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:

Illiberal Practices: Territorial Variance within Large Federal Democracies. Edited by Jacqueline Behrend and Laurence Whitehead. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Pp. x + 330. $49.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781421419589.

Avoiding Governors: Federalism, Democracy, and Poverty Alleviation in Brazil and Argentina. By Tracy Beck Fenwick. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016. Pp. xviii + 277. $29.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780268028961.

Boundary Control: Subnational Authoritarianism in Federal Democracies. By Edward L. Gibson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 192. $31.99 paperback. ISBN: 9780521127332.

Democrats and Autocrats: Pathways of Subnational Undemocratic Regime Continuity within Democratic Countries. By Agustina Giraudy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xx + 214. $86.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780198706861.

Diffusion of Good Government: Social Sector Reforms in Brazil. By Natasha Borges Sugiyama. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Pp. xx + 265. $35.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780268041427.

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.

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.

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.

En las fronteras indígenas del Río de la Plata y Chile meridional, principalmente en la primera, la comunicación interétnica estuvo condicionada para las autoridades coloniales por una endémica escasez de lenguaraces e intérpretes, de quienes dependían debido a su habitual desconocimiento del mapu dungum, lengua del sur del reino de generalizada utilización en el siglo XVIII por todos los grupos nativos de la región. Con relación a estos últimos, en cambio, no son pocos los casos documentados de personas que habían incorporado el habla de Castilla (o español como se la denominaba) y la utilizaban en actividades de mediación —inclusive por circunstancial requerimiento de la administración— y de inteligencia. En este artículo, se examinan las distintas maneras en que los oficiales reales, los sacerdotes y especialmente los hombres y mujeres indígenas enfrentaron y resolvieron las dificultades inherentes a la adquisición de ambas lenguas y a las demandas de intermediación.

This research note provides a preliminary discussion of changing agricultural and food procurement strategies in a smallholder farming community in Piribebuy District, Paraguay. Although considerable attention has been paid to the contemporary problems of soy agriculture in Paraguay, it is also important to engage with the experiences of smallholders who are not involved in or affected by soy cultivation, as this highlights farmers' diverse everyday experiences and their agricultural priorities. We consider three issues that have emerged as key to farmer agricultural decision making in this community: farmer perceptions of environmental changes, processes of dietary delocalization via the movement of food from urban centers to rural communities, and the intersection of labor issues and aging farmers.

Municipalities in nineteenth-century Brazil bore the responsibility for providing public services that enhanced economic exchange, particularly physical infrastructure that facilitated the circulation of goods and services. Therefore, the question of whether the resources to pay for these services were abundant or scarce matters greatly to our understanding of Brazil’s history of economic development and socioeconomic inequality. Although ex ante budgets regularly predicted financial abundance, ex post financial statements repeatedly reported chronic deficits and financial instability. In the face of unanticipated revenue shortfalls, municipalities cut investments in essential public infrastructure, thereby dampening domestic economic exchange and perpetuating municipal poverty.

The goal of “health for all by the year 2000” was endorsed by member nations of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) at the International Conference on Primary Health Care, held at Alma Ata, U.S.S.R., in September 1978. The goal of attaining total health care coverage of the population had been agreed upon by the Ministers of Health of the Americas at their III Special Meeting in 1972. Meeting again in 1977, the ministers took stock of the region's accomplishments and remaining shortcomings in preparation for the Alma Ata conference. They concluded that their institutional health care systems, which bear the major responsibility for providing total coverage, had not yet attained this goal; among the reasons mentioned were institutional rigidities that made it difficult to determine and respond to unattended needs for health care, and the financial inaccessibility to large population groups of the institutions providing health services. These problems were compounded by a “significant increase in the cost of medical care … which reduces the resources available for providing universal coverage.”

Why do politicians pursue policy reforms to improve government performance when these are perceived to be costly, both materially and politically? Theories based on advanced democracies stress electoral accountability mechanisms rooted in programmatic parties with strong ties to society. Empirically, these are largely absent in less developed democracies, and this often leads to poor public goods provision. To better understand the incentives for local policy reform in developing democracies, we constructed a comprehensive data set of local natural resource management reforms in Ecuador's cantons during 1997–2008. We find that the presence of “organic” political parties, legitimate participatory decision-making institutions, and high levels of civic engagement increased the incidence of reform. Our findings suggest that even in environments marked by clientelist politics and weak, elite-based party systems, institutions linking politicians with a mobilized civil society (e.g., organic parties and participatory decision-making institutions) can incentivize elected officials to pursue performance-enhancing reforms.

Partiendo de la discusión reciente sobre la integración económica en dos regiones periféricas, Asia y América del Sur, este artículo evalúa si existen condiciones de convergencia económica en el ámbito de los grupos denominados Asociación de Naciones del Sudeste Asiático más China, Japón y la República de Corea (ASEAN+3, por sus siglas en inglés) y el Mercado Común del Sur (Mercosur), que puedan llevar a una mayor integración monetaria o financiera en ambas regiones. Por una parte, se analizan los aspectos históricos e institucionales de la construcción de los acuerdos de integración regional, destacando los elementos económicos y políticos que están favoreciendo o dificultando un mayor acercamiento económico-financiero entre los países miembros de los dos bloques regionales. Y, por otra, utilizando el referente analítico de la teoría de áreas monetarias óptimas, se estima si ambas regiones obtendrían ventajas al abandonar su autonomía en la gestión macroeconómica, especialmente en lo que se refiere a la política monetaria y cambiaria, a cambio de una adhesión a un sistema monetario coordinado internacionalmente.

In the last several years an increasing number of political scientists have turned to Latin America as their principal area interest. Many of these academicians have been trained in the various sub-disciplines of political science and turn to Latin America as a meaningful laboratory for the study of specific political groups or processes.

In 1943 there appeared in Mexico City the first book in Spanish on the story of philosophy in Mexico written from a nonscholastic or lay standpoint. Its title is, simply, Historia de la filosofía en México, the author being Samuel Ramos (1897-1959) of Zitácuaro, Michoacán, a philosophy professor at the National University of Mexico. The pioneering work is tentative and modest in content but firm and ambitious in intent. It opens and closes with the same fixed idea in mind: To encourage Mexican thinkers to develop their own philosophy by integrating European philosophy with their national spirit; that is, by nationalizing philosophy itself. Put negatively and more effectively, the whole point of the author's endeavor is to get Mexican intellectuals out of the traditional habit of imitating the philosophies of others by inviting them to think henceforth on their own two feet about the fundamental problems of Mexico herself.