Power from Experience: Urban Popular Movements in Late Twentieth-Century Mexico (review)
Giving a nod to democratic forms, the populist era was also marked by an acceptance and even appropriation of elements of black culture for nationalistic purposes, ensuring its popularity far beyond the borders of Latin America. However, periods marked by advances were succeeded by periods of repression, and the restrictions of the neo-liberal decade of the 1980s resulted in a new upsurge of racially defined black mobilization and a final recognition that past claims of the region's racial democracy were a myth. The book ends in 2000, but the author recognizes that the struggle has not ended and points to some of the ways Afro-Latin Americans will likely promote their political, economic, and cultural goals in the future.