Americas in the World Series – serie

This superbly edited volume provides scholars and general readers with an in depth view of the evolution, nature, dynamics, and consequences of the global cocaine industry. Cocaine: The Global Reach of the World’s Most Lucrative Illicit Drug offers an unprecedented global analysis of the cocaine trade, revealing how the world’s most lucrative illicit market operates today. Unlike previous works that focus on individual countries or regions, this volume takes a global view of the cocaine supply chain, tracking the drug’s journey from coca fields in the Andes to consumers in New York, Lagos, Rotterdam, Sydney, and beyond. With contributions from leading scholars in criminology, sociology, and political science, it sheds light on the expanding networks of criminal organizations that connect producer countries in Latin America to consumer markets worldwide. The book explores the profound transformation of the cocaine market, which has shifted from being dominated by a few powerful cartels to a fragmented and highly competitive underworld. Colombian, Mexican, and Brazilian organizations have traditionally controlled the market, but new actors, including Nigerian and Albanian syndicates, have emerged as key players. From the rise of transshipment hubs in West Africa to nontraditional trafficking routes in Asia, this volume demonstrates how criminal organizations adapt to evolving market demands and law enforcement crackdowns. Just as multinational corporations streamline production, cocaine traffickers around the world manage logistics, transportation, and financial flows across continents. Yet unlike legal industries, the cocaine market thrives on secrecy, violence, and corruption, making it one of the most resilient global enterprises. By bridging theoretical frameworks from different disciplines, this volume deepens our understanding of how the global illicit economy functions. From the campesinos harvesting coca to the street dealers in Europe and the United States, the book emphasizes the interconnectedness of all actors in this lucrative, dangerous market. Furthermore, it critiques the failures of international counter-drug efforts, revealing how institutional corruption and state fragility perpetuate the trade. This book is an essential resource for policymakers, scholars, and anyone seeking to understand the complexities of the global cocaine economy.

This superbly edited volume provides scholars and general readers with an in depth view of the evolution, nature, dynamics, and consequences of the global cocaine industry. Cocaine: The Global Reach of the World’s Most Lucrative Illicit Drug offers an unprecedented global analysis of the cocaine trade, revealing how the world’s most lucrative illicit market operates today. Unlike previous works that focus on individual countries or regions, this volume takes a global view of the cocaine supply chain, tracking the drug’s journey from coca fields in the Andes to consumers in New York, Lagos, Rotterdam, Sydney, and beyond. With contributions from leading scholars in criminology, sociology, and political science, it sheds light on the expanding networks of criminal organizations that connect producer countries in Latin America to consumer markets worldwide.The book explores the profound transformation of the cocaine market, which has shifted from being dominated by a few powerful cartels to a fragmented and highly competitive underworld. Colombian, Mexican, and Brazilian organizations have traditionally controlled the market, but new actors, including Nigerian and Albanian syndicates, have emerged as key players. From the rise of transshipment hubs in West Africa to nontraditional trafficking routes in Asia, this volume demonstrates how criminal organizations adapt to evolving market demands and law enforcement crackdowns.Just as multinational corporations streamline production, cocaine traffickers around the world manage logistics, transportation, and financial flows across continents. Yet unlike legal industries, the cocaine market thrives on secrecy, violence, and corruption, making it one of the most resilient global enterprises.By bridging theoretical frameworks from different disciplines, this volume deepens our understanding of how the global illicit economy functions. From the campesinos harvesting coca to the street dealers in Europe and the United States, the book emphasizes the interconnectedness of all actors in this lucrative, dangerous market. Furthermore, it critiques the failures of international counter-drug efforts, revealing how institutional corruption and state fragility perpetuate the trade. This book is an essential resource for policymakers, scholars, and anyone seeking to understand the complexities of the global cocaine economy.

This unique anthology from scholars across the humanities and allied fields presents a vivid picture of the state of scholarship on transnationalism today.Are we living in a transnational world? The 900 percent rise in the use of “transnationalism” in publications since 1995 testifies to a defining phenomenon. International migration has increased two-thirds since 1980, and the global circulation of capital, media, and culture has intensified, provoking nationalist political backlash worldwide.This collection of studies on exile, social science, indigeneity, gender activism, music and dance, gangs, sex work, narcofiction, and cinema examines how transnational forces influence racial difference, national identity, immigrant exclusion, state power, and cultural expression in the Americas. It explores how the physical and symbolic movement of humans and their artifacts shapes ideas and challenges accepted notions of national and conceptual boundaries among them. By addressing the impact of digital technologies on spatialization, by challenging emerging conventions on transnationalism, and by fostering interdisciplinary exchange, the book enriches our understanding of transnational lives and provides tools for exploring the transnational turn.

