This article analyzes the impact of state policies since the 1970s on household food security in several Mapuche communities in the Araucanía region of Chile (Region IX). The author highlights key transformations in the national economy and food system and endeavors to link those to local phenomena, in particular the absorption of the local livelihood strategies and food systems into capitalist markets and the high incidences of food, insecurity. The article concludes that a reconceptualization of macroeconomic and indigenous policies are required to rebuild the material and social foundations of rural Mapuche communities that provide the bases from which their inhabitants can reconstruct a mutually beneficial relationship with the broader Chilean society and avert the continued acceleration of tension and violence.

The Salasacas are one of several indigenous peoples in highland Ecuador who consider themselves, and are considered by others, to be a distinct, homogeneous blood group. Throughout the Incaic, Spanish, and national periods, we trace their ethnogenesis from diverse origins to a single, highly unified ethnic community. Using an interdisciplinary methodology that combines historical and ethnographic data and follows the movement of current Salasaca anthroponyms, we identify three seventeenth-century migrations of different groups to Salasaca. These groups were still separate in the eighteenth century, and we follow their fusion into a single, exclusive, and vocal ethnic group in the postindependence period. We focus careful attention on their often novel responses to multiple historical contingencies over the course of five hundred years. Departing from writers who emphasize the political nature of ethnicity, we argue that Salasaca became a zone of cultural refusal as indigenous actors made a conscious decision to maintain a specific indigenous cultural identity.

Conspiracy theories are central to political discourse in Venezuela and are widely supported. In the Americas Barometer Venezuela survey from 2016 to 2017, 54 percent of respondents expressed agreement for at least one of three political conspiracy narratives unsupported by evidence. Political loyalties to Chavismo or to the anti-Chavista opposition drive much conspiracy theory belief, but not all. Politically motivated reasoning pushes some citizens toward a given conspiracy narrative but others away. Other factors that are distinct from political loyalties, including low education levels, predispositions toward Manichaeanism and fatalism, and belief in the supernatural are associated with conspiracism. This article presents new data on conspiracy theory beliefs in Venezuela as well as analysis of its individual-level correlates, then discusses how the current Venezuelan political environment fosters conspiracy and what changes might mitigate this phenomenon.

For most of the past decade, Central America has been wracked by revolution, counterrevolution, military repression, and massive dislocation that have affected the lives of millions of people. Yet despite these dramatic events, little anthropological research has been directed toward Central America in the 1980s. Analysis of the contents of seven major cultural anthropology journals from 1980 to 1986 shows no increased attention to the area over a previous period, 1970 to 1976. Research published in the 1980s has been emphatically non-policy-based, even when fieldwork was conducted in the midst of crisis. This research report will analyze the underrepresentation of Central America in anthropology journals and possible reasons for it. I will suggest that the reticence of anthropology as a discipline to legitimate policy-based research in Central America stems from a tendency that has characterized the field since its beginnings: studying communities as isolated, timeless cultures that are unaffected by regional, national, and international events taking place outside their borders. This bias causes practitioners who wish to advance their careers to turn their backs on what may be considered controversial policy analysis and write instead about subjects endorsed by the discipline.

Psychology is both a science and a profession. its development in any geographical area can be roughly gauged by such manifestations of scientific and professional activities as training, research and publication, and professional structures and organizations. The following analysis is based on a mail survey of schools of psychology conducted in late 1964 and personal visits by the author to thirty-two psychological institutions in Latin America in the summer of 1965.

In March 1973, for the first time since the military coup of 1966, a presidential election was held in Argentina. It also was the first time since 1955 that Peronist parties were allowed to present candidates in every province. The present note originated in an initiative by Darío Canton to collect occupational and electoral data from polling places in several Argentine cities. He had the cooperation of Beba Balvé and Lucía Osvaldo of the Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias Sociales, Buenos Aires. The three were responsible for gathering data in Buenos Aires (Canton), Rosario (Balvé), and La Matanza (Osvaldo). Subsequently, collaboration with researchers Jorge R. Jorrat and Héctor Caldelari from interior provinces made it possible to include comparisons with data from Córdoba and Tucumán. The analysis of the data and, ultimately, this note are the sole responsibility of the two authors whose names appear above.

Una de las cuestiones interesantes de las guerras de liberación y las revoluciones sociales del Tercer Mundo es que las luchas por profundas transformaciones sociales e, incluso, por un horizonte socialista, no tienen como fuerza principal a un partido proletario ni a organizaciones donde la clase obrera constituye el componente principal. El protagonista fundamental de estos movimientos es, antes bien, un complejo conjunto de clases y grupos populares—artesanos, campesinos, semiproletarios, jóvenes, pobres de la ciudad y del campo—donde la clase obrera no es un componente mayoritario. Este perfil social propio de las revoluciones y guerras de liberación del Tercer Mundo obedece en definitiva al modo en que el capitalismo se desarrolló en estos países, articulándose a formas no capitalistas de producción y circulación, subordinándolas pero sin eliminarlas plenamente.

