Minor Omissions: Children in Latin American History and Society

by Tobias Hecht (Editor)

Overview

Latin American history—the stuff of wars, elections, conquests, inventions, colonization, and all those other events and processes attributed to adults—has also been lived and partially forged by children. Taking a fresh look at Latin American and Caribbean society over the course of more than half a millennium, this book explores how the omission of children from the region's historiography may in fact be no small matter.
    Children currently make up one-third of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean, and over the centuries they have worked, played, worshipped, committed crimes, and fought and suffered in wars. Regarded as more promising converts to the Christian faith than adults, children were vital in European efforts to invent loyal subjects during the colonial era. In the contemporary economies of Latin America and the Caribbean—where 23 percent of people live on a dollar per day or less—the labor of children may spell the difference between survival and starvation for millions of households.
    Minor Omissions brings together scholars of history, anthropology, religion, and art history as well as a talented young author who has lived in the streets of a Brazilian city since the age of nine. The book closes with the prophetic dystopian tale "The Children's Rebellion" by the noted Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299180331
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	09/07/2002
Series:	Living in Latin America
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Tobias Hecht is the author of At Home in the Street: Street Children of Northeast Brazil. A freelance writer, editor, and literary translator, he holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction Hecht Tobias
1. Sketches of Childhood: Children in Colonial Andean Art and Society Dean Carolyn
2. Model Children and Models for Children in Early Mexico Lipsett-Rivera Sonya
3. Historical Perspectives on Illegitimacy and Illegitimates in Latin America Milanich Nara
4. Down and Out in Havana: Foundlings in Eighteenth-Century Cuba González Ondina E.
5. Minor Offenses: Youth, Crime, and Law in Eighteenth-Century Lima Prem Bianca
6. The State, the Family, and Marginal Children in Latin America Guy Donna J.
7. The Child-Saving Movement in Brazil: Ideology in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Rizzini Irene
8. How Haitian Artists Disclose Childhood of All Ages Benson LeGrace
9. Victims, Heroes, Enemies: Children in Central American Wars Peterson Anna L. Read Kay Almere
10. August Veríssimo Bruna
11. Children and Contemporary Latin America Hecht Tobias
The Children's Rebellion Rossi Cristina Peri
Glossary
Contributors

Editorial Reviews

"Unique and pioneering. There is no volume that compares with its 500-year historical scope."—Dain Borges, University of Chicago

From the Publisher