This essay reviews the following works:

Beyond Civil Society: Activism, Participation, and Protest in Latin America. Edited by Sonia E. Alvarez, Jeffrey W. Rubin, Millie Thayer, Gianpaolo Baiocchi, and Agustín Laó-Montes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Pp. xvi + 386 pages. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822373353.

Social Protests in Colombia: A History, 1958–1990: Social Movements in the Americas. By Mauricio Archila Neira. Translated by Camilo Ordoñez-Zambrano; foreword by A. Ricardo López-Pedreros. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019. Pp. xx + 375. $120.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781498558877.

Estado de malestar y tradiciones de lucha: Genealogía del movimiento piquetero de Tartagal-Mosconi, 1930–2001. By José Daniel Benclowitz. Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2013. ISBN: 9789876911146.

Policing Protest in Argentina and Chile. By Michelle D. Bonner. Boulder, CO: First Forum Press, 2014. Pp. xiv + 249. $75.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781935049869.

Where Are the Unions? Workers and Social Movements in Latin America, the Middle East and Europe. Edited by Sian Lazar. London: Zed Books, 2017. Pp. 296. $25.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781783609895.

Protest State: The Rise of Everyday Contention in Latin America. By Mason W. Moseley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xvi + 241. $78.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780190694005.

The Poor’s Struggle for Political Incorporation: The Piquetero Movement in Argentina. By Federico M. Rossi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. 341. $31.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781107525986.

Indigenous Women’s Movements in Latin America: Gender and Ethnicity in Peru, Mexico, and Bolivia. By Stéphanie Rousseau and Anahi Morales Hudon. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Pp. 225. ISBN: 9781349950621.

Popular Movements in Autocracies: Religion, Repression, and Indigenous Collective Action in Mexico. By Guillermo Trejo. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. 339. ISBN: 9780521197724.

This essay reviews the following works:

Silencios y disputas en la historia de Hispanoamérica. By Antonio Annino. Bogotá: Universidad Externado de Colombia, 2014. Pp. xi + 455. $45.00 paperback. ISBN: 9789587587456.

Nineteenth-Century Spanish America: A Cultural History. By Christopher Conway. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2015. Pp. x + 270. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780826520609.

Vernacular Latin Americanisms: War, the Market, and the Making of a Discipline. By Fernando Degiovanni. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018. Pp. viii + 238. $29.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780822965541.

Days of National Festivity in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1823–1889. By Hendrik Kraay. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 562. $70.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780804785266.

Intimations of Modernity: Civil Culture in Nineteenth-Century Cuba. By Louis A. Pérez Jr. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. xi + 256. $39.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9781469631301.

Historia global de América Latina del siglo XXI a la Independencia. By Héctor Pérez Brignoli. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2018. Pp. 629. €15.5 paperback. ISBN: 9788491811022.

Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea. By Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 240. $40.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780226443065.

This essay reviews the following works:

From Lenin to Castro, 1917–1959: Early Encounters between Moscow and Havana. By Mervyn J. Bain. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. Pp. vii + 159. $55.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9780739181102.

Cuba’s Revolutionary World. By Jonathan C. Brown. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. vi + 586. $35.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780674971981.

Cubans in Angola: South-South Cooperation and Transfer of Knowledge, 1976–1991. By Christine Hatzky. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015. Pp. v + 386. $39.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780299301040.

Exporting Revolution: Cuba’s Global Solidarity. By Margaret Randall. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Pp. x + 272. $25.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822369042.

U.S.-Cuba Relations: Charting a New Path. By Jonathan D. Rosen and Hanna S. Kassab. Baltimore, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. Pp. vii + 164. $36.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781498537759.

Este ensayo reseña las siguientes películas:

50 Chuseok. Dir. Tamae Garateguy. Prod. Florencia Franco, Tamae Garateguy y Chang Sung Kim. Argentina, 2018, 84 minutos. https://play.cine.ar/INCAA/produccion/5833.

Halmoni/Abuela/Grandmother. Dir. Daniel Kim. Prod. Mariana Luconi. Argentina, 2018, 63 minutos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ6FQfIP0EI.

Mi último fracaso/My Last Failure. Dir. Cecilia Kang. Prod. Cecilia Kang y Virginia Roffo. Argentina, 2016, 63 minutos. Contactarse con la directora Cecilia Kang para obtener visionado de su película: [email protected].

This essay reviews the following works:

La marchita, el escudo y el bombo: Una historia cultural de los emblemas del peronismo, de Perón a Cristina Kirchner. By Ezequiel Adamovsky and Esteban Buch. Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2016. Pp. 367. ARS$555 paperback. ISBN: 9789504954750.

