The Mexican transition to democracy has not been completed in terms of either the destitution of the authoritarian regime or the establishment of a democratic regime, a situation that explains the continuity of authoritarian practices and culture in public life. Not only did the Partido Revolucionario Institucional preserve impressive veto power over constitutional reforms and even small changes in matters of public policy, but also the other two main political parties (Partido Acción Nacional and Partido de la Revolución Democrática) had no alternative democratic projects and reproduced the clientelistic and particularistic political culture of the past; civil society was (and is) both socially and politically weak, and its popular sectors suffered important strategic defeats along the process. Not surprisingly, democratic innovations have been scarce, and the few interesting ones are at risk. The emergence of new social and political actors, as well as new public spaces, is urgent and necessary to counter the paradoxical combination of depoliticization of public life and overpoliticization of democratic institutions the country suffers nowadays, a situation that explains the current simultaneous crisis of representation and governability.

Recently, a number of scholars have begun to piece together the economic and social history of Indian women in the Andes during the colonial period. It has not been an easy task: too often quantitative materials, such as tributary censuses, mention women only as wives and mothers and then may not provide even minimal demographic data on them. Moreover, although court and notarial records can be rich sources of information about Indian women, they generally deal with those who lived in cities or who were familiar enough with them to know how to use the colonial legal system. Consequently, it is no accident that most research has concentrated on native women in urban settings, certainly a small minority of the female indigenous population.

The Paraguayan War, or War of the Triple Alliance, fought by Paraguay against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay (1864–1870), remains unique in the Latin American context in several respects. Dire in its duration and human toll, the war's underlying conflict was not directly related to specific boundary disagreements. Unlike other Latin American conflicts, the War of the Triple Alliance has stirred a passionate controversy involving heavy ideological connotations, with some analysts viewing it as a struggle between civilization (the Alliance) and barbarism (Paraguay) and others depicting it as a confrontation between British imperialism (the Alliance) and Latin American nationalism (Paraguay).

In 2008 Guatemala passed legislation criminalizing various forms of violence against women and mandating the creation of courts that would specialize in such violence. This article demonstrates that these reforms’ impacts were unevenly felt, with the most marginalized benefiting the least. It explains this gap by drawing on a historical intersectional analysis, and reveals the importance of including place alongside more commonly studied categories of difference. It also illuminates the sources of the gaps between policies and their impacts. It finds that many Guatemalan women remained marginalized from security and justice, despite attempts to protect them, for two reasons. First, the reforms isolated violence against women from other structural sources of inequality, thus undercutting their impacts for multiply marginalized women. Second, the reforms’ impacts were undermined by historically constituted patterns of state-society relations and the uneven nature of the Guatemalan state.

Este artículo explica los efectos de la violencia y, en particular, el tipo de violencia relacionado con los cárteles de droga y su influencia sobre la competitividad electoral a nivel local (municipal). Resulta pertinente comprender y estimar este efecto para asegurar que la democracia, definida sobre la base de su requisito más elemental—es decir, elecciones libres y justas —, no se deteriore o transite al autoritarismo en los gobiernos locales. Los resultados revelan un deterioro en la competitividad electoral a nivel local debido a la violencia relacionada con el tráfico ilegal de drogas. Las estrategias represivas del gobierno mexicano no han sido efectivas en prevenir este resultado.

Latin American politics has taken a left turn in the past decade, with an increasing number of chief executives hailing from left-of-center parties. We investigate the political and socioeconomic factors explaining political ideology of the chief executive in a sample of one hundred elections taking place between 1975 and 2007 in eighteen Latin American countries. We find that the commodity booms in agricultural, mining, and oil are positively and significantly related to the probability that a country will have a chief executive from a left-of-center political party. However, for oil exports, we observe that this effect holds only for Venezuela. We also show that past political discrimination and government crises are positively and significantly associated with a move to more left-wing chief executives. Openness to trade and having a president from the right in the previous presidential term negatively affects the probability of having a more liberal president, although the effect of trade openness disappears when the incumbent president is a conservative. We also find that when a government crisis occurs during a term with a president from the right, the probability of having a president from the left in the following term increases significantly.

