New Books in Latin American Studies

The consequences of U.S. border policies through the experiences of Honduran migrants. Hondurans have been at the heart of some of the most visible migration phenomena in the last few years, as well as the direct target of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy. In Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds (U California Press, 2026) Amelia Frank-Vitale offers a detailed portrait of the Honduran exodus and what it reveals about the broader consequences of changing US border enforcement policies. She highlights the stories of those who are often presented as unsympathetic: deported young men implicitly associated with the very violence they are trying to flee. In the process, she challenges underlying assumptions frequently held by policy makers and humanitarian agencies. Connecting overlapping regimes of mobility control, from the invisible gangland borders within San Pedro Sula to the growing expansiveness of the U.S. border's reach, this book shows how deportation does not deter migration but, in fact, keeps people moving, and how U.S. policies fuel the migration "crisis" they claim to address. Drawing from her own experiences accompanying migrant caravans over many years, Frank-Vitale also explores how caravans emerge as both protest movement and migration tactic in response to this expanding border regime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

The Political Economy of Oil in Venezuela: Class Conflict, the State, and the World Market (Brill, 2026) is the latest book from Dr. Kristin Ciupa, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Regina. Published with Brill, this book provides a detailed and engaging account of the historical development of Venezuela’s political economy and interrelated oil industry. The book takes us from Venezuela prior to the advent of oil discovery where the economy was dependent on a limited range of export-oriented agricultural crops, all the way up to the Bolivarian government project instituted by Hugo Chavez. Of course, Venezuela has been at the centre of political turmoil at present, and it is crucial to get a strong, historical understanding of Venezuela’s political economy, connected as it is with broader regional and global developments, to more concretely comprehend the current moment. Ciupa situates Venezuela within not only the broader ‘Pink Tide’ that swept different parts of Latin America since the1990s, but also within the dynamics and tendencies of oil extraction and class politics at a local and international scale. Much of the literature has seen Venezuela as trapped in the classic ‘resource curse’, where oil-exporting developing countries earn windfall revenues but have been unable to translate that to sustainable growth and development, which is usually deemed to be due to poor economic planning, weak institutions, and a lack of incentives for governments to invest. Ciupa’s book argues, instead, that the interplay between national and international structures and relations of power, in Venezuela and in the global market, serve to perpetuate oil dependence. In making this argument, Ciupa presents a detailed, historical analysis of the ways in which the country was subsumed into the global economy as an oil exporter, tracing Venezuela’s development and political economy through its prior dictatorships, the crises of the twentieth century, and then finally through the revolutionary Bolivarian government led by Hugo Chavez and then Nicolas Maduro. Kristin Ciupa’s new book is a detailed, theoretically invigorated, and careful examination of Venezuela and its oil industry, which is still at the centre of geopolitical struggles more broadly today. Elliot Dolan-Evans is a sessional lecturer and tutor in law at Monash University and RMIT. His research investigates the political economy of global capitalism, forms of international governance, and questions of war and peace. His first book, Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF and the Conflict in Ukraine, is now out with Bristol University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

Why did Langston Hughes's translations of Mexican and Cuban stories go unpublished for nearly a century? A landmark book—the first complete publication of Langston Hughes’s translations of thirty-three stories by eighteen Mexican and Cuban writers In late 1934, Langston Hughes, already established as a leading voice of literary Black America, traveled to Mexico City, where he stayed for more than five months and began translating short fiction by prominent Mexican and Cuban writers. These stories, as he wrote to a friend, explore “the revolutions and uprisings, sugar cane, Negroes, Indians, corrupt generals, [and] American imperialists,” and are “mostly all left stories, because practically all the writers down here are left these days.” But when Hughes proposed publishing the stories as a book, to be titled Troubled Lands: Stories of Mexico and Cuba as Translated by Langston Hughes (Princeton University Press, 2026), his agent discouraged him from further pursuing the project and it remained unpublished, until now, with only a handful of the translations making their way into contemporary magazines. This volume presents Hughes’s translations of these stories together for the first time as he originally envisioned. Edited by Ricardo Wilson, the book also features an introduction and brief biographies of the included writers. Troubled Lands features thirty-three stories by eighteen writers, including Rafael Felipe Muñoz, Nellie Campobello, Lino Novás Calvo, Luis Felipe Rodríguez, Germán List Arzubide, Pablo de la Torriente-Brau, and Juan de la Cabada. The collection depicts Mexico in the wake of its revolution and Cuba in the years between the brutal regimes of Machado and Batista. Hughes was a noted translator of poetry, but his commitment to translating fiction is less well known. Troubled Lands provides a window into this important dimension of his work and illuminates his deep interest in Mexico and Cuba. Ricardo A. Wilson II is a creative writer and scholar. He is associate professor of English at Williams College and founder and executive director of The Outpost Foundation. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

