‘Latin American Modernity,and Yet …’1

The article examines two ‘postmodern’ critiques of modernity: a general history that argues that it was never solely Western, and a work of Latin American cultural criticism that petitions for the region to leave behind a modernity seen as Eurocentric. It argues that to understand the modern elements of Latin America entails keeping present the European, and in part pre‐nineteenth‐century, genealogy of modernity. This is in order to grasp that both the pitfalls of claiming modernity is a common project (colonialism vanishes) and the difficulty of going beyond it (European modernity bequeathed the language of breaks and dialectical incorporations). The piece identifies the rhetorical choreography involved when the limits of the critique of Western modernity become apparent.     

The origins of APRA in Cajamarca, 1928–1935⋆

From its foundation in 1930 until the late 1980s, the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) comprised the largest and best organised political party in Peru, but surprisingly few studies exist on how the organisation was established and built up a mass following at the provincial level. This article examines the birth of APRA in the Andean department of Cajamarca. It highlights the support the organisation obtained among key middle–class groups (i.e. lawyers, schoolteachers, cattle dealers, etc.), and the links they forged with the rural and urban poor. APRA's efforts to mobilise “new” social actors, such as women and students, are also described.