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.

Domestic workers, as essentially black women in highly precarious conditions, lacking social protection, and often not recognized as proper workers, are considered particularly hard, or even impossible, to organize compared to the “standard” male industrial worker. Yet they have been mobilizing for decades in several countries, including Brazil, where they won new labor rights in 2015. Through an ethnographic study of domestic workers’ unions in Brazil, I argue that what has made their mobilization possible is precisely the intersectional dimension of their oppression. While gender, race, and class have produced multiple forms of exclusion, these vectors of oppression have also enabled domestic workers to build alliances with women’s, black, and workers’ movements, thus giving domestic workers more visibility and more resources to organize their members. I have identified three forms of alliance building, each determined by domestic workers’ unions’ particular framing of gender, race, and class issues: rigid autonomy, critical alliance, and encompassing unionism.

This article considers how changes in Latin American countries’ age structures may affect their long-term economic performance through the impact on labor supply, dependency ratios, and productivity. It analyzes fourteen Latin American countries using population projections for 2015–2050 and considering three scenarios. The basic scenario assumes constant sex- and age-specific behavior concerning employment, while the other two scenarios imply increases in female activity rates and significant human capital accumulation. The results illustrate the heterogeneity of Latin American countries. In some of them, major productivity increases can only be achieved through substantial changes in the incorporation of women into the labor market, and especially in the educational level of the population as a whole. However, in most of the region’s countries, the demographic factor is still favorable and there is scope to exploit the demographic dividend.

This article works to understand what happens to women working in the public sector, especially women in traditionally male occupations, such as the police. Moreover, in Latin America and in most developing countries, it is crucial to examine the interaction between precarious jobs and gender discrimination. The article finds that gender discrimination is accentuated in organizations with precarious labor conditions. To illustrate this problem, it examines the police force in Mexico. This is a crucial case study for understanding the phenomena: Mexico is an extremely violent country, but conditions in the police force are highly precarious for workers. Moreover, this labor precariousness has an even greater impact on female police officers. In addition to working in a profession characterized by instability, they also face structural barriers to the performance of their duties and greater obstacles to entry and promotion within the organization. Furthermore, women face the glass ceiling as well as a hostile work culture that expresses itself through discrimination.

Conventional measures of economic well-being, such as gross domestic product (GDP) and poverty, do not consider the goods produced within the household or the unpaid work done at home. This study analyzes the quantification of the value added generated within a Peruvian household based on the recalculation of the average wage of domestic workers. It proposes measure that complements monetary poverty by considering the time requirements for household production: the poverty of time. The calculation of this time shows that 43.7 percent of the population in 2010 was poor, that is, 12.62 percentage points above the official poverty rate. Thus, the vulnerability of 12.62 percent of the population is hidden when the conventional measure of poverty is used, which does not consider the time poverty of the people.

For the first time within living memory, the rural Roman Catholic parish of Talavera in the south-central Peruvian Andes features only native clergy. By placing the Talaveran Catholic priests in theological and historical context, this article shows how this current generation of Catholic priests in Talavera must be understood within the context of the post–Vatican II Catholic Church in Latin America, which explicitly encouraged the training of native clergy and recast the relationship between the sacramental and the human as mutually compatible and constitutive. Although such initiatives are generally associated with liberal parishes unlike Talavera, the nouvelle theology that shaped Vatican II nevertheless meant that the dual nature of the Roman Catholic priesthood—as concretely human but also ineffably sacramental—fundamentally shapes the lay relationship with the Catholic priests in Talavera, too. The resulting tension between the priest as a sacramental mediator to the divine and the priest as a human man is continually renegotiated by laity and clergy alike, and is essential to understanding Catholic priests in Latin America and how lay parishioners experience the Catholic priesthood.

This article advances several arguments about scientific and diplomatic collaboration on peaceful nuclear energy technologies between Argentina and Brazil. First, although 1972–1980 is generally viewed as an acrimonious period in the neighbors’ bilateral relationship, nuclear energy officials in these South American countries made significant and unexpected progress toward technical cooperation, motivated by a shared geopolitical position. Furthermore, technological differences between the two nuclear energy programs, and experts’ ideas on their potential implications for agreement between key officials, opened potential avenues for diplomatic cooperation. Finally, this article illuminates a surprising quality of diplomatic behavior of the military dictatorships in Brazil and Argentina. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, Argentina and Brazil shared nearly identical stances on the unfettered right to pursue advanced nuclear technology. In combination with increased technical cooperation, this ideological alignment supported a landmark bilateral presidential summit in 1980 on nuclear energy collaboration.

How did the social sciences theoretically contribute to producing the movements of Chilean pobladores and Brazilian favelados during the twentieth century? Through a critical review of the main theories that seek to understand the political actions of the urban poor in Santiago de Chile and Rio de Janeiro, this article shows the close relationship between these movements and the production of social sciences, in which a double hermeneutic operates—a mutually influential reflexive process that eventually contributed to the constitution and recognition of the movements as such. This research analyzes how social sciences perform the same social struggles that they attempt to describe, in other words, how certain academic contexts interact positively or negatively with the political and social disputes generated from the movements in question. I review theories of marginality and dependent urbanization, urban social movements, utilitarian views, and new social movements, showing how these interpretations alternated between requiem, rediscovery, and denial of the favelados and pobladores as social movements.

