Full Description
Profiles of triumph and hardship amid massive inequality in Latin America.
Each chapter of Portraits of Persistence, a project of the University of Texas Urban Ethnography Lab, offers an intimate portrait of one or two individual lives. The subjects are a diverse group of individuals from across the continent: grassroots activists and political brokers, private security entrepreneurs, female drug dealers, shantytown dwellers, and rural farmers, as well as migrants finding routes into and out of the region. Through these accounts, the writers explore issues that are common throughout today's world: precarious work situations, gender oppression, housing displacement, experiences navigating the bureaucracy for asylum seekers, state violence, environmental devastation, and access to good and affordable health care. Carefully situating these experiences within the sociohistorical context of their specific local regions or countries, editor Javier Auyero and his colleagues consider how people make sense of the paths their lives have taken, the triumphs and hardships they have experienced, and the aspirations they hold for the future. Ultimately, these twelve compelling profiles offer unique and personal windows into the region's complex and multilayered reality.
Contents
Introduction (Alison Coffey and Javier Auyero)
Chapter 1. Soraya, la Reina del Sur in Nicaragua (Dennis Rodgers)
Chapter 2. MaÍra: Mothering and Struggle in the Shadow of State Violence (Alison Coffey)
Chapter 3. Rodrigo: "Many Secrets, Nothing to Hide"-Security Entrepreneurship in Mexico City (Eldad Levy)
Chapter 4. Fabio and AngÉlica: The Resistance of Staying Put (Alex Diamond)
Chapter 5. Doris Huaiquian: Newen, Tenacity of Spirit (Cinthya E. Ammerman)
Chapter 6. Aurelia: Displacement, Toxicity, and the Struggle for Home (Maricarmen HernÁndez)
Chapter 7. Hamid: A Life Deferred in Brazil (Katherine Jensen)
Chapter 8. MarÍa: Obligated by Circumstances-From Temporary to Precariously Permanent in the United States (Jennifer Scott)
Chapter 9. Ezequiel: A Laburante in Argentina's Relegated Neighborhoods (Marcos Perez)
Chapter 10. Nelson and Celia: Feeling Potholes and Debt in the Bones (Jorge Derpic)
Chapter 11. Big Love: A Political Broker at Work (Javier Auyero and SofÍa ServiÁn)
Chapter 12. Alberto: Service Work and Social Change in Argentina (Katherine Sobering)
Afterword (Javier Auyero)
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index
