Offering a balance of social, political, environmental, and cultural history,Latin America and Its Peoplelooks at the whole of Latin America in a thematic rather than country-by-country approach. This engaging textbook emphasizes the stories of the diverse people of Latin America, their everyday lives, and the issues that affected them. Written by two of the leading scholars in the field, Cheryl Martin and Mark Wasserman,Latin America and Its Peoplepresents a fresh interpretative survey of Latin American history from pre-Columbian times to the beginning of the Twenty-First Century. It examines the many institutions that Latin Americans have built and rebuilt - families, governments, churches, political parties, labor unions, schools, and armies - and it does so through the lives of the people who forged these institutions and later altered them to meet the changing circumstances.