2022.06.28 了解美洲的七本书

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Economist Reads | Latin America
Our Bello columnist on the essential books for understanding Latin America
The seven books for getting to grips with the Americas
Cuba, Havana, Folkloric Show In The Street. (Photo by Giovanni Mereghetti/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Jun 28th 2022

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This article is part of our Summer reads series. Visit our collection to discover “The Economist reads” guides, guest essays and more seasonal distractions.

Latin america is hugely diverse but there are also common themes. One is that some of the best writing about it is by novelists and journalists. Another is that the region is immersed in one of its periodic bouts of re-assessing its history. A third is that politics has sometimes been marked by violence. Many of the best books about the region are, naturally enough, written in Spanish or Portuguese. Here is a small selection of books in English that reflect those trends while paying homage to the region’s diversity. What they have in common is that they are all good reads.


Conquistadores. By Fernando Cervantes. Viking; 512 pages; $35. Penguin, £12.99

A balanced retelling, published in 2020, of the Spanish conquest of the Caribbean, Mexico and Peru, which draws heavily on the letters and diaries of the protagonists. Fernando Cervantes, a Spanish historian at Bristol University, does not shrink from chronicling the brutality of the invaders but seeks to judge them according to their own times rather than 21st century notions of human rights. The assumptions and behaviour of Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro and the rest were nurtured by a late medieval religious culture, not purely by the lure of gold and still less by modern notions of statehood, he argues.

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Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend. Oxford University Press; 336 pages; $21.95 and £14.99

The people vanquished by Cortés whom we often call Aztecs but who called themselves Mexica quickly adapted to their new world, learning to write in the Roman alphabet. They used that skill to write their own history, drawing on a prior oral tradition. Camilla Townsend, a historian at Rutgers University, has mined these “annals” to offer a fresh account of the Mexica in their own words. It covers their arrival in Mexico’s central valley from what is now the south-western United States, their experience of the Spanish conquest and their subsequent adaption and survival. Published in 2019, the book shows they were less obsessed with human sacrifice than the Spanish chroniclers claimed.

Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America by Enrique Krauze. Translated by Hank Hefetz and Natasha Wimmer. HarperCollins; 560 pages; $19.99


A flowing history of the dominant trends in political thinking in the region told through the lives of a dozen Latin American intellectuals, writers or political leaders, mainly of the 20th century. They range from José Martí to Eva Perón and Mario Vargas Llosa to Hugo Chávez, with the longest chapter being reserved for Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet who became a political liberal and was the author’s mentor. Published in 2011.

Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution by Alma Guillermoprieto. Knopf; 304 pages; $15.95

A personal account of the six months the author spent as a teacher of modern dance in Fidel Castro’s Cuba in 1970, at a juncture when the revolution was past its heroic dawn and well on the way to becoming a culturally conformist Stalinist dictatorship. The experience “thoroughly unravelled” Ms Guillermoprieto’s life. She arrived as an aspiring artist and left as the future writer who would go on to become perhaps the best journalistic chronicler of contemporary Latin America. We published our review of the book in 2004.

News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Márquez. Translated by Edith Grossman. Vintage; 304 pages; $17. Penguin; £8.99

An unsurpassed journalistic account by Colombia’s most famous novelist of the horror inflicted by Pablo Escobar, the murderous drug trafficker from Medellín in the late 1980s and early 1990s. First published in Spanish in 1996, the events in the book involve the kidnapping of Diana Turbay, a journalist and daughter of a former president. It traces the agonising choices officials had to make, torn as they were between the national interest and personal ties. As was so often the case where Escobar was involved, the story doesn’t end well. We published an obituary of Gabriel García Márquez in 2014.

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated by Edith Grossman. Picador; 416 pages; $20. Faber & Faber; £8.99

Peru’s Nobel-prize-winning novelist is at his psychologically probing best in this fictionalised account of the moral corruption and political repression of the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, the self-styled Generalissimo who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. First published in 2000. We spoke to Mario Vargas Llosa about liberalism, dictatorship and more, in 2018.

Beef, Bible and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro. By Richard Lapper. Manchester University Press; 272 pages; $29.95 and £11.99

A readable account of how Jair Bolsonaro won Brazil’s presidency through a culture war which melded an ad-hoc coalition of farmers, evangelical protestants and the security forces. It takes in, too, the damage he has done to the country and its democracy. By a former Latin American editor of the Financial Times.

Our Bello columnist wrote a special report on Latin America in June 2022. He is also the author of two books of his own:

Forgotten Continent: A History of the New Latin America. By Michael Reid. Yale University Press; 440 pages; $18 and £14.99 (2017)

An account of the region’s long struggle for democracy and development up to the present day.


Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global Power. By Michael Reid. Yale University Press; 352 pages; $16 and $12.99 (2015)

A guide to history, politics, economic development and society in Latin America’s largest country.■



经济学人读物｜拉丁美洲
我们的贝洛专栏作家介绍了解拉美的必备书籍
了解美洲的七本书
古巴，哈瓦那，街上的民俗表演。(Photo by Giovanni Mereghetti/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
2022年6月28日


这篇文章是我们夏季读物系列的一部分。请访问我们的收藏，以发现 "经济学人读物 "指南、特邀文章和更多季节性的分散注意力。

拉丁美洲有很大的多样性，但也有一些共同的主题。一个是关于它的一些最好的文章是由小说家和记者写的。另一个是，该地区正沉浸在重新评估其历史的周期性阵痛之中。第三是政治有时以暴力为标志。许多关于该地区的最佳书籍自然是用西班牙语或葡萄牙语写的。这里有一小部分反映这些趋势的英文书，同时向该地区的多样性表示敬意。它们的共同点是，它们都是好书。


