Review

General Books

Women in Latin American and the Caribbean makes an important contribution to the "Restoring Women to History" series edited by Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel. It begins with an excellent chronology of Latin American and Caribbean history from the earliest civilizations' domestication of maize (the staple crop of the region) through the return of the Panama Canal to Panama at the turn of the century. This timeline is an invaluable resource for both Latin American specialists and those teaching comparative world history. In the introductory section of the text, the series editors discuss the importance of recognizing the range of women's roles in world history. Noting that women have too often been represented as the "exotic other" when included in many histories of non-Western, post-colonial societies, Johnson-Odim and Strobel remind us that women are not members of a "monolithic" category, but rather individuals whose lives and circumstances are shaped by the intersection of sex, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. This introduction, which incorporates information about the household, religious, political and economic roles played by women in other regions covered in the series (Africa, Asia and the Middle East), provides the context for the more detailed discussion of Latin America and Caribbean women that follows. The remaining two sections of the text are written by Navarro and Sánchez Korrol respectively.	1
In Part I, Marysa Navarro focuses on "Women in Pre-Columbian and Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean." This section covers a vast geographical area and five millennia. It provides an overview of the diversity of the pre-European populations who included hunters and gatherers and horticulturists of the Amazon rain forests and Caribbean islands, as well as of the Aztec and Maya empires of Central America and the dominant Inca empire of the Andes conquered by Spanish conquistadors. The lingering controversies regarding the role and motives of La Malinche/Doña Marina, the indigenous slave who became Cortes' translator, mistress, and ultimately the most powerful woman in colonial New Spain are used to illustrate the ways that women of different ethnic groups were treated by the Spanish during the European conquest and subsequent settlement of the New World. This section also explains gender based labor patterns, noting that decimation of native populations by smallpox and other diseases led conquerors to rely more heavily on the labor of African slaves in Brazil and the Caribbean than was true in Central America. Navarro discusses ways that Portuguese and Spanish social policies differed in other ways, focusing primarily on ways that women and children were affected by rape, concubinage, and eventually intermarriage in different areas. This entire section provides the context for Part II.	2
Virginia Sánchez Korrol focuses on "Women in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Latin America and the Caribbean," emphasizing conditions in Spanish-speaking regions during and after the struggles for independence that gripped the region in the first half of the nineteenth century. The discussion of the wide range of roles women played in independence movements – where they were outspoken activists, nurses, armed resistance fighters in addition to providing a "family" life to soldiers – is very well done. Korrol includes a number of compelling stories of women who risked death and prison to stand up for their beliefs. She also discusses the significance of the struggle for women's access to education and the suffrage movements. This discussion places these social movements within a broader discussion of changing labor and labor circumstances that affected both men and women. The section ends with a discussion of feminism in Latin America today and the struggles that women face in a changing society.	3
In sum, this comprehensive text integrates a rich body of literature concerning variations in Latin American and Caribbean women's roles across time and space. It is a welcome complement to more standard texts about colonial and contemporary Latin America that do not address women's roles and contributions. In conjunction with historical materials from other regions, this text is certainly appropriate for use in undergraduate world history courses. Moreover, it can be supplemented with ethnographic, ethnohistoric and primary sources for upper division and graduate courses focusing on Latin America and Caribbean history and gender.	4
California State University, Long Beach   Jayne Howell

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