For the past thirty years, the imprint “Editorial Joaquín Mortiz” has stood for innovation, quality, and prestige in Mexican literature. After it was founded in 1962, Joaquín Mortiz quickly emerged as the premier literary publisher in Mexico and has provided readers with many of the novels and short stories now recognized as landmarks defining the contemporary canon of Mexican fiction. Most studies of Mexican narrative of the 1960s have tended to emphasize the dichotomy between the elitist self-conscious experimentation of escritura writing and the irreverent youthful exuberance of onda writing. Shifting the focus from texts to publishers, however, reveals a different configuration. Editorial Joaquín Mortiz actually encouraged both these trends by cultivating the work of escritura authors such as Salvador Elizondo, Juan García Ponce, and José Emilio Pacheco along with those of onda authors like Gustavo Sainz and José Agustín. Moreover, during its first two years, Joaquín Mortiz staked much of its early reputation on promoting two Mexican novels now fundamental to women's writing throughout Latin America: Oficio de tinieblas (1962) by Rosario Castellanos and Los recuerdos del porvenir (1963) by Elena Garro. Thus Editorial Joaquín Mortiz has greatly influenced the development of contemporary Mexican narrative.

Esta nota estudia la territorialidad de las maras en Honduras contribuyendo así a los estudios y debates existentes sobre territorio, espacio y pandillas. La territorialidad se percibe según la noción de Robert Sack (1986) definida como estrategias geográficas de poder con las cuales se pueden influenciar, afectar y controlar relaciones sociales, personas u objetos dentro de un área delimitada. Centrándose en el caso de miembros encarcelados de la Dieciocho en Honduras, este trabajo demuestra que las maras desarrollan estrategias territoriales que desafían el orden territorial de la cárcel y, por otro lado, producen un nuevo espacio social llamado el barrio el cual surge como un centro de reclusión dentro de otro centro de reclusión.

La territorialidad de las maras encarceladas indica la habilidad de desarrollar reacciones y respuestas en distintas situaciones, incluso las políticas represivas de seguridad del estado hondureño; asimismo, es indicador de los altos niveles de violencia y exclusión que viven estos jóvenes marginados.

Leyendo casi cualquier estudio sobre la historia de Iberoamrica durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX, comprobamos fcilmente que el Estado es un personaje central. Hace y deshace, se halla siempre en el centro de las decisiones y tiene un desempeo actoral relevante en la resolucin de todos los conflictos.

I discuss how the chorographic view of landscape in Spanish cartography was at variance with the perspective of terrain represented in Andean mapping media when both traditions converged upon the implementation of the Crown-mandated surveys known as the “Relaciones Geográficas del Peru” (1577–1586). These surveys were collected and transcribed by modern editors for publication. The sole map included in the Relaciones may have been due to the self-interest of the Spanish author. The continued use of Andean media and the art of “memory mapping,” both of precontact origin, may explain why indigenous mappings did not enter the Relaciones record. This memory activity was, and is still, manifested during the ritualized traversing of community-held land boundaries. Therefore, the few extant paper-like mappings had been appended to land-litigation documents. I examine how the visualized route and the naming of topographical features underlie three sixteenth-century mappings and their accompanying judicial accounts (relaciones). These mappings and accounts display the native Andeans' adaptation of precontact place identification practices to Spanish boundary-marking methods. The mappings demonstrate a hybrid cartographic art, which combines manuscript and block print within the pictorial format. In one of the maps the artist-scribes include a relación in Quechua (and its Spanish version), a rare example of this genre in Andean letters. Indigenous cabildo authorities, exemplified by Felipe Guarnan Poma de Ayala, adopted writing practices by recording place names. This activity led to a pan-Andean lexicon of toponymns for judicial purposes. Contemporary ethnographic research on current walkabout customs could further elucidate the genesis of these Colonial Andean mappings and lead to the recovery of other specimens.

This essay explores the impact of new consumer cultures on rural women in Chile's fruit-export sector during the military regime of Augusto Pinochet, 1973–1990. It challenges the longstanding assumption that the “consumerism” associated with Chile's neoliberal makeover was overwhelmingly reactionary in its political consequences and debilitating for working-class communities in particular. It argues that while new consumer cultures emerged within, and sometimes exacerbated, conditions of extraordinary exploitation and want, consumption was also a site through which women fruit workers challenged family patriarchy and created new forms of community with each other. Taking the central valley province of the Aconcagua Valley as its focus, the essay examines women's enthusiasm for the proliferation of imported commodities such as ready-made clothes, makeup, televisions, refrigerators, and electronic music devices, whose availability resulted from employment in the fruit-export sector as well as new sources of consumer debt. It concludes that while such new consumer desires and practices positioned rural women as validating certain aspects of the military's modernization project, it simultaneously encouraged women to resist necessarily linkages between “authoritarian” and “modernity” and to embrace gender ideals that were quite oppositional to those the regime promoted.

