Raising an Empire: Children in Early Modern Iberia and Colonial Latin America ed. by Ondina González, Bianca Premo (review)

The Latin Americanist, June 2008 makes an effort to emphasize the differences between, for example, the structuralist perspective of CEPAL and the Marxist structuralist critique of Dependency theory, the discussion seems to imply that the statism they espoused was politically and ideologically the same. It is critically important to point out the differences that existed between these two theoretical perspectives. When the post-war populist regimes of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico sought to accelerate and deepen ISI, they might have found temporary political support from Marxist and Communist groups. But their long term strategies were at odds with each other since they sought to win the support of the same constituency, the working classes. Moreover , dependentistas emerged during the 1960s and 1970s to challenge the renewed industrializing effort of heavy and basic industries which relied on transnational technology and capital. For a more nuanced and balanced discussion I will suggest the work of political scientists and sociologists such as Peter Evans, Guillermo O’Donnell, and David Collier. For a book on Latin American economic development that attempts to be both comprehensive and in-depth, it is understandable that compromises have to be made. I believe, however, that some topics deserve more attention, for example: the rising impact of Latin American MNCs around the world. Increasingly, U.S. consumers have been reminded of the connection between CITGO and the Venezuela state oil company, PDVSA, or air travelers that they are flying on regional commuter planes built by Brazil’s EMBRAER. After reviewing other texts, I selected Franko’s book for my undergraduate class on Latin American development, and I plan to continue using it in the future. I believe it is one of the best texts on the political economy of Latin America. It clearly presents and discusses the challenges and contradictions of contemporary development models in the region. I highly recommend it for upper level undergraduate courses or graduate level courses on the development of Latin America. Cristian A. Harris Department of Political Science North Georgia College and State University RAISING AN EMPIRE: CHILDREN IN EARLY MODERN IBERIA AND COLONIAL LATIN AMERICA. By Ondina González and Bianca Premo (eds.). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007, p 270, $ 24.95. Raising an Empire is an essential book that offers both a recreation of children’s lives in addition to practices of reading sources to understand childhood as a fundamental piece in the construction of the Iberian colonial empire in several countries including Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, and Spain. This transatlantic dynamic of exploring children allows the 96 Book Reviews reader to observe the development of ideologies, systems of control of behavior, patterns of identity, negotiations and transformations, as well as the agencies of diverse actors such as administrators, families, and children that, precisely, raised the empire. The eight chapters in this book offer not only enlightening pictures on childhood but also a distinctive international scholarly effort to guide readers toward the understanding of the actual life of children from the time of the colonial administration to the end of the nineteenth century. Rather than only focusing on adult points of view, the chapters also intend to re-consider children from their own perspective whenever possible . This is a coherent attempt to answer Ondina González’s question in her introduction: “Where could they [the scholars] retrieve the children’s voices and lived experiences seemingly lost to time and indifference?”(5) This attempt implies a methodology of reading that connects creatively both data and rationale to re-create children from diverse cultural texts and artifacts. Examples of this perspective are Guimarães Sá’s chapter on children in Portugal and Valentina Tikoff’s on juvenile charity in Seville. Guimarães Sá departs from an analysis of the children playing and eating in Gregório Lopes’ seventeenth-century painting Apresentação da Cabeça de S. João Baptista. Their representation allows her to explain social status as well as the dynamics and relationships among children in early modern Portugal. In her study on diversity and young orphans in Seville, Tikoff uses echoes from picaresque in Murillo’s canvases and Cervantes’s duo Rinconete and Cortadillo to address the...