Este artículo analiza la manera en que determinadas políticas económicas (en este caso el proceso de privatización que involucró la industria azucarera dominicana a partir de 1999) pueden generar nuevas formas de subyugación individual basadas en la trampa de la deuda. Mediante el recurso a la literatura histórica y teórica del área del Caribe y al testimonio etnográfico de un joven migrante haitiano, dedicado al corte de la caña de azúcar, ilustraremos la dinámica concreta que informa las relaciones laborales en las plantaciones de la República Dominicana, para finalmente llegar a establecer una conexión entre la gestión privada de la industria azucarera y condiciones de trabajo comparables a la esclavitud de la deuda.

Although the knotted cord texts known as khipus have been created in the Andes for over a millennium (ca. AD 950–1950), their historical philology has been little understood. This study, based on original archival and ethnographic research, analyzes hybrid khipu/alphabetic texts known as “khipu boards,” examining their development in colonial Peru, and their role in twentieth-century Andean rituals. Particular attention is paid to a previously unknown sacred manuscript, the Entablo, from the community of San Pedro de Casta, Peru, which describes how villagers used khipu boards in their annual religious ceremonies until the 1950s. This study reveals new insights into the social and symbolic nature of post-Inka khipus as texts, particularly with reference to gender, place, and knowledge.

Este estudo objetivou identificar os efeitos e impactos da recriação das Superintendências de Desenvolvimento do Nordeste (Sudene) e da Amazônia (Sudam), sob o Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento, no desenvolvimento socioeconômico dos municípios atendidos. Para tanto, utilizaram-se modelos de Dados em Painel Dinâmico e de Diferenças em Diferenças, com informações dos municípios brasileiros, de 2005 a 2014. O indicador de desenvolvimento socioeconômico empregado foi o Índice Firjan de Desenvolvimento Municipal, tanto sob a perspectiva geral quanto sob suas dimensões (educação, saúde e emprego/renda). De forma geral, os resultados apontaram que as Superintendências impactaram positivamente os desenvolvimentos geral e da educação. Para a saúde, observaram-se impactos e efeitos positivos. Porém, embora as regiões beneficiadas sejam as mais necessitadas de políticas de desenvolvimento regional no Brasil, a reestruturação das superintendências, com os projetos e objetivos propostos, não foi capaz de cumpri-los integralmente, pois não foram identificados impactos positivos para emprego e renda.

Mano de obra is one of the most studied novels written by the Chilean author Diamela Eltit (b. 1949). Scholars have paid particular attention to the novel’s socioeconomic commentary at the level of the plot. They have not, however, conducted a close examination of how the novel expresses this criticism through its narrative form. Nor have they explored the relationship of the novel’s literary techniques to the politico-cultural context that it portrays. This article engages in a close reading of the literary techniques that Mano de obra employs to depict a certain social context. It also addresses some politico-cultural implications of the novel’s narrative form in the context of Chile’s contemporary society to demonstrate that the novel foregrounds a sense of pessimism and hopelessness about linking Chilean workers’ subversive past with their submissive present.

This article analyzes Jorge Luis Borges’s views on race, as he expressed them in personal conversations with Adolfo Bioy Casares and vis-à-vis his fiction. In the conversations recorded by Bioy Casares, Borges emerges as a man of his time and his social class in the worst sense possible: racism, bigotry, and his self-constructed whiteness inform almost all of his controversial statements on blackness and on Brazilian people. The article aims to expose a cohesive racial discourse underlying not only Borges’s private conversations but also his narratives. The goal is to challenge the enduring views of Borges as a “universal” author, dissociated from history and society.

En 1835, el esclavo cubano Juan Francisco Manzano escribió su autobiografía, cumpliendo con el encargo del abolicionista Domingo del Monte. El manuscrito original muestra un narrador psicológicamente escindido que lucha consigo mismo y proyecta una tonalidad terrorífica que produce una gran empatía a sus lectores. En oposición al horror, la modalidad terrorífica se define por su tendencia a la ocultación, al tiempo que crea incertidumbre e intriga. Esto es visible en los múltiples episodios de tortura en el texto, en el cual el narrador se centra en los momentos previos al suceso, evitando descripciones gráficas. A través del análisis de la transcripción del manuscrito de William Luis, arguyo que esta tonalidad logra expresar la experiencia de la esclavitud, una condición desconocida para la gran mayoría de los lectores. Gracias a un proceso imaginativo, los lectores pueden tener acceso a la experiencia y sentir empatía por el esclavo en el umbral del horror.

