Beyond Imagined Communities

Reading and Writing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

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Edited by John Charles Chasteen and Sara Castro-Klaren

Johns Hopkins University Press

Due/Published January 2004, 272 pages, paper

ISBN 0801878535

How did the nationalisms of Latin America's many countries--elaborated in everything from history and fiction to cookery--arise from their common backgrounds in the Spanish and Portuguese empires and their similar populations of mixed European, native, and African origins? Beyond Imagined Communities, discards one answer and provides a rich collection of others.

These essays began as a critique of the argument by Benedict Anderson's highly influential book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Anderson traces Latin American nationalisms to local circulation of colonial newspapers and tours of duty of colonial administrators, but this book shows the limited validity of these arguments.

Instead, Beyond Imagined Communities shows how more diverse cultural influences shaped Latin American nationalisms. Four historians examine social situations: Fran¨ois-Xavier Guerra studies various forms of political communication; Tulio Halper’n Doghi, political parties; Sarah C. Chambers, the feminine world of salons; and Andrew Kirkendall, the institutions of higher education that trained the new administrators. Next, four critics examine production of cultural objects: Fernando Unzueta investigates novels; Sara Castro Klarén, archeology and folklore; Gustavo Verdesio, suppression of unwanted archeological evidence; and Beatriz González Stephan, national literary histories and international expositions.

"Every Latin Americanist will welcome the insight provided by this book into Latin America's complex heterogeneity."--Mario J. Valdés, University of Toronto

Published with The Woodrow Wilson Center Press