100 books like Weavers of Revolution

By Peter Winn,

Here are 100 books that Weavers of Revolution fans have personally recommended if you like Weavers of Revolution. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of To Lead As Equals: Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in Chinandega, Nicaragua, 1912-1979

Gillian McGillivray Author Of Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class, and State Formation in Cuba, 1868-1959

From my list on workers, populism, and revolution in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I became curious about US imperialism and Latin American history after reading Gabriel García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. While pursuing a BA in History and Spanish at Dalhousie and an MA and PhD in Latin American Studies and History at Georgetown, I learned that Marquez's fictional banana worker massacre really happened in 1928 Colombia. What made me focus on sugar, rather than bananas, is the fact that sugar’s not really food... it often takes over land where food was planted, and the lack of food leads to a potentially revolutionary situation. I've used the following books in my classes about Revolution, Populism, and Commodities in Latin America at York University's Glendon College.

Gillian's book list on workers, populism, and revolution in Latin America

Gillian McGillivray Why did Gillian love this book?

To get through over a hundred books on my History PhD comprehensive exams list, I allowed myself a maximum of one reading day plus a maximum of one double-sided cue card per book.

Jeff Gould crammed so much super cool theory about populism and revolution, workers, and women into his beautifully written book that he got four cue cards and three days! Gould explains that the first Somoza (named “Anastasio”) rose to power largely thanks to US influence, but, once there, he built his own following and passed some remarkably progressive reforms, at least on paper.

The book changed the way I think about populism and revolution in Latin America, completely inspiring the PhD research that became my first book and my current project on rural populism in Brazil.
To Lead as Equals shows how powerful sugar workers can be when rural sugar-cane cutters unite with industrial sugar-factory workers, and…

By Jeffrey L. Gould,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked To Lead As Equals as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book is a carefully argued study of peasants and labor during the Somoza regime, focusing on popular movements in the economically strategic department of Chinandega in western Nicaragua. Jeffrey Gould traces the evolution of group consciousness among peasants and workers as they moved away from extreme dependency on the patron to achieve an autonomous social and political ideology. In doing so, he makes important contributions to peasant studies and theories of revolution, as well as our understanding of Nicaraguan history.

According to Gould, when Anastasio Somoza first came to power in 1936, workers and peasants took the Somocista reform…


Book cover of Sandino's Daughters Revisited: Feminism in Nicaragua

Gillian McGillivray Author Of Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class, and State Formation in Cuba, 1868-1959

From my list on workers, populism, and revolution in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I became curious about US imperialism and Latin American history after reading Gabriel García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. While pursuing a BA in History and Spanish at Dalhousie and an MA and PhD in Latin American Studies and History at Georgetown, I learned that Marquez's fictional banana worker massacre really happened in 1928 Colombia. What made me focus on sugar, rather than bananas, is the fact that sugar’s not really food... it often takes over land where food was planted, and the lack of food leads to a potentially revolutionary situation. I've used the following books in my classes about Revolution, Populism, and Commodities in Latin America at York University's Glendon College.

Gillian's book list on workers, populism, and revolution in Latin America

Gillian McGillivray Why did Gillian love this book?

I came across Margaret Randall’s Sandino’s Daughters Revisited while researching my MA thesis on women in the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution, and I love to use it with students since it tells a fascinating history through individuals’ stories.

The book is a really interesting follow-up to Sandino’s Daughters, which was based on interviews Randall did before the triumph of the revolution. Here, Randall is interviewing many of the same women after the Sandinistas lost democratic elections in 1990, offering lots of insights to readers about the complex causes for the triumph and downfall of the revolution.

The twelve women came from many different backgrounds, including: Diana Espinoza, who worked for an employee-owned factory during the revolutionary period; Daisy Zamora, a poet who served as vice-minister of culture during the revolution, and Dora Maria Vidaluz Meneses, the daughter of a Somozan official who shares some really moving stories about her time living…

By Margaret Randall,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sandino's Daughters Revisited as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Sandino's Daughters, Margaret Randall's conversations with Nicaraguan women in their struggle against the dictator Somoza in 1979, brought the lives of a group of extraordinary female revolutionaries to the American and world public. The book remains a landmark. Now, a decade later, Randall returns to interview many of the same women and others. In Sandino's Daughters Revisited, they speak of their lives during and since the Sandinista administration, the ways in which the revolution made them strong--and also held them back. Ironically, the 1990 defeat of the Sandinistas at the ballot box has given Sandinista women greater freedom to express…


Book cover of Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History

Gillian McGillivray Author Of Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class, and State Formation in Cuba, 1868-1959

From my list on workers, populism, and revolution in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I became curious about US imperialism and Latin American history after reading Gabriel García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. While pursuing a BA in History and Spanish at Dalhousie and an MA and PhD in Latin American Studies and History at Georgetown, I learned that Marquez's fictional banana worker massacre really happened in 1928 Colombia. What made me focus on sugar, rather than bananas, is the fact that sugar’s not really food... it often takes over land where food was planted, and the lack of food leads to a potentially revolutionary situation. I've used the following books in my classes about Revolution, Populism, and Commodities in Latin America at York University's Glendon College.

