patrick iber

Prof. Patrick Iber

[This version posted May 2026.]

The special challenge of doing a prelims field in modern Latin American history is that you must cover a very broad range of issues in a broad range of countries from a broad range of perspectives. If you spread yourself too thin, you don’t have a lot of opportunities to observe historiographical debates—that is, to observe historians arguing about the interpretation of an event, and how their approaches change over time. Because of the large number of countries that the student of Latin America must cover, this problem is more acute than someone doing, say, a list in U.S. history. As a result, I recommend choosing two focus areas where we can observe historiographical evolution and debate. Two of the richest areas are also essential topics for teaching: the Mexican Revolution and Brazilian slavery.

To understand the evolution of trends in the field of history and their causes, everyone should read the first two chapters of William Sewell’s Logics of History, even though it is focused on European history.

If you have not yet read these classic texts relevant to the study of history, you should do so now:

• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
• Karl Marx, esp. the Communist Manifesto, the 18th Brumaire
• Lenin’s theories of imperialism (which build on J. A. Hobson)
• Gayatri Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?
• Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish
• James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State
• Hayden White, Metahistory

You should also know the following influential works that are rooted, in whole or in part, in Latin American history:

• Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
• Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past
• Enzo Faletto and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Dependency and Development in Latin America

To help in understanding the importance of these texts on the development of our field, see:

• Miguel Angel Centeno and Fernando López-Alves, The Other Mirror: Grand Theory Through the Lens of Latin America;
• Patrick Iber, Poverty of the Imagination, which explains the core social scientific frameworks that have influenced Latin American studies. You might want to read these before engaging Faletto and Cardoso, which can be a bit of a slog for students today.

Be prepared to discuss the ways that these theoretical texts inform other works you read, including textbooks such as

• Tulio Halperín Donghi, Contemporary History of Latin America
• Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Economic History of Latin America

On the idea of Latin America itself, I recommend:

• Aims McGuinness, “Searching for ‘Latin America’: Race and Sovereignty in the Americas in the 1850s.” In Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, edited by Nancy Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 87-107.
• Leslie Bethell, “Brazil and ‘Latin America’,” Journal of Latin American Studies 42 (2010): 457-485.
• Mauricio Tenorio, The Idea of Latin America.

Now, on the big historiographical debates, let’s begin with Brazilian slavery:

• Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen, is very dated but kicks off the debate;
• Gilberto Freyre, Casa Grande e Senzala [The Masters and the Slaves], is also very dated, but fundamental to both historiography and Brazilian politics and nationalism;
• Understand the contribution of Caio Prado Jr.’s Formação do Brasil Contemporâneo;
• Jeffrey D. Needell, “The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in 1850: Historiography, Slave Agency and Statesmanship,” Journal of Latin American Studies 33, no. 4 (November 2001): 681-711.
• Emilia Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Realities;
• Stuart Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society;
• Sidney Chaloub, “Precariousness of Freedom in a Slave Society,” International Review of Social History 56, no. 3 (December 2011): 405-439.
• Be able to describe the evolution of this historiographical cluster. Choose at least one additional book published in the last ten years on related themes and consider the ways that the questions it answers, and how it answers them, differ from previous scholarship.

Now let’s turn to the Mexican Revolution:

• John Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, is probably the one book every person in our field must read;
• Friedrich Katz, Secret War in Mexico showcases a transnational approach; Katz’s Pancho Villa is also very much worth reading when you have time for 800-900 pages;
• John Womack’s Cambridge History of Latin America essay shows the evolution of his own thinking and is a clear statement of revisionist thinking about the Revolution;
• For deeper historiographical understanding, I recommend the chapter on Womack from Pedro L. San Miguel, “Muchos Mexicos.” Imaginarios históricos sobre México en Estados Unidos, Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José Luis Mora, 2016.
• Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution is long but a necessary attempt to resolve interpretive debates; 
• Luis González y González, Pueblo en vilo [or, San José de Gracia: Mexican Village in Transition in English translation] is probably the most important microhistory in our field;
• Mary Kay Vaughn, Cultural Politics in Revolution breaks away from the boys’ club and introduces a more cultural approach;
• Find two relatively recent books on the Mexican Revolution that showcase new approaches. How do these works bring in new actors (women? workers? the environment?) and therefore new arguments into these classic works?

To think about the way the field has processed various trends in global historiography, you should read:

• Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent, Everyday Forms of State Formation
• Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation [on subaltern studies]
• Steve Haber, How Latin America Fell Behind [on cliometrics]
• Then read the debate between Mallon, Haber, and others on the “New Cultural History” in the Hispanic American Historical Review 79, no. 2 (1999). Establish your own position!

Here’s a mini-trilogy showcasing methodological innovations in the literature on socialism and dictatorship in Chile:

• Peter Winn, Weavers of Revolution [on working-class history]
• Heidi Tinsman, Partners in Conflict [on women’s history, and you should read it after Winn]
• Steven Stern, The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile [on memory studies, which you should read after Winn and Tinsman]

Other texts that everyone in our field should have read:

• Angel Rama, The Lettered City;
• José Moya, Cousins and Strangers;
• Rebecca Scott, Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery;
• Barbara Weinstein, The Color of Modernity;
• At least one book by Ada Ferrer;
• Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre;
• Francisco Scarano, “The Jíbaro Masquerade and the Subaltern Politics of Creole Identity Formation in Puerto Rico, 1745-1823,” American Historical Review 101, no. 5 (December 1996), pp. 1398-1431.
• Gabriela Soto Laveaga, “Uncommon Trajectories: Steroid Hormones, Mexican Peasants, and the Search for a Wild Yam,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (2005): 743-760.

As you add other works to your list, consider books that have won prizes from LASA, CLAH, and the AHA. You should add geographic diversity to the list, covering the Andes, Central America, and other parts of the Caribbean. Don’t neglect the nineteenth century either as you look for more to read—this list doesn’t include much on the independence process yet! At your exam, I will ask you to nominate one work to add to this document, so pick something and be able to explain why you deem its inclusion important.

Finally, every scholar of Latin America must read works in Spanish and Portuguese. When you build out the parts of your list that are most relevant to your own work, consider the historians working in the country you are studying. What are they writing about? Make sure they are represented on your list, as they are also your colleagues. If you working on Latin America from within the U.S. academy, do not reproduce systems of scholarly imperialism.