Cualquier diccionario nos señala los límites de la palabra “contemporáneo”; actual; algo que existe al mismo tiempo que otra persona o cosa. No hay aquí ningún problema de semántica; lo que existe al mismo tiempo que nosotros son los escritores vivos, aunque hayan dejado de escribir.

Para nuestros propósitos, entonces, debemos prescindir de la presencia de novelistas ya desaparecidos, como Augusto D'Halmar, Pedro Prado y Mariano Latorre, que aunque continúan siendo representantes de Chile, no deben figurar entre los novelistas contemporáneos.

This article examines the dynamics of collective behavior in Santiago, Chile every September 11, the date of the 1973 coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. It uses a multiple-method strategy that includes participant observation, personal interviews, and content analysis of three major newspapers during the period 2003–8. The theoretical approach emphasizes time and space coordinates of specified social actors, sociocultural emergence, a limited range of dominant emotions, and dramaturgy to describe the complexity of ritualized commemorations. It shows that incidents occurring on this date are not primarily caused by the actions of social movement organizations. Moreover, the dichotomy of “day and night” used to understand the peaceful and violent commemorations is an oversimplification of a complex network of events, actors, and scenarios that has the effect of denying any legitimacy to actions that fall outside the state-approved practices.

This article will argue that general agreement between Cuba and the Soviet Union on their foreign policy toward Latin America is likely over the long run, despite (a) Fidel Castro's condemnation of perestroika and glasnost, and (b) his obvious attempt to embarrass Soviet Secretary-General Mikhail Gorbachev during the latter's state visit to Cuba in April 1989. Serious obstacles — such as differences over Cuban domestic policy and Castro's personal ambitions — remain to be overcome, but foreign policy disagreements between the two countries are likely to prove less intractable than is frequently assumed.

This article will start with (1) an overview of Cuban Latin American foreign policy since the 1970s; then proceed to (2) an interpretation of Soviet “new thinking;” and finally (3) argue that this particular interpretation of “new thinking” is consistent with, and not contradictory to, Castro's foreign policy.

The international debt crisis has received a great deal of attention at the macroeconomic and the political levels, but there have been few analyses of its impact upon individual sectors. Thus this article will consider the consequences of the Latin American debt crisis for manufacturing industry, particularly the adjustments that this sector has made in its response to the crisis.

The adjustment process which the manufacturing sector has undergone has produced implications which depend partly upon factors exogenous to the sector and partly upon the nature, and degree of competitiveness, of the manufacturing activity in each of the countries. In turn, the latter factors have been influenced by those very macroeconomic and exogenous variables. Some variables, such as the exchange rate, play major roles in determining the competitiveness of industry, as has frequently been emphasized in recent years. This is true of a number of variables at the industry and enterprise level as well.

The fifteenth United Nations General Assembly was an exciting one. It met during the cold aftermath of the U-2 affair. It attracted the largest group of world leaders, including Castro, Tito, Nasser, Nehru, Sukarno, Nkrumah, Touré, and Khrushchev, ever to assemble at the UN site. It accelerated the “Africanization” of the UN by admitting during its first part 17 members, 16 from Africa. It was rocked, politically, militarily, and financially, by the Congo crisis, which led to the demand for the ouster of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and then to his death. It debated Cuban charges against the United States and the embarrassing Bay of Pigs invasion. In a lighter vein, it produced the first public banging of shoes on a UN table by a head of government.

The purpose of this paper is to draw together from primary sources the case history of formative policy years for the Central Bank of Honduras. This bank, like others formed throughout the underdeveloped world in the post-World War II era, was created in 1950 as a vehicle for stimulating economic growth. In retrospect over 186 months of operations this particular Central Bank has an unusually outstanding policy record—a record which argues forcefully for appropriate monetary policy as a stimulant to economic advance.

The first meeting of Central Bank directors was held on May 31, 1950, for the purpose of establishing the major monetary policies under which the Bank would commence operations July 1. At that meeting the directors established a schedule of maximum interest rates to be charged by the public commercial banks and a schedule of rates at which eligible commercial paper of 12 months maturity or less could be rediscounted with the Central Bank.

La obra más popular de Sarmiento es la que dedicó a Facundo y publicó con este nombre y el agregado de Civilización y barbarie en 1845. Este libro es, también, el que más ha sido leído, entre sus cincuenta y dos volúmenes de obras completas, y el que más comentarios, buenos y malos, ha suscitado. Sobre él han llovido los elogios y han caído los ataques. Lo mejor que se ha dicho es que constituye la obra maestra más extraordinaria de las letras americanas; lo peor, que todas sus páginas son una calumnia y un monumento de ignorancia. Entre los escritores modernos, Manuel Gálvez lo ha atacado con independencia y valentía, más movido por un raro odio que por una sabia comprensión.

The use of veto points to block policy change has received significant attention in Latin America, but the different institutional venues have not been analyzed in a unified framework. Uruguay is exceptional in that political actors use both referendums and judicial review as effective ways to oppose public policies. While the activation of direct democracy mechanisms in Uruguay has been widely studied, the surge in the use of the judicial venue remains underexplored. This article argues that veto point use responds to the ideological content of policies adopted by different coalitions and the type of interest organization affected. It shows that policy opponents predominantly activate referendums when center-right coalitions rule and judicial review when center-left coalitions govern. It illustrates the causal argument by tracing the politics of court and referendum activation. This approach helps to bridge the gap between research on direct democracy and judicial politics, providing a unified framework.