Do conditional cash transfers (CCTs) lead to increased participation in multiple political activities in Latin America? If CCTs contribute to broad political participation, how do CCTs increase participation in a wide variety of political activities? I argue that CCTs boost political participation through resource effects, and that both the cash transfers and the conditionalities play an important role in shaping political activity among beneficiaries. Using an original data set from Mexico and existing survey data from nine Latin American countries, I analyze the relationship between CCTs and political participation and examine the hypothesized pathway. The results support my argument.

This article examines the effect of perceived ethnoracial identity on electoral politics in the Dominican Republic and provides an explanation for the low salience of race and ethnicity in political behavior in Latin America. I argue that, under certain conditions, individuals will deal with ethnoracial discrimination and stratification through exit rather than voice —that is, they will reclassify their way out of marginalized ethnoracial categories instead of voting for candidates or parties that share their ethnoracial identities. This tends to be the case where ethnoracial group identity is inchoate and group boundaries are permeable. I also argue that where ethnoracial group loyalties are weak and immigration is widespread, citizens may emphasize national origin over race or ethnicity. Findings from an original field experiment and survey in Santo Domingo show that candidates did not consistently support candidates that shared their ethnoracial attributes, but they did slightly favor candidates perceived as white. Respondents strongly discriminated against candidates of Haitian origin.

In January 1875, the Buenos Aires municipal council legalized female sexual commerce within authorized bordellos. A decade of rapid urbanization and population growth, characterized by a high proportion of unmarried males, had created problems of social control and public health that had to be addressed by city authorities. Assisted in their task by doctors specializing in public health who were aware of European legislation on the issue, councilmen enacted a law purportedly intended to improve public health. Instead, the desire to create revenues from exorbitant license fees meant that municipally regulated prostitution served principally to keep prostitutes off the streets and enlarge city coffers. It was not until 1888 that the Dispensario de Salubridad (or Prostitutes' Registry) was established along with the Sifilicomio (the venereal disease hospital) to periodically examine and treat women in licensed houses of prostitution.

Until a few years ago, Venezuelans and their historians held black and white notions about the regimes that had governed the country after it became a centralized state in the early twentieth century. As Venezuelan historian Santiago Gerardo Suárez pointed out, “The victor writes history.” And indeed, most portrayals of Venezuelan rulers after 1908 were strongly colored by the roles played by leading members of the political parties that emerged triumphant in 1958 when the modern democratic period was ushered in (Suárez 1965, 20). In fact, the most influential works were written by important politicians and others closely tied to political organizations.

La reforma del servicio civil de 1991/92 creó en Argentina una burocracia profesional (en el clásico sentido “weberiano”) a escala relativamente masiva para países de América Latina. En la presente nota se exponen resultados de una investigación empírica que conciernen a la situación del servicio público federal argentino, diez años después de la reforma. Basada en entrevistas con informantes claves, así como también en estadísticas y documentos oficiales, esta nota de investigación describe, en primer lugar, la muy baja influencia de los nuevos funcionarios de carrera sobre decisiones de política pública. En segundo lugar, se examinan las dificultades que tienen los designados políticos de alto nivel para trabajar con funcionarios profesionales permanentes, y se incluye una breve retrospectiva de la problemática relación entre los dos grupos desde la democratización de 1983. Se presenta, finalmente, un análisis estadístico de la burocracia federal argentina, con el propósito de medir el impacto numérico del nuevo servicio civil de carrera sobre la estructura burocrática general, esto es, el nivel de profesionalismo global alcanzado mediante la reforma de 1991/92.

Though much scholarly attention has been paid to the emergence of female-headed households in Latin America, there is debate over where to place these households within discussions of poverty and resource deprivation. Two issues complicate this debate: first, the lack of multi-resource models in quantitative analyses to fully assess types of resource accumulation, and second, the broad failure for analyses of female-headed households to differentiate between different kinds of female-heads of household.

