En los primeros códigos civiles, las mujeres fueron definidas como sujetos de incapacidad de hecho relativa, limitación que venía asociada a la potestad del varón dentro del matrimonio. Este artículo aborda el reconocimiento de la capacidad civil plena de las mujeres en Uruguay (1946), Brasil (1962), Argentina (1968) y Chile (1989) como parte de un proceso complejo hacia la erosión (pero no disolución) del patriarcado. Para ello pone en práctica una metodología específica para el análisis del fenómeno legal que permite revelar los mecanismos discriminatorios. Asimismo, asume una perspectiva sociológico-histórica comparativa que muestra los diferentes recorridos hacia la reforma de la ley civil y los elementos que le son comunes. Se explicitan las distintas trayectorias, asumiendo que las dinámicas internas son únicas, pero mostrando que es posible identificar un mismo patrón de cambio: la modernización conservadora. En efecto, las mujeres casadas quedaron fijadas como sujetos de inferioridad jurídica, incluso cuando se les otorgó formalmente la capacidad civil plena. La modernización trajo cambios, pero el proceso estuvo dominado por las fuerzas de la tradición.

Scholarly literature has often characterized the popular bandit Chucho el Roto (1835?–1885) in terms of his legend as Mexico's urban Robin Hood, yet no study has attempted to discern how this legend took root and changed over time. This investigation brings together historical documents and literary texts about Chucho el Roto from the 1880s to the 1920s to analyze changing cultural perceptions of social class tensions in Mexico. It finds that Chucho provided a vehicle for both lower and upper classes to critically reflect on the morality of dominant society and to unite behind the resiliency and dignity of the oppressed working class. While the earliest literary text from 1889 criticizes Chucho for refusing to submit to dominant social norms and accept his place in the socioeconomic hierarchy, two post-1910 novels celebrate Chucho's banditry as a socialist-inspired political rebellion that resists assimilation into dominant political paradigms, including that of revolution.

It would be a truism to state that for the Latin American universities, as well as those of the Third World, questions of excellence or equality can be resolved by accepting the idea that equality also means a lack of excellence (quality). In other words, we are dealing with universities that operate in countries where the process of democracy is still precarious and consequently the universities respond in a way that produces or legitimizes dominant classes. With regard to the qualitative level, the first duty is not to create or disseminate knowledge but rather to create functions in the Weberian sense of the word. Universities of the Third World are the germinators of new classes; but in general, in small societies, the possible social participation of those “new” classes is of a limited and elitist nature. The university does not play an intellectual role but rather a social role, in terms of creating and legitimizing its operative functions within a context where professional characterization is foremost instead of knowledge. Thus, in a Third World society, although it is important for an individual to obtain a university degree, it does not necessarily mean that he will also possess the knowledge and skills that this implies. The intellectual knowledge gained through university education may well be effectively divorced from the social function.

This article explores how sex and violence were part of the everyday making of the soldier in the Peruvian armed forces during the internal armed conflict between 1980 and 2000. In-depth interviews with Peruvian veterans indicate the importance of sex and violence in soldiers’ experience of becoming a combatant. The article analyzes the ambiguity in soldiers’ narratives about sex and violence, coercion, and consent, and how they are implicated in both receiving and enacting sexualized violence. In particular, authors discuss veterans’ accounts of collective experiences of sexualized hazing, abuse of women and girls, porn and prostitution, and references to gang rape. Soldiers, while in the army, experience intimacy through performative practices of sex and violence—which profoundly affect their interactions with one another—and the violence they perpetrate against enemy populations. These military intimacies, encouraged through institutional as well as cultural practices, help explain the prevalence of widespread sexual violence during the conflict.

This article explores the experience of the Afro-Colombian movement over the course of two peace processes, investigating the relationship between opportunities for participation and effective inclusion. The 1991 Constituent Assembly that emerged from the peace processes of the late 1980s presented a particularly open opportunity for civil society participation, and yet the Afro-Colombian movement was unable to gain representation in negotiations for a new constitution. In the 2016 peace process with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC, despite insistence from the government that its negotiations with FARC were exclusively bilateral, the Afro movement was able to gain a seat at the table along with its Indigenous counterparts and generate a commitment from both parties to protect ethnic rights, known as the Capítulo Étnico (Ethnic Chapter). In contrast to existing literature that focuses on international actors as drivers of inclusion, we argue that effective inclusion reflects in large part the internal capacity, coherence, and unity of the movements themselves.

