Power and Culture: The Social History of Nineteenth-Century Spanish America

Children Of Facundo: Caudillo And Gaucho Insurgency During The Argentine State-Formation Process(La Rioja, 1853-1870). By Ariel de la Fuente. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. Pp. 249. $54.95 Cloth, $18.95 Paper.)

Containing The Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871. By Silvia M. Arrom. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. Pp. 398. $59.95 Cloth, $19.95 Paper.)

From Subjects To Citizens: Honor, Gender, And Politics In Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1854. By Sarah C. Chambers. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. Pp. 286. $55.00 Cloth, $19.95 Paper.)

Honorable Lives: Lawyers, Families, And Politics In Colombia, 1780-1850. By Victor Uribe-Uran. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. Pp. 276. $50.00 Cloth.)

Imposing Decency: The Politics Of Sexuality And Race In Puerto Rico, 1870-1920. By Eileen J. Suárez Findlay. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999. Pp. 328. $59.95 Cloth, $19.95 Paper.)

Shaping The Discourse On Space: Charity And Its Wards In Nineteenth-Century San Juan, Puerto RICO. By Teresita Martínez-Vergne. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. Pp. 235. $32.50 Cloth, $17.95 Paper.)

The historiography of Latin American society has come to revolve largely around the themes of culture and power. In one form or another, the exercise of power within society has provided such a central theme in histories of the region for so long that its continued prominence hardly requires explanation. More innovative is the insistence—growing out of the "new cultural history" of Latin America—that power (along with many other phenomena) be viewed in cultural terms. A definition of the new cultural history remains elusive, but for purposes of this essay it is sufficient to say that this school of thought assumes that historical knowledge is best advanced by interpreting a wide range of historical processes as cultural processes, and that it often focuses on the social construction of cultural meanings (including social identities) through the analysis of discourses (Knight 2002). By this standard, all the works reviewed here demonstrate the influence of the new cultural history on the field of social history, though it would be difficult to argue that most of these works exemplify the new cultural history.

The six books address the intersection of culture and power in a variety of ways, which in turn serve as the basis for organizing the essay. Victor Uribe-Uran and Alejandro de la Fuente both examine social processes linked to the formation of national states and construct analyses that revolve around cultural values. Sarah Chambers and Eileen Suárez Findlay ask how political transitions (from colony to republic in Peru, and from Spanish to U.S. rule in Puerto Rico) resulted in struggles to redefine gender relations and concepts of honor. Finally, Teresita Martínez-Vergne and Sylvia Arrom arrive at different conclusions regarding the applicability to Latin America of Michel Foucault's view of disciplinary institutions as instruments of social control. As a group, these works raise three issues to which I return at the conclusion of the essay: the location of power within society, the theoretical relationship between culture and power, and the extent to which cultural struggles of the nineteenth century arose out of issues related to modernity.

Culture, Society, and State Formation

Victor Uribe-Uran and Alejandro de la Fuente approach the question of state formation by casting their analyses in terms of social and cultural history. Uribe-Uran joins the growing number of historians who interpret Latin American society through the concept of honor (Johnson and Lipsett-Rivera 1998; Twinam 1999). But while recent studies of honor are usually confined to the colonial era and often focus on the relationship between honor and gender, Uribe-Uran ranges across the late colonial and early national periods in order to show how lawyers' quest for honor (or "status-honor") became intertwined with the...