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  • Heroes and Hero Cults in Latin America
  • Thomas E. Skidmore
Heroes and Hero Cults in Latin America. Edited by Samuel Brunk and Ben Fallow (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2006) 318 pp. $55.00 cloth $22.95 paper

This excellent collection of articles on heroism in South America owes much to ideas from European history. The very concept of heroism is prominent in the nineteenth-century writings of Carlyle, who was intrigued with the origins of European "kingship" and applied it primarily to the evolution of the nation-state.1 But this collection needs its own unifying theme, and the editors found it in Weber, who developed the concept of the charismatic leader to explain why certain social movements become especially powerful.2 It has proven highly effective in analyzing phenomena of both the political left and the political right.

The substance of this book is an examination of ten figures in Latin American history. It has the explicit goal of "making a case for returning the study of . . . individuals to the center of historical analysis" (11). The examples were chosen as "at least candidates for heroism, some attaining it, others celebrated as heroic only at particular moments in their lives, then largely forgotten . . . or marked down as villains" (14).

The fact that the book is organized by person leaves any explicitly comparative analysis to the editors' introduction and conclusion. They are up to that task, drawing out a series of dimensions to determine heroic characteristics. They also discuss the extent to which Latin American [End Page 637] heroes and their cults differ from those produced elsewhere, concluding that the differences are overdrawn. Finally, they ask whether Mexico is unique in Latin America, finding once again that the differences are overdrawn.

The criteria that the editors distil for heroic cult status involve not merely how heroic these figures were during their lifetimes but the extent to which their posthumous image has risen to cult proportions. The identified criteria for hero cult status (not counting gender) are four: triumphs/successes during life (image as a resourceful leader), dramatic death, a political leaning of liberal to left, and status as a political outsider (that is, never becoming president). On the basis of these criteria, they select for their top tier Emiliano Zapata, Felipe Carillo Puerto, Augusto Sandino, and Eva Peron. Their second tier includes Simon Bolivar, Frida Kahlo, and Victor Raul Haya de la Torre. Their third tier (at least partial failures) includes Agustin Gamarra, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, and Porfirio Diaz.

The biggest surprise in their list is that Bolivar achieves only second tier status, which must be because he was not a political outsider. He is the meta-hero of Spanish American independence and the great visionary of possible South American unity. He has all the elements of true heroism, which include great valor and enormous talent for combat leadership. He was memorialized in his combat trips by the villages that renamed themselves after the Great Liberator. In addition, he was skilled at cultivating his own image as a dramatic orator and outstanding negotiator. His manner of death also helped his cult image—a mysterious river-borne disease that was immortalized in a glorious literary volume from the hand of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Love in the Time of Cholera [New York, 1989]). Furthermore, he was unique among South American liberators in that he could claim paternity for three nations—Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador. Finally, unlike the others featured in this book, he was acknowledged as a supreme hero in Europe.

Thomas E. Skidmore
Brown University

Footnotes

1. Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (New York, 1893).

2. Max Weber (ed. Talcott Parsons; trans. A. M. Henderson), The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York, 1947).

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