Este trabajo se propone analizar los principales cambios que el primer gobierno de izquierda que asume el gobierno en el año 2005, introdujo en los formatos de negociación colectiva ensayados en el país desde 1985 hasta 1990. La convocatoria a Consejos de Salarios retoma los procedimientos de negociación colectiva desmantelados luego de quince años de políticas de corte neoliberal, en el marco de un proceso de reforma laboral que el país nunca había experimentado en el plano de las relaciones colectivas de trabajo. La nueva normativa laboral establece un conjunto de reglas de juego que generan espacios de intermediación de intereses más estables y con mayores niveles de legitimidad que en épocas pasadas. El trabajo analiza estos cambios a partir de un censo realizado a los representantes del Estado, de los trabajadores y de los empresarios que participaron en la experiencia de negociación colectiva entre el año 2005 y el año 2009.

Onipresente na obra de Gilberto Freyre, na qual recebe tratamento diversificado, o tema da culinária e da alimentação evidencia o projeto científico e o programa político do autor pernambucano, bem como seu pioneirismo e sua importância contemporânea. Buscando um esforço de síntese e a sondagem de alguns aspectos mais recônditos da obra freyreana, esse artigo pretende demonstrar que subjazem ao tratamento da culinária em Freyre os temas-chave de raça, identidade e modernidade. A relação e entre nutrição e raça sugere que argumentos baseados na alimentação foram fundamentais para sobrepor ao paradigma racista um culturalista. A relação entre alimentação e identidade evidencia que a culinária brasileira é epítome do caráter mestiço do brasileiro. A relação entre alimentação e modernidade implica que a culinária nacional há de ser defendida das forças descaracterizadoras da modernização.

This article draws on participant observation research in a Civil Police station (delegacia) in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, to disentangle existing notions of police resistance to democratic change. Through processes such as “talk of castigation,” the Civil Police reproduce three kinds of authority—public, institutional, and criminal—that influence how police work is done. These authorities are antagonistic, battling over different normative worldviews and notions of acceptable police practice, and these antagonisms result in police work that is often a conflicted amalgam of democratic, institutional, and criminal pressures. The slow pace of democratic change at this police station emerges from not one but multiple modes of resistance that complicate how police can do their work.

When we as LARR associate editors learned of the proposal of Jeffrey Rubin, David Smilde, and Benjamin Junge for this special issue, we were eager to be involved. Representing the journal, we had the great pleasure to attend meetings in Boston in 2011 and 2012 of this important new research initiative, initially titled “Religion, Social Movements, and Progressive Reform in Latin America,” where we heard many stimulating papers from a diverse range of scholars working in Latin America and the United States. At each meeting the group of presenters was never the same, which made for much exciting cross-fertilization of thinking in efforts to work through these themes, with stimulating and lively discussions moving from conference venues to restaurants and spilling out later onto the sidewalks of Boston. As our gracious host and the main convener of the meetings, Jeff Rubin skillfully wove together disparate views and approaches, moving toward the common threads that you see highlighted in this volume: zones of crisis, the day-to-day experience of religion, and citizenship. Each of the papers configures these themes in a unique way, demonstrating the undeniable centrality of religion as an inspiration and shaper of subjectivities, personal and public action, and engagement with politics in diverse settings across the Americas.

Existing case-study research suggests that the recent increase in human rights violations in Latin America is attributed to the US-funded drug war. This narrative, which is referred to as the collateral damage perspective, stands in contrast to US human rights law, which makes governments' respect for human rights a precondition to receive aid. The apparent endogeneity between aid and human rights introduces bias that casts serious doubts on the validity of the collateral damage narrative. In addressing endogeneity, this article presents a simultaneous instrumental variable analysis of the human rights effects of US counternarcotic aid in the Americas. The results show that while counternarcotic aid to regimes increases overall violations of human rights, this effect is greater among democracies than autocracies. And with the exception of torture, this finding is consistent when disappearances, political imprisonment, and extrajudicial killings are also considered. The implication of this research suggests that policy makers in Washington risk losing regional support for US drug control policies if US laws that govern the allocation of aid are not effectively implemented.