Literature on the Guatemalan Civil War has debated whether or not state violence was triggered by rebel activities. Did the government respond to each insurrection caused by the rebels, or did it blindly target regions where antigovernment antipathy and movements had historically prevailed? Because state violence was extensive during the civil war period, the dynamism of the war could have been the reason for its occurrence. Relying on the threat-response model of state violence, this article argues that human rights violations occurred when the government perceived a rebel threat that would have seriously degraded its capability in future counterinsurgencies. The article employs propensity score matching to address the problem of confounding in empirical analysis, and reveals that rebel attacks, particularly those targeting security apparatus and resulting in human injury, increased the likelihood of state violence in the Guatemalan Civil War.

Are Latin American presidents at greater risk for removal in remittance-dependent countries? Departing from the debate about whether remittances produce democratic or autocratic outcomes, this article asks whether remittances contribute to presidential removals, which are an important characteristic of Latin American democracies since the Third Wave. It uses questions about supporting a military coup under high corruption and crime scenarios to gauge remittance recipients’ support for early removal of a president. It finds that remittances create a constituency that tolerates military coups. Using data from Martínez (2021), the analysis also shows that remittances increase the risk of removal for presidents who face a greater number of scandals; but remittances do not pose this threat under poor economic performance.

Conventional wisdom among scholars of Latin American politics holds that informal workers are less participatory and less left-leaning than formal workers. Relevant empirical findings, however, are mixed and in need of synthesis. This article provides that synthesis by conducting meta-analyses on the universe of previous quantitative studies of informality and the vote. It finds that informal workers are indeed less likely to vote than formal workers, but the effect of informality is small—just four to seven percentage points. It further finds that informal workers are more likely to vote for the left, not the right, but here the effect size is even smaller. Meta-regression analyses reveal that in countries where organized professional activity among informal workers is high, gaps in turnout between the two sectors are minimal. The article concludes that the conventional wisdom over-states the individual-level political consequences of labor informality in Latin America.

Postneoliberal regionalism in Latin America has failed to live up to the expectations of its proponents and analysts in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Several causes explain its disappointing result, but a relatively understudied cause may be found in the US policy of competitive liberalization. This policy not only aimed at securing US economic and trade interests but also served as a counterweight against emerging postneoliberalism and as a tool for reaffirming US hegemony. This article presents a case study of one example of competitive liberalization in action, the US-Peru FTA, in order to assess how the policy functioned and contributed to curbing the posthegemonic moment in Latin America. It observes a combination of coercion and the political influence of beneficiaries of free trade, and it considers how these dynamics worked to strengthen US influence, both in Peru and in the wider regional political economy.

Geopolitical competition between the United States and China has led to an increased reliance on economic statecraft. In this context, understanding the conditions that trigger trade, aid, or investment weaponization becomes crucial. This article examines how the United States has employed economic statecraft in response to Latin American countries’ engagement with China. The study revisits the theoretical debate on positive and negative economic statecraft and proposes a mechanism that identifies the conditions under which “carrots” or “sticks” are more likely to be employed. We argue that the US response towards Latin American countries’ engagement with China tends to prioritize economic engagement over economic coercion, particularly when dealing with countries that are politically and economically aligned with Washington policies. To test our argument, we adopt a mixed-methods approach. First, we conduct a case study analysis on the United States-Panama relationship. Second, we perform a statistical analysis to assess the impact of economic engagement with China on the allocation of American foreign assistance in the region.

Faced with rapid changes in the global system, most Caribbean countries may seem to be doing everything right. The English-speaking Caribbean countries, in particular, have been exemplary in their practice of democracy and political stability. Others, such as Suriname and Haiti, are nurturing new democratic regimes. Economically, the region has followed the neoliberal reform rule book and implemented policies mandated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. They have trimmed fiscal deficits, privatized state-owned commercial enterprises that were losing money, and liberalized their trading regimes. These measures have been implemented either by reform-minded governments or governments which have seen no alternative. Only Cuba continues to labor under a discredited, ideological model that does not encourage democracy, while its economy mirrors some version of “á la carte capitalism” in the face of an accelerated US embargo.

Puestos a examinar la herencia política y jurídica que los países hispanoamericanos conservan de España, de inmediato nos apercibimos de la inmensidad y la importancia del tema. Los paíes hispanoamericanos cubren una parte importante del Nuevo Mundo y están grávidos de potencialidades inéditas. Es preciso repetir que forman la única región de cultura occidental que permanece en retardo científico, tecnológico y ecónomico. Esperamos que los pueblos avanzados de la esfera occidental de cultura se mantengan conscientes de esta realidad. Está en el interés de todos los pueblos que las regiones atrasadas ocupen su puesto al sol en la sociedad científica y tecnológica de nuestros días. Saber, para actuar apropiadamente, es una prudente actitud, y de ahí que los estudios de los pueblos y regiones estén llamados a tener consecuencias prácticas. La proliferatión de los estudios latinoamericanos en universidades europeas y norteamericanas —y en este punto Texas tiene un papel importante entre las universidades de los Estados Unidos— promete el análisis serio de las realidades sociales e históricas, y por lo tanto el establecimiento de canales idóneos de comunicación.

The International Coffee Agreement (1962) culminated a long search for a comprehensive coffee price support scheme. From the late 1920s to the early 1940s Brazil had unilaterally supported coffee prices by storing and burning huge quantities of coffee. Brazil's efforts to gain multilateral price support during this period were in vain. In the mid-1950s, when it again became apparent that coffee production would soon exceed demand at any price satisfactory to producers, Brazil renewed the search for multilateral market support. Her efforts met with partial success in October 1957 when seven Latin American coffee growing nations signed the Mexico Agreement. Market support was gradually expanded in a series of annual agreements until representatives of countries accounting for over 90 percent of the world's production and consumption agreed to the five-year International Coffee Agreement (1962). This agreement was followed by another five-year pact, the International Coffee Agreement of 1968.