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Book Reviews CENTERING ANIMALS IN LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY. By Martha Few and Zeb Tortorici (eds.). Durham: Duke UP, 2013, p. 408, $26.95. The study of history is by its very nature anthropocentric. It is humans, and not plants or animals, who make history. Centering Animals in Latin American History calls into question this assumption by focusing on the significance of animals in Latin American societies, from the colonial period to the present. Edited by Martha Few and Zeb Tortorici, the chapters in this volume interrogate the “ontological distance” (112) between humans and animals that has traditionally characterized historical scholarship. In varying degrees, all contributors approach animals as historical actors, taking seriously the ways that “interactions between humans and animals have significantly shaped the narratives of Latin American histories and cultures” (5). In doing so, this path-breaking volume joins a growing, interdisciplinary subfield in the humanities devoted to a critical examination of the complex roles of animals in human societies. Centering Animals is divided into three sections, each with its own thematic focus. The first section examines the cultural and economic significance that animals held within various colonial contexts. León Garcı́a Garagarza expands on Elinor Melville’s study of the destructive impact of European livestock on the indigenous landscapes of central Mexico to assess how local populations made sense of such rapid changes within their own cosmological frameworks. Few documents how periodic locust plagues forced colonial administrators to channel indigenous labor toward extermination campaigns to protect valuable export commodities. This, in turn, led to decreased agricultural production, famine, and epidemics. In his chapter on canine baptisms, weddings, and funerals, Zeb Tortorici uses Inquisition records to examine how changing relationships between humans and dogs created new meanings for domestic pets in late-colonial Mexico. Part two uses animals to examine the creation of medical knowledge, the practice of medical research, and the birth of public health policy. Adam Warren uses natural histories, popular medical guides, and ethnographies to trace how the “animal-based treatments” of the Kallawaya found their way into popular medical practice in eighteenth-century Peru. Heather McCrea examines mosquitos and other “pests” to chart the evolution of Mexican state policy toward the Yucatan after independence. By the 1880s, germ theory and the doctrine of public health gave the state new cause to carry out inspections to eradicate “vectors” of disease, thus extending its influence into the homes and workplaces of Maya populations. Neel Ahuja shows how monkeys – rhesus macaques imported to Puerto Rico from India as research specimens for the U.S. pharmaceutical industry – functioned first as symbols of modernity and scientific progress and later as emblems of imperial domination. The final section places animals within a postcolonial context marked by the increased commodification of animals but also a growing belief in 69 The Latin Americanist, September 2014 the need to protect animals from the abuses of humans. Reinaldo Funes Monzote charts the birth of animal protection societies in Cuba that coincided with the abolition of slavery and the increased mechanization of sugar plantation agriculture. Regina Horta Duarte examines the conflict that developed between scientists, lawmakers, and broader Brazilian society as key individuals sought to advance legislation to protect the nation’s avifauna from overhunting. John Soluri examines how the behaviors, life cycles, and ecology of fur seals “conditioned the modern history of fur seal hunting in Patagonia” (247). Robin Derby excavates the cultural history of goats and other “proto-pets” in the Dominican Republic to explain public spectacles depicting Rafael Trujillo, the nation’s ex-dictator, as a goat. The volume concludes with a rich, theoretical reflection by the late Neil Whitehead. Although the topics covered in this volume are diverse, all contributors grapple with similar conceptual and methodological challenges revolving around the issue of agency. For example, to what extent did animals themselves influence historical processes or events? While some authors, such as Few, posit them as central actors, others, such as Ahuja, focus mostly on animals as symbols of broader historical processes. This tendency to abstract animals from the actual historical landscapes that they co-inhabited with humans is largely a function of goals and interpretation. As the volume editors point out...

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