Elites, Masses, and Modernization in Latin America, 1850-1930 - Paperback

by E. Bradford Burns (Author), Thomas E. Skidmore (Author), Virginia Bernhard (Editor)

The interactions between the elites and the lower classes of Latin America are explored from the divergent perspectives of three eminent historians in this volume. The result is a counterbalance of viewpoints on the urban and the rural, the rich and the poor, and the Europeanized and the traditional of Latin America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

E. Bradford Burns advances the view that two cultures were in conflict in nineteenth-century Latin America: that of the modernizing, European-oriented elite, and that of the "common folk" of mixed racial background who lived close to the earth. Thomas E. Skidmore discusses the emerging field of labor history in twentieth-century Latin America, suggesting that the historical roots of today's exacerbated tensions lie in the secular struggle of army against workers that he describes. In the introduction, Richard Graham takes issue with both authors on certain basic premises and points out implications of their essays for the understanding of North American as well as Latin American history.

Author Biography

E. Bradford Burns (1932-1995) was Professor of History at the University of California at Los Angeles. Thomas E. Skidmore is Professor of History at Brown University. Richard Graham is Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Texas at Austin. Editor Virginia Bernhard is Professor Emerita of History at the University of St. Thomas, where the contents of this volume were delivered in their original form as the 1978 B. K. Smith Lectures in History.