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The Latin Americanist, September 2010 The OCIAA established an exchange system for Brazilian artists and intellectuals , and Hollywood producers were instructed to hire Brazilians. Yet they also presented the strategic importance of Brazil’s war effort in the role of supplier of raw materials, showing to the American public educational films about Brazilian quartz used in the manufacture of radios, and declarations of coffee as an important tool for the American soldier in the front line. Tota sprinkles his analysis with colorful examples from music and film, closely reading them to illuminate the underlying tensions of what he sees as an unequal relationship. In his third and final chapter, he analyzes the reception of American culture through samba songs that critiqued Americanization . Artists often satirically talked about American influence and Brazilian music in the United States. It is because of this critical dialogue that Tota argues that the Americanization of Brazil was not an exercise in imitation. Rather, he argues, the invasion of American culture in Brazil “did not destroy Brazil’s culture, but most certainly it produced new cultural manifestations”(119). While this is similar to the anthropophagical argument put forth by Oswald de Andrade among other Brazilian modernists , Tota argues that there was also a degree of cultural resistance, and that the best way to interpret these cultural exchanges is perhaps as a fusion of the concepts of cultural anthropophagy and cultural resistance. Certainly, reading the light tone in which some Brazilian artists simultaneously mocked and appropriated American music and culture, it seems that Tota is correct in his interpretation, certainly valid for what happened among the producers of popular culture. The research, however, could have benefitted from a more thorough attempt at understanding the popular reception of American culture – while Tota cites a couple of opinion polls and readership statistics for some magazines, his analysis hardly elucidates what the consumers of popular culture, moviegoers and radio listeners, thought of the American influence. Since the arrival of American media in Brazil stemmed from government promotion rather than a market demand, it does not imply in itself that Brazilians were fond of the American culture suddenly presented to them in these media. Felipe Cruz Department of History University of Texas-Austin SATAN’S PLAYGROUND: MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS AT AMERICA’S GREATEST GAMING RESORT. By Paul J. Vanderwood. Durham: Duke UP, 2010, 408 pp., $24.95 trade paperback. Making his way deep into the lost world of Tijuana’s legendary Jazz Age entertainment complex, Paul Vanderwood has produced a truly transnational tale that is masterfully revealed through an array of sumptuous, 114 Book Reviews sometimes spine-chilling, vignettes combined with probing historical analysis centered on the city’s erstwhile upscale resort Agua Caliente. Earlier entertainment industry development in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands region , with places like Mexicali’s Owl nightclub and an assortment of drinking and gambling establishments in Tijuana, preceded Agua Caliente. So too did government collusion with organized crime as politicians such as Esteban Cantú presided profitably over the federal Territory of Baja California from 1915 to 1920. Soon, however, a new cohort would take charge and significantly raise the stakes. Vanderwood’s treatment is somewhat unique in that he carefully builds his narrative through a combination of crime capers and cross-sectional views. Drawing in the reader with an opening scene involving robbery and murder, the key players are gradually brought center stage. Initially, it was three enterprising men who joined forces to build what would become the fabled resort. None, as Vanderwood reports, initially came from elite, moneyed backgrounds. Instead, each had left home as teenagers and headed west seeking their fortunes. Future Border Baron (as they would become known) Wirt Bowman had “bummed around as a lumberjack and railroad section hand” while James Crofton earlier worked as a “flamboyant circus barker” and Baron Long (his actual name) earned a modest living as “a traveling flimflam medicine man” (37). Crowning the Agua Caliente development deal, powerful Mexican governor Abelardo Rodrı́guez soon provided the gringo entrepreneurs with the tacit government backing essential for their success. In 1923, Rodrı́guez, the relatively poor son of a teamster turned amateur boxer, baseball player, singer, police chief...

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