The Jaguar series by Scholarly Resources continues to offer well-conceived thematic readers for classroom use. Edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Mark D. Szuchman, the present volume focuses on the urban experience in Latin America, covering the entire chronological span from the pre-Hispanic era to the present. Topics addressed reflect the varied concerns of urban studies, including daily realities, social structure and mobility, municipal governance, and the role of cities in regional development. Szuchman’s introductory chapter provides a good synthetic overview of Latin American urban history, designed to facilitate student access to the readings that follow. In addition, a scholarly commentary preceding each selection alerts the reader to the principal themes developed, the author’s own background, and the historiographical significance of the work.
One virtue of the collection is that most of the authors represented were firsthand, often intimate, observers of the cities their writings describe. Some, such as Jacques Soustelle and Charles Gibson on Tenochtitlan-Mexico, are familiar names, but others, such as Bernabé Cobo on early Lima, Luis dos Santos Vilhena on eighteenth-century Bahia, and Miguel Samper on nineteenth-century Bogotá, are here introduced to English-speaking audiences for the first time. For the contemporary period, the editors effectively interweave selections from Carolina Maria de Jesus’s celebrated memoir of life in the favelas of São Paulo with excerpts from oral histories by her adult children. Only the most indifferent of undergraduates will fail to be moved by her story, or by Jonathan Kandell’s Dantesque portrayal of the slums and garbage dumps of late twentieth-century Mexico City.
