The Mirabal sisters

Remembering the Mirabal Sisters

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women honors three sisters who were murdered by the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.
A poster used in Japan to attract immigrants to Brazil. It reads: "Let's go to South America (Brazil highlighted) with families."

Asian South America

The migration of Asian people—from India, from China, from Japan—to South America and the Caribbean began as early as the sixteenth century.
Painting at Museo Regional de Palmillas, Yanga Veracruz

Mexico’s First Liberated City Commemorates Its Founding

The City of Yanga was founded after a group of enslaved Africans, led by Gaspar Yanga, rebelled against colonial rule.
Portrait of Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo

The Women (Real and Imagined) Resisting Caudillos

In Latin America and the Caribbean, women's groups have acted to oppose military dictatorships. In fiction, their roles are rarely that of protagonist.
Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers

How Mexican and Cuban Music Influenced the Blues

The pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton once told an ethnomusicologist that real jazz tunes needed "tinges of Spanish."
Hernan Cortes, Spanish Conquistador meeting Moctezuma II Aztec Emperor

The Mexica Didn’t Believe the Conquistadors Were Gods

The indigenous Mexica (Aztec) people were overwhelmed by a superior technological force ruthlessly used against them.
Mexican film star Raquel Torres, circa 1930

La Pelona: The Hispanic-American Flapper

Flapperismo was no more appreciated by Hispanic guardians of traditional femininity than it was by Anglo-American ones.
The Birth of the Monroe Doctrine by Clyde O. DeLand

The Monroe Doctrine’s Checkered Past

This 1823 policy initially focused on preventing European colonization in the Americas. But different U.S. presidents have used it to mean different things.
A tank in front of the National Congress of Brazil during the 1964 coup d'etat

The Recipe for a Coup D’État

Why were there so many coups in Latin America?
mesoamerican ballgame

A Mesoamerican Ball Game Returns

An ancient ball game called Ulama is making a comeback in Mexico. What do we know about the earlier iteration of the game?