During the 1820s, the works of English utilitarian philosopher and jurisconsult Jeremy Bentham attained a remarkable diffusion throughout Spanish America, enjoying a high reputation among the leaders of the revolt against Spanish rule. Colombian Francisco de Paula Santander professed himself to be Bentham's admirer, while Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda took his advice on freedom of the press. Simón Bolívar, el Gran Libertador, went so far as to assure Bentham that his name was never pronounced “even in these savage regions of America, without veneration nor without gratitude.”

For eighteen months, between March 1982 and August 1983, Guatemala was ruled by a born-again Christian, General Efrain Ríos Montt. He drew world attention to Guatemala because of his brutally effective suppression of the nation's guerrilla movement and his idiosyncratic style of rule but above all, because of his religion. The idea that a Protestant could serve as the chief of state in a country as staunchly Catholic as Guatemala struck many observers as an anomaly. Closer examination reveals, however, that it was not anomalous for a Protestant to be president of Guatemala. By 1982 nearly 30 percent of the Guatemalan population were Protestants, the result of a quiet wave of conversion that started during the nineteenth century and has accelerated dramatically in the last three decades. The idea that President Ríos Montt's religion would influence his entire administration was even less surprising, for Protestantism has been wed to politics in Guatemala ever since it first arrived in the country. The purpose of this research report is to examine the development of patterns in the relationship between the Guatemalan state and Protestantism as they evolved during the formative years between 1872 and 1954 and to explore the effects of this relationship on Protestant conversion.

In the spring of 1973, the author conducted a survey of political scientists teaching Latin American politics at American colleges and universities. The intention was to collect and disseminate information on (1) the techniques used in teaching Latin American politics, (2) the books assigned most frequently to students, (3) the identification of political systems most frequently emphasized in the classroom, and (4) the current level of student interest in the politics of Latin America. In addition to these data, information was gathered on those who teach in the area—i.e., how many have done field research, in which countries do they have the most expertise, and which approaches to political development do they find useful in teaching Latin American politics.

Currently, Western Europe is experiencing a novel type of Marxism. The Communist movement is no longer viewed by most observers as a cohesive monolith waiting for directions from the East, and communism in Italy, France, and Spain has shown an increasing level of autonomy and national resourcefulness. Indeed, the “Eurocommunism” of Santiago Carrillo (head of the Spanish Communist party) is frequently attacked by his Soviet comrades in Party Congress and press alike. In that this new European communism pays a great deal of attention to specific national conditions, the importance of autonomy, and flexible strategies to win support, it is not always understood by orthodox Communists or ardent anti-Marxists. The latter group is convinced that all Communists are the same and will show their true color once in power, while the former is greatly concerned that their once revolutionary parties will evolve into revisionist Social Democratic groupings far afield from Lenin's prototypical Bolshevik party. Neither, then, is happy with this innovative approach to Western European Marxist-Leninist praxis.

Este artículo analiza la forma en que la construcción e institucionalización de las representaciones sociales sobre Tepoztlán, Morelos, México, han influido en la definición de la actividad turística en esta población. Proponemos el concepto de “economía de la experiencia íntima” para analizar las formas de institucionalización que tienen los lugares, las prácticas, los símbolos y las relaciones que al reunirse producen lo que la mayoría de la gente considera como vivencias auténticas, de recreo y confort. El artículo concluye que el turismo es una compleja red de dimensiones y relaciones sociales donde existe una tendencia a la creación de relaciones asimétricas de explotación del trabajo y la cultura.

N. M. Rothschild & Sons (NMR), the banking house which the Frankfurt-born Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777–1836) began operating from New Court in London in 1809 and which is continued to this day by his descendants, has a long history of involvement in Brazil. Extensive documentation of this history is preserved in The Rothschild Archive in London, where material up to 1930 is available for consultation. The firm's initial business with Brazil was in merchant banking activities and bullion dealing, but in 1855 it became the Brazilian government's financial agent in London and went on to handle the government's borrowing in the London capital markets and to be closely concerned with the country's fiscal, commercial, and exchange rate policy. With the bank at the heart of the development of Brazilian public finance, The Rothschild Archive is an important resource for an understanding of this aspect of Brazilian economic and political history, as well as the history of British informal imperialism and emerging patterns of globalization.

During 1986 and 1987, Cuba found itself once again debating the relative merits of material and moral incentives. Analysts outside Cuba have rushed to their word processors to pronounce judgment on the Cuban economy's alleged uncertain footing. Some writers have erroneously declared that Cuba has abolished its post-1973 system of tying pay to productivity, and some have interpreted changes in the Cuban economic system as marking the failure and demise of the Sistema de Dirección y Planificación de la Economía (SDPE), Cuba's system of economic management and planning since 1976. This essay will endeavor not to uncover the errant interpretations of Western observers but to explore the underlying problematic and dynamic that Cuba confronts in attempting to balance moral and material incentives within the framework of central planning.

