Special Section Introduction

The articles in this special section consider the representation of the city in Latin America, fascinating to the rest of the world ever since the encounter with the fabled cities of gold of the indigenous civilisations.Over the last century, there have been dramatic increases in urbanisation globally.But what of the particularities of Latin America?There are now a greater number of large cities than ever before, emptying out (and sometimes swallowing up) small rural areas, entailing a wide range of consequences for their inhabitants whether these are well established or recently arrived.These articles explore the way in which the changing city is represented in a range of narratives.They examine how the urban topos reveals itself in textual and visual accounts of Latin American cities, and the possibilities for the production of urban imaginaries in cities with populations that are larger and more varied than those of many other regions of the world.At times, the city becomes another character in the story; at others it functions as the backdrop and location against which a drama is played out; elsewhere it serves as a resonant motif.Each author has chosen a particular city (Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City), and examined a particular narrative (novel or fi lm) or series of narratives (travel writing and investigative journalism) that elaborate on these and other issues related to the representation of the city in Latin America.Both socially and culturally, cities have been the cradles of modernity, fed by the interaction and often confl ict between different classes, races, nationalities and ideologies thrown together in a small space.The creative possibilities that this entails are many, but

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• Cultural Agency in the Americas

  Jesus Martin Barbero, Diana Taylor et al.•Cultural Agency in the Americas•2006

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