In this introduction we present the concepts of “lived religion” and “lived citizenship” as tools for understanding the ways in which religious and political meanings and practices are constituted in social movements and locations of poverty and exclusion in Latin America. We first develop the idea of “zones of crisis” as a context in which struggles for rights, recognition, and survival are enacted. We then challenge reified distinctions between the secular and the religious, emphasizing religion's embodiment and emplacement in daily life and politics. Reviewing the empirical findings of the articles in this special issue, we discuss the multiple imbrications of religion and citizenship with regard to democratic politics, geographies of conflict, and safe spaces, as well as selfhood, identity, and agency. In a postsecular world, interrogating religion, secularity, and politics together enables us better to understand the complex construction of democratic citizenship and the dynamism of Latin America's multiple modernities.

After the slaves were emancipated between 1880 and 1886, the planter class in Cuba underwent a transformation. Successful mill owners modernized their facilities, increased their cane-processing capabilities, and became planter-industrialists. Unsuccessful mill owners who lacked sufficient capital to modernize dismantled their outdated mills and became simply cane farmers. The social structure of the sugar mills was also transformed. Wage labor and tenancy arrangements replaced slave labor, and the industrial process of cane milling became separate from the agricultural processes of planting and harvesting sugarcane. As industrial units became fewer but larger, they could grind more sugarcane than that grown on the land directly under their ownership, and the larger mills therefore entered into arrangements with surrounding mill owners who were unable to make the transition to the new technological phase of sugar milling. Because the new mills centralized the grinding of cane previously carried out by many smaller units, they became known as ingenios centrales and eventually as simply centrales. Planters who gave up their obsolete milling operations and turned exclusively to cane farming were called colonos.

This article suggests that transnational motives have remained key components of legitimation strategies for regional realignment in Latin America. Specifically, we assess the legitimation strategy of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and the associated political movement, Chavismo, as a recent case of transnational identity politics. Studies of Chavismo have stressed its role in the changing balance of power in early twenty-first-century Venezuela and the redrafting of global alliances, through a series of organizational moves and petrodollars. Combined with these political and economic boosters, Chavismo’s impact was sustained through a strategy that sought legitimation by drawing on earlier narratives of the solidarity of “Nuestramérica” (Our America), used in reshaping transnational networks within the region and beyond. This identity layer provided a basis for regional and international realignment and organizational creation, even if more recently it lost traction and became criticized for its unfulfilled promises and growing gap between rhetoric and implementation.

As you know, we have an institution called the sexenio when everything changes.

And we're here now for six years. You know how we all come in and get thrown out at the sexenio.

If someone has a chief who is capable and has the prospects for a good future, then that person will probably think, “Perhaps I can go with him at the sexenio”; and it happens in reverse, too, if someone has a chief who is not particularly capable but who has influential friends, some will want to follow him. There are a lot of changes and it affects our program, especially when people stop working to pursue their futures.

For the past twenty years, the organized black consciousness movement in Brazil has argued that Protestant Christianity is a highly assimilationist religion that pushes black converts to abandon their racial identity and seek incorporation into dominant white culture. The present study, based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro, challenges this view. By analyzing how Pentecostal churches address the issues of appearance, color, courtship, and womanhood, this research note argues that although evangelical Christianity involves a variety of beliefs that are incompatible with a strong ethnic identity, this religion also includes a range of ideas and practices that nourish rather than corrode black identity. The essay concludes by exploring the historic potential of several churches that have made the intersection of faith and race an explicit part of their agenda.

On International Women's Day in March 1958, ten thousand women gathered in the largest stadium in Caracas to celebrate the fall of the dictatorship of Major Marcos Pérez Jiménez and to commemorate the many women who had taken an active role in opposing it. This gathering was the first mass meeting following the demise of authoritarian rule. Despite the array of political views represented in the audience and on the dais, unity was stressed by every speaker. Women had struggled against the dictatorship united, and united they would promote their own rights in the fledgling democracy. But within a year, the women's group that had sponsored the rally disbanded. Women did not hold another nonpartisan meeting for sixteen years, and then only when the United Nations' International Women's Year in 1974 galvanized the two thousand participants. During the first thirty years of democracy in Venezuela, women held no more than 5 percent of congressional seats and few of the decision-making positions in political parties.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Latin America experienced a so-called left turn that sought either to reform or eliminate the neoliberal institutions established during the 1980s and 1990s. However, although Peru has electoral, economic, and social processes similar to those of its neighbors, the neoliberal institutions established in Peru by the 1993 Constitution remain firmly in place. This article aims to understand the mechanisms sustaining Peru's neoliberal regime since its creation. Why have these institutions survived and grown in strength in a regional environment that has been hostile to neoliberal legacies? The article answers that question, emphasizing the evolution of the balance of power between the precarious Peruvian political class and the empowered technocrats and bureaucrats within the state. The reformist politicians are too weak and amateurish to challenge the technobureaucrats within the state. Moreover, the article analyzes the different strategies deployed by technocrats and bureaucrats in order to ensure the continuity and stability of the neoliberal regime and its policies. Theoretically, the article suggests that institutional stability can arise from a daily process gradually shaped by actors and their strategies.