The Resurgence of Populism in Latin America. By Robert R. Barr. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2017. Pp. xii + 251. $75 hardcover. ISBN: 9781626376670.

The Promise and Perils of Populism: Global Perspectives. Edited by Carlos de la Torre. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. Pp. viii + 474. $45.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780813153308.

Latin America’s Leaders. By Rut Diamint and Laura Tedesco. London: Zed, 2015. Pp. xi + 188. $25.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781783601028.

Evita, Inevitably: Performing Argentina’s Icons before and after Eva Perón. By Jean Graham-Jones. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 271. $37.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780472052332.

Creating Charismatic Bonds in Argentina: Letters to Juan and Eva Perón. By Donna J. Guy. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 173. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780826338389.

Populism and Performance in the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela. By Angela Marino. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018. Pp. xi + 212. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780810136731.

Populism: A Very Short Introduction. By Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 136. $11.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780190234874.

Dancing Jacobins: A Venezuelan Genealogy of Latin American Populism. By Rafael Sánchez. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 393. $35 paperback. ISBN: 9780823263660.

When Democracy Trumps Populism: European and Latin American Lessons for the United States. Edited by Kurt Weyland and Raúl L. Madrid. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 238. $27.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781108728829.

This essay reviews the following works:

Learning from Bogotá: Pedagogical Urbanism and the Reshaping of Public Space. By Rachel Berney. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017. Pp. 190. $40.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781477311042.

Spectacular Modernity: Dictatorship, Space, and Visuality in Venezuela, 1948–1958. By Lisa Blackmore. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 268. $28.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822964384.

São Paulo: A Graphic Biography/Uma biografia gráfica. By Felipe Correa. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018. Pp. 7 + 336. $65.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781477316276.

Shaping Terrain: City Building in Latin America. Edited by René Davids. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016. Pp. xii + 261. $79.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780813062679.

El Mall: The Spatial and Class Politics of Malls in Latin America. By Arlene Dávila. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 215. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780520286856.

Improvised Cities: Architecture, Urbanization, and Innovation in Peru. By Helen Gyger. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019. Pp. xvii + 438. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780822945369.

This essay reviews the following works:

Ensaios de grande estratégia brasileira. By João Paulo S. Alsina Jr. Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, 2018. Pp. 291. Reais 43.00 paperback. ISBN: 9788522520619.

Politics in Uniform: Military Officers and Dictatorship in Brazil, 1960–1980. By Maud Chirio. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018. Pp. xii + 280. $28.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822965374.

Soldiers of the Nation: Military Service and Modern Puerto Rico, 1868–1952. By Harry Franqui-Rivera. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Pp. xiii + 342. $60.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780803278677.

Fuerzas armadas, pretorianismo y calidad de la democracia: Ecuador y Uruguay. By Patricio Haro Ayerve. Quito: FLACSO, 2017. Pp. xix + 307. $18.00. ISBN: 9789978674789.

Brazil, 1964–1985: The Military Regimes of Latin America in the Cold War. By Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. Pp. xiii+ 216. $40.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780300223316.

Debating Civil-Military Relations in Latin America. Edited by David R. Mares and Rafael Martínez. Eastbourne, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2014. Pp. xii + 224. $69.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9781845195915.

Military Missions in Democratic Latin America. By David Pion-Berlin. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pp. xiii + 218. $119.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781137592699.

Soldiers, Politicians, and Civilians: Reforming Civil-Military Relations in Democratic Latin America. By David Pion-Berlin and Rafael Martínez. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. i + 414. $32.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781316604434.

In 2008 Guatemala passed legislation criminalizing various forms of violence against women and mandating the creation of courts that would specialize in such violence. This article demonstrates that these reforms’ impacts were unevenly felt, with the most marginalized benefiting the least. It explains this gap by drawing on a historical intersectional analysis, and reveals the importance of including place alongside more commonly studied categories of difference. It also illuminates the sources of the gaps between policies and their impacts. It finds that many Guatemalan women remained marginalized from security and justice, despite attempts to protect them, for two reasons. First, the reforms isolated violence against women from other structural sources of inequality, thus undercutting their impacts for multiply marginalized women. Second, the reforms’ impacts were undermined by historically constituted patterns of state-society relations and the uneven nature of the Guatemalan state.