In this introduction we present the concepts of “lived religion” and “lived citizenship” as tools for understanding the ways in which religious and political meanings and practices are constituted in social movements and locations of poverty and exclusion in Latin America. We first develop the idea of “zones of crisis” as a context in which struggles for rights, recognition, and survival are enacted. We then challenge reified distinctions between the secular and the religious, emphasizing religion's embodiment and emplacement in daily life and politics. Reviewing the empirical findings of the articles in this special issue, we discuss the multiple imbrications of religion and citizenship with regard to democratic politics, geographies of conflict, and safe spaces, as well as selfhood, identity, and agency. In a postsecular world, interrogating religion, secularity, and politics together enables us better to understand the complex construction of democratic citizenship and the dynamism of Latin America's multiple modernities.

A significant shortcoming in Latin American transitions to democracy has been the failure of some subnational units to follow suit, leading to the emergence of authoritarian enclaves. Recently, however, some of these nondemocratic regimes have moved toward a political opening. In this respect, the state of Bahia in Northeastern Brazil is intriguing. Antônio Carlos Magalhães and his associates, known as carlistas, were in office between 1970 and 2006, when Jaques Wagner, from the Worker's Party (PT), won the gubernatorial election. While the ascent of the PT was saluted as spearheading Bahia's democratization, numerous observers have signaled important elements of continuity, including personalism, clientelism, and top-down decision making. What changed and what didn't is thus a pertinent question. To answer it, I use Robert Dahl's procedural definition of democracy (completed and updated by more recent scholarship) as the guiding criterion to compare carlista and PT rule in Bahia. I conclude with a broad reflection on subnational democratization in Latin America.

El presente artículo reflexiona sobre una de las maneras a través de las cuales la sociedad boliviana contemporánea ha intentado resolver el brusco vaciamiento de la concepción de lo nacional en la era neoliberal. El artículo argumenta que la hoja de coca ha sido uno de los elementos más importantes en llenar este vacío. Su poder simbólico ha hecho posible bajo determinadas circunstancias (políticas, sociales y culturales) pasar de ser un elemento clave de representación local a otro nacional. Asimismo, la hoja de coca contiene la siempre problemática relación entre lo local y la política global de su erradicación. Precisamente, uno de los aspectos que contribuye al fortalecimiento de la hoja de coca como símbolo en determinado momento es la lucha de los productores de coca en contra de tales políticas. Como marco de referencia de la argumentación se utiliza la noción de sistema-mundo de Immanuel Wallerstein, la idea de globalización de Thomas Barnett y la concepción de representación de Ernesto Laclau.

This essay examines the Responsible Procreation campaign of Acción Cultural Popular (ACPO) within the context of “zones of crisis” characterized not only by the legacy of long-standing violence but by tensions experienced within the Catholic Church and Colombian society at large during the tumultuous decades of the 1960s and 1970s. ACPO centered its Responsible Procreation campaign on a radical critique of authoritarian and exclusionary gender relations that could only be remedied by guaranteeing women's access to education and their participation as equals in household and community decision making. As a Catholic-affiliated organization, ACPO enjoyed legitimacy many secular organizations did not, enabling it to provide spaces where rural Colombians, especially women, could experiment with voice and agency and explore alternative visions of citizenship and community development without fear of reprisal or social ostracism. Christian social activism, the essay concludes, often laid the basis for the proliferation today of social movements spearheaded by rural women.