La política migratoria de Trump da continuidad al retorno de mexicanos a su país de origen. La magnitud del flujo, la alta presencia de niñas, niños y adolescentes y la complejidad y diversidad de sus trayectorias y características constituyen elementos distintivos del actual retorno. Uno de los estados mexicanos que más migración en retorno recibe es el de Oaxaca, configurado desde los años ochenta como uno de los principales expulsores de migrantes a Estados Unidos que ahora regresan acompañados de sus hijos menores. Consecuentemente, el sistema educativo, principal vía de (re)inserción de la niñez y la adolescencia a la sociedad en contextos migratorios, experimenta una mayor demanda de servicios por parte de esta población en edad escolar con características y necesidades distintivas. Los hallazgos de esta investigación muestran los principales elementos que impiden la (re)inserción al sistema educativo mexicano de las niñas, niños y adolescentes procedentes de Estados Unidos y sus consecuencias.

Taking as a starting point the ontological differentiation between animal and human as a fundamental mechanism of biopolitical violence, I analyze the ambiguity of the imaginaries of flesh and animality in the contexts of revolutionary Cuba and Venezuela. I demonstrate how the dynamics of power marked by an ontological division between human and not human, often ascribed to neoliberalism, paradoxically operate in socialist regimes. I examine several instances of visual arts, performance, literature, and public demonstrations, to reveal, on the one hand, sacrificial state power over the population’s bodies and, on the other, examples of disobedience against the state.

Este artículo analiza las fotografías, ensayos y diario de viaje de la exploradora inglesa Alice Dixon Le Plongeon en su paso por la Península de Yucatán durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX (1874–1885). A pesar de su trabajo pionero como exploradora y fotógrafa Chichén Itzá y Uxmal, Alice Dixon no ha formado parte hasta ahora del conjunto de viajeros y viajeras extranjeros que integran el canon multicultural y multilingüe de Latinoamérica. Este trabajo rescata la obra de Dixon prestando particular atención a la dimensión material (mobiliario, vestimenta, instrumentos domésticos y fotográficos) sobre la que se construye la experiencia y el conocimiento de la viajera como arqueóloga y fotógrafa en Yucatán. Un análisis de la presencia, circulación y reflexión de y sobre los objetos (“cosas” en la definición de Bill Brown) contribuye al estudio de la compleja relación de los viajeros con su propia identidad en viaje y con el territorio visitado, destaca el rol de la cultura material en la definición de “lo femenino” en el siglo XIX, y propone nuevos modos para aproximarse a la construcción del conocimiento científico y etnográfico en la escritura de las mujeres viajeras.

Este artículo analiza la prensa satírica producida por obreros tipógrafos en Chile entre finales del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX. A partir de la revisión de archivos de prensa y utilizando la conceptualización sobre “cultura popular ausente”, los principales resultados revelan características diferenciadas del objeto de estudio respecto de la autorrepresentación de lo popular y del rol jugado en la esfera pública, que por un lado lo apartan de la sátira chilena del siglo XIX centrada en las disputas de los partidos oligárquicos, al tiempo que visibilizan un sujeto popular (emisor y receptor) más complejo y paradójico que el de la prensa obrera dominante, generando hallazgos relevantes para un debate actual sobre los otros populares, el modo en que han permanecido ocultos históricamente y cómo traerlos a escena para la reflexión sobre proyectos políticos del presente.

Este artículo muestra que centrar el análisis en las dinámicas de uso, posesión y propiedad de recursos naturales tales como el agua, permite cuestionar conceptualizaciones historiográficas tales como el proceso de independencia, cuando estas refieren a la historia de grupos subordinados tales como las mujeres. La investigación se enfoca en una serie de demandas por derechos de aguas en el último siglo de la Colonia española en Chile, que involucrarán a una o más mujeres. Estas disputas serán vistas como los primeros indicios de la implementación de la modernidad capitalista en el territorio, la cual resultará en una serie de modificaciones en las concepciones respecto a lo que implican la sociedad y la naturaleza, exacerbando, al mismo tiempo, la situación de dependencia de las mujeres chilenas a mediano y largo plazo.

This article proposes the concept of nationness to explore the nuances and complexities that permeate the symbolic and material efforts to remember, imagine, and re-present the nation among the diasporic community of Venezuelan artists. Focusing on Deborah Castillo’s exhibition RAW (2015) and Violette Bule’s installation REQUIEM200≤ (2018), it analyzes how the two artists engage in a form of crafting that re-presents the nation as raw matter (wood, nails, clay) that never achieves a state of completeness or stability. I argue that this act of crafting is interactive and critical. It does not simply remember Venezuela and reproduce it as a spectacle to be passively consumed abroad; it provides the possibility to intervene in systems of power and representation that determine which bodies are visible and which are not, which bodies have power and which do not, which bodies are mourned and who should mourn them. In crafting what I call “Venezuelanness,” the artists’ work offers the space and the means to think (about) the country differently, beyond the spatial boundaries of its territory, beyond the icons that monopolize its collective imaginary, and beyond the extreme polarization of its politics.