How do people justify what others see as transgression? Taking that question to the Persian-Muslim and Latin-Christian worlds over the period 1200 to 1700, Justifying Transgression: Muslims, Christians, and the Law - 1200 to 1700(de Gruyter, 2023) shows that people in both these worlds invested considerable energy in worrying, debating, and writing about proscribed practices. It compares how people in the two worlds came to terms with the proscriptions of sodomy, idolatry, and usury. When historians speak of the gap between premodern practice and the legal theory of the time, they tend to ignore the myriad of justifications that filled this gap. Moreover, a focus on justification evens out many of the contrasts that have been alleged to exist between the two worlds, or the Muslim and Christian worlds more generally. The similarities outweigh the differences in the ways people came to terms with the various rules of divine law. The level of flexibility of the theologians and jurists in charge of divine law varied more over time and by topic than between the two worlds. Both worlds also saw the development of ever more sophisticated justifications. Amid the increasing complexity of justifications, a particular kind of reasoning emerged: that good outcomes are more important than upholding rules for their own sake. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

Why do supposedly accountability-enhancing electoral reforms often fail in young democracies? How can legislators serve their constituents when parties control the necessary resources? Unity through Particularism: How Electoral Reforms Influence Parties and Legislative Behavior (Cambridge University Press, 2026) by Dr. Lucia Motolinia sheds light on these questions and more by explaining how parties can use personal vote-seeking incentives in order to decrease intra-party dissent. Studying a unique electoral reform in Mexico, the book provides a detailed description of how institutional incentives can conflict. It draws on a variety of rich, original data sources on legislative behavior and organization in 20 Mexican states to develop a novel explanation of how electoral reforms can amplify competing institutional incentives. In settings where legislative rules and candidate selection procedures favor parties, legislators may lack the resources necessary to build voter support. If this is the case, party leaders can condition access to these resources on loyalty to the party's political agenda. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

Ken Chitwood's Borícua Muslims: Everyday Cosmopolitanism among Puerto Rican Converts to Islam (University of Texas Press, 2025), uses rich ethnographic fieldwork across multiple cities and the digital space to capture the complex lived realities of Puerto Rican Muslims both on the island and in the United States. The study is attuned to the archipelago’s context that accents Puerto Rican Islam, such as through histories that link it to Andalusian Spain, and culture, especially through foodscapes. Puerto Rico also has a diverse Arab Muslim diasporic population, especially Palestinians. Due to this diversity of Muslim experiences, throughout the book there emerge conversations about the boundaries of Islam in relation to culture, ethnicity, and theology. At times, when these varied communities share ritual and communal space together, questions of authenticity unfold, such as over language or notions of piety. Despite moments of tension around tribalism and questions of legitimacy, we learn that often Islam for both these communities is understood through their experiences of colonialism, and so anti-colonial registers of Islam influence the solidarity building and social justice organizing that unites Puerto Rican and Palestinian Muslims. The book also has an accompanying Spotify playlist that you definitely should check out. This book will be of interest to anyone working on Islam in South America and/or North America, and Arab and Palestinian diasporic studies, and food studies. Ken Chitwood is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer with the Department for the Study of Religion at Universität Bayreuth and Affiliate of the University of Southern California's Center for Religion and Civic Culture. Shobhana Xavier is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Queen’s University. More details about her research and scholarship may be found here. She may be reached at shobhana.xavier@queensu.ca. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

In 1760, following the largest slave revolt in the eighteenth-century British Empire, the Afro-Caribbean word Obeah first appeared in British colonial law. In Archival Irruptions, Katharine Gerbner traces how British authorities in Jamaica came to criminalize Obeah, a practice that was variously seen as a healing method, an Africana religion, a science, and a form of witchcraft. Gerbner shows that in the years directly preceding its criminalization, for enslaved Africans and Maroons, Obeah was a prophetic practice tied to healing and death rites. Drawing on Moravian missionary archives, Gerbner theorizes these descriptions of African religious beliefs, rituals, and concepts as "irruptions" moments when Africana epistemologies break the narrative of a European-authored archival document. In these irruptions, we see European assertions of authority through the lens of Obeah. Moreover, we find that the modern category of religion is rooted in the histories of slavery, rebellion, and the criminalization of Black religious practices. Gerbner's search for archival irruptions not only creates an opportunity to write an alternative narration about Obeah; it provides a new methodology for all those conducting archival research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

