Dennis Gilbert, The Oligarchy and the Old Regime in Latin America, 1880–1970 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), pp. x + 292, £19.95, pb.
whether Wallace Fuentes herself appreciates the full extent of the merits of her work on APRA. Indeed, her hesitation becomes a blind spot. She refrains from seriously engaging with the growing scholarship on the APRA movement – the absence of important titles in her bibliography conspicuously reveals this blind spot – thereby missing out on methodological caveats that might have proved useful to her arguments in Parts 2 and 3. Wallace Fuentes too often takes at face value the published correspondence and testimonies of other major APRA leaders, such as those of Luis Alberto Sánchez, which are traversed by political goals and ambitions and thus would have required a more critical reading. This is a surprising mishap considering the extreme caution with whichWallace Fuentes reads Magda Portal’s sources. Ultimately, this lack of analytical rigour does not lead to any gross historical misinterpretation. It nevertheless thwarts the full revisionist potential of Wallace Fuentes’ analysis for the history of the APRA movement as a whole. Most Scandalous Woman details how intimate, often life-shattering, but also fundamentally liberating political engagement can be. It will be of interest to a large audience. Those interested in radical politics, the history of emotions, gender history and the history of anti-imperialist and anti-oligarchic movements in Latin America will find in this book food for thought. Most Scandalous Woman is above all a tour de force of historical writing. I cannot insist enough on the outstanding quality of Wallace Fuentes as a storyteller. She takes her readers so closely by the hand from beginning to end that her demonstration reads effortlessly. She weaves her historical arguments into a seamless and engaging narrative that takes on an air of fictional writing. Historians should read her book to learn the craft William Cronon called for in his 2013 presidential address, entitled ‘Storytelling’, to the American Historical Association. University professors should assign this book in their classes to have their students fall in love with history. Students in all disciplines involving narrative-based arguments should study this book carefully. They’ll understand the power of rigorous and sensitive historical work. They’ll realise that critical analyses, like novels, can move you to the bone.