This unique anthology from scholars across the humanities and allied fields presents a vivid picture of the state of scholarship on transnationalism today.Are we living in a transnational world? The 900 percent rise in the use of “transnationalism” in publications since 1995 testifies to a defining phenomenon. International migration has increased two-thirds since 1980, and the global circulation of capital, media, and culture has intensified, provoking nationalist political backlash worldwide.This collection of studies on exile, social science, indigeneity, gender activism, music and dance, gangs, sex work, narcofiction, and cinema examines how transnational forces influence racial difference, national identity, immigrant exclusion, state power, and cultural expression in the Americas. It explores how the physical and symbolic movement of humans and their artifacts shapes ideas and challenges accepted notions of national and conceptual boundaries among them. By addressing the impact of digital technologies on spatialization, by challenging emerging conventions on transnationalism, and by fostering interdisciplinary exchange, the book enriches our understanding of transnational lives and provides tools for exploring the transnational turn.

This book examines a crucial turning point in the colonial history of Brazil and especially the enduring consequences of local and trans-Atlantic resistance to Dutch colonialism. From a desert death march in North Africa to the war-torn beaches of Bahia, The Battle for Brazil: Resistance, Renewal, and the War Against the Dutch, 1580–1654 integrates Portuguese prophecy, myth, and tradition with on-the-ground action. A remarkable moment in an enduring global contest, the Dutch challenge for Brazil was sparked by the 1580 Spanish claim of the Portuguese throne. The Netherlanders, already locked in battle against Habsburg Spain, turned on their old trading partners, and Portuguese trading posts fell to the Dutch East India Company’s relentless assaults. Then the Dutch turned west—to Brazil. In 1624, Portuguese soldiers, priests, and their indigenous allies pinned invading Dutch West India Company troops to the town of Salvador, Bahia. The following year, a joint Luso-Spanish armada helped oust the Dutch—a short-lived interlude in the battle for Brazil (1630–1654). As town by town fell to the enemy, and as the West India Company expanded control over the Brazilian northeast, it seemed that the contested colony would go Dutch. By the end of 1640, the restoration of an independent Portugal ended sixty years of Spanish rule, but this did not end the kingdom’s trials. With Dom João IV of Braganza on the throne, the kingdom of Portugal now faced a two-front challenge—at home, from Spain, and abroad, from the Dutch. Within five years, lackluster support from Lisbon prompted a new phase of local resistance against the Dutch in Brazil. This defiance manifested in what would become known as the “Divine War of Liberation”—and with it, an emergent Luso-Brazilian identity. On the ground, cross-class and transatlantic alliance and coordination, formed in the first Dutch assault, only strengthened during the next nine years. The Battle for Brazil highlights the actions of once-marginalized men and women of European, African, Indigenous, and mixed descent who helped force final Dutch surrender by 1654. On both sides of the Atlantic, the battle for Brazil proved a spiritual venture and a reckoning, shaping a new world to come.

This book examines a crucial turning point in the colonial history of Brazil and especially the enduring consequences of local and trans-Atlantic resistance to Dutch colonialism. From a desert death march in North Africa to the war-torn beaches of Bahia, The Battle for Brazil: Resistance, Renewal, and the War Against the Dutch, 1580–1654 integrates Portuguese prophecy, myth, and tradition with on-the-ground action. A remarkable moment in an enduring global contest, the Dutch challenge for Brazil was sparked by the 1580 Spanish claim of the Portuguese throne. The Netherlanders, already locked in battle against Habsburg Spain, turned on their old trading partners, and Portuguese trading posts fell to the Dutch East India Company’s relentless assaults. Then the Dutch turned west—to Brazil. In 1624, Portuguese soldiers, priests, and their indigenous allies pinned invading Dutch West India Company troops to the town of Salvador, Bahia. The following year, a joint Luso-Spanish armada helped oust the Dutch—a short-lived interlude in the battle for Brazil (1630–1654). As town by town fell to the enemy, and as the West India Company expanded control over the Brazilian northeast, it seemed that the contested colony would go Dutch. By the end of 1640, the restoration of an independent Portugal ended sixty years of Spanish rule, but this did not end the kingdom’s trials. With Dom João IV of Braganza on the throne, the kingdom of Portugal now faced a two-front challenge—at home, from Spain, and abroad, from the Dutch. Within five years, lackluster support from Lisbon prompted a new phase of local resistance against the Dutch in Brazil. This defiance manifested in what would become known as the “Divine War of Liberation”—and with it, an emergent Luso-Brazilian identity. On the ground, cross-class and transatlantic alliance and coordination, formed in the first Dutch assault, only strengthened during the next nine years. The Battle for Brazil highlights the actions of once-marginalized men and women of European, African, Indigenous, and mixed descent who helped force final Dutch surrender by 1654. On both sides of the Atlantic, the battle for Brazil proved a spiritual venture and a reckoning, shaping a new world to come.