The New Kingdom of Granada: The Making and Unmaking of Spain's Atlantic Empire (Duke UP, 2025) tells the history of the making and unmaking of empire in the diverse and decentralized Indigenous landscapes of the Northern Andes. Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez examines the intricate and disputed processes that reshaped the peoples and landscapes of present-day Colombia into a kingdom within the global Spanish monarchy. Drawing on correspondence, visitation reports, judicial records, maps, textiles, and accounting and legal documents created by Europeans and Indigenous peoples, Muñoz-Arbeláez outlines the painstaking century-long effort between 1530 and 1630 to consolidate the kingdom. A diverse group of people that included Indigenous interpreters, scribes, and intellectuals spearheaded these projects, which eventually expanded colonial control outward from its base in the highland Andean plateaus down to the lowland river valleys. Meanwhile, autonomous Indigenous political projects constantly threatened imperial rule, as rebels often encircled the kingdom and seized the corridors that linked it to Spain. By foregrounding the kingdom’s difficult establishment and tenuous hold on power, Muñoz-Arbeláez challenges traditional understandings of imperial politics and the myriad ways Indigenous peoples participated in, disputed, and negotiated the establishment of colonial rule. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

Who gets to live a life with dignity? Each day, families around the world make the difficult decision to leave their homes in search of safety, stability, and opportunity. For many migrant families, this search centers on access to strong, caring, and equitable educational systems that enable children to flourish. Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life (Stanford UP, 2025) follows the lives of 16 migrant families from Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as they navigate the promises and challenges of the American education system. Drawing on immersive ethnographic research in homes and schools from 2018 to 2021, Gabrielle Oliveira offers an intimate portrait of these families' experiences. She weaves together stories of parental sacrifice, children's educational and migration journeys, and educators' responses to trauma—all shaped by the additional disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Oliveira highlights the perseverance of families confronting the overlapping crises of border detention, family separation, and a public health emergency. These experiences forced them to reimagine education and what it means to build a future in the U.S. By examining how migrant children engage in classrooms, how teachers understand their needs, and how hope evolves, this book offers vital insights into the intersections of schooling and immigration. It calls for more responsive educational practices and policies that affirm the dignity and potential of all migrant children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

Over the last thirty years, Latin America has undergone an unprecedented wave of reparations targeting victims of political violence during military regimes, Indigenous and Afro-Latin groups affected by historical processes of dispossession, and citizens suffering from environmental harm. Reparations prompt us to face uncomfortable pasts and in so doing, create conditions for imagination of multiple futures. In representing the experiences and hopes of those affected by political violence in El Salvador and Argentina, environmental harm in Guatemala and Peru, and colonial dispossession in Chile and Bolivia, reparations are built upon conflictive forms of future imagination, translation of harm and new forms of belonging to and beyond the nation state, which reifies as much as challenges state authority over the promises of actual repair. In today’s Latin American political debate, hopes for justice and democracy remain anchored to the question of the kinds of future that can be imagined through and after reparation. Piergiorgio Di Giminiani, Helene Risør, and Karine Vanthuyne discuss their edited volume, The Futures of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, Translation, and Belonging (Rutgers UP, 2026) Piergiorgio Di Giminiani is an associate professor in anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is the author of Sentient Lands: Indigeneity, Property, and Political Imagination in Neoliberal Chile and co-editor of Theorizing Relations in Indigenous South America. Helene Risør is a teaching associate professor in anthropology and visiting research fellow at Copenhagen University. Professor Risør is also a senior researcher at the Millennium Institute for Research on Violence and Democracy based in Chile. Professor Karine Vanthuyne is professor in Anthropology at the University of Ottawa. Professor Vanthuyne is the author of La presence d’un passé de violences: mémoires et identités autochtones dans le Guatemala postgénocide, as well as co-editor of Power through Testimony: Residential schools in the age of reconciliation in Canada. Shodona Kettle is a PhD candidate at the Institute of the Americas, University College London. Her research explores demands for reparations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Website here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies