One must always make a special case for presenting puerto rican along with other Latin American studies. With public planning this is even more true. Puerto Rico is, after all, legally a part of the United States, and for many decades its well-being has been intimately tied to both general conditions in the U.S. and to U.S. policies, even those not directed specifically at Puerto Rico. For these reasons, planning by the government of Puerto Rico is very constrained: it must act without any of the options available to independent governments, such as the issuance of money or the control of imports; its laws and procedures must accommodate to the constraints of the U.S. legal system; it must permit U.S. citizens who are not Puerto Ricans to participate under conditions of full equality and mobility in Puerto Rico and between Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland.

Today, Brazil has one of the most diverse energy systems in the world. The sugar-based ethanol industry plays a pivotal role in that achievement, yet scholars of energy development have focused little on ethanol. This article examines the history of the sugar-based ethanol industry from its beginning in the 1930s to the creation of the state-led program Proálcool (the National Ethanol Program) in 1975 and the ethanol-fueled car in 1979. This article demonstrates how federal and private actors connected nationalist goals of a modern, industrial Brazilian identity to ethanol in order to sustain the industry against the vagaries of the sugar market. Drawing from production data, the monthly sugar industry journal Brasil Açucareiro, newspapers, government funding applications for privately owned ethanol distilleries, and oral interviews, it highlights how the idea of a nationally developed technology and domestic industry etched a long-term place for the ethanol industry in the nation’s energy strategy.

This article is an effort to update a discussion of Argentina’s international financial relations during the late 1970s that is lagging behind recent scholarly developments on the cases of Mexico and Chile. It focuses on the early restoration of Argentine credit standing with multilateral financial institutions, as well as their loans and technical assistance, achieved by Minister Martínez de Hoz and his team during their early years in office. So far this stage had not elicited detailed analyses of its differences with the controversial and better-known monetary balance of payments approach adopted in December 1978 to finally curb inflation, and which gave international private bankers a leading role in the financing of Argentina’s foreign exchange needs.

University students have long played an important role in latin american politics. Preceding by several decades the first signs of youthful protest in the United States, student activism in Latin America has been persistent and often decisive. For example, student groups were instrumental in the overthrow of regimes in Cuba (1933, 1959), Guatemala (1944), Venezuela (1958), and Bolivia (1964). At one time or another, virtually every governing strongman in the region has had to contend with varying opposition from student groups. Indeed, as Robert Alexander has noted, “in the past four decades they have constituted one of the most important pressure groups in twenty republics.”

Had massive migration of mexican labor to the southwest not taken place in the twentieth century, it is probable, as Ruth Tuck observed in Not with the Fist: Mexican-Americans in a Southwest City (N.Y., 1946; 29-30), that “side-eddies” of native Spanish-speaking would have been gradually swept into the mainstream of American life, as they almost were in California by 1900. Or perhaps these Spanish-speakers would have remained a picturesque folk in such isolated areas as northern New Mexico and South Texas. But massive migration from Mexico did occur at the opening of this century, adding a new chapter to Southwestern settlement and development, a chapter that differs from the old romanticized Southwest as much as a Chicano barrio or migrant camp differs from a restored Spanish mission or a New Mexico adobe. And yet this chapter—now so important to the ethnic study movement—has been almost totally neglected by Latin Americanists both in the United States and Mexico.

Tax evasion can be considered as a systemic fraud in which different parties such as taxpayers, lawyers, banks, and multinational entities interact. Here, accountants are key agents owing to their legal liability in tax reporting and their knowledge on accounting rules. The present study analyzes the role that accountants play in firms tax evasion by presenting evidence from a randomized field experiment carried out with microenterprises in Ecuador’s tax system in early 2016. The article evaluates to what extent a notification of accountants is more effective in increasing tax reporting than a notification of taxpayers, through five different treatments. The results show that simultaneous persuasive notifications of both accountants and taxpayers were the unique treatment that significantly increased firms’ declared income tax. Furthermore, it was shown that penalty notifications of accountants, rather than taxpayers only, were the most significant treatment at reducing revenue underreporting.