Research in advanced industrialized democracies on social attitudes toward same-sex marriage suggests that intergroup social contact and positive media coverage play an important role in promoting tolerance and support for same-sex marriage. Using AmericasBarometer survey data for eighteen countries in 2010, 2012, and 2014, this article examines the ways in which individual-level Internet use interacts with news exposure, country-level quality of democracy, Internet penetration, and their association with support for same-sex marriage. The results suggest that not only is Internet use associated with greater support for same-sex marriage, but that among those who both use the Internet and pay more attention to the news, the positive effects are amplified. In addition, national level of democracy, economic development, and Internet use are also associated with overall higher probabilities of supporting same-sex marriage. We find that Internet use has a strong positive association with the probability of supporting same-sex marriage as the percentage of the national population on the Internet increases. These findings extend our understanding of social and political tolerance of same-sex marriage in Latin America.

During the dramatic wave of democratization in the 1980s, Venezuela stood out as South America's wise elder. While neighboring militaries had shifted in and out of power, sometimes ruling for decades, Venezuela had maintained a stable democracy since 1959. After a relatively brief period of adjustment, the country settled into a political system in which two dominant political parties alternated in power and the armed forces remained peacefully in the barracks. Yet twice in 1992, important sectors of the armed forces took up arms to displace what they and many other Venezuelans viewed as a decrepit and corrupt political system. The coups failed, but they left the political system shaken and the military's political subordination seriously in doubt. The coup attempts also raised doubts about Venezuelan strategies for military control that had been a model for the rest of Latin America.

This article analyzes the Catholic Church's involvement in social conflicts resulting from resource extraction activities in Peru. The nature and degree of the Catholic Church's involvement vary greatly according to the type of conflict and the diversity of standpoints of the Church at the local level. The article focuses on three distinctive, widely known conflicts against the expansion of extractive activities. It shows that the importance conventionally given to the role of particular religious figures, their adherence to progressive ideologies, and the defense of the Church's strategic interests do not fully encompass the complexity of local processes. In contrast, the article contends that the Church's institutional embeddedness in local networks is the most influential factor in the involvement of Catholic organizations in anti-mining conflicts. Embeddedness coincides with a spirituality that prioritizes local people's agency, whereby the priests and Church organizations accompany and follow the initiatives of local communities instead of taking a leading role. This does not mean that the Church takes a passive stance in these conflicts. Priests and other pastoral agents have incorporated environmental and human rights discourses into an explicit religious framework that amplifies the social space of the Church and provides legitimacy for mobilizations. In parallel, locally generated doctrinal frameworks permeate the official discourse of the Catholic Church, reinforcing the position of those committed to the defense of local demands.

Television is an important political tool in Latin America. In recognition of its ability to shape public opinion and influence political behavior, Brazilian electoral authorities provide political parties with free television airtime in the weeks preceding elections. While Brazil’s publicly financed electoral program levels the playing field between parties, it may contribute to intraparty resource disparities. This article contends that racial considerations influence how party elites distribute television airtime and thus contribute to the political marginalization of Afro-Brazilians. Using original data from Rio de Janeiro’s 2012 municipal elections, it shows that party officials provide Afro-Brazilian candidates significantly less airtime than their white counterparts, even after controlling for theoretically important nonracial candidate characteristics. Moreover, it shows that there are racial differences in how candidates use the airtime they are awarded. Afro-Brazilian candidates are nearly ten times more likely than whites to focus on racial issues in their campaign ads. These results provide new insight about why Afro-Brazilians are rarely elected to public office and, when elected, the types of issues they may address.

In 1970, as part of a comprehensive program of institutionalization, new economic policies were introduced in Cuba emphasizing more extensive use of material incentives, wage differentials, and piece rates to stimulate productivity. Those policies raised the incomes of Cuban workers and created new demands for a better diet and more consumer goods. Yet problems in the state-run domestic food sector made it difficult for Cubans to secure the higher standard of living promised by their increased salaries and wages. In May 1980, the mercados libres campesinos (MLCs) were introduced as part of a strategy aimed at harnessing the productive capacities of the peasant sector to help satisfy the resulting pent-up demand. The MLCs provided sites where agricultural producers (free peasants, cooperativists, workers on state enterprises, and owners of small plots and gardens) could sell their surplus production directly to consumers. The law governing the MLCs contained several significant restrictions, but the markets were “free” in regard to prices and quantities sold.