Richard W. Slatta – författare

This collection explores the varieties of banditry in Latin America and provides a major comparative testing of Hobsbawm's model of the social bandit. Comprised of a unique collection of essays, it contributes to a more accurate understanding of bandit leaders and followers, as well as to the analysis of banditry as a social phenomenon.

Although as much romanticized as the American cowboy, the Argentine gaucho lived a persecuted, marginal existence, beleaguered by mandatory passports, vagrancy laws, and forced military service. The story of this nineteenth-century migratory ranch hand is told in vivid detail by Richard W. Slatta, a professor of history at North Carolina State University at Raleigh and the author of Cowboys of the Americas (1990).

Historians of the American west, perhaps inspired by NAFTA and Internet communication, are expanding their intellectual horizons across borders north and south. This collection of essays functions as a how-to guide to comparative frontier research in the American. Frontiers specialist Richard W. Slatta presents topics, techniques, and methods that will intrigue social-science professionals and western-history buffs alike as he explores the frontiers of North and South America from Spanish colonial days into the twentieth century.The always popular cowboy is joined by the fascinating gaucho, llanero, vaquero, and charro as Slatta compares their work techniques, roundups, songs, tack, lingo, equestrian culture, and vices. We visit saloons and pulperÍas as well as plains pampas, and Slatta expertly compares clothing, weather, terrain, diets, alcoholic beverages, card games ,and military tactics. From primary records we learn how Europeans, Native Americans, and African Americans become the ranch hands, cowmen, and buckaroos of the Americas, and why their dependence on the ranch cattle industry kept them bachelors and landless peons.

Alphabetically organized and thoroughly cross-referenced entries provide information on cowboy history, culture, and myth in North and South America. Entries include cowboy types, equipment, dress, work, and recreation. illustrated, with informative appendixes, an index, and bibliography.