This study focuses on a dimension of partisanship overlooked by most comparative studies on campaign effects: individual-level stability, a measure of short-term partisanship. Some voters in young democracies are able to develop partisanship as a screen through which they observe the political world, leading them to interpret new information in a manner that reinforces their political predispositions. However, some voters lack long-term partisan attachments, enabling them to update their party identification as the campaign unfolds. These voters have a harder time reinforcing their precampaign dispositions and are more likely to change their vote intention. The findings suggest that for some voters, partisanship and vote choice are empirically intertwined.

This article introduces an analytical framework to explain the coexistence of peaceful borders and illicit transnational flows as evidenced by drug trafficking, human trafficking and smuggling, weapons trafficking, and terrorism in the Americas, a region characterized by international peace, domestic peace, and regional integration. Under the assumption that peaceful relations among neighboring countries enable the incursion of transnational nonstate actors across their borders, the article poses this main question: Under which conditions might peaceful borders enable illicit transnational flows? There is much more variance in the incidence of these illicit transnational flows across borders than in the existence of international peace. The article examines two major variables: the degree of governance and institutional strength of the bordering states; and the prevalent socioeconomic conditions of the bordering states.

Despite persisting impunity, over the past several years Guatemala has made important strides in prosecuting war crimes committed during the internal armed conflict (1960–1996). This article provides an ethnographic account of the 2018 Molina Theissen trial, which resulted in the conviction of four senior military officials for crimes against humanity, aggravated sexual violence, and forced disappearance. An ethnographic study of this critical human rights trial can help us understand how a country with a relatively weak judicial system and well-organized spoilers has managed to hold the intellectual authors of wartime atrocities responsible for their acts. It also contributes to a richer understanding of the construction, meaning, and impact of human rights prosecutions for victims and the broader society, and what role they play in broader public debates over the historical memory of conflictual pasts.

This essay reviews the following works:

Families in War and Peace: Chile from Colony to Nation. By Sarah C. Chambers. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. xi + 288. $25.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822358831.

Of Love and Other Passions: Elites, Politics, and Family in Bogotá, Colombia, 1778–1870. By Guiomar Dueñas-Vargas. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015. Pp. xii + 268. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826355850.

The Oligarchy and the Old Regime in Latin America, 1880–1970. By Dennis Gilbert. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017. Pp. x + 293. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781442270909.

Los terratenientes de la pampa argentina: Una historia social y política. By Roy Hora. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2015. Pp. 390. $21.96 paperback. ISBN: 9789876295567.

Una familia de la elite argentina: Los Senillosa, 1810–1930. By Roy Hora and Leandro Losada. Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2015. Pp. 166. $46.72 paperback. ISBN: 9789875747463.

This essay reviews the following works:

Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-Twentieth-Century Latin American Art. By Alexander Alberro. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Pp. 368. $50.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780226393957.

Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America. Revised and expanded edition. By Jacqueline Barnitz and Patrick Frank. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. 435. $55.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781477308042.

Manifestos and Polemics in Latin American Modern Art. Edited and translated by Patrick Frank. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017. Pp. 320. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780826357885.

Painting in a State of Exception: New Figuration in Argentina, 1960–1965. By Patrick Frank. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2018. Pp. 256. $40.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780813062495.

Constructing an Avant-Garde: Art in Brazil, 1949–1979. By Sérgio B. Martins. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. Pp. 248. $43.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780262019262.

The New Iconoclasts: From Art of a New Reality to Conceptual Art in Colombia, 1961–1975. By Gina McDaniel Tarver. Bogotá: Facultad de Artes y Humanidades, Universidad de los Andes, 2016. Pp. 342. $130.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9789587742909.

This essay reviews the following works:

The Intelligence War in Latin America, 1914–1922. By Jamie Bisher. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2016. Pp. viii + 414. $75.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780786433506.

Beyond Geopolitics: New Histories of Latin America at the League of Nations. Edited by Alan McPherson and Yannick Wehrli. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015. Pp. viii + 269. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826351654.

Treacherous Passage: Germany’s Secret Plot against the United States in Mexico during World War I. By Bill Mills. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. Pp xii + 256. $29.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9781612348544.

Colombia and World War I: The Experience of a Neutral Latin American Nation during the Great War and Its Aftermath, 1914–1921. By Jane M. Rausch. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. Pp. vii + 137. $91.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780739187739.

Latin America and the First World War. By Stefan Rinke. Translated by Christopher W. Reid. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. viii + 297. $29.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781107566064.

This essay reviews the following works:

Oil and Nation: A History of Bolivia’s Petroleum Sector. By Stephen C. Cote Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 195. $26.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781943665471.