This unique volume analyzes the Pacific’s influence on Latin America between 1850 and 1950, demonstrating how the Pacific Ocean world is an intrinsic part of the modern history of Latin America. Since the end of the Cold War, Latin America has witnessed a veritable explosion of “vernacular” or non-national sovereignties, ranging from plurinational citizenship to secessionist movements. While each has been the subject of scholarly discussion and debate, no one has asked why the nation-state came to be regarded as so deeply problematic by such a wide range of social actors across the region. Re-Orienting Latin American History seeks to provide an interdisciplinary, transnational explanation, analyzing vernacular sovereignties that proliferated in Pacific-facing Latin America between the gold rush (1849) and the outbreak of the Cold War (circa 1950). Using diverse methodologies, sources, and scales, these essays trace circuits of capital, ideas, and people across maritime and terrestrial space from San Francisco to the Andes, exploring Black and Indigenous refugee regions, ephemeral republics, corridors of capital, and transnational revolutionary imaginaries. Rather than comparing nation-states and considering them as deviations from normative national political projects, Fallaw and Nugent set out to understand alternative forms of sovereignty on their own terms. This collection transcends both history’s transnational turn and anthropology’s broad-ranging critique of the nation-state as an analytic category.

This unique volume analyzes the Pacific’s influence on Latin America between 1850 and 1950, demonstrating how the Pacific Ocean world is an intrinsic part of the modern history of Latin America. Since the end of the Cold War, Latin America has witnessed a veritable explosion of “vernacular” or non-national sovereignties, ranging from plurinational citizenship to secessionist movements. While each has been the subject of scholarly discussion and debate, no one has asked why the nation-state came to be regarded as so deeply problematic by such a wide range of social actors across the region. Re-Orienting Latin American History seeks to provide an interdisciplinary, transnational explanation, analyzing vernacular sovereignties that proliferated in Pacific-facing Latin America between the gold rush (1849) and the outbreak of the Cold War (circa 1950). Using diverse methodologies, sources, and scales, these essays trace circuits of capital, ideas, and people across maritime and terrestrial space from San Francisco to the Andes, exploring Black and Indigenous refugee regions, ephemeral republics, corridors of capital, and transnational revolutionary imaginaries. Rather than comparing nation-states and considering them as deviations from normative national political projects, Fallaw and Nugent set out to understand alternative forms of sovereignty on their own terms. This collection transcends both history’s transnational turn and anthropology’s broad-ranging critique of the nation-state as an analytic category.

In a corner of the world where most nation-states are deeply problematic, Costa Rica’s success is a puzzle. This scholarly yet accessible book explores which political decisions led to a very different outcome for the little country that could. Since a brief civil conflict in 1948, the Central American country of Costa Rica has built a stable democracy, with regular, scheduled, and fair elections and respect for human rights. The country has built public and private institutions that have led to notable achievements in economic growth, education, health care, and environmental stewardship. For example, Costa Rica has the highest life expectancy in the Americas, even though it only has a per capita income of one sixth that of the United States. Costa Rica also has one of the highest literacy rates in Latin America (exceeded only by Uruguay). Progress has come from the unexpected benefits of being a backwater of Spanish colonialism, which contributed to a more egalitarian society and in turn spawned political leaders committed to broad-based economic development. Costa Rica has participated actively in the international economy and found imaginative ways to better social welfare. Colburn and Prado explore Costa Rica’s remarkable success as a country and its creation, since the mid-twentieth century, of an inclusive society and a stable democracy. Enriched with illuminating quotations from a wide range of Costa Ricans, this important new contribution to Latin American studies elucidates how the country’s sense of national identity and political institutions led to the crafting of sensible public policies.