No issue in Mexican politics received more attention in selecting the 1982 presidential candidate than the role of the technocrat. The technocrat's influence on the Mexican state has had widespread consequences, such as changing political recruitment patterns, altering the socialization of political leaders, shifting career channels essential to advancement within the political system, and most significantly, causing adjustments in the stability of the political system. Crucial to any discussion of the changing role played by the technocrat in Mexican politics is a clear understanding of the term technocrat. This essay therefore will discuss conceptualizations of the technocrat, attempt a working definition of the term in the Mexican context, provide empirical evidence as to the presence of technocrats in Mexican politics, and suggest possible consequences for the political system.

This article examines the implementation of Peru's new water law and discusses how it produces new forms of water citizenship. Inspired by the global paradigm of “integrated water resources management,” the law aims to include all citizens in the management of the country's water resources by embracing a “new water culture.” We ask what forms of water citizenship emerge from the new water law and how they engage with local water practices and affect existing relations of inequality. We answer these questions ethnographically by comparing previous water legislation and how the new law currently is negotiated and contested in three localities in Peru's southern highlands. We argue that the law creates a new water culture that views water as a substance that is measurable, quantifiable, and taxable, but that it neglects other ways of valuing water. We conclude that water citizenship emerges from the particular ways water authorities and water users define rights to access and use water, on the one hand, and obligations to contribute to the construction and maintenance of water infrastructure and pay for the use of water, on the other.

What are the factors behind citizen support for the use of extralegal violence in Latin America? The prevailing argument is that, in countries overwhelmed by skyrocketing levels of criminal violence, people endorse the use of extralegal violence as a way to cope with insecurity. Other scholars believe that support for extralegal violence is the result of state withdrawal and failure. Few empirical studies, however, have tested any of these arguments. In this article, using regional data from the 2012 AmericasBarometer, we examine different explanations regarding citizen support for the utilization of extralegal violence in Latin America and the Caribbean. We developed a multi-item scale that gauges support for different forms of extralegal violence across the Americas, and we hypothesize that support for extralegal violence is higher not only in countries with extreme levels of violence but especially in countries in which people distrust the political system. Results indicate that support for extralegal violence is significantly higher in societies characterized by little support for the existing political system.

Since 2010, legal gains for LGBTQI communities in Latin America have exposed the contradictions of inclusion under a rights-based approach to sexual citizenship. Expanding neoliberal economies and multicultural incorporation has yet to resolve persistent inequalities or ongoing gender-based violence, in particular for trans and travesti populations in the region. Rather than depend on the symbolic and material protections of the state, however, many trans and travesti activists, artists, and performers argue that since the state is interested in normalizing sexual relations and gendered identities through legal recognition, it cannot be a source of identification, safety, or freedom. Focusing on recent work by Susy Shock (Argentina) and Claudia Rodríguez (Chile), this article demonstrates that “monstering” (to monster) has become a crucial form of epistemological resistance to neoliberal politics of inclusion and recognition in Latin America and of opening up new possibilities of imagining collective belonging.

Urbanization and the increasing concentration of population in the major urban centers in Latin America is often conceived as the manifestation of a convergent economic process, that of industrialization (Roberts 1978). Internal cityward migration and natural increase are two dominant contributors to the increase in urbanized population throughout most of Latin America and the Caribbean in the last four decades (Elizaga 1965, Clarke 1974, Davis 1972). In Latin American research, studies of internal migration and urbanization have proliferated, investigating regional origins, migration networks, migrant selectivity, aspects of migrant assimilation in the urban social, economic and political realms, and the character and nature of initial settlement (cf. Morse 1971 for a summary of studies written between 1965–70). By and large, previous research has not fully explored the social and spatial dimensions of the process whereby migrants select initial residential sites and subsequently relocate (exceptions include studies by Brown 1972, Cornelius 1975, Davies and Blood 1974, Vaughn and Feindt 1973, Ward 1976). In short, we know very little about the paths a migrant follows between the time he reaches the city and the time he settles into a secure and stable dwelling environment.

El Gran Chaco Argentino constituye la mayor extensión forestal y el más grande reservorio de biomasa del hemisferio sur extratropical. El sector situado al oeste de la isohieta de setecientos milímetros constituye el ambiente del Chaco Semiárido o Seco, ocupando sectores de las provincias de Salta, Chaco, Formosa, Santiago del Estero y Tucumán. Esta área del Chaco tiene una gran diversidad biológica y se caracteriza por un acelerado proceso de deforestación, en especial para la implantación del cultivo de soja. Concebido como un territorio vacío en términos demográficos, prevalece sobre el Chaco la idea de pobreza y marginalidad. Los cambios que están ocurriendo en los márgenes de este ambiente en relación con la expansión de la frontera agropecuaria, afecta a las poblaciones locales, transformando su dinámica demográfica. Este trabajo, por ello, trata de mostrar la magnitud de la deforestación y el impacto del avance de la frontera agropecuaria (especialmente del cultivo de soja) sobre la dinámica demográfica del área.