According to the theory of sectoral clashes and coalitions, the sectoral element plays a unique role in affecting, on the one hand, the interrelationships between the economic processes of income creation, distribution, and allocation and, on the other hand, the interrelationships between economic, social, political, and institutional processes that make for change and progress. The objective of this essay is to extend the previous formulation of the theory of sectoral clashes and coalitions along two lines: first, by presenting statistical information from all of Latin America which prima facie supports the theory's basic premises; second, by defining and expanding these premises and the basic framework in an effort to obtain a clearer vision of the theory and its links to economic, political, and social reality. Although most criticisms of the theory find a specific answer and most of the suggestions for improvement are followed, this article is more than a rebuttal. In response to the urgent need for its further development, cited by all commentators and those who have applied and tested the theory in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, and Peru, this essay seeks to open new ground and explore new dimensions.

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a relação entre os agentes estatais e umafração da classe economicamente dominante da economia cafeeira paulista—o “capital cafeeiro”—durante a Primeira República brasileira (1889–1930). Para tanto, escolhi como objeto de análise a política tributária promovida pelo governo do estado de São Paulo durante o período. A minha intencão é mostrar que os agentes estatais ao promoverem uma política tributária essencialmente calcada no imposto de exportação serviram-se de parte significativa do excedente pro-duzido pelo capital cafeeiro para financiar as atividades ordinárias do aparelho estatal paulista (educação, polícia, saúde, judiciário), o que muito desagradou aos membros daquela fração de classe. Estes reagiram à política oficial tanto pela via corporativa como pela via política, sem, contudo, conseguir revertê-la. Por fim, afirmamos que os conflitos políticos oriundos desse embate foram importantes para a configuração da cena política do final da Primeira República.

The profile of voters and nonvoters according to age, occupation, and education is described. The study is based on samples of around 30 male mesas from the city of Buenos Aires in four presidential elections1983, 1989, 1995, and 1999and 100 from each of two elections (1997 representatives and 1999 presidential) in the homonymous province. Data from official voter registers (padrones) are analyzed for those obligated to vote (18-69) and for those exempted (70+ years). The level of abstention increased slowly but steadily along the time span considered. Citizens obligated to vote do so more than those who are not. Logistic regression equations showed a positive effect of the lowest occupational status categoriesless educated peopleon the odds of nonvoting, while the opposite was true for the highest occupational status categories.

Agrarian studies in Peru experienced an unusual development in the seventies, when a new generation of scholars emerged whose impact has been considerable. The advances made are the result of their collective contribution. One consequence of recent research has been the displacement of a traditional view consisting of a schematic paradigm of the Peruvian countryside that long dominated the thought of social scientists and laymen. Its origins can be traced to the portrayals by Mariátegui and Haya de la Torre of Peruvian society of the twenties, which at the time were fresh and meaningful. The paradigm can be recognized in works such as Roel (1961) or CIDA (1966) that, despite their merits, failed to place sufficient emphasis upon the new trends that emerged in Peruvian agriculture following the Second World War. The structuralism of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) and the reformist agrarian thought of the fifties and sixties reinforced this accepted interpretation that was transformed into an increasingly ideologized vision of reality.

The institution of female domestic service in La Paz has been characterized by continuity as well as change, despite the profound social transformations brought about by the Bolivian National Revolution in 1952. Domestic service has historically been the most important source of employment for women in Bolivian cities and Latin American urban centers in general (Glave 1988; Arrom 1985; Kuznesof n.d.). Live-in domestic service continues to be the norm in La Paz, even though the number of live-out household workers is increasing. The dependent nature of the Bolivian economy and enduring gender biases have precluded the absorption of women into “formal sector” employment, and generally depressed wage rates do not permit most women in La Paz the luxury of being full-time mothers, wives, or daughters. As a result, salaried domestic service is not only persisting but expanding as a prolonged economic crisis forces growing numbers of female Aymara Indian immigrants from the countryside to seek wage employment in the homes of criollo women in the city.

What do technology-driven bureaucratic sectors do when their budgets are cut? In Latin America, this type of state institution has come to expect budget reductions, given recurrent economic crises, lack of coherent science policy, and more recently, state rationalization policies. On the basis of in-depth interviews I conducted with nuclear specialists of the region and drawing from network theories, I argue that bureaucratic institutions with expertise in nuclear science and technology respond strategically to decreased government spending by becoming more active in transnational policy networks. I test this argument using social network and maximum likelihood techniques to study collaborative research projects in nuclear science and technology among twenty Latin American countries over a period of twenty years (1984–2004). Study findings confirm expectations and carry implications for how science policies are adopted in Latin American states under chronic budget deficits.