El artículo analiza la movilización y autogestión de empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores en Argentina, en tanto fenómeno surgido en el contexto de la crisis socioeconómica de dicho país (2001–2002), aunque vigente hasta la actualidad. Nos centramos en aquellos procesos y mecanismos que favorecen la autogestión. Específicamente, analizamos la relación entre el proceso de movilización y el proceso de inserción económica en el mercado por parte de estas experiencias colectivas. Estudiamos, en primer término, la presencia de mecanismos como la articulación política (correduría), la atribución de oportunidades, los cambios de identidad, la certificación y la competencia dados en el contexto argentino actual y que configuran este movimiento social. En segundo término, analizamos las estrategias de autogestión que implementan los trabajadores y la manera en que las mismas están condicionadas por las características de la movilización social.

Este trabajo analiza de qué manera la guerra de Malvinas (Falklands) afectó los planes de la Internacional Socialista (IS) para consolidar un esquema de alianzas flexibles entre partidos políticos de distinta procedencia geográfica e ideológica como sostén de su expansión extra europea, en el marco de un entorno internacional cambiante. Se avanza en la caracterización de las posiciones adoptadas por los partidos políticos latinoamericanos y europeos miembros de la IS, profundizando en sus diferentes visiones del conflicto y evaluando qué impacto tuvo en las relaciones interpartidarias y en las estrategias regionales de la IS.

Este ensayo propone un análisis deconstructivo del problema del habla y la escritura en Vidas secas (1938) de Graciliano Ramos. Al examinar la razón de la aparente discapacidad lingüístico-alfabética de los protagonistas de la obra, la crítica ha permanecido hasta el momento dentro de un esquema oposicional (habla/no-habla) que debería ser reevaluado por fuera de ese mismo esquema. Siguiendo las ideas de Jacques Derrida, el artículo considera a Fabiano y a su familia una suerte de filósofos que, en su divagar mental y físico, realizan una crítica onto-teológica y logocéntrica del sistema de diferencias metafísicas naturaleza/cultura y humanidad/animalidad. A la luz de las teorías de Giorgio Agamben, Fabiano representa igualmente al homo sacer, en tanto proscrito bajo estado de excepción en donde se anula la diferencia entre animalidad y humanidad. Como subalterno, el personaje se ubica en un espacio liminal, incluido por su misma exclusión.

Con los gobiernos de Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) se produjo en Venezuela un cambio de régimen político de una democracia representativa a otra “participativa y protagónica”. Este artículo presenta resultados de una investigación sobre los orígenes del concepto participativo constitucional, que son de manera preponderante derivados del pensamiento social de la Iglesia Católica. La primera parte revisa ideas sobre la participación desde Concilio Vaticano II; la segunda, cómo estas ideas pasaron luego a propuestas políticas del partido socialcristiano COPEI (Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente). La tercera indaga sobre el concepto participativo en la izquierda venezolana; y la cuarta y quinta partes examinan la participación en las propuestas de la Comisión para la Reforma del Estado y en la fallida reforma constitucional de 1992, donde quedó asentado el principio participativo que sería copiado a la Carta Magna de 1999.

In 1955, a monument to Inca warrior Rumiñahui was erected in Otavalo's central plaza. In this article, I study the ways in which competing imaginings of the Ecuadorian nation have shaped the material and symbolic trajectory of the monument. The monument was the outcome of a struggle for hegemony between nonindigenous elites. The current appropriation of the monument by the local indigenous population, however, is at odds with the ideological purpose for which it was built. The initiative to build the monument emerged from the public sphere—which at that time excluded indigenous peoples—in a context of national debates about the Indian problem. The widespread notion that the indigenous people of Otavalo were exceptional propelled the local nonindigenous elite to debate the Indian problem and shape, in the process, a public sphere. Elucidating the workings of the public sphere in the racialization of indigenous peoples, I aim to contribute to the academic literature about the relationship between Indian and nation in Ecuador. This literature has focused on the role that either the state or the private sphere has played in this racialization and has not paid enough explicit attention to the public sphere.

