Latin American Identities After 1980 takes an interdisciplinary approach to Latin American social and cultural identities. With broad regional coverage, and an emphasis on Canadian perspectives, it focuses on Latin American contact with other cultures and nations. Its sound scholarship combines evidence-based case studies with the Latin American tradition of the essay, particularly in areas where the discourse of the establishment does not match political, social, and cultural realities and where it is difficult to uncover the purposely covert.
This study of the cultural and social Latin America begins with an interpretation of the new Pax Americana, designed in the 1980s by the North in agreement with the Southern elites. As the agreement ties the hands of national governments and establishes new regional and global strategies, a pan–Latin American identity is emphasized over individual national identities. The multi-faceted impacts and effects of globalization in Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and the Caribbean are examined, with an emphasis on social change, the transnationalization and commodification of Latin American and Caribbean arts and the adaptation of cultural identities in a globalized context as understood by Latin American authors writing from transnational perspectives.

Amy Huras is a graduate of the University of Cambridge (St. Edmund’s College) with an M.Phil. in Latin American Studies. Her M.Phil. dissertation “The Ambiguity of the Language Policy of the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1569–1600,” has led to a larger doctoral research project on the process of Castilianization in colonial Peru. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto.

Amy Huras' profile page

Gordana Yovanovich is the author of Julio Cortázar’s Character Mosaic (1991) and Play and the Picaresque (1999), and editor of The New World Order (2003). She has published articles in scholarly journals on the role of character and on play and improvisation. She is also the coordinator and founder of the only bilingual, interdisciplinary Latin American and Caribbean Studies master’s program in Canada.

Amy Huras is a graduate of the University of Cambridge (St. Edmund’s College) with an M.Phil. in Latin American Studies. Her M.Phil. dissertation “The Ambiguity of the Language Policy of the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1569–1600,” has led to a larger doctoral research project on the process of Castilianization in colonial Peru. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto.

Gordana Yovanovich's profile page

''This is an edited book with a long and useful introduction (actually a fine synthesis of the whole book) that expands our understanding of emergent identities in Latin American by addressing the question ‘What does it mean to be Latin American (person or artist) in an age of globalisation?’ Changing local, national and culture area wide identities are considered, especially with reference to their relationships with global political and economic influences.... The essays are well written and the book makes a positive contribution to both Latin American studies and the study of Identity.''

Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2012