Miniature messages : the semiotics and politics of Latin American postage stamps / Jack Child.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Child, Jack.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Postage stamps--Latin America.

Postage stamps.

Latin America.

Physical Description:

xx, 247 pages : color illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2008.

Summary:

In Miniature Messages, Jack Child analyzes Latin American postage stamps, revealing the messages about history, culture, and politics encoded in their design and disseminated throughout the world. While postage stamps are a sanctioned product of official government agencies, Child argues that they accumulate popular cultural value and take on new meanings as they circulate in the public sphere. As he demonstrates in this richly illustrated study, the postage stamp conveys many of the contestations and triumphs of Latin American history.

Child combines history and political science with philatelic research of nearly forty thousand Latin American stamps. He focuses on Argentina and the Southern Cone, highlighting stamps representing the consolidation of the Argentine republic and those produced under its Peronist regime. He compares Chilean stamps issued by the leftist government of Salvador Allende and by Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. Considering postage stamps produced under other dictatorial regimes, he examines stamps from the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Paraguay. Child studies how international conflicts have been depicted on the stamps of Argentina, Chile, and Peru, and he pays particular attention to the role of South American and British stamps in establishing claims to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands and to Antarctica. He also covers the cultural and political history of stamps in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Grenada, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, and elsewhere. In Miniature Messages, Child finds the political history of modern Latin America in its "tiny posters."

Contents:

Semiotics, popular culture, politics, and stamps

An overview of Latin American postage stamps

Internal politics and Latin American stamps

International relations and Latin American stamps

Argentina

The Falklands/Malvinas

South American Antarctica

Other miniature messages of note.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822341796

0822341794

9780822341994

0822341999

OCLC:

179838536