Lima is one of several cities in Latin America that have been the subject of a relatively large number of studies by anthropologists. About thirty years' worth of anthropological research in Lima has accrued, yet little has been done in the way of synthesis, although Millones (1978), Osterling (1980), and Lloyd (1980) have made summary comments toward this end in introductions to their recent books. No ethnography of the entire city has been attempted, and in many ways, the research has been concerned only with relatively smaller units and bounded groups, particularly squatter settlements and highland migrants. Nor have the linkages between studies and groups often been made. I will briefly discuss here, within a typological framework, the ethnographic studies carried out in Lima with an eye to describing and integrating the nature, focus, and methods of these studies.

Many have attributed the recent unprecedented wave of redistribution in Brazil to national economic and political factors such as the commodities boom, changes in minimum wages or premiums to skilled labor, the rise of the Partido dos Trabalhadores and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and a commodities-driven economic boom. Yet much less attention has been devoted to the study of inequality at the subnational level, where trajectories of inequality across states remain incredibly varied. This article argues that Brazil’s most recent democratic transition enhanced political competition in many Brazilian states, which in turn has contributed to the amelioration of inequality. Using an original time-series cross-sectional dataset covering the highly redistributive period of 1998–2015, this article finds that Brazilian states with higher political and party competition have lower levels of inequality than those with less competitive party systems.

Early advocates of decentralization lauded it as a strategy for strengthening democratic institutions, but later scholarship has emphasized decentralization’s negative consequences, especially for political parties. This article argues that the impact of political decentralization on established parties is shaped by the context in which the reforms occur, with poor economic performance and limited programmatic differentiation making parties more vulnerable to the challenges posed by decentralization. The article explores how decentralization under such circumstances has contributed to party decay in Latin America, where declining support for established parties has been significant, in some places undermining democratic stability and governability. The article employs cross-national time-series analysis and case studies. The quantitative evidence indicates that political decentralization weakens existing parties in contexts of poor economic conditions and little ideological differentiation in the party system. Case studies elaborate the processes through which decentralizing reforms together with economic conditions and party linkages affect party systems.

Studies of how previous political experience affects a candidate’s electoral success have overlooked the experience that candidates get from running campaigns even if they lose. This article argues that experience running for office, whether successfully or unsuccessfully, could give candidates several benefits, such as expertise in running strong campaigns, a network of connections, and visibility among the electorate. As a result, candidate experience, not just office-holding experience, should be positively correlated with electoral success. The article tests this expectation in Brazil using a database of candidates for seven types of elected offices between 1998 and 2018. It finds that candidates who ran for, but lost, elected offices are more likely to win when they run in future elections for the same and lower-ranked offices, compared to candidates with no experience running for office. Thus, candidate experience, not just office-holding experience, is important for explaining electoral success in politics.

The development of the Mexican sugar industry during the twentieth century has reflected both the general problems of industrialization in the hemisphere and the distinct historical conditions that were shaped by the Revolution of 1910. The broader problems can be assessed in terms of the implications of peripheral capitalist development for the internal dynamics of social class relations and for the corresponding political factors that set the boundaries for government policy options.

This article will examine the development of labor unrest in Argentina between 1887 and 1907. Because official statistics were not compiled until after 1907, new data on strikes have been generated for the earlier period through a detailed reading of newspapers. These data provide information on the occupational and geographical distribution of strikes, their timing, and the kinds of demands made by strikers. The new data also provide helpful insights into the nature of labor organizations and the causes of labor unrest. Most important, these data indicate that changes in the organization of the workplace were a significant factor in altering the composition of demand for labor and in generating labor unrest. Finally, they show that the organization of the workplace also accounted for significant differences in the forms of action and organization adopted by various sectors of the labor force. Hence insofar as the position of different groups of workers in the labor market was itself shaped by the nature of the labor process and workplace relations, the transformation of these spheres constitutes an important analytical point of departure for explaining the central features of the emerging labor movement.

Literature on the latin american university is largely of a polemical and speculative nature, generally devoid of empirical grounding and theoretical significance. Research, in the sense of a systematic quest to enhance our powers to understand, predict, and control relationships among variables, is of recent origin. Parker (1964), in a review of over two hundred U.S. doctoral dissertations written on Latin American education, noted that few studies were concerned with university reform or the influence of universities on social, economic, and political improvement. Lipset (1966, p. 153), in a general survey of literature on university students in underdeveloped countries, observed that the influence of university studies, patterns of recruitment, modes of teaching on intellectual, professional, political and cultural standards and aspirations or the assimilation of students into the various spheres of adult activity is still terra incognita.

Since 1929 Argentina has undergone a remarkable series of political and economic changes. During the twenties it was a showcase of economic growth based on export expansion, as well as a model of bourgeois democracy in its parliamentary form. Yet that Argentina now lies in the distant past, and nowadays the name Argentina is likely to conjure up military coups and economic stagnation. This transformation deserves more attention than it has yet received. The question, “What went wrong in Argentina?” is as important for students of underdevelopment as is the question, “What went wrong in Germany?” for students of advanced industrialization.