Gillian's book list on workers, populism, and revolution in Latin America

Gillian McGillivray Why did Gillian love this book?

This was a really amazing book to read with students in my graduate course on the social history of commodities.

It contributes some really original theory about power and race, the peasantry, politics, and other major topics that those more inclined towards sociology or political science would appreciate. It is a little like the Dominican Republic version of Jeff Gould’s To Lead as Equals on Nicaragua or Gladys McCormick’s The Logic of Compromise: Authoritarianism, Betrayal, and Revolution in Rural Mexico, 1935-1965.

I am constantly telling students and colleagues about the fascinating arguments presented in Foundations of Despotism, which echoes Gould’s evidence that dictators cannot remain in power through violence, alone.

Turits’ interviews with peasants and letters that he found in the Dominican national archives from humble rural peoples show that after first coming to power in the early 1930s—ostensibly purely because of US support—the Trujillo regime built a rural base…

By Richard Lee Turits,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Foundations of Despotism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book explores the history of the Dominican Republic as it evolved from the first European colony in the Americas into a modern nation under the rule of Rafael Trujillo. It investigates the social foundations of Trujillo's exceptionally enduring and brutal dictatorship (1930-1961) and, more broadly, the way power is sustained in such non-democratic regimes.

The author reveals how the seemingly unilateral imposition of power by Trujillo in fact depended on the regime's mediation of profound social and economic transformations, especially through agrarian policies that assisted the nation's large independent peasantry. By promoting an alternative modernity that sustained peasants' free…


Book cover of Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States

Gillian McGillivray Author Of Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class, and State Formation in Cuba, 1868-1959

From my list on workers, populism, and revolution in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I became curious about US imperialism and Latin American history after reading Gabriel García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. While pursuing a BA in History and Spanish at Dalhousie and an MA and PhD in Latin American Studies and History at Georgetown, I learned that Marquez's fictional banana worker massacre really happened in 1928 Colombia. What made me focus on sugar, rather than bananas, is the fact that sugar’s not really food... it often takes over land where food was planted, and the lack of food leads to a potentially revolutionary situation. I've used the following books in my classes about Revolution, Populism, and Commodities in Latin America at York University's Glendon College.

Gillian's book list on workers, populism, and revolution in Latin America

Gillian McGillivray Why did Gillian love this book?

How could you not love a book that explores the at times hilarious, at times tragic, but always fascinating impact of the banana in the United States and Latin America?

From the changing faces of Chiquita Banana to cookbooks and popular jingles like, “Yes, we have no bananas!” Soluri shows us how the banana became one of the most common fruits in the US diet. At the same time, he shows how US importers and marketers took control over, manipulated, and expanded, much of the production in tropical areas like Honduras.

On the production side, Soluri explores ironies like the fact that the United Fruit Company created the perfect breeding ground for pathogens by shrinking banana gene pools and shoving the same type of banana trees all in a row... or the tragic fact that “macho” banana workers became sterile after refusing to wear protective clothing.

John Soluri’s book is…

By John Soluri,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Banana Cultures as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Bananas, the most frequently consumed fresh fruit in the United States, have been linked to Miss Chiquita and Carmen Miranda, "banana republics," and Banana Republic clothing stores-everything from exotic kitsch, to Third World dictatorships, to middle-class fashion. But how did the rise in banana consumption in the United States affect the banana-growing regions of Central America? In this lively, interdisciplinary study, John Soluri integrates agroecology, anthropology, political economy, and history to trace the symbiotic growth of the export banana industry in Honduras and the consumer mass market in the United States.

Beginning in the 1870s, when bananas first appeared in…


Book cover of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability

Tom Gething Author Of Under a False Flag

From my list on covert ops in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m always delighted when a reader asks, “Did you work for the CIA?” It tells me I achieved the verisimilitude I was striving for in Under a False Flag. I’m also proud that my novel has been included in a university-level Latin American history curriculum. That tells me I got the history right. No aspect of modern history is more intriguing or controversial than the role covert action played, for better or worse, in the Cold War. With the exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took us to the brink of nuclear disaster, the Cold War in Latin America was mostly fought in the shadows with markedly ambivalent achievements.

Tom's book list on covert ops in Latin America

Tom Gething Why did Tom love this book?

