Includes "Bibliographical section".

In this special issue of the Hispanic American Historical Review, the editors stepped outside the sometimes narrow confines of technical academic writing. They sought contributors who were willing to dive into an honest, open discussion of Mexico's cultural history. The result is a vigorous, complex, innovative, and occasionally humorous discussion of the pros and cons of a new cultural historical approach to Mexican history. All the contributors to this issue agree on the importance and relevance of a historical study of culture in its most inclusive sense. But there is much less consensus about the promise and potential of a "new cultural history" of Mexico and Latin America. While some of the contributors celebrate new interpretive and methodological advances, others express concern about the dangers of overinterpretation, untoward speculation, and the imposition of postmodernist concepts. Contributors and topics covered include: Susan Deans-Smith and Gilbert M. Joseph on the Arena of Dispute Eric Van Young on the New Cultural History William E. French on Cultural History of Nineteenth-Century Mexico Mary Kay Vaughan on Cultural Approaches to Peasant Politics in the Mexican Revolution Stephen Haber on Mexico's "New" Cultural History Florencia E. Mallon on Cycles of Revisionism Susan Migden Socolow on Putting the "Cult" in Culture Claudio Lomnitz on the Politics of the "New Cultural History of Mexico"

Latinos are the fastest growing population group in the United States.Through their language and popular music Latinos are making their mark on American culture as never before. As the United States becomes Latinized, how will Latinos fit into America's divided racial landscape and how will they define their own racial and ethnic identity? Through strikingly original historical analysis, extensive personal interviews and a careful examination of census data, Clara E. Rodriguez shows that Latino identity is surprisingly fluid, situation-dependent, and constantly changing. She illustrates how the way Latinos are defining themselves, and refusing to define themselves, represents a powerful challenge to America's system of racial classification and American racism.

“A rich and moving chronicle for our very present.” —Julio Ortega, New York Times Book Review The United States is still typically conceived of as an offshoot of England, with our history unfolding east to west beginning with the first English settlers in Jamestown. This view overlooks the significance of America’s Hispanic past. With the profile of the United States increasingly Hispanic, the importance of recovering the Hispanic dimension to our national story has never been greater. This absorbing narrative begins with the explorers and conquistadores who planted Spain’s first colonies in Puerto Rico, Florida, and the Southwest. Missionaries and rancheros carry Spain’s expansive impulse into the late eighteenth century, settling California, mapping the American interior to the Rockies, and charting the Pacific coast. During the nineteenth century Anglo-America expands west under the banner of “Manifest Destiny” and consolidates control through war with Mexico. In the Hispanic resurgence that follows, it is the peoples of Latin America who overspread the continent, from the Hispanic heartland in the West to major cities such as Chicago, Miami, New York, and Boston. The United States clearly has a Hispanic present and future. And here is its Hispanic past, presented with characteristic insight and wit by one of our greatest historians.

A highly readable survey of women's experiences in Latin America from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries.