Fifty Years of Peasant Wars in Latin America

Informed by Eric Wolf’s Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, published in 1969, this book examines selected peasant struggles in seven Latin American countries during the last fifty years and suggests the continuing relevance of Wolf’s approach.

Leigh Binford is Professor Emeritus of the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. He writes on rural social economies, international migration and struggle in Mexico and El Salvador. His recent publications include (with Scott Cook) Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism (2013, University of Texas Press).

Lesley Gill teaches anthropology at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of A Century of Violence in a Red City (2016, Duke University Press) and The School of the Americas (2004, Duke University Press).

Steve Striffler is the Director of the Labor Resource Center and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. He writes on labor and the left in Latin America and the United States. His latest book is Solidarity: Latin America and the US Left in the Era of Human Rights (2019, Pluto Press).

Leigh Binford is Professor Emeritus of the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. He writes on rural social economies, international migration and struggle in Mexico and El Salvador. His recent publications include (with Scott Cook) Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism (2013, University of Texas Press).

“Highly recommended.” • Choice

“This stimulating book will be of interest to a wide range of readers, including those who want an accessible, well-written guide to peasant struggles and agrarian change in Latin America…. In a world of escalating inequality, precarity, and violence, such an approach to intellectual labour is more urgent than ever.” • Journal of Agrarian Change

“The book is quite unique… The concept is original and intriguing, and brings together an outstanding array of scholars to pursue the questions Eric Wolf raised in different Latin American cases.” • Avi Chomsky, Salem State University.