On 11 September 1973, heavily armed troops attacked the Chilean Presidential Palace in Santiago and toppled the government of Dr. Salvador Allende. The military coup brought an end to Latin America's first democratically-elected Marxist government. Since the September military takeover, the Chilean armed forces have moved with unparalleled harshness to suppress the base of the Allende regime's popular support. The Allende government's efforts toward raising the consumption level of Chile's lower classes had earned his Popular Unity (Unidad Popular—UP) coalition a high degree of political support among the nation's working class and urban migrant population. Because his Socialist-Communist coalition had been actively competing since the 1960s with both the reformist Christian Democratic party (Partido Demócrata Cristiano—PDC) and the ultraradical Leftist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria—MIR) for the support of the urban poor, Santiago's migrant shantytowns had an unusually high level of political mobilization. The squatter settlements outside of the capital provided some of the strongest support for Chile's various Marxist parties. Not surprisingly, since the military takeover many of Santiago's squatter communities have been subjected to mass arrests and even executions by the rightist government (Slaughterhouse, 1973; Terror, 1974).

Globalization has exacerbated the impact of three Northern-driven forces on Central American unions. Transnational firms have restructured or enhanced their levels of subcontracting. Governments, while weakening labor-code implemention, have launched extensive privatization schemes. And international supporters of unions have espoused new priorities and rechanneled funding. Although all three trends have caused major difficulties for unions, this article assesses whether or not their traditional spirit of “social-movement unionism” has been undermined. Based on extensive interviews and primary and secondary data, the study documents union resilience in the banana and maquila sectors despite problematic corporate behavior and market conditions. Stung by state privatizations, unions that fragmented following the Central American Peace Accords have partially regrouped to resist public-health takeovers and labor-code harmonization. Facing losses in Northern funding, unions have painfully adapted to fresh organizing strategies and sensitivity to women's issues, which they found to be fundamental to successful collaboration with corporate campaigns, trade pressure, and NGOs. Despite losses, unions have tapped a broader solidarity in their struggle against the demons of globalization.

The political tensions surrounding economic stabilization in revolutionary Nicaragua between 1979 and 1988 will be examined in this article. A review of the Nicaraguan case reveals that the Sandinista model of a mixed economy (presupposing at least simple reproduction of the capitalist, small producer, and state sectors) with multiclass “national unity” created a series of demands that were increasingly difficult to reconcile with defense priorities and longer-term goals for socioeconomic transformation. After 1981, access to external finance became more restrictive, the payoff horizon for investment projects began to lengthen, and destabilization intensified. Failure to assess these internal and external tensions realistically contributed to inflationary pressures and de facto shifts in income distribution, which at times undermined the consolidation of revolutionary hegemony and required reconsidering alliance strategies.

Why is Colombia, a country with fertile arable lands, increasingly importing its food supply as a consequence of shrinking lands dedicated to crop production, whereas land inappropriate for pasture and livestock has been expanding exponentially? The answer lies in the land laws approved since the 1930s, coupled with the state's economic policies, which have reduced the opportunity costs of investing in this sector. Both have provided an institutional matrix to transform parts of the rural economy from food production to a rentier political economy spearheaded by cattle ranching. This article explains why cattle ranching has become increasingly prominent since the 1950s for a segment of the dominant classes that is predisposed to invest in this endeavor despite the risks and low economic returns. More important, the article explains how the institutional matrix (laws and policies) and precarious property rights in rural areas provided the incipient narco-bourgeoisie, since the mid-1970s, with a pivotal incentive to choose cattle ranching as a favorite means to launder money, speculate, and exercise political power, consequently cementing rentier capitalism.

Historians who have sought to examine the native societies of the Americas, whether before or after the European conquest, have often felt a need to go beyond the traditional bounds of the discipline, loose as they are, in their efforts to comprehend the values and the actions of people whose societies did not conform to the European pattern. In the study of Indian societies, anthropology and history joined early and have continued to collaborate; the very term ethnohistory, which some would consider an unnecessary coining of a new name for social history, is clear evidence of this union. Further evidence, if such be necessary, is provided by the degree to which scholars have drawn upon the approaches and conclusions of both disciplines in their work. While this practice is of long standing, earlier work showed a general tendency to utilize the data and the conclusions of other disciplines, rather than drawing upon the theories and the approaches developed by others in order to reexamine one's own materials. This highly pragmatic approach to the potential contributions of other disciplines is increasingly giving way to deeper collaboration and interchange.