Brazil offers a clear example of the political consequences of informal labour in Latin America at the heart of two new books

Decapitation structures a bold new take on cinematic theory. Review: The Visual Guillotine: The Cinematic Cut and Politics in Latin America, Thomas Matusiak

Afro-descendant Brazilians are in the front line of the battle for Nature. Review: The Earth Gives, the Earth Wants, Nêgo Bispo

A black revolutionary’s exile in Cuba draws attention to unfinished business. Review: Fugitive States: The Life of Charlie Hill, a Black Radical Exile in Socialist Cuba, Teishan A Latner

Migrant Mexican farmworkers can count punk rock among their contributions to the US. Review: Latinx Encounters: How Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans Made the Modern Midwest

All is not lost: Puerto Rico can be free. Books in brief: Post-Disaster Futures: Ruin, Repair, and Decolonial Imagination in Puerto Rico

A pioneering woman was behind Latin America’s first avant-garde arts magazine. Review: Artes Visuales: The Latin American Avant-Garde in Print, Harper Montgomery et al.

Violence against women in Guatemala reflects deep historical traumas. Review: Seeking Justice for Gendered Violence: Courts, Communities, and Care in Guatemala, Erin Beck and Lynn Stephen

Ginsberg Centennial – the Mexican perspective – “The poet and activist Allen Ginsberg, a dissident and a rebel, a voice for the marginalized who uttered what society would rather keep silent,”   La Jo...

Lessons about Cuba’s survival can be gleaned from the latest biography of Castro. Review: Fidel Castro: Beyond the Legend, Katrien Demuynck and Marc Vandepitte

The history of US academics involved in espionage highlights a modern risk. Review: Scientists or Spies? The American Museum of Natural History in World War I Latin America, Roberta Marx Delson

Political turmoil in Bolivia hints at a paradigm shift. Review: Bolivia and the Making of the Global Indigenous Movement, Juanita Roca-Sánchez

A Chilean artist shaped by the nightmare of Pinochet subverts colonial time. Review: Alfredo Jaar: Decolonial Time and the Aesthetics of the Unfinished, Florencia San Martín

An underclass of young Mexican American men is trapped by systemic exclusion. Review: Homeboys Forever: The Lifetime Consequences of Gang Membership, Avelardo Valdez

Guyana once provided revolutionary hope for African Americans. Review: A Proxy Africa: Guyana, African Americans, and the Radical 1970s, Russell Rickford

El Salvador reveals the failure of a dominant idea. Review: Indignant Liberalism: Political Protest and Generational Change in El Salvador, Ellen Moodie

Mexico shot itself in the foot by kowtowing to the US migrant backlash. Review: Organised Crime and Migration, Victorie Knox

A Mexican town’s bid to restore a sacred stone reflects a new politics of patrimony. Review: The Absent Stone: Mexican Patrimony and the Aftershocks of State Theft, Sandra Rozental

Art is a way of confronting institutional obstacles to decolonisation. Review: Unmaking to Make: Art as decolonising practice in Latin America’s future, past and present

Georgina Jiménez assesses how London’s Tate Modern is exploring ‘Fridamania’

Authoritarian populism in Brazil is both new—and old. Review: The Faces of Authoritarianism and Strategies of Dissent in Contemporary Brazil

The Bolsonaro bandwagon continues to reek of malodorous far-right fictions. Review: The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy, AJA Woods

A London bookseller’s visionary homage to the Beat Generation reveals how Mexico nurtured a cultural revolution

Studying abroad has been an elite status symbol that has damaged sovereignty. Review: The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico’s Foreign-Educated Elite, Rachel Grace Newman

The insecurity of campesinos is fuelling violence in Colombia. Review: Governing the Excluded: Rural Livelihoods Beyond Coca in Colombia’s Peace Laboratory, Alex Diamond

Puerto Rico’s colonial status made its debt crisis inevitable. Review: Promise Land: The Inside Story of the Puerto Rico Debt Crisis, David Skeel

Reform of property rights was a step in the emancipation of Latin American women. Books in brief: First-Wave Feminism and Women’s Civil and Political Rights in South America

A study of racial politics mounts a challenge to area studies. Books in brief: Transpacific Nonencounters: Racial Disconnects Across Twentieth-Century Japan and Mexico

Mexican and Cuban stories translated by Langston Hughes make a radical debut. Books in brief: Troubled Lands: Stories of Mexico and Cuba

Antonio Dias was the most famous Brazilian pop artist that never was. Books in brief: Borderless Painting as Borderless Art: Antonio Dias between Brazil and Europe

An old US predilection for finger-pointing underpins a new study of its neighbour. Review: The Making of Mexico: Revolution, Reform, and Transformation, Pamela K Starr

Puerto Ricans offer lessons for Latin Americans in the UK seeking recognition. Review: White, Black, Brown: Becoming Puerto Rican in Chicago, Michael Staudenmaier

A groundbreaking history of the Maya unifies a hitherto fragmented narrative. Review: The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya, David Stuart

We need to understand the forms taken by anti-imperialism as Trump wreaks havoc on the global order, Marxist historian John Rees explained at a Counterfire event in London

A new novel traces the lives of the Aztec emperor’s forgotten daughters. Books in brief: The Other Moctezuma Girls, Sofia Robleda

Latin America’s need to remember a darker past is influencing literature. Books in brief: Exemplary Humans, Juliana Leite

A Peruvian graphic novel grapples with a collapsing world. Books in brief: Before We Sail, Carlos Yacolca et al.

A sociocultural study of Cuba’s transnational relationships offers rare insights. Review: The Cuban Revolution and the New Left, Michelle Chase and Isabella Cosse (eds)

Was a masterpiece by Mario Vargas Llosa about the Brazilian ‘War of Canudos’ really referring to Israel’s rampage through the Middle East?

Judiciaries have shaped how abortion has risen up the agenda. Books in brief: The Judicial Politics of Abortion in Latin America: Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico

Nature’s cultural impact is best seen by breaking disciplinary boundaries. Books in brief: Plants and Animals in Latin American Cultural Production

Latin America figures prominently in a history of urban visions. Books in brief: The Invention of the Future: A History of Cities in the Modern World

Novel Mayan cultural artefacts can illustrate how indigeneity crosses borders. Books in brief: Indigenous Archives: The Maya Diaspora and Mobile Cultural Production

Two books place Latin America in the vanguard of climate debates. Reviews: Latin American Cultural Responses to a Warming World, and The Climate Trial, by Gavin O'Toole

The work of John Mearsheimer suggests that, despite Trump’s violent Middle Eastern adventures, the US remains fixated on Latin America

Iran’s ties with Latin America have been distorted by US and Israeli narrative terrorism. We review titles about the Islamic Republic's engagement with other targets of imperialism

Claims about Cuban involvement in Ukraine expose European double standards

The legacy of Cuban internationalism in Africa still defies US hegemony. Review: Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, Víctor Dreke Cruz, by Gavin O'Toole

Labour migration has posed significant policy challenges for Mexico. Books in brief: Caught in the Current, Irvin Ibarguen, by Gavin O'Toole

The impact of the Tren Maya challenges academic narratives about Indigenous politics. Books in brief: Roads to Prosperity and Ruin, Fernando Armstrong-Fumero, by Gavin O'Toole