Development studies
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The Flavour of Latin America
Forget the mass-produced tortilla chips and E-flavoured salsa dips. Discover the taste of real Latin American food, as diverse as its beautiful landscapes, drawing on age-old indigenous recipes with influences from Spain, Portugal and Africa. From the snow-capped mountains of the Andes there is drun...
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The Boulder Concept in Building Walls
This brief was written BY the Building Advisory Service and Information Network (BASIN) providing information resources on low-cost building technologies.
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Brazil In Focus
Brazil is depicted as a land of global superlatives, boasting the best football, the largest rainforest, and the world's worst social and economic inequality. It's vibrant culture is best known for Carnival and samba and attracts thousands of visitors each year. The Carnival capital of Rio also show...
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Eastern Caribbean In Focus
The idyllic landscapes of the Eastern Caribbean belie a dramatic and often cruel history. Fought over by the imperial Navies and vulnerable to natural disasters, these small islands have also been marked by slavery, migration and a tradition of resistance. With their population rooted in every conti...
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Ecuador In Focus
Wilma Roos, Omer Van Renterghem
Ecuador is one of the major tourist destinations in the Americas, offering unparalleled colonial architecture, dramatic landscapes and the eco-tourist mecca of the Galapagos Islands. But behind its colourful markets and mountain scenery lies a more complex country, divided by geography and race and...
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Daughters of Caliban
Haitian women and "voodoo" healing; Cuban women in the midst of economic crisis; Jamaican women and the unspoken racism of beauty contests. These are just three of the dimensions of this multifaceted survey of contemporary Caribbean women. Looking at a region where race and gender play vital roles i...
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Guyana: Fragile Frontier
Guyana's environment is in danger of wholesale destruction. In the name of economic liberalization, this small, indebted country is promoting a dramatic escalation of logging, mining and other forms of extraction. In the 1990s, millions of hectares of rainforest have been leased to foreign companies...
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Faces of Latin America 2nd Edition
This work portrays Latin America's peoples in their fight for a brighter future. It explores the region's economic crisis and the desecration of the environment. The author shows how injustice and conflict in the countryside have unleashed an exodus to the slums that encircle the major cities. He an...
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Machos, Maricones, and Gays
Since the Cuban revolution in 1959, male homosexuality has been a controversial aspect of Cuban society. In this account of homosexual life, Ian Lumsden explores the treatment of male homosexuality under Castro within the framework of pre-revolution prejudices and preconceptions. This first-hand rep...
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Religion in the Megacity
"Mega-cities" - sprawling urban centres - are now home to most Latin Americans. This work contrasts religion in two such cities - Sao Paulo in Brazil and Caracas in Venezuela. In Brazil, the Catholic Archdiocese of Sao Paulo, under Cardinal Arns and progressive Catholics, was a rallying point for re...