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 examines the effect of democratization on a key education reform across three Mexican states. Previous scholarship has found a positive effect of electoral competition on social spending, as leaders seek to improve their reelection prospects by delivering services to voters. However, the evidence presented here indicates that more money has not meant better educational outcomes in Mexico. Rather, new and vulnerable elected leaders are especially susceptible to the demands of powerful interest groups at the expense of accountability to constituents. In this case, the dominant teachers' union has used its leverage to exact greater control over the country's resource-rich merit pay program for teachers. It has exploited this control to increase salaries and decrease standards for advancement up the remuneration ladder. The evidence suggests that increased electoral competition has led to the empowerment of entrenched interests rather than voters, with an overall negative effect on education.

Este texto aborda, a partir da estruturação efuncionamento de canais institucionais, a cooperação e influência norte-americana sobre o Exército Brasileiro na década de 1940 e início de 1950. Estes canais foram as comissões militares mistas que funcionaram em Washington e no Rio de Janeiro a partir de 1942, os programas de visita e treinamento de militares brasileiros nos EUA e os programas de assistência norte-americana às instituições de ensino militar no Brasil. Tais programas, somados às transferências de material bélico, resultaram numa forte influência organizacional, doutrinária e política norteamericana sobre as Forças Armadas brasileiras, particularmente sobre o exército. Tal influência, contudo, também gerou resistências, adaptações e tensões no corpo de oficiais.

La investigación que se presenta analiza la incidencia del trabajo infantil fuera del hogar en el desempeño académico de los estudiantes de tercer y sexto grado de primaria en América Latina, en las áreas de lectura y matemáticas. Para ello, se utilizan modelos multinivel de cuatro niveles con los datos del Segundo Estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicativo de la UNESCO, analizándose algo más de noventa y cinco mil estudiantes de tercer grado de educación primaria y de noventaiún mil alumnos de sexto grado de dieciséis países latinoamericanos. Los resultados muestran que los estudiantes que trabajan fuera del hogar tanto de tercero como de sexto grado, obtienen menores desempeños en lectura y matemáticas que quienes no lo hacen. Tal rendimiento se ve además negativamente afectado, en función de las horas de dedicación diaria y días trabajados en la semana.

This article analyzes the Catholic Church's involvement in social conflicts resulting from resource extraction activities in Peru. The nature and degree of the Catholic Church's involvement vary greatly according to the type of conflict and the diversity of standpoints of the Church at the local level. The article focuses on three distinctive, widely known conflicts against the expansion of extractive activities. It shows that the importance conventionally given to the role of particular religious figures, their adherence to progressive ideologies, and the defense of the Church's strategic interests do not fully encompass the complexity of local processes. In contrast, the article contends that the Church's institutional embeddedness in local networks is the most influential factor in the involvement of Catholic organizations in anti-mining conflicts. Embeddedness coincides with a spirituality that prioritizes local people's agency, whereby the priests and Church organizations accompany and follow the initiatives of local communities instead of taking a leading role. This does not mean that the Church takes a passive stance in these conflicts. Priests and other pastoral agents have incorporated environmental and human rights discourses into an explicit religious framework that amplifies the social space of the Church and provides legitimacy for mobilizations. In parallel, locally generated doctrinal frameworks permeate the official discourse of the Catholic Church, reinforcing the position of those committed to the defense of local demands.

Drawing on the literature on the social construction of public policy, this article pinpoints the emergence of the trope of the “temporary Mexican,” that is, the migrant farm laborer, to the 1920 congressional hearings on the “admission of illiterate Mexican laborers.” I argue that this construction was the brainchild of southwestern agriculture and its congressional supporters who sought to conceive of the Mexican laborer in terms consistent with the eugenic, liberal, and socially conservative sensibilities of the time. What resulted from this strategic creative process was the temporary Mexican, a new breed of peon who had free will and was biologically destined to return to Mexico. This temporariness, which was what made this social construction most palatable in the 1920s, has stayed with Mexicans (and Latinos generally) to the modern day, turning them into an in-between group whose membership is always suspect.