The 1973 coup in Chile violently destroyed the freely elected Marxist government of Salvador Allende and installed the brutal 17-year dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. For years afterward suspicions swirled that the U.S. was behind the event. But evidence was largely anecdotal. What is so impressive about this book is Kornbluh’s persistence deploying the Freedom of Information Act to obtain thousands of classified documents related to the coup. Kornbluh connects the dots and reveals the smoking guns. Through facsimiles of actual cables, telexes, and phone memos (many still highly redacted) this dossier allows you to draw your own conclusions about what really happened in Chile.

By Peter Kornbluh,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Pinochet File as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Pinochet File reveals a record of complicity with atrocity by the U.S. government. The documents, first declassified for the original edition of the book, formed the heart of the campaign to hold Gen. Pinochet accountable for murder, torture and terrorism. The New York Times wrote of the original 2003 edition, 'Thanks to Peter Kornbluh, we have the first complete, almost day-to-day and fully documented record of this sordid chapter in Cold War American History.' With this 40th anniversary edition, the record is even more complete and up-to-date.


Book cover of Reagan and Pinochet: The Struggle Over U.S. Policy Toward Chile

Russell C. Crandall Author Of "Our Hemisphere"? The United States in Latin America, from 1776 to the Twenty-First Century

From my list on U.S. involvement in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've been interested in U.S.-Latin American relations ever since my junior year in college when I studied abroad in Chile, a country that had only two years prior been run by dictator Augusto Pinochet. Often referred to as America’s “backyard,” Latin America has often been on the receiving end of U.S. machinations and expansions. In terms of the history of American foreign policy, it's never a dull moment in U.S. involvement in its own hemisphere. I have now had the privilege to work inside the executive branch of the U.S. government on Latin America policy, stints which have forced me to reconsider some of what I had assumed about U.S. abilities and outcomes. 

Russell's book list on U.S. involvement in Latin America

Russell C. Crandall Why did Russell love this book?

So much ink has been spent on the Nixon administration’s early 1970s plotting and policies during the regime of democratic socialist president Salvador Allende. This exquisite book is a sharp reminder that, while far less studied, the Reagan administration was deeply involved in a Chile run by the very political actor who ousted Allende: General Augusto Pinochet. Yet, contrary to what we often assumed, the Reagan team eventually embraced a policy aimed to get Washington’s erstwhile ally out of power. 

By Morris Morley, Chris McGillion,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Reagan and Pinochet as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book is the first comprehensive study of the Reagan administration's policy toward the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile. Based on new primary and archival materials, as well as on original interviews with former US and Chilean officials, it traces the evolution of Reagan policy from an initial 'close embrace' of the junta to a re-evaluation of whether Pinochet was a risk to long-term US interests in Chile and, finally, to an acceptance in Washington of the need to push for a return to democracy. It provides fresh insights into the bureaucratic conflicts that were a key…


Book cover of How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic

June Carolyn Erlick Author Of A Gringa in Bogotá: Living Colombia's Invisible War

From my list on classics for understanding Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I accidentally fell in love with Latin America, a love that has lasted my lifetime. When I was young, I lived in a Dominican neighborhood in New York, learning Spanish from my neighbors. After I graduated from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism I got a job covering the Cuban community in New Jersey because I spoke Spanish. Eventually I ended up living in Colombia and then Managua as a foreign correspondent. Now I edit a magazine at Harvard about Latin America. It's not just the news that interests me; I love the cadence of the language, the smell and taste of its varied cuisine, the warmth of the people, the culture, and, yes, soccer.

June's book list on classics for understanding Latin America

June Carolyn Erlick Why did June love this book?

Despite its garish cover, How to Read Donald Duck is not about cartoons. It's a penetrating analysis from a Marxist and nationalist perspective that helped me understand the influence of Disney in particular and U.S. entertainment exports in general in Latin America. The book was originally published in Spanish as "Para Leer el Pato Donald." The book was considered so dangerous that the Chilean Navy dumped the entire third edition into the sea during the dictatorship. 

The book was my first insight into what's known in leftist circles as U.S. cultural imperialism. A lot has changed and lot has not since the book was first written, but it makes me reflect on the role U.S. cultural products play in Latin America today.

By Ariel Dorfman, Armand Mattelart,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked How to Read Donald Duck as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

First published in 1971, How to Read Donald Duck shocked readers by revealing how capitalist ideology operates in our most beloved cartoons. Having survived bonfires, impounding and being dumped into the ocean by the Chilean army, this controversial book is once again back on our shelves.

Written and published during the blossoming of Salvador Allende's revolutionary socialism, the book examines how Disney comics not only reflect capitalist ideology, but are active agents working in this ideology's favour. Focusing on the hapless mice and ducks of Disney, curiously parentless, marginalised and always short of cash, Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart expose…


Book cover of Me Llamo Celia/My Name Is Celia: La Vida de Celia Cruz/The Life Of Celia Cruz

Bobbito Garcia Author Of Aim High, Little Giant, Aim High!

