Reviews for Roots of Poverty in Latin America

The average rating for Roots of Poverty in Latin America based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-06-10 00:00:00 Alan Armstrong This is an ideal book to read in preparation for a trip to Peru. As it says in its subtitle, The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics covers the whole spectrum of the country in its 512 pages, with a particular emphasis on culture and politics, particularly in the Twentieth Century. Orin Starn and his co-editors have done a sterling job of bringing together so much material that is fascinating. I can see myself as mining the books bibliography for years to come. In addition to the usual Inca and Pre-Inca history, there are essays and poems about socialism and communism, the Shining Path guerrillas, the "War on Drugs" attempt to shut down coca production, a cholera epidemic, the Alberto Fujimori presidency, and a mythical piece about the Aguaruna of the Amazon. There is even a hefty excerpt from Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa's Conversation in the Cathedral, perhaps the greatest of Peruvian novels. There is a threatening speech from Abimael Guzman, founder of the Shining Path movement:The flesh of the reactionaries will rot away, converted into raggedy threads, and this black filth will sink into the mud, and that which remains will be burned and the ashes scattered by the winds of the earth so that only the sinister memory will remain of that which will never return, because it neither can nor should.In reality, that is pretty much what happened to the Shining Path movement: They became a "sinister memory." As for Guzman, he is rotting in prison until the Second Coming. In his book Conquest of the Incas, John Hemming gives one possible reason why it was so easy for the Spanish to conquer the Incas:It was during these campaigns that Huayna-Capac was first informed of the appearance of tall strangers from the sea. He was destined never to see any Europeans. His army and court were struck by a violent epidemic that killed Huayna-Capac in a delirious fever, at some time between 1525 and 1527. The disease may have been malaria, but it could have been smallpox. The Spaniards brought smallpox with them from Europe, and it spread fiercely around the Caribbean among peoples who had no immunity. It could easily have swept from tribe to tribe across Colombia and struck the Inca armies long before the Spaniards themselves sailed down the coast. The epidemic "consumed the greater part" of the Inca court including Huayna-Capac's probable heir, Ninan Cuyuchi. "Countless thousands of common people also died."I could go on like this for pages. This book is absorbing in its multiplicity of viewpoints, all pointing like signposts to more complete material one has not previously considered.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-03-13 00:00:00 Iris Levy Mash-up history of Peru with each section uniquely authored, fiction, poetry, history documented.