征服者》（Conquistadores）。费尔南多-塞万提斯著。维京人；512页；35美元。企鹅，12.99英镑

这是一部平衡的重述，于2020年出版，讲述了西班牙对加勒比海、墨西哥和秘鲁的征服，其中大量采用了主人公的信件和日记。费尔南多-塞万提斯是布里斯托尔大学的一名西班牙历史学家，他在记录侵略者的残暴行为时并没有退缩，而是试图根据他们自己的时代而不是21世纪的人权观念来判断他们。他认为，埃尔南-科尔特斯、弗朗西斯科-皮萨罗和其他人的假设和行为是由中世纪后期的宗教文化培养出来的，而不是纯粹由黄金的诱惑，更不是由现代的国家概念培养出来的。

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第五个太阳。卡米拉-汤森的《阿兹特克人的新历史》。牛津大学出版社；336页；21.95美元和14.99英镑

被科尔特斯征服的人们，我们通常称之为阿兹特克人，但他们自称为墨西哥人，他们很快适应了他们的新世界，学会了用罗马字母书写。他们利用这一技能写出了自己的历史，借鉴了之前的口头传统。罗格斯大学的历史学家卡米拉-汤森挖掘了这些 "年鉴"，用他们自己的话提供了一个关于墨西哥人的全新描述。该书涵盖了他们从现在的美国西南部抵达墨西哥中央谷地的情况，他们对西班牙征服的经历以及他们随后的适应和生存。该书于2019年出版，表明他们并不像西班牙编年史家所说的那样痴迷于人的牺牲。

赎罪者。拉丁美洲的思想与权力》，作者：恩里克-克劳兹。汉克-赫菲茨和娜塔莎-维默尔翻译。哈珀柯林斯出版社；560页；19.99美元


通过十几位主要是20世纪的拉丁美洲知识分子、作家或政治领袖的生活，讲述了该地区政治思想的主导趋势，是一部流动的历史。他们从何塞-马蒂到伊娃-贝隆，从马里奥-巴尔加斯-略萨到乌戈-查韦斯，其中最长的一章是留给奥克塔维奥-帕斯的，这位墨西哥诗人成为了一名政治自由主义者，也是作者的导师。该书于2011年出版。

与古巴共舞。Alma Guillermoprieto的《革命回忆录》。Knopf；304页；15.95美元

这是作者1970年在菲德尔-卡斯特罗的古巴担任现代舞教师六个月的个人记录，当时革命已经过了英雄的黎明，正准备成为一个文化上顺从的斯大林主义独裁政权。这段经历 "彻底解开了 "吉列莫普列托女士的生活。她作为一个有抱负的艺术家来到这里，离开时却成为未来的作家，并可能成为当代拉丁美洲最好的新闻记录者。我们在2004年发表了对该书的评论。

加布里埃尔-加西亚-马尔克斯的《绑架的消息》。由伊迪丝-格罗斯曼翻译。Vintage；304页；17美元。企鹅公司；8.99英镑

哥伦比亚最著名的小说家对巴勃罗-埃斯科瓦尔（Pablo Escobar）在20世纪80年代末和90年代初麦德林的谋杀毒贩所造成的恐怖进行了无与伦比的新闻报道。该书于1996年首次以西班牙语出版，书中的事件涉及记者和前总统的女儿戴安娜-图尔瓦（Diana Turbay）被绑架。该书追溯了官员们不得不做出的痛苦选择，他们在国家利益和个人关系之间挣扎。正如埃斯科瓦尔所涉及的情况一样，这个故事的结局并不美好。我们在2014年发表了加布里埃尔-加西亚-马尔克斯的讣告。

山羊的盛宴》，作者：马里奥-巴尔加斯-略萨。由伊迪丝-格罗斯曼翻译。Picador；416页；20美元。Faber & Faber；8.99英镑

秘鲁的诺贝尔文学奖获得者在这部虚构的作品中发挥了其最佳的心理探究能力，讲述了拉斐尔-莱昂尼达斯-特鲁希略独裁统治时期的道德腐败和政治压迫，这位自诩为总司令的人从1930年开始统治多米尼加共和国，直到1961年被暗杀。该书于2000年首次出版。2018年，我们与马里奥-巴尔加斯-略萨就自由主义、独裁统治等问题进行了交谈。

牛肉、圣经和子弹。博尔索纳罗时代的巴西。作者：理查德-拉普尔。曼彻斯特大学出版社；272页；29.95美元和11.99英镑

这是一份可读的报告，介绍了贾伊尔-博尔索纳罗如何通过文化战争赢得巴西总统职位，这场战争融合了农民、福音派新教徒和安全部队的临时联盟。书中还提到了他对国家和民主所造成的损害。作者是《金融时报》的一位前拉丁美洲编辑。

我们的贝洛专栏作家在2022年6月写了一份关于拉丁美洲的特别报告。他也是自己的两本书的作者。

被遗忘的大陆。新拉美的历史》。作者：迈克尔-里德。耶鲁大学出版社；440页；18美元和14.99英镑(2017)

记述了该地区到今天为止为民主和发展而进行的长期斗争。


巴西。一个全球大国的艰难崛起。作者：迈克尔-里德。耶鲁大学出版社；352页；16美元和12.99美元（2015年）。

关于拉丁美洲最大国家的历史、政治、经济发展和社会的指南。