Food Systems in an Unequal World: Pesticides, Vegetables, and Agrarian Capitalism in Costa Rica. By Ryan E. Galt Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014. Pp. vii + 284. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780816506033.

Soybeans and Power: Genetically Modified Crops, Environmental Politics, and Social Movements in Argentina. By Pablo Lapegna. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 217. $27.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780190215149.

Social Mobilization, Global Capitalism and Struggles over Food. A Comparative Study of Social Movements. By Renata Motta. New York: Routledge, 2016. Pp. xiv, 190. $149.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9781472479082.

Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs: How One Banana-Exporting Country Achieved Worldwide Reach. By Douglas Southgate and Lois Roberts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 215. $59.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780812248074.

Blood of the Earth: Resource Nationalism, Revolution, and Empire in Bolivia. By Kevin A. Young Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017. Pp. vii + 265. $27.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781477311653.

This article investigates the sources of foreign ministries’ policy-making capacity in presidential regimes. Using the concept of family resemblance, we argue that professionalization of the diplomatic corps is a necessary condition, whereas the institutional attributions of the ministry and the degree of presidential delegation are relevant but substitutable elements. The higher the scores on either of the latter dimensions, the stronger is the capacity of the foreign ministry to influence the chief executive and to contest other players’ policy preferences. To empirically validate our concept, we measure the three dimensions in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico between 1946 and 2015 using data on diplomats’ recruitment and career paths, influence of diplomatic schools and doctrines, appointment patterns of foreign ministers, and relevance of presidential diplomacy, with an emphasis on travels abroad. Our analysis indicates that Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico enjoy a high level of professionalization of their diplomatic corps; however, differences—both across countries and over time—remain regarding institutional attributions and presidential delegation.

Although the US preserves a dominant position in Latin America, China’s rise poses economic and political challenges and has set up a potential battle for the hearts and minds of the Latin American populace. To explore this theme, this article considers the level of support among Latin Americans toward China and the United States at the country and individual levels, the causes of variance thereof, and whether the views of China, the newcomer, covary with views about the region’s traditional power broker. We provide evidence that the views do not covary, either positively or negatively, largely because while attitudes toward the United States are structured by ideology and other factors, attitudes toward China are relatively unstructured. This lack of structure appears to be the result of China’s success in appealing to diverse sectors of Latin American society, which, in turn, should positively influence its future trajectory.

Politicians often buy votes with impunity. Brazil outlawed vote buying for many years, but prosecutions were rare. However, popular pressure mounted against the practice in the late 1990s. Over one million Brazilians signed a petition against vote buying, leading to the country’s first law by popular initiative passed by the national legislature. The law not only surmounted key obstacles to the popular initiative process but also dramatically increased prosecutions for clientelism during elections. Campaign handouts became the top reason that politicians were ousted in Brazil, with over a thousand removals from office. This study examines the role of civil society and the judiciary in the enactment and implementation of this important legislation.

As both a focus and locus of vibrant scholarly work, the field of Bolivian studies burst onto the international scene, carving a distinctive niche for itself within the larger fields of Andean and Latin American studies over the past twenty-five years. Bolivia went from being the hemisphere’s “least studied” country, according to a 1984 LASA Forum survey, to becoming a beacon of intercultural dialogue, vanguard scholarship, and postcolonial debate. This essay traces Bolivian studies’ coming of age. Plotting the field’s developments and dialogues across history, anthropology, and ethnohistory, it argues that a dual process of academic decentering and epistemic reinvention unfolded in Bolivia at the height of its indigenous and popular mobilizations during the 1990s and early 2000s. The article closes by identifying five thematic clusters of recent research and briefly reflects on the place of Bolivian scholarship in the wider purview of Andean studies.

Conspiracy theories are central to political discourse in Venezuela and are widely supported. In the Americas Barometer Venezuela survey from 2016 to 2017, 54 percent of respondents expressed agreement for at least one of three political conspiracy narratives unsupported by evidence. Political loyalties to Chavismo or to the anti-Chavista opposition drive much conspiracy theory belief, but not all. Politically motivated reasoning pushes some citizens toward a given conspiracy narrative but others away. Other factors that are distinct from political loyalties, including low education levels, predispositions toward Manichaeanism and fatalism, and belief in the supernatural are associated with conspiracism. This article presents new data on conspiracy theory beliefs in Venezuela as well as analysis of its individual-level correlates, then discusses how the current Venezuelan political environment fosters conspiracy and what changes might mitigate this phenomenon.