Jury:

Agustín Goenaga, Lund University

Patricia Harms, Brandon University

Fabio Henrique Pereira, Université Laval

Winner of the 2022 Best Book Award:

Dorais, Geneviève. 2021. Journey to Indo-América. APRA and the Transnational Politics of Exile, Persecution, and Solidarity, 1918-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 266

For the 2021, Best Book Award, the jury received 11 nominations that met the requirements to participate. The jury unanimously agreed that Journey to Indo-América. APRA and the Transnational Politics of Exile, Persecution, and Solidarity, 1918-1945, by Professor Geneviève Dorais, should receive the award. Journey to Indo-América is an exceptional piece of scholarly research. Through an impressive amount of original empirical evidence from archives spanning multiple countries and languages, Dorais throws new light on the transnational origins of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) in Peru. Dorais convincingly shows that the APRA was not only a political movement with transnational ambitions, but that it was profoundly shaped by its founders’ experiences in exile, by their engagement with global revolutionary ideologies, and by their interactions with a wide array of international actors. The nuance and novelty of the argument, the comprehensiveness of primary sources, the methodological rigour, and the elegance of the writing make this book a truly exceptional contribution to Latin American studies.

Honourable mention:

Pozos Barcelata, Adriana. 2021. Derecho y desaparición de personas. El cuerpo ausente como sujeto político. Mexico City: Tirant lo Blanch, pp. 404

The jury of the 2021 Best Book Award also decided to confer an honourable mention to Derecho y desaparición de personas. El cuerpo ausente como sujeto político by Dr. Adriana Pozos Barcelata. The book is a tour de force on the topic of disappearances in Mexico and beyond. It presents a compelling reflection of the historical processes that turned forced disappearances into both a strategy of political terror used by the state and a catalyzer of new forms of political mobilization and subjectivities in Latin America. The book is also impressive in its interdisciplinary outlook, firmly rooted in political anthropology, but relevant for legal scholars, political scientists, historians, and Latin Americanists.