Las ciencias sociales por lo general han propuesto lecturas de las clases populares y de lo popular que han tendido a minimizar la existencia de formas de individualidad en su seno, dando lugar a visiones altamente colectivistas de sus miembros. Sobre la base de dos investigaciones empíricas de tipo cualitativo para el caso de Chile, realizadas mediante entrevistas semidirectivas y técnicas grupales, este artículo discute que, sin desconocer la comunidad de experiencias observable entre sus miembros, es posible dar cuenta de ciertos procesos individualizadores específicos en este grupo social. Frente a las numerosas adversidades de su existencia en un contexto de alta inestabilidad posicionai y exigencia de híperactuación, los miembros de los sectores populares urbanos tienden a afirmar su individualidad a partir de tres dimensiones: la fortaleza de carácter; la habilidad y el sentido de oportunidad; y el goce y la irreverencia humorística.

Although the first Communist state in the Western Hemisphere was established in Cuba, scholars have paid relatively little attention to the old Cuban Communist party, which for many years was the only significant political organization on the island that claimed to speak in the name of Marxism. An analysis of the old Cuban Communist program, strategy, and tactics is significant for understanding social and political processes not only in Cuba, but elsewhere in the world. The growth of so-called Eurocommunism and the questioning of the revolutionary credentials of traditional Communist parties by others within the Left have led to voluminous polemics, but have failed to clarify the nature and role of traditional Communist parties throughout the world.

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognizes Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination and to maintain their distinct institutions. This article investigates how those rights are being exercised in Charagua, which became Bolivia’s first “Indigenous autonomous government” when the municipality’s Guaraní majority approved conversion in 2015. We explore the construction of novel institutions of self-government to assess how local Guaraní leaders are negotiating autonomy, both externally and internally. The result of those negotiations is a hybrid political system in which power is balanced between an executive organ (as required by Bolivian law) and a deliberative assembly (the Ñemboati Guasu, which operates according to Indigenous custom). The prominence of the assembly expresses a significant form of autonomy that promotes intercultural political participation and enacts Indigenous self-government in ways that are important to Guaraní people. Yet, because the new political unit does not control subsoil rights and thus cannot determine the sorts of development that take place in its territory, we cannot yet say the Guaranís are exercising full and robust autonomy as expressed by the UN Declaration’s provisions for self-determination.

The transformation of Latin American societies from the 1970s onward and the recent sociopolitical and economic changes at a global scale call for reconsiderations of the relation between art and power and its role in processes of democratization. This article examines art's social function and its understanding as transformative social praxis—an activity that reflects upon the world and seeks to change it, and that at the same time critically reflects upon its own condition and relation to that world. It specifically suggests the idea of art's rhetoric in order to conceptualize art's critical potential and identify processes that generate and displace meaning across artistic, sociopolitical, and discursive contexts. Tucumán Arde (1968) in Argentina, Colectivo Actiones de Artes Para no morir de hambre en el arte (1979) in Chile, and Proyecto Venus (2000-2006), based in Buenos Aires, use interdisciplinary methodologies to critically intersect the public sphere. They scrutinize art's position in society, seek to raise awareness, and act as alternative networks of information and socialization.

Capitalism is profoundly conditioned by the types of landed property and agrarian classes it confronts in its development, thereby determining fundamental features of the historically specific “social formation” that emerges in a given capitalist country. Such a social formation is not merely split into the constituent classes unique to the capitalist mode of production, but also incorporates, as Marx wrote of Western European capitalism, “strata of society which, though belonging to the antiquated mode of production, continue to exist side by side with it in gradual decay” (1967, vol. 1, p. 765). Or, as Joseph Schumpeter—certainly no Marxist—put it: “Any theory of class structure, in dealing with a given historical period, must include prior class structures among its data; … any theory of classes and class formation must explain the fact that classes coexisting at any given time bear the marks of different centuries on their brow” (1955, p. 111). Every concrete social class, therefore, is also an historical class, not a mere social category or analytic abstraction, and its existence depends on the particular history of the society of which it is a decisive constituent; and in that history, the protracted presence of agrarian elements has often been critical.