This essay reviews the following works:

Elecciones y partidos en América Latina en el cambio de ciclo. Edited by Manuel Alcántara, María Laura Tagina, and Daniel Buquet. Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, 2018. Pp. 511. ISBN: 9788474767605.

Presidential Campaigns in Latin America: Electoral Strategies and Success Contagion. By Taylor C. Boas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 276. $29.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781107578890.

The Latin American Voter: Pursuing Representation and Accountability in Challenging Contexts. Edited by Ryan E. Carlin, Mathew M. Singer, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 429. $40.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780472052875.

Buying Audiences: Clientelism and Electoral Campaigns When Parties Are Weak. By Paula Muñoz. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiii + 318. $105.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781108422598.

Latin American Elections: Choice and Change. By Richard Nadeau, Éric Bélanger, Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Mathieu Turgeon, and François Gélineau. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017. Pp. 248. $70.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780472130221.

Regime Support beyond the Balance Sheet: Participation and Policy Performance in Latin America. By Matthew Rhodes-Purdy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. xi + 278. $105.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781108420259.

Partisans, Antipartisans, and Nonpartisans: Voting Behavior in Brazil. By David J. Samuels and Cesar Zucco. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xiv + 184. $99.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781108428880.

Dancing Jacobins: A Venezuelan Genealogy of Latin American Populism. By Rafael Sánchez. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 408. $35.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780823263660.

This article argues that descriptive representation, or demographic similarities between legislators and the public, can provide effective substantive representation of citizens’ concerns. We examine representation through the lens of opinion congruence