Miguel Tinker Salas is Arango Professor in Latin American History and Professor of History and Chicano/a Studies at Pomona College. He is the author of In the Shadow of the Eagles: Sonora and the Transformation of the Border during the Porfiriato and co-editor of Venezuela: Hugo Chávez and the Decline of an “Exceptional Democracy.”

Preface vii
Introduction: Oil, Culture, and Society 1
1. A Tropical Mediterranean: Lake Maracaibo at the Turn of the Century 15
2. The Search for Black Gold 39
3. La Ruta Petrolera: Learning to Live with Oil 73
4. Oil, Race, Labor, and Nationalism 107
5. Our Tropical Outpost: Gender and the Senior Staff Camps 143
6. The Oil Industry and Civil Society 171
7. Oil and Politics: An Enduring Relation 205
Conclusion: An Enduring Legacy 237
Notes 251
Bibliography 299
Index 317

Tinker Salas has written a monograph that bridges business and social and cultural history, but he has also written a study in class formation, the Venezuelan middle class, to be specific. The result is not only quite successful but also thoroughly enjoyable. . . . Tinker Salas has written a wonderful book that merits a wide audience, not only among students of Venezuela, but anyone who is interested in learning about the legacies of oil worldwide