Author: Evan Rothera

Evan C. Rothera is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the History Department at Penn State University. His dissertation examines civil wars and reconstructions in the U.S., Mexico, and Argentina. He specialises in 19th Century U.S., Latin American, and transnational/global history.
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Book Review: The FBI in Latin America: The Ecuador Files by Marc Becker

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While scholars have devoted considerable attention to CIA activities in Latin America during the Cold War, they have spent less time examining intelligence-gathering before 1947, when the CIA was created. Marc Becker, currently Professor of History at Truman State University and author of several books on Ecuador, argues in The FBI in Latin America that scholars need to study FBI operations in Latin America in the 1940s. Continue reading

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Book Review: An American Genocide by Benjamin Madley

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In ‘An American Genocide’, Benjamin Madley analyses the devastating demographic decline of California Indians. California’s Native American population declined from about 150,000 people to 30,000 in the period 1846-1873. Madley draws heavily on the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. As he explains, this convention provides a powerful analytical tool to help scholars explain what happened to California’s indigenous people. Continue reading

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Book review: A Short History of U.S. Interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean by Alan McPherson

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In A Short History of U.S. Interventions, part of Wiley-Blackwell’s Viewpoints/Punto de Vista series, Alan McPherson analyses U.S. interventions in Latin America from the No Transfer resolution of 1811 through the present-day drug wars. McPherson argues that the foremost goal of U.S. policymakers was ‘political stability and political cultural change’ (4). Economic and other motivations certainly played a role, but he asserts that every intervention ‘harboured above all political motives’ (4). Continue reading