A recent diagnosis of the health of Latin American studies in the United States reveals that Bolivia is among the forgotten or ignored countries. U.S. scholarship on Mexico, Brazil, and Peru vastly outranks research on Bolivia. Following the Bolivian Revolution of 1952, U.S. universities turned out a host of dissertations and books on Bolivia, but since that time, the U.S. community of Bolivianists has declined. Yet anthropological and historical research on this southern Andean country seems to be flourishing. Although some political scientists attracted to problems and prospects for reform created by the Revolution have turned their attention elsewhere, Bolivia still fascinates scholars interested in the deeper currents of historical change and the remarkable resilience of rural Andean peoples in their struggle to preserve their cultural integrity.

The scholarship seeking to explain the ineffectiveness of violence against women (VAW) laws has focused on the lack of resources or will to implement these laws. Less attention has been given to how these laws are crafted and positioned in the legal hierarchy, which may undermine them from the start. This article focuses on four cases from Central America, a region where fifty-five laws to protect women from violence were passed between 1960 and 2018, yet VAW continues. It finds that the legal positioning and language of these laws prioritize family unity while undermining women’s rights to protection; thus, these laws fail by design. The article identifies four legal placements that delay (El Salvador), undermine (Honduras), diminish (Nicaragua), or render abstract (Guatemala) the effectiveness of VAW laws in the context of penal and judicial codes. This work has direct policy implications and broader relevance beyond the cases examined here.

Este artigo é uma análise histórica das relações entre nacionalismo, biogeografia, internacionalismo e conservação da natureza no Brasil nas décadas de 1930 e 1940. A produção e a divulgação do conhecimento biológico mostraram-se repletas de conteúdos políticos e se ligaram a diversas ações intelectuais e políticas mais amplas para a construção de uma identidade nacional. Privilegiando a obra do zoólogo Cândido de Mello Leitão, argumento que o estudo da zoogeografía permitiu-lhe adotar uma abordagem inovadora e complexa sobre a fauna brasileira. Suas análises evidenciavam o caráter ínfimo da história humana e das fronteiras políticas, no âmbito maior das eras geológicas e da vida na Terra. Nesse processo, Mello Leitão relativizou o tempo e o espaço da nação brasileira, aproximandose das tendências crescentemente internacionalistas do conservacionismo.

This study probes two major questions of urban growth: What are the significant forces that give physical form to the city, and what are the characteristics of human relationships within the city. In answering the first, the study seeks to move beyond the long accepted “plaza orientation” of Hispanic cities to explore hypotheses such as the “pampean urban structure,” the “commercial” city, or the “commercial-bureaucratic” city. The response to the second question attempts to cast further light on the powerful influences of cultural continuity and class structure in determining human associations through family and neighborhood or in occupational and ethnic groupings. In the long run, comparison of the results of this investigation with research on Latin American cities, such as the Caracas or Mexico City projects, or with urban histories of distinct cultural areas such as Australia and the southern United States, may yield more meaningful discussion of urban patterns in the developing world.

Increasingly, historians of and in the Latin American countries are turning to quantitative data and analysis. TePaske (1972, 1975), Smith (1973), and McGreevey (1972, 1974) comment on work that has been and is being done and on problems inherent in quantification. The problems that students face as quantifiers of the past may be summarized under the rubrics: (1) sources, (2) methodology, (3) training, and (4) financing. It is with the first of these that this article is concerned, especially with sources for quantifying the nineteenth century after independence, a period neglected almost as much as the seventeenth century used to be, at least insofar as the smaller countries are concerned, except for their politics and personages.

This essay discusses aspects of contemporary cuban politics and economics, up to but not including the 1969-1970 sugar harvest effort, from the point of view of a theory of sectoral clashes presented by Markos Mamalakis. The essay will focus on those hypotheses, derived from Mamalakis' previous work, which attempt to explain social and political conflict and policy making.

Mamalakis defines a clash or collision of sectors as the aggressive and administered struggle for privileges and advantages among an economy's sectors. The clash is administered or manipulated because the transfer of resources from one sector to another is brought about through governmental economic policy; it is aggressive because the transfer of resources goes beyond voluntary saving or nondiscriminatory fiscal policies to such an extent that the government is willing to risk the decay of one economic sector in order to promote another.

This essay reviews the following works:

Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War. By Ana Arjona. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xxii + 401. $33.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781107571594.

Rivalry and Revenge: The Politics of Violence during Civil War. By Laia Balcells. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 285. $29.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781107548213.

Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves. By Oliver Kaplan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. xi + 360. $34.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781316612446.

Electing Peace: From Civil Conflict to Political Participation. By Aila Matanock. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. vii + 320. $34.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781316638811.

Mourning Remains: State Atrocity, Exhumations, and Governing the Disappeared in Peru’s Postwar Andes. By Isaias Rojas-Perez. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 330. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781503602625.

Politics after Violence: Legacies of the Shining Path Conflict in Peru. Edited by Hillel David Soifer and Alberto Vergara. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019. Pp. x + 373. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781477317310.