From my list on BIPOC Shorties for kids.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a parent who along with my co-parent is raising a Black and Puerto Rican child in a world that is consumed with misunderstanding our communities of people. We seek books that speak volumes to our core, and that can expand our son’s horizons so that he understands himself as well as others.

Bobbito's book list on BIPOC Shorties for kids

Bobbito Garcia Why did Bobbito love this book?

I honestly think I enjoyed this book even more than my son, ha ha!

The richness of the illustrations are stunning, and Celia’s narrative is groundbreaking. Ultimately, it’s a wonderful story told in both Spanish and English, which has worked to connect us to two languages that are dear to our family.

By Monica Brown, Rafael López (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Me Llamo Celia/My Name Is Celia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This bilingual book allows young readers to enter Celia Cruz's life as she becomes a well-known singer in her homeland of Cuba, then moves to New York City and Miami where she and others create a new type of music called salsa. School Library Journal has named My Name is Celia "[a]n exuberant picture-book biography ...a brilliant introduction to a significant woman and her music."


Book cover of Alpha Boys School: Cradle Of Jamaican Music

Eric Abbey Author Of Distillation of Sound: Dub and the Creation of Culture

From my list on books to nod your head to: Jamaican inspired music and sounds.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor, writer, and musician who performs and produces Jamaican influenced music.  I have always loved ska, reggae, dancehall, and dub music since I first heard it as a child.  Since starting in ska bands, I have been lucky enough to travel around the world performing and was extremely lucky to be able to study and record in Jamaica at the University of the West Indies Reggae Studies Unit and Anchor Music Studios.  In writing about music, I had always taken an outsider looking in approach before this book.  For this book I wrote from the inside, and everything changed because of it. 

Eric's book list on books to nod your head to: Jamaican inspired music and sounds

Eric Abbey Why did Eric love this book?

I loved reading this book for the detailed history of Alpha Boys school and its relationship to Jamaican popular music. 

Augustyn has written many books on ska and the people involved with it, but this book is detailed and lively in its look at the starting point of the genre.  As a performer, writer, and lover of this music I could not stop reading this book.  I strongly recommend this book and all the books from Augustyn.

This book is not only for ska fans but everyone who is interested in the history of a pivotal institution in Jamaica that has helped countless numbers of people excel in life.  

By Heather Augustyn, Adam Reeves,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Alpha Boys School as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The true story of the school that started a musical revolution.

Ska and reggae music has reverbarated around the planet but without the musical brilliance of the graduates of Jamaica's Alpha Boys' School it might never have been that way.

From the Jamaican big band swing of the 1940s and '50s through the ska and rocksteady of the 1960s, the global roots reggae explosion of the 1970s and the rise of the new dancehall style in the 1980s, graduates of Alpha Boys' School have been right at the heart of the musical action, composing, arranging and playing on thousands of…


Book cover of Studies in the History of Latin American Economic Thought

Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak Author Of The Political Economy of Latin American Independence

From my list on the history of political economy in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a Brazilian economist working in Paris and dedicated to historical scholarship. I have always been deeply impressed by the political weight carried by economic arguments across Latin America. Debates on economic policy are typically contentious everywhere, but in Latin America, your alignment with different traditions of political economy can go a long way to determine your intellectual and political identity. At the same time, our condition as peripheral societies – and hence net importers of ideas from abroad – raises perennial questions about the meaning of a truly Latin American political economy. I hope this list will be a useful entry point for people similarly interested in these problems.

Carlos' book list on the history of political economy in Latin America

Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak Why did Carlos love this book?

A living illustration of the nexus between Rumania and Latin America in the field of political economy, this work is the English translation of a monograph written in Spanish by Popescu, a Rumanian economist who emigrated to Argentina after WWII.

Still unparalleled in scope, the book retraces the evolution of political economy in Spanish America since the early days of European domination in the continent, highlighting the dissemination of scholastic, physiocratic, and classical economic doctrines as well as their transformation in the hands of Latin Americans.

Tellingly, Raúl Prebisch does not occupy center stage, appearing instead as a simple epilogue to the long odyssey chronicled by Popescu.

By Oreste Popescu,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Studies in the History of Latin American Economic Thought as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the first study of the development of economic thought in Latin America. It traces the development of economic ideas during five centuries and across the whole continent. It addresses a wide range of approaches to economic issues including:
* the scholastic tradition in Latin American economies
* the quantity theory of money
* cameralism
* human captal theory.


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Latin America, Augusto Pinochet, and socialism?

Latin America 122 books
Socialism 53 books