Minor Omissions

by Hecht, Tobias

• ISBN13: 9780299180348
• ISBN10: 0299180344
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Tobias Hecht is a freelance writer, editor, and literary translator, he has won research awards from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities LeGrace Benson is Director of the Arts of Haiti Research Project and Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York Carolyn Dean is Chair of the Department of Art History at the University of California, Santa Cruz Ondina E. Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor of History at Reinhardt College Donna J. Guy is Professor of History at Ohio State University Tobias Hecht is an independednt scholar. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities award for independent scholars, he received his B.A., M.I.A., and Graduate Certificate in Latin American and Iberian Studies from Columbia University and his doctorate from the University of Cambridge. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, Professor of Latin American history at Carleton University Nara Milanich is a graduate student and Mellon Fellow in Latin American History at Yale University Cristina Peri Rossi was born and raised in Uruguay but has resided in Spain since she went into exile in 1972. She has published more than twenty books -- novels, poetry, short stories, and one collection of essays -- and been awarded numerous literary prizes, including the Premio Benito Perez Galdos Anna L. Peterson is Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida Bianca Premo, Assistant Professor of History at Emory University Kay Almere Read is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at DePaul University Irene Rizzini is Director of the Center for Research on Childhood of the University of Santa Ursula and Professor at the Department of Social Policy at the Rio de Janeiro State University Bruna Verissimo has lived in the streets of Recife, in Northeast Brazil, since the age of nine. Although she never went to school as a child, she learned to read and write on her own by studying street signs. She is also a self-taught artist. With support from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, she is currently working on an ethnographic research project about life in the streets of Recife

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 3
Sketches of Childhood: Children in Colonial Andean Art and Society	p. 21
Model Children and Models for Children in Early Mexico	p. 52
Historical Perspectives on Illegitimacy and Illegitimates in Latin America	p. 72
Down and Out in Havana: Foundlings in Eighteenth-Century Cuba	p. 102
Minor Offenses: Youth, Crime, and Law in Eighteenth-Century Lima	p. 114
The State, the Family, and Marginal Children in Latin America	p. 139
The Child-Saving Movement in Brazil: Ideology in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries	p. 165
How Haitian Artists Disclose Childhood of All Ages	p. 181
Victims, Heroes, Enemies: Children in Central American Wars	p. 215
August	p. 232
Children and Contemporary Latin America	p. 242
The Children's Rebellion	p. 251
Glossary	p. 273
Contributors	p. 275
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