O projeto de integração regional Mercosul inclui o ensino de espanhol e português nos países membros. A Argentina e o Brasil têm leis obrigando a ofertar essas línguas aos estudantes no ensino médio, porém os processos de promoção, financiamento e implementação desses compromissos, como o contexto de implementação dessas iniciativas, são marcadamente diferentes. Neste trabalho analiso os últimos vinte anos de política lingüística regional à luz de fatores extralingüísticos e discuto algumas das razões que podem estar influenciando a maior autonomia regional do ensino de português em Buenos Aires, em contraste com uma maior dependência do ensino de espanhol em São Paulo vis-a-vis a Espanha.

El siguiente informe de investigación tiene por objeto presentar los resultados sobre cuatro de las principales dimensiones medidas en la Encuesta Solidaridad, aplicada en la ciudad de Santiago de Chile: (1) semántica de la noción de solidaridad; (2) niveles de valoración hacia distintos tipos de solidaridad; (3) frecuencia de práctica de distintos tipos de solidaridad; y (4) la relación entre solidaridad y atribución de responsabilidad social. A partir de estos resultados se concluye que el significado que los sujetos le atribuyen a la solidaridad es múltiple y variado, y que al mismo tiempo existe una alta valoración de las diversas prácticas solidarias. Asimismo, se identifica un contraste entre las solidaridades más valoradas y las más practicadas. Por último, los encuestados vinculan fuertemente la solidaridad a una demanda por un Estado más activo y socialmente responsable.

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.

The Prevalent Theory of Revolution—After Restricting the Dimensions of the phenomenon under study to only one aspect, that ending with the seizure of power—distinguishes between preconditions and precipitants. Preconditions are “the crucial concern of men of affairs….” Precipitants, “by their very nature,” are ephemeral phenomena and cannot be anticipated. The conservative bias of this elaboration is obvious. By definition revolution is subsumed into the category of “civil strife,” thus eliminating all those phases of the process potentially as creative as the one following the seizure of power. Theoretical relevance, then, is assigned only to those elements of the phenomenon susceptible of preventive treatment—the preconditions. Finally, the events able to unleash the revolutionary process are relegated to the conditions of accidents—“they only happen”—and, consequently, are disregarded.

By using innovative microlevel data from Colombia’s civil war, this article examines protests, one of many actions that civilians employ to resists peacefully armed actors during civil war. By using a cost-benefit analysis, the author argues that inhabitants can mobilize and solve their collective action problem when the costs of migrating or supporting one side in a war are too expensive. By examining the civil conflict on Colombia between 1988 and 2010, the author finds that civilians are likely to protest armed actors under three conditions. First, autonomous communities, which enjoy benefits associated with their territory, are likely to protest because migration would be costly; moreover, the institutional strength of these communities can decrease the costs of mobilization against armed actors. Second, foreign aid distributed through nongovernmental associations can empower individuals to take action by providing selective incentives for mobilization, thus decreasing costs. Last, high levels of violence, up to a certain threshold, increase the costs of nonparticipation and induce civilian action.

Why have moderate electorates elected and reelected leftist governments in Latin America over the last twenty years? Scholars who rely on the classic Downsian logic of the median voter theorem have observed a process of ideological moderation among the most salient left-wing parties in the region. However, there have been no systematic attempts to evaluate the moderation thesis at the comparative level, either across Latin America or within cases over time. This article uses a directional model in the spatial modeling tradition to argue that the success of the left rests on the provision of clear leftist programmatic cues to voters. Data coming from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems for five Latin American countries during 1994 and 2014 show that left-wing parties won on left-wing platforms across the region, while an in-depth study on Brazilian elections reveals that leftist voters of the Workers’ Party in 2002 were driven by programmatic cues that largely disappeared during the 2010 elections.

This article introduces an analytical framework to explain the coexistence of peaceful borders and illicit transnational flows as evidenced by drug trafficking, human trafficking and smuggling, weapons trafficking, and terrorism in the Americas, a region characterized by international peace, domestic peace, and regional integration. Under the assumption that peaceful relations among neighboring countries enable the incursion of transnational nonstate actors across their borders, the article poses this main question: Under which conditions might peaceful borders enable illicit transnational flows? There is much more variance in the incidence of these illicit transnational flows across borders than in the existence of international peace. The article examines two major variables: the degree of governance and institutional strength of the bordering states; and the prevalent socioeconomic conditions of the bordering states.

The pulperos were the largest group of small, independent entrepreneurial storekeepers officially categorized and supervised in Spanish America during the colonial period and the nineteenth century. There are no studies of them. There were other small storekeepers, such as owners of bakeries or fish stores, who were far fewer in number, or artisan storekeepers, who occasionally were many in number but who were craft oriented rather than purely business oriented. What follows is a preliminary report. A final analysis and presentation must await an intensive, long-term study of the pulperos and bodegueros in Caracas, Medellín, or Buenos Aires, as circumstances permit, that will not be completed for several years.

Este artigo examina os impactos do neoliberalismo global e do capitalismo racial em comunidades pesqueiras do Recôncavo da Bahia, sobretudo, na Comunidade Remanescente de Quilombo de São Braz. Mais particularmente, buscou-se entender como homens e mulheres têm sido afetados de forma distinta por empreendimentos transnacionais que incidem em seus territórios, suas atividades produtivas e processos identitários; e como, em consequência, estes têm desenvolvido formas de organização política que correspondem a demandas específicas de cada gênero. Os dados para este artigo foram coletados por meio de trabalho de campo realizado com o apoio do Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPQ) e do Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário (MDA), entre os anos de 2010 a 2012, e, depois, de forma intercalada, até 2015.

This note reports on research in Latin America and the Caribbean concerning international relations and foreign policy. It lists persons in the region who are working on these subjects, comments on changing priorities in research by Latin Americans, broadly evaluates the quality of their research, considers the institutional loci and contexts for Latin American work in this field, and discusses the relevance of work in Latin America and the Caribbean to scholars in the United States and other Northern countries, and to those in developing countries beyond Latin America. The report draws on a considerable number of books, journal articles, and unpublished memoranda made available by colleagues, on correspondence with a number of Latin American social scientists, and on several interviews. These notes are surely not complete, and inadvertent inaccuracies may be included, but this version is presented with the hope that it will be helpful to others in its present form and that it may stimulate the submission to LARR of additional pertinent material.

In the first part, I will describe briefly the intuitive relevance of Professor Markos Mamalakis' “Theory of Sectoral Clashes” to the Mexican case. In part II, I will briefly comment on aspects of the theory which are relevant to empirical verification. And finally, in part III, I will attempt to derive and test some of the empirical implications of this hypothesis.

Recent criticism of the Spanish American novela total likens the genre's “totalizing” approach to social representation to that of state-administered nationalism, in which differences are either systematically erased or institutionalized through demographic segmentation in order to construct homogeneous, “democratic” consensus among political agents. In this view, the total novel misappropriates others' voices for the cultural elite's own political and commercial ends. In contrast, the testimonio is held up as a more democratic genre that distributes representational authority among a variety of agents. This essay reevaluates the relationship between the novela total and testimonial modes of discourse, arguing that Mexican author Fernando del Paso's total novels draw on the litigious power of testimonial as well as modernist aesthetics of rupture to disrupt the narrative of democratic consensus constructed by Mexico's Partido Revolucionario Institucional and to postulate a civil society that congeals as a horizontal, aggregative ethical community in opposition to state politics.