In Different Parts of the World, Landowners Have Sometimes Found fit to compensate labor, wholly or partially, by letting laborers have the usufruct of a small plot of land. The border between this category of labor and that of tenants is blurred, as is suggested by the English term, tenant labor (or labor tenants).

El artículo analiza la diversidad del campo judaico en Argentina a través de dos proyectos identitarios: la ortodoxia jabadiana y el Proyecto YOK. Dicho análisis permitirá observar las diferencias en lo que concierne a la definición de la identidad en cada uno de los proyectos identitarios y las relaciones entre identidad judía e identidad nacional. A partir del estudio sobre el campo judaico, pretendemos analizar problemáticas sociales vinculadas a la revitalización de lo religioso y a las tensiones entre identidades étnicas, religiosas y nacionales en la era de la globalización.

In the context of urban poverty in Brazil, this article considers the national context of civil society starting in the 1950s through to the approval of the Statute of the City in 2001. Focusing on a case study of Niterói, Rio de Janeiro State, I unpack the perception of a declining civil society in that city. Rather than taking a retraction of civil society at face value, I make the case for alterations within civil society and the role of the political context.

While there is much disagreement concerning the political effects of Chile's two-member district binominal election system, most agree that it provides strong incentives for the formation and maintenance of coalitions. This article takes on these assumptions, contending that the electoral system's coalition-inducing tendencies are actually quite context dependent. Focusing primarily on the governing Concertación coalition and relying on analyses of relative levels of electoral support among parties, a “reward” insurance policy for electoral losers, and the timing and sequencing of elections, this article outlines the conditions under which the coalition-enhancing tendencies of the electoral system are at their strongest and their weakest. It finds that these variables align to provide a less than propitious environment for the maintenance of the Concertación coalition in the lead up to the 2005 elections. In theoretical terms, the article challenges direct and mechanistic connections between electoral formulae and party outcomes, arguing that we should not be surprised when subtle contextual variations cause theorized outcomes not to occur. These findings contribute to an emerging consensus that many of the theorized rules on the connection between electoral and party systems are more complex and context dependent than is usually supposed and should be applied with greater caution.

As part of a long-standing debate about the extent to which official, government-linked unions in Mexico actively seek to win gains for their members, analysts of labor relations in Mexico have described the dominance of contratos de protección, collective bargaining contracts that offer little or nothing to workers while protecting employers from real union representation. In particular, a number of researchers have asserted that such contracts are universal in retail. Analyzing forty-one retail collective bargaining contracts from four Mexican cities, I find strong evidence that this is not the case. I find considerable variation in wages and fringe benefits, benefits in excess of the legal minimum in 27 to 68 percent of cases (depending on the benefit), and cases of sustained improvement in contractual benefits. Detailed consideration of the patterns suggests that these contracts are not uniformly protection contracts, indicating that there is strong as well as weak unionism in Mexican retail, including among official unions, but that competitive conditions in Mexican retail constrain the possibilities for strong unionism.

At the beginning of the 1950s, Chile prided herself on a century-old tradition of social studies. Beginning with the so-called generation of 1842 and with the support of the University of Chile (established in 1843), some of the most distinguished Chilean minds devoted themselves to the study of Chilean society and its evolution. Hernán Godoy Urzua (1967) classifies this intellectual production in six groups: social thinking of the nineteenth century, studies belonging to traditional social disciplines, writings on the “social question,” novels with social content, modern social essays, and writings with sociological intent.

In analyzing the historical development of Meso- and Andean-American society, historians have stressed the hacienda's destructive impact on native settlements, which, once broken down, became disposed to the adoption of Spanish traits. This view focuses primarily on the hacendado's acquisition of Indian land and labor and the resultant destruction, partial or complete, of traditional Indian forms of cultivation, trade, and ultimately social relationships. To the extent that the hacendado forced communal Indians to resettle in newly opened lands, cultivate European crops, and engage in European trade, he encouraged the Indians to abandon their traditional rituals and adopt readily available Spanish patterns as replacements.

This article reports on the current state of collective migrant organizing for two Indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. Strained relations between migrant organizations and village authorities combine with small active memberships to limit the level and type of fund-raising in support of village development and governance. These findings highlight the difficulties that communities face to maintain effective translocal institutions over time, particularly as first-generation migrants “retire” and a lack of new arrivals hinders organizational renewal.