The renewal of Latin American Political History (1990-2020)

Abstract

This paper shows some of the features that has developed Latin American political history in the last thirty years. Political historians have concentrated on electoral processes (electoral franchising and campaigning, political machinery, etc.), on the intricated relations between journals and politics, the elite’s political sociability (clubs, tertulias, political parties, intellectual circles, etc.) and on the manners in which political identities were built, spread and defied. Three particular subjects are reviewed in this paper: firstly, the limits, meanings and possibilities of the constitutionally-defined citizenship in the 19th; in second place, the new interpretations of the classic populist regimes of the mid-20th century with approaches more sensitive to the active role played by the working class; and finally, the authoritarian military regimes arose from the sixties.