Cultural Producers And Social Change In Latin America

This book explores the cultural side of political and social debates about citizenship in Argentina, Colombia, and Peru. In all three countries, there has been an out-pouring of artistic and popular-performative activities in public spaces that have asked citizens to pose basic questions about the social order in which they live and about the memories of recent atrocities.

Cala Buendia looks at ways in which cultural producers in these spaces adapted or developed products and strategies as resources for social actors to use or suppress in the struggle for social change. Review: This is a timely and far-reaching comparative study of creative responses to economic and political crises in Colombia, Peru and Argentina.

Cala Buendia's bold and nuanced interpretation demonstrates the surprising goals achieved by spontaneous, unconventional cultural initiatives that emerge from both grass-roots and governmental levels. Culture is truly the protagonist of this story where the political agency of visual art, performance, and literature provides effective tactics in the contemporary Latin American public sphere. - Marcy Schwartz, Rutgers University, USA This book is a remarkable achievement.

At once a cultural history of citizenship and a political analysis of the role of cultural producers, Felipe Cala Buendia crosses disciplines and genres to offer us a unique and very special study of the role of artists, writers, publishers and performers in the making of modern democracy. It is theoretically sophisticated and a great read. - Jeremy Adelman, Princeton University, USA