On 10 October 1988, President Miguel de la Madrid authorized loading of the first of two reactor units at the Laguna Verde nuclear power plant, on the Mexican gulf coast above the port of Veracruz. De la Madrid's decision to move ahead with Laguna Verde, Mexico's first foray into commercial nuclear energy production, came as no surprise. What was extraordinary was that it proved to be one of the most controversial policy actions of his sexenio. Culminating twenty years of planning and development, the Laguna Verde project, which had been emblematic of Mexico's technical progress and promise at its outset, had turned into a political albatross.

In this article I focus on the nexus of urbanization, the environment and public health that was exposed by the 1912 bubonic plague epidemic in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I utilize the concept of “urban health penalty,” developed by demographic historians of the industrial revolution in Europe, to account for the declining health of the working class in cities. While in Europe poor health among the urban poor was associated with industrialization, I argue that in San Juan chaotic, unplanned urbanization reflected the effects of colonialism. I further examine how the epidemic exacerbated the class and racial divisions that contributed to the disastrous living conditions, and speculate as to whether the environmental neglect of the neighborhood by authorities was due to the fact that it was home to many poor people of African descent. I also highlight the varying understandings of the causes and appropriate responses to plague.

This article is concerned with the problem of reading and interpreting the Argentine literary magazine Sur, which was published regularly between 1931 and 1970 (and irregularly thereafter) as an elegant fusion of fiction, poetry, philosophy, plastic arts, and social commentary. That a magazine should be chosen as a research topic reflects the reality of Argentine literary life in the twentieth century. Such publications offered many writers their main opportunity to put forward ideas in the forms of works of literature and critical or general essays. Most magazines lasted for very few years, but Sur, thanks to the quality of its contributors and the sound financial base of its founder, Victoria Ocampo, was to have an important influence on several generations.

“Scholars and intellectuals, like human beings in other walks of life, need to interpret and come to grips with the crises plaguing the contemporary global political and social system. Indeed, their obligation to do so may be a particularly special and important one.” This credo might properly be etched on the minds of all those who study the politics of Latin America. Scholarship is not restricted to an academic preserve in which the principal, even sole commitment must be the intellectual task at hand. Rather, the study of Latin American politics requires a heightened sense of self-consciousness, which is linked in turn to the parameters and strictures of the several professional disciplines involved.

Much of the focus of, indeed much of the impetus for, the current discussion of science and technology policy for the Latin American industrial sector has involved comparisons of foreign and domestic ownership. While such traditional concerns as the quantity of repatriated profits and interference in domestic politics (in the case of foreign firms) continue to be important, much of the recent literature is on comparative financial performance, growth, technology, and the interrelationships among these elements. The following conclusion is ubiquitous: Domestic enterprises, due largely to “technological” shortcomings, are simply unable to compete with the foreign firms and are therefore restricted both to secondary positions within individual product markets and to the less profitable sectors.

This essay explores the intellectual foundings of Argentine constitutionalism from the 1830s to the 1850s. Focusing on the writings of Juan Bautista Alberdi and some of his critics, it argues that Argentine constitutionalism had liberal roots but invoked arguments that could neither bring unity to the state-building coalition nor resolve some basic tensions within the framework of national sovereignty.

This essay reviews the following works:

Illegal Drugs, Drug Trafficking and Violence in Latin America. By Marcelo Bergman. Buenos Aires: Springer International, 2018. Pp. v + 170. $89.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9783319731520.

More Money, More Crime: Prosperity and Rising Crime in Latin America. By Marcelo Bergman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. vii + 392. $39.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780190608774.

Tough on Crime: The Rise of Punitive Populism in Latin America. By Michelle D. Bonner. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019. Pp. vii + 204. $40.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780822945826.

Argentina’s Missing Bones: Revisiting the History of the Dirty War. By James P. Brennan. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. Pp. xi + 195. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780520297937.

Modernity at Gunpoint: Firearms, Politics, and Culture in Mexico and Central America. By Sophie Esch. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018. Pp. vii + 284. $28.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822965381.

A History of Political Murder in Latin America: Killing the Messengers of Change. By W. John Green. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015. Pp. v + 360. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781438456645.

Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: Subnational Structures, Institutions, and Clientelistic Networks. Edited by Tina Hilgers and Laura Macdonald. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. v + 298. $99.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107193178.

Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning, and Accountability. By Antonius C. G. M. Robben. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Pp. vii + 294. $65.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780812250053.

Organized Crime, Drug Trafficking, and Violence in Mexico: The Transition from Felipe Calderón to Enrique Peña Nieto. By Jonathan D. Rosen and Roberto Zepeda. Lanham, MA: Lexington Books, 2016. Pp. vii + 158. $80.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781498535601.