Women make upadisproportionate shareoftheworld's poor, andLatin America is noexception to this trend. Nevertheless, veryfew studiesofsocial policy intheregion haveinvestigated whythegendered character ofwelfare provisionvariesacrosscountries. Thisarticleaddresses thatquestion throughacomparativehistoricalanalysisofChileandUruguayandconcludes thatvariation in thegendered natureofeach state's social policy regime resultedfromatwo-step process. Inthefirst stage,female laborforce participation, themobilizing capacityofwomen, andpolicy legacies differentiated thet7.UO countries, placing Chile onaless equitable trajectory thanUruguay. These differences were thenmagnifiedduringeach state's experience underauthoritarian rule.

This essay examines the ambivalent interaction between liberation theology and notions of ‘respect’ among Quichua speakers in highland Ecuador. It focuses on three ways that notions of respect rooted in local history inform and transform current Catholic practice and ethnic politics. First, indigenous Catholic activists and mestizo priests appeal to respect for elders to argue for ethnic and religious loyalty. Second, the memory of hacienda-era discipline partly underpins current models of community authority and “indigenous law.” Finally, many villagers bring expectations shaped by hacienda prayer meetings to the Bible reflection that liberation theology promotes. This complex interaction contributes to local redefinitions of modernity.

As a national group, Canadians are frequently viewed as an outward-looking people with an innate thirst for knowledge about the social, economic, and political customs of other nationalities. Traditionally, such curiosity has extended to countries that have played a large role in shaping contemporary Canadian society, especially the United States and the former colonizing powers of Europe. More recently, however, owing at least partly to changing patterns of immigration to Canada and the growth in hemispheric cultural and economic ties, curiosity has turned more and more toward Canada's neighbors to the south, the countries of Latin America.

This paper originated with Jonathan Brown's invitation to participate in a LARR-sponsored panel at the 2004 LASA Congress, commenting on the lectures offered by John Coatsworth and Joseph Love. The discussants' task was to relate the general ideas presented by these scholars to our own field of specialization, which in my case happens to be the history of foreign trade. Therefore, this article summarizes the evolution of economic ideas with respect to Latin America, with special emphasis on foreign trade and commercial policy. It explains the basic positions held by the structuralist and dependentista schools, the shift brought about by the return of neoclassical economics, and the partial departure from orthodoxy made by the New Institutional Economics (NIE). This article concludes with a discussion of how these changes in paradigms were generated and how the evolution in ideas contributes fresh approaches to the historical interpretation of the role of foreign trade in Latin America.

An enduring paradox lies at the heart of Brazilian politics. The Brazilian Army has long suffered from corruption at the highest levels so extreme as to create disquiet throughout the institution. Yet the Brazilian military, like other armed forces in Latin America, has justified its involvement in politics and society by accusing civilians of corruption. Despite repeated revelations of military corruption, soldiers and civilians as well have sometimes accepted the armed forces' use of this moral discourse. For example, an anonymous businessman wrote General Pedro Aurélio de Góes Monteiro on 30 November 1954: “The country is on the brink of financial and economic ruin. This state of things is the result of the abuses of past governments and of the deceased President Vargas and the generalized corruption. … The only solution for the reestablishment of confidence in the exterior would be the delivery of the government to a military dictatorship” (emphasis in the original).2 Thirty years later, at the close of authoritarian rule in Brazil, a daring journalist named Carlos Alberto de Carli exposed rampant corruption within the military's intelligence services. Yet Carli himself dedicated his book in part to “the armed forces—the moral reserves of our people” (cover page, Carli 1985).

Since the late 1980s, peasants throughout Central America have begun to coordinate political and economic strategy. Agriculturalists from the five republics that constituted “la patria grande” of Spanish Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica) as well as representatives from Panama and Belize have founded regional organizations that meet to compare experiences with free-market policies, share new technologies, develop sources of finance, and create channels for marketing their products abroad. They have also established a presence in the increasingly distant arenas where decisions are made that affect their livelihood. Small-farmer organizations now lobby at the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and regional summit meetings. Central American campesinos have attended numerous regional gatherings of agriculture ministers and presidents, as well as events like the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the 1995 Western Hemisphere Presidents' Summit in Miami, the 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, and the 1996 Food Security Summit in Rome.