Working Hard, Drinking Hard

"Honduras is violent." Adrienne Pine situates this oft-repeated claim at the center of her vivid and nuanced chronicle of Honduran subjectivity. Through an examination of three major subject areas-violence, alcohol, and the export-processing (maquiladora) industry-Pine explores the daily relationships and routines of urban Hondurans. She views their day-to-day lives in the context of the vast economic footprint and ideological domination of the region by the United States, powerfully elucidating the extent of Honduras's dependence. Despite the damage that has been done to their country by this relationship, many Hondurans persist in the belief that the United States and its people are "better" than they are. In these pages Adrienne Pine provides an historically situated ethnographic analysis of this fraught relationship and the effect it has had on Hondurans' understandings of who they are. The resulting ethnography is a rich and visceral portrait of a culture buffeted by the forces of globalization and inequality.