Democracy and Displacement in Colombia’s Civil War. By Abbey Steele. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 264. $49.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781501713736.

Citizens of Memory: Affect, Representation, and Human Rights in Postdictatorship Argentina. By Silvia R. Tandeciarz. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 304. $120.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781611488456.

In the last decade in Peru, there have been substantive changes in thinking about Peruvian history and society. Although this change is visible in all the social sciences, in a special way economic analysis and historical investigation have made some important gains. Economics no longer consists, in the works of its better adherents, of vague meditations or the crude accounting of a druggist; and historical studies are also finally beginning to reach a minimal level of seriousness. Once the end product of only a few particularly lucid minds, the concept that we have today of history and the work of the historian is now shared by a much larger group. It is interesting, therefore, to see where these changes have been made, not only because of the academic necessity of giving a correct accounting, but also because the outlines of this new consciousness of its past that Peruvian society is acquiring need to be underscored. The study of history in Peru, more than any other social science, is part of the continual struggle to redraw the past of Peruvian society and to destroy the collective amnesia of the masses. These two objectives have always been sought but only now are they being achieved by works of indisputable rigor.

Desde formas y latitudes distintas, existen llamamientos a la globalización de la educación superior. Pero, ¿qué es lo que realmente se pide? Este artículo examina los programas de enseñanza de teoría y crítica literaria de Argentina, un país históricamente atravesado por el pensamiento europeo, con una sólida producción académica. Encontramos que los programas priorizan la producción nacional y una selección de obras internacionales, con inclinación hacia el pensamiento francés. Estos resultados se explican por la ecología institucional y la distribución intelectual del trabajo entre las instituciones más antiguas y prestigiosas que se centran en el ámbito nacional y las más recientes, con mayor inclinación internacional. También se explican por el peso de la traducción, que permite mayor acceso a materiales. Además, encontramos bibliografía realizada por fuera de América Latina, Europa y Estados Unidos, de académicos globalizados que dejaron sus países de origen para estudiar en Europa y Estados Unidos.

This essay reviews the following works:

• Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil. By Rebecca J. Atencio. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014. Pp. xviii + 144. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780299297244.

• Human Rights Policies in Chile: The Unfinished Struggle for Truth and Justice. By Silvia Borzutzky. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Pp. 242. $119.99 paperback. ISBN: 9783319536965.

• Intermittences: Memory, Justice, and the Poetics of the Visible in Uruguay. By Ana Forcinito. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018. Pp. xii + 257. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822965664.

• Democratization and Memories of Violence: Ethnic Minority Rights Movements in Mexico, Turkey, and El Salvador. By Mneesha Gellman. London: Routledge, 2016. Pp. xv + 242. $52.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781138597686.

• Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America. By Theresa Keeley. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020. Pp. xiv + 352. $49.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9781501750755.

• Sovereign Emergencies: Latin America and the Making of Global Human Rights Politics. By Patrick William Kelly. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xx + 318. $29.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781316615119.

• The Brazilian Truth Commission: Local, National and Global Perspectives. Edited by Nina Schneider. New York: Berghahn, 2019. Pp. 382. $135.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781789200034.

• Phenomenal Justice: Violence and Morality in Argentina. By Eva van Roekel. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020. Pp. 208. $32.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781978800267.

• Los pelotones de la muerte: La construcción de los perpetradores del genocidio guatemalteco. By Manolo E. Vela Castañeda. México, DF: Colegio de México, 2015. Pp. 454. $32.03 paperback. ISBN: 9786074623680.

• Acts of Repair: Justice, Truth, and the Politics of Memory in Argentina. By Natasha Zaretsky. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020. Pp. 252. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781978807426.

This essay reviews the following works:

Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence–and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets. By Thomas Abt. New York: Basic Books, 2019. Pp. 304. $30.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781541645721.

MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang. By Steven Dudley. New York: Hanover Square Press, 2020. Pp. 352. $28.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781335005540.

Mortal Doubt: Transnational Gangs and Social Order in Guatemala City. By Anthony W. Fontes Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018. Pp. 332. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780520297098.

El Niño de Hollywood: Cómo Estados Unidos y El Salvador moldearon a un sicario de la Mara Salvatrucha 13. By Óscar Martínez and Juan José Martínez. Mexico City: Debate, 2018. Pp. 272. $16.95 paperback. ISBN: 9786073169004.

La tropa: Por qué mata un soldado. By Daniela Rea and Pablo Ferri. Mexico City: Aguilar, 2018. Pp. 336. MXN339.00 paperback. ISBN: 9786073177795.

Gangs of the El Paso-Juárez Borderland: A History. By Mike Tapia. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019. Pp. 200. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826361097.

Carta desde Zacatraz. By Roberto Valencia. Madrid: Libros del K.O., 2018. Pp. 381. $20.00 paperback. ISBN: 9788416001866.

State of War: MS-13 and El Salvador’s World of Violence. By William Wheeler. New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2020. Pp. 150. $15.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781733623728.