This essay reviews the following works:

Sports and Nationalism in Latin/o America. Edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste, Robert McKee Irwin, and Juan Poblete. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Pp. xiii + 307. $95.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781137487186.

Muscling in on New Worlds: Jews, Sport, and the Making of the Americas. Edited by Raanan Rein and David M. K. Sheinin. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 2014. Pp. x + 196. $135.00 cloth. ISBN: 9789004284487.

Sports Culture in Latin American History. Edited by David M. K. Sheinin. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 239. $25.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822963370.

The Sovereign Colony: Olympic Sport, National Identity, and International Politics in Puerto Rico. By Antonio Sotomayor. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Pp. xix + 360. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780803278813.

The Central American Common Market (CACM) was once described as “the most successful example of economic integration in the Third World.” Today the CACM is nearly defunct, a victim of the smoldering crisis that erupted in Central America in 1979 following the second oil shock and the Nicaraguan Revolution. Various arguments may be found in the literature on the economics of the region that purport to explain this collapse.

As Latin America has moved through the second half of the twentieth century, both the public and private sectors have required increasing levels of technological skills and specialized expertise. In the public sector, this necessity has occasioned the rise to prominence of a sector known in Latin America as profesionales y tcnicos. This emergent elite has assumed a significant role in shaping and implementing public policy because its members command skills critical to the functioning of modernizing technological society. As a result, participation by professionals and tcnicos has become central to bureaucratic efficiency, economic development, and the manipulation of symbols that reinforce political legitimacy. Yet the political role of professionals and tcnicos has been little explored, and direct relationships between professional elites and national parties, often central to the democratization of developing nations, have received minimal attention.

Same-sex marriage has risen to the top of political agendas across Latin America, but it is still illegal in many countries. Public support about the issue varies greatly, and the roles of the courts, presidents, and legislatures have also differed. This article focuses on legislators because they are charged with representing the public and converting demands into policy. Although many legislatures have now voted on the issue, the literature has not intensively examined the policy makers’ attitudes toward same-sex marriage. This study applies a theoretical framework that extends theories considering context and social contact and uses a survey of the region’s legislators to study the correlates of support for same-sex marriage. Although the study also tests for individual-level variables (e.g., gender and ideology), the models focus on the contextual role of religiosity. The results show that having more secular colleagues encourages even pious legislators to support same-sex marriage.

This article examines the emergence of a synergy that allowed the early development of what was once considered the best anti-AIDS program in the developing world. Initial responses to AIDS in Brazil during the 1980s and early 1990s were marked by a confrontation between activists concerned with human rights, and a government focusing on biomedical management of the epidemic. After 1992, activists, medical researchers, government officials, international donors like the Ford Foundation, health officers, and multilateral agencies like the World Bank were galvanized to cooperate. This was a complex process of braiding knowledge and practices related to activism, science, public health, governance and philanthropy in which each constituency maintained its independence. The result was a complex, holistic, and nuanced AIDS program. The process helped bridge the gap between knowledge and advocacy, generated public awareness, and was instrumental to reducing AIDS mortality developing local human resources and comprehensive policies.

Although much has been written on civil society participation in the formulation and monitoring of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), very little systematic and scientific evidence exists on the kind of organizations that participate and the elements that explain their involvement in these processes. This article considers one country case, Honduras, for which survey data were gathered from 101 civil society organizations (CSOs) in 2006. This study examines the characteristics these organizations display which explain (non)participation in the next participatory round of the PRSPs. The findings challenge some of the by now widely accepted ideas relating to the kinds of organizations involved in PRSP processes. The idea that predominantly urban-based, highly professional, well-funded, donor-bred-and-fed nongovernmental organizations participate is too blunt. The Honduran case shows that the players in participative processes are more diversified than much of the current literature on PRSPs suggests.

This article addresses the way in which the Argentine Supreme Court has set out to redefine its own institutional role through its procedures and decisions, since its institutional reform in 2003. It shows that the Court has developed innovative ways of judicial intervention in public policy and rights issues, which include the participation of new kinds of actors and entail an emerging new relationship between the Court and civil society organizations in Argentina. The article argues that this change can be understood as a way for the Court to rebuild its institutional legitimacy, and that the reform is connected to the presence of strong nongovernmental organizations whose claims for a change in the Court's composition and procedures gained momentum in the aftermath of the social and political crisis of 2001-2002 in Argentina.

Existing work on state building focuses on the creation of modern bureaucracies and institutions for education and taxation but generally neglects to point to communal property regimes as tools of statecraft. Political science scholars who focus on ethnic communal lands in the Americas emphasize the rise of formal multicultural institutions, including Indigenous land rights, but are skeptical about governments’ willingness to title large extensions of land to Indigenous or other ethnic groups because of opposing economic interests. Focusing on the titling of 12 percent of Honduras’s territory between 2012 and 2016, this article uses semi-structured elite interviews, land titling data, field notes from three months in rural and urban sites in Honduras, and drug-trafficking reports to examine the motivation of officials in the central government. Evidence suggests that the central government views and uses ethnic land titling as a strategy to reclaim territorial dominance in contested locations that lack state presence.

Este trabajo se propone analizar los principales cambios que el primer gobierno de izquierda que asume el gobierno en el año 2005, introdujo en los formatos de negociación colectiva ensayados en el país desde 1985 hasta 1990. La convocatoria a Consejos de Salarios retoma los procedimientos de negociación colectiva desmantelados luego de quince años de políticas de corte neoliberal, en el marco de un proceso de reforma laboral que el país nunca había experimentado en el plano de las relaciones colectivas de trabajo. La nueva normativa laboral establece un conjunto de reglas de juego que generan espacios de intermediación de intereses más estables y con mayores niveles de legitimidad que en épocas pasadas. El trabajo analiza estos cambios a partir de un censo realizado a los representantes del Estado, de los trabajadores y de los empresarios que participaron en la experiencia de negociación colectiva entre el año 2005 y el año 2009.

To think of Nicolás Guillén is to be immediately reminded of two observations. The first by José Martí, who, quite aptly argued:

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, restrictions on archives in Russia have diminished markedly. Some of the repositories have potential interest for Latin Americanists, including the Comintern Archive. This research note discusses the objectives of the archive and the types of material it contains. A list of the major collections relevant to Latin America is followed by comments on how to use the archive and websites that will facilitate research in Russia. Also provided are bibliographic references to academic studies on Latin America based on Comintern materials.