El estudio examina un conjunto de eventos ocurridos en La Plata, sede de la audiencia de Charcas, en 1781 a raíz de la difusión de rumores acerca de una presunta revuelta popular. En ellos podemos apreciar la incipiente conformación de una cultura política urbana que, aunque enraizada en tradiciones ideológicas pluriseculares, se erigió en abierta contraposición al orden vigente. Los alegatos colectivos de los vecinos patricios y plebeyos, las iniciativas del ayuntamiento y una serie de ceremonias públicas revelan significativas mutaciones en los modos de concebir las relaciones de los grupos urbanos, así como vigorosos cuestionamientos a los principios del absolutismo borbónico. Veremos aflorar marcados sentimientos de antagonismo entre los vecinos y los sectores peninsulares, formas de interpelación al “pueblo” que expusieron la repentina relevancia adquirida por las opiniones de la población local y la construcción de la ciudad como sujeto de la historia y actor político colectivo.

In this paper I present the views of a Latin American sociologist, partly trained in the United States, on Latin American Studies in this country. This is not a research paper but a frank and open presentation of my impressions, however opinionated. The aim is to stimulate reflection and debate, not to appease or to compromise. Implicit in all this are the following beliefs: (a) The training of Latin Americanists in the United States today is generally poor; (b) much of the research on Latin America carried out in the United States today is second-rate; (c) this situation can be improved; and, most important, (d) it is to Latin America's advantage, and not to its disadvantage, that such improvement take place.

The Soviet Union has established what has become the largest, and probably the most prolific, research center devoted exclusively to Latin America. Soviet progress has been especially dramatic because the USSR was so weak in this field in 1961, when the Institute of Latin America was established in Moscow. The Institute now has one hundred full-time researchers and supports the activities of many other Latin Americanists there and in other Soviet cities. It also has maintained ties with new Latin Americanist groups in Eastern Europe, particularly in East Germany and Poland.

The study of politics in british universities has traditionally been historical in approach and parochial in scope. It is only recently that the teaching and research interests of british political scientists have spread beyond the Anglo-European parliamentary tradition to the more ‘exotic’ areas of what is inaccurately called the ‘third world’. In the first half of this century the observation and analysis of political activity in the non-European parts of the world were the unchallenged concerns of travellers, diplomats, and journalists; and their writings found few serious readers in the universities. Their work was regarded, and often conceived, as a species of adventurers' tales describing quaint but essentially pre-political societies.

This article explores the impact of neighborhood effects on the socioeconomic integration of the inhabitants of three favelas of Salvador da Bahia. Urban research has argued that the spatial concentration of poverty adversely affects individual outcomes. Nevertheless, disagreement persists on whether contiguity between poor neighborhoods and higher-class gated communities widens opportunity structures. Examining the composition of social networks and their mobilization in the struggle for economic mobility, this study confirms that the proximity of Nordeste de Amaralina to upper-class neighborhoods improves access to labor opportunities, though mechanisms of social stratification limit these potentials. Segregation and the scarcity of economic opportunities in Plataforma foster the residents’ social isolation, whereas the socializing effects of public institutions in Fazenda Grande II mitigate the negative repercussions of poverty. The study urges a more holistic approach to urban poverty within public policies.

During the last few years, interest in overall economic growth as the best measure and object of development has increasingly given way to a preoccupation with the distribution of income and thus with how the benefits of economic growth are shared. Within this general concern is a specific preoccupation with the poorest families in less-developed countries, who may remain in dire poverty despite significant increases in income per head or other measures of development.

El uso de Recursos Forestales No Maderables (RFNM) puede crear oportunidades de desarrollo para poblaciones locales; pero ello requiere de determinadas condiciones. En México, el uso de RFNM considerados oficialmente como “amenazados” es regulado por Unidades de Manejo para la Conservación de la Vida Silvestre (UMA), un instrumento que busca conciliar la conservación biológica con desarrollo local. Sus resultados varían en función de las características del contexto en que se aplica. La mayoría de las UMA del sur del país, especialmente de RFNM, muestran resultados poco alentadores, pues no consideran en su diseño e implementación, la complejidad y diversidad de condiciones presentes en los espacios rurales de esta región. Aquí analizamos la implementación de una UMA de palma camedor en dos comunidades rurales de la Selva Lacandona, Chiapas, México, a través de registro etnográfico, entrevistas a profundidad y cuestionarios socioeconómicos. Argumentamos que las UMA de palma parten de una concepción simplificada de la realidad compleja de las comunidades en donde se implementan y trastocan su equilibrio de poder; su diseño burocrático y sobre-regulatorio fomenta discrecionalidad, simulación y corrupción, lo que acentúa la exclusión y favorece a las élites locales.