the use of the index approach in climate reconstruction. We begin by summarising the range of studies that have used indices for climate reconstructi...

Resumen El artículo analiza representaciones de la moda en un conjunto de periódicos publicados en Buenos Aires en las décadas de 1860 y 1870. Tras describir los rasgos principales de la prensa desarrollada en este período, el trabajo analiza las ilustraciones de moda-figurines-que circulaban en algunos periódicos, y los textos que convivían con dichas imágenes. El artículo explora las ambigüedades y tensiones entre textos e imágenes. Así, se argumenta que la moda ocupó un lugar renovado dentro de la prensa: los figurines no solo transmitían las modas parisinas en Buenos Aires, sino que comunicaban un estilo de vida asociado a lo burgués-femenino, mientras que los textos que los describían buscaban adaptarlos a la realidad local. Asimismo, en las crónicas de la moda, otras voces advertían acerca de los peligros que la moda y el consumo de vestimenta podría traer para las mujeres y sus familias. Abstract The article analyzes representations of fashion on a set of newspapers published in Buenos Aires in the 1860s and the 1870s. After describing the main characteristics of the press developed in this period, the paper focuses on analyzing the fashion illustrations that were published in some newspapers, and the texts that coexisted with those images. The article explores ambiguities and tensions between texts and images. Therefore, we argue that fashion had a renewed place on the press: fashion illustrations not only transmitted Paris' fashion in Buenos Aires, but also communicated a lifestyle associated with the bourgeoise-feminine; meanwhile the images' descriptions attempted to adapt them to local reality. Additionally, in the chronicles about fashion, some other voices warned about the dangers that fashion and its consumption could bring to women and their families.

The Spanish-Portuguese treaty signed in Madrid in 1750 was a turning point
not only in the colonial history of Brazil, but also in the history of Jesuit
cartography of that area. In 1753, the Spanish-Portuguese demarcation in the
Amazon region was entrusted to a group of military engineering officers
who, under the king’s orders, were joined by a royal mathematician and
astronomer from Croatia, the Jesuit Ignatius Szentmártonyi (1718–1793).
Based on Szentmártonyi’s astronomical and geodetic survey along the river
courses of the Amazon and Negro Rivers, the first detailed, mathematicallybased
map of the area was created in 1755. In addition to being the first
accurate map of the Amazon and Negro Rivers, this map is significant
because it represents a rare case of cooperation between the Jesuit and
military cartographers in their joint service to imperial authorities. This
service would, however, have disastrous consequences for the Jesuit order.