The Oligarchy and the Old Regime in Latin America, 1880–1970 by Dennis Gilbert (review)
The book is timely for American readers who have spent the last several months watching a wealthy real estate tycoon attempt to manage the nation as “family enterprise.” In Latin America, beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing until about 1930, important families ruled politically, economically, and socially. Then, events during the first third of the twentieth century (the Mexican Revolution, modern voter laws in Argentina, the Great Depression) ended the oligarchs’ widespread grip on power.