During the last decade, there has been a great debate on the social role and political function of the social sciences. This debate has brought into focus certain types of research that had not been considered valid before, each with its respective theoretical framework. As I see them, the most interesting and productive of these new perspectives for the social sciences in Latin America today are (1) modesty in research, (2) primacy of the qualitative, (3) autonomous development of theoretical models, (4) interdisciplinary research, and (5) broader acceptance of individual action and commitment as validating elements for research. None of these is strictly new: on the contrary, some of them (e.g., 5) are cyclical and have quite respectable ancestors; some have been presented by other colleagues, and myself, in many places and at many times. Nevertheless, they are worthy of repetition in view of their considerable implications for research policy and social action.

Carolina Maria de Jess was a fiercely proud black Brazilian woman who lived in a So Paulo favela with her three illegitimate children (each with a different father). She had learned to read and write by continuing to study on her own after only two years of primary school. In 1958 fragments of her diary came to the attention of an enterprising journalist, Audlio Dantas, who helped her get it published. For a brief period, Carolina Maria de Jess became an international celebrity as the author of the best-selling book in Brazilian publishing history. For many reasons, however, Carolina fell from favor: the rise of a military dictatorship in 1964, which led to an accompanying reaction against social criticism, and especially the ways in which she handled her fame and related to the press and the literary elite. Within a few years, she was forced to move back into the favela and scavenge for a living. A brief flurry of publicity in 1969 about her fallen condition prompted a slight improvement in her circumstances, but she was soon forgotten again. Carolina died in 1977, on the verge of indigence. Her complete life story has never been told, and most Brazilians today are unaware that a black favelada in the 1960s became the symbol (to foreigners, at least) of the struggle to rise above poverty. Most Brazilians neither read her books nor consider them noteworthy. Evidently, the author of what The New York Times called a rarely matched essay on the meaning and the feeling of hunger, degradation, and want touched no nerve in the Brazilian sensibility.

Do large-scale and unexpected events, such as natural disasters, affect elections? This article studies the political dimension of the 19-S earthquake that hit Mexico City in 2017, a few months before the 2018 elections. Using fine-grained geospatial data, the results show that candidates from the city-level incumbent Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) had a small increase in vote share in 2018 compared to the previous election in precincts more exposed to damaged caused by the earthquake (in terms of both distance-based and per capita measures), accounting for the seismic profile and socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhood. The article shows that the implementation of disaster-recovery policy explains part of this relationship. Moreover, voters were as electorally responsive to a future risk reduction strategy as to a reconstruction credit.

This article works to understand what happens to women working in the public sector, especially women in traditionally male occupations, such as the police. Moreover, in Latin America and in most developing countries, it is crucial to examine the interaction between precarious jobs and gender discrimination. The article finds that gender discrimination is accentuated in organizations with precarious labor conditions. To illustrate this problem, it examines the police force in Mexico. This is a crucial case study for understanding the phenomena: Mexico is an extremely violent country, but conditions in the police force are highly precarious for workers. Moreover, this labor precariousness has an even greater impact on female police officers. In addition to working in a profession characterized by instability, they also face structural barriers to the performance of their duties and greater obstacles to entry and promotion within the organization. Furthermore, women face the glass ceiling as well as a hostile work culture that expresses itself through discrimination.

To understand the momentous transformation in Argentine-Brazilian relations from rivalry to Mercosur, scholars need to analyze negative cases, when rapprochement was attempted unsuccessfully. This article examines the failed 1972 summit between Presidents Alejandro Agustín Lanusse and Emílio Garrastazú Médici, which is poorly explained by existing theories of international relations and overlooked or misinterpreted in many regional histories. I argue, based on research in the Argentine Foreign Ministry Archives, newly declassified US government documents, and a reexamination of published primary sources, that rapprochement failed in 1972 primarily because bureaucratic interests in the armed forces and foreign ministries of both states depended on the continuation of rivalry. Organizational politics, not popular nationalism or presidential diplomatic errors, best explains the persistence of Argentine-Brazilian conflict in the early 1970s. Successful cooperation between rivals therefore may require not only agreement between national leaders but also the support of the state apparatus on both sides.

Las Cortes influyen de forma directa e indirecta en el proceso legislativo. Hasta el momento, los estudios sobre Congreso en Colombia se han enfocado mayoritariamente en la influencia directa de la Corte Constitucional. Este artículo explora su influencia indirecta. Usando la Reforma Penal Militar de 2012 como estudio de caso, mostramos cómo la Corte cambia los cálculos y comportamiento de los congresistas. Debido a su independencia y accesibilidad, la Corte Constitucional amplía el abanico de estrategias disponibles a las coaliciones minoritarias de oposición en el Congreso. Aquí identificamos dos prácticas de obstrucción: invitar a la Corte (mediante la motivación o aprovechamiento y la documentación de vicios de procedimiento), y demandas ante la Corte. Juntas, estas estrategias les permiten a oposiciones minoritarias bloquear leyes adversas y avanzar su agenda en el proceso de construcción de políticas públicas.

Este artículo discute la relación entre el Fondo Común Municipal (FCM) y la convergencia de ingresos municipales en Chile entre 2001 y 2011. Utilizando cuasi experimentos y ecuaciones dinámicas, se demuestra que este instrumento no tiene un efecto significativo en la velocidad de convergencia. El débil desarrollo de la descentralización y los bajos incentivos de las municipalidades para obtener fuentes propias de financiamiento, podrían promover diversos comportamientos estratégicos que distorsionarían el efecto redistributivo del FCM en las municipalidades, disminuyendo su impacto en la reducción de las disparidades territoriales en Chile.

This article analyzes two sets of narratives that describe the area contained within the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) Araripe Basin Geopark, the first such geological preserve in the Americas. The first group includes scientific-sounding accounts of fossils, sediments, and geological formations. The second is a series of “folk” stories that describe the sacred geography of a part of the northeastern Brazilian backlands best known for their economic backwardness and religious mysticism. Although at first glance the two sets of narratives appear wholly divergent, both treat the natural world as ancient, fluid, composed of interrelated elements, mysterious, and deeply worthy of protection. These shared conceptions have important policy implications in strategizing a sustainable tourism that will preserve the region's geological and cultural heritage while bringing economic benefits to the local population.

Produced along the Río de la Plata during the nineteenth century, shipped to Havana, and consumed by African slaves, the salt-cured beef known as tasajo affected both of those places and, to some degree, the Atlantic world in general. Initial exploration of the tasajo trail that connected Buenos Aires and Cuba employs primary sources such as nineteenth-century descriptions and shipping records to characterize the landscapes, places, routes, and agents of the largely unexplored research territory of that anomalous commodity: one that, unlike others such as sugar, slaves not only produced but also consumed; one that underpinned more prominent, latitudinal transatlantic flows such as the slave trade, yet itself flowed meridionally; one that, like all those flows, had an oceanic component that comprised an actively lived space of flows rather than a dead space of separation; and one that might be mundane, yet helped fuel major transformations of two of the principal nodes of Hispanic Atlantic.

Existing case-study research suggests that the recent increase in human rights violations in Latin America is attributed to the US-funded drug war. This narrative, which is referred to as the collateral damage perspective, stands in contrast to US human rights law, which makes governments' respect for human rights a precondition to receive aid. The apparent endogeneity between aid and human rights introduces bias that casts serious doubts on the validity of the collateral damage narrative. In addressing endogeneity, this article presents a simultaneous instrumental variable analysis of the human rights effects of US counternarcotic aid in the Americas. The results show that while counternarcotic aid to regimes increases overall violations of human rights, this effect is greater among democracies than autocracies. And with the exception of torture, this finding is consistent when disappearances, political imprisonment, and extrajudicial killings are also considered. The implication of this research suggests that policy makers in Washington risk losing regional support for US drug control policies if US laws that govern the allocation of aid are not effectively implemented.

A “Cult of ‘Che’” Has Arisen in the United States and in Latin America since the death of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara in Bolivia on October 9, 1967. The principal followers of the cult are the radical intellectuals, students and workers in the Western Hemisphere. The selection of Che Guevara as a hero by these segments of society, and their subsequent use of his name to champion their causes, has attracted the attention of the general public to this controversial figure. This sudden awareness of Che has created a substantial demand for information about his life and ideas. To meet this demand, publishers in the United States and Latin America have literally flooded the market with literature about him. This body of literature can be divided into two broad categories. The first comprises works containing his spoken or written words. In the second category are those works which have been written about him. These broad categories can be subdivided into books and periodical articles.

El criollismo ha sido elaborado—desde diversos géneros—como espacio del consenso identitario aún en momentos de graves tensiones simbólicas. Se trata de un lugar construido sobre la capacidad de desplazamiento de la voz letrada, en función de adaptarse a los cambios producidos en la esfera cultural. Con el fin de trazar algunos de los hitos de este proceso de apelación identitaria en el caso específico de Venezuela, revisaré textos, publicados en su mayoría en la prensa, a lo largo del siglo XIX y principios del XX. La lectura de este corpus mostrará la trama de discursividades sobre la cual se asienta la autoridad letrada que emitió el discurso criollista.

La migración no sólo representa un desplazamiento de habitantes, bienes tangibles y simbólicos, o que crea transformaciones, a su vez, produce una constante desterritorialización y reterritorialización de percepciones, sentimientos y memorias. Estos procesos representan una interrupción o un quiebre en los proyectos de vida e identidades. La comunidad de San Cristóbal se “construye” afrocolombiana como un camino de resistencia a las amenazas perceptibles de desplazamiento. En San Cristóbal, la amenaza por la desterritorialización es el principal detonante de los procesos actuales de construcción de identidad. Su tránsito de campesinos a afrocolombianos está anclado en el factor espacial. En consecuencia, su experiencia demuestra que el territorio se convierte en parte esencial de la identidad, donde los lugares y los espacios toman significados históricos en la creación de los discursos identitarios.

The present article analyzes the media produced by the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, especially its national cable TV station and online news agency. We discuss whether these media sources promote accountability and participation. Our findings suggest that although these sources have been employed, according to the logic of audience democracy, to promote the public visibility, credibility, and reputation of Brazil's federal representatives, they do contribute to enhancing the accountability and quality of Brazilian democracy, insofar as they provide access to relevant information about legislative processes.