The History of Emotions and Sentiments: Learnings and Questions from Latin America

Objective/Context: This text sets out a succinct overview of the sweep of the history of emotions and sentiments, from the decisive steps taken by Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns in the 1980s up to some of the essential contributions made to the field by numerous academics from Latin America in subsequent moments. The fundamental goal of this exercise is to provide context for the contributions of the articles included in the current issue of Historic Critica. Methodology: I will point out the main methods and approaches of numerous papers about the history of emotions and sentiments produced in North America and Europe. At the same time, I will inquire about the attention this field has received in Latin American historiography and present the articles of the dossier. Originality: Me text condenses and compares a substantial set of historical viewpoints about emotions and sentiments, the pathways it opens to widening historical explanations and invites exploring them from Latinamerican historiography, Conclusions: The articles collected in this issue suggest the importance of continuing to move forward in the study of the history of emotions and sentiments in Latin America, given the authors of these texts prove that the weight of regimes and the signification of emotional experiences matter in the spectrum of causalities, in the decisions, and the agency of individuals and groups, in the formation of political loyalties, in power contests, in revolutions, and wars, in the representations of order and the manners in which to subvert it, but also in the elucidation of the deepest creases of the lives, feelings, and words of the societies of the past.