This study discusses the responses of Mexican intellectuals to the 1968 massacre in the Plaza de Tlatelolco. Several published studies and anthologies have covered the poetry, narrative, and essays written on the subject, but no such consideration has been given to the theatrical works written and staged since 1968. Jeanette Malkin's theory on memory-theatre, Pierre Nora's “lieux de mémoire,” and Michel Foucault's concept of countermemories all shed light on how these dramatic works function in a changing Mexico, now moving toward authentic democracy and ready to revive a segment of history suppressed and distorted but never forgotten. Of the many plays commemorating the events of 1968, four that focus on the process of memory are analyzed in this essay. Because of the slow democratization of Mexico, the growing maturity of former participants and witnesses, and the postmodern craving for testimony, the repressed memories of Tlatelolco have not faded into oblivion but continue to inspire the dramatic imagination.

In this paper I move beyond binary conceptions of the Colombian state as either strong or weak, failed or successful. Instead, I analyze particular sublime and gross qualities of the state as they are expressed through contestations over the space of el pueblo. I argue that this space—el pueblo—has been constructed around an internal contradiction. On one hand, it is figured as distant and in opposition to the city-state. On the other hand, it occupies the center of the nation. Marginalized by the official state, competing actors have incorporated el pueblo into “shadow states” that subvert the sublime image of the state. Lacking legitimacy within el pueblo, both the official and shadow states employ institutionalized violences in order to assert symbolic, discursive, and physical control over it. The result is the creation of a “culture of terror” that marks the real and imaginary space of el pueblo. The “spatialized vocabularies of citizenship” articulated by each actor—the state, shadow states, and el pueblo itself—from these margins mutually constitute Colombia's competing and intertwining “languages of stateness.”

As a preeminent enduring regime in the world today, Mexico provides a compelling case study regarding the nature and locus of power. Since the 1970s, accounts of politics in postrevolutionary Mexico have assumed that ongoing domination has resulted from centralized, relatively homogeneous power transmitted outward through corporatist mechanisms. The process of transmission replicated the dynamics of the center through a combination of skillful management and efficient coercion. Even now, as researchers are emphasizing the breakdown of corporatism and the complexity and nuance of current Mexican politics, they continue to codify the past according to the terms of the 1970s analysis and view the present through this lens. But while social scientists in the 1970s were right to characterize the postrevolutionary Mexican regime as authoritarian and hegemonic, they were wrong about the nature of hegemony. In constructing a state-centered and center-centered understanding of politics, social scientists then and now have misunderstood the nature of power and domination in Mexico and the reasons for the endurance of the Mexican regime.

This article explores the sources of Ecuador's boom in flower exports since the late 1980s. In that boom, fresh cut flower exports rose from almost nothing to 9 percent of the country's nonpetroleum export earnings. This research addresses whether trade liberalization and macroeconomic reforms played a decisive role in stimulating the export boom or whether changes in the global flower market created Ecuador's comparative advantage in flower exports independent of the policy regime. The article surveys the many changes in economic policy toward agriculture in general, flower cultivation, nontraditional exports, international trade, and macroeconomic stability. Growth rates in traditional and non-traditional exports are examined to see if they correlate with changes in key policies. The article also examines how the restructuring of the global flower market affected Ecuador's floriculture industry.

For the past thirty years, the imprint “Editorial Joaquín Mortiz” has stood for innovation, quality, and prestige in Mexican literature. After it was founded in 1962, Joaquín Mortiz quickly emerged as the premier literary publisher in Mexico and has provided readers with many of the novels and short stories now recognized as landmarks defining the contemporary canon of Mexican fiction. Most studies of Mexican narrative of the 1960s have tended to emphasize the dichotomy between the elitist self-conscious experimentation of escritura writing and the irreverent youthful exuberance of onda writing. Shifting the focus from texts to publishers, however, reveals a different configuration. Editorial Joaquín Mortiz actually encouraged both these trends by cultivating the work of escritura authors such as Salvador Elizondo, Juan García Ponce, and José Emilio Pacheco along with those of onda authors like Gustavo Sainz and José Agustín. Moreover, during its first two years, Joaquín Mortiz staked much of its early reputation on promoting two Mexican novels now fundamental to women's writing throughout Latin America: Oficio de tinieblas (1962) by Rosario Castellanos and Los recuerdos del porvenir (1963) by Elena Garro. Thus Editorial Joaquín Mortiz has greatly influenced the development of contemporary Mexican narrative.

Costa Rica has been the real success story of Latin American democracy. For the last half-century, this small country has held free, fair, and competitive elections, experienced regular rotation of rulers and parties, and rarely violated human or civil rights. Consistent voter turnout rates of 80 percent and a firmly entrenched two-party system appeared to be unalterable features of the electoral landscape since the late 1950s. While democracy still seems securely entrenched, the 1998 elections brought a major shift. Abstention increased by 50 percent, and votes for minor parties in the legislature doubled, reaching one-quarter of the electorate. This research note presents evidence that the shift is the result of long-term forces, using cross-sectional survey data collected from 1978 to 1999. Notable declines in the legitimacy of the political system explain the drop in turnout and the rise of minor parties. The study then attempts to explain why this decline may have occurred.