Riots in the Cities

Popular Politics and the Urban Poor in Latin America 1765-1910

Edited by Servando Ortoll, Silvia M. Arrom

Publication date:

01 March 1996

Length of book:

248 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780842025805

The goal of Riots in the Cities, editors Silvia Marina Arrom and Servando Ortoll contend, is to encourage Latin Americanists to rethink standard notions of urban politics before the populist era. The actual political power wielded by the underprivileged city dwellers before the twentieth century has received little scholarly attention or has been downplayed. Researchers often described urban inhabitants as having little influence over both their lives and on the politics of their day. The elite were perceived as having firm control over the political process.

The seven essays in this reader analyze urban riots that broke out in major Latin American population centers between 1765 and 1910. Inspired by the works of Eric Hobsbawm and George Rud,, the authors find that the participants in these riots were far from irrational. The crowds responded to specific social provocation and attacked property rather than people. When taken together these essays challenge the notion that prior to 1910 power was strictly in the hands of the elite. Lower-class city residents, too, held strong opinions and acted on their convictions. Most important, their voices were not unheeded by those who officially wielded power and implemented social policies.

Chapter 1 Popular Politics in Latin America before the Populist Era
Chapter 2 Popular Politics in Mexico City: The Pari·n Riot, 1828
Chapter 3 'Death to the Cemetery': Funerary Reform and Rebellion in Salvador, Brazil, 1836
Chapter 4 The Vintem Riot and Political Culture: Rio de Janeiro, 1880
Chapter 5 The 1893 Bogotazo: Artisans and Public Violence in Late Nineteenth-Century Bogot·
Chapter 6 '°Viva Mexico! °Mueran los yanquis!': The Guadalajara Riots of 1910
Chapter 7 Conclusion: Contention and the Urban Poor in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Latin America

Kudos to Arrom and Ortoll for restoring riots, street celebrations, and other...forms of popular politics and consciousness to the Latin Americanist's research agenda. The seven essays...are all empirically rich and informed by recent trends in social theory. Arrom's conceptual introduction and Charles Tilly's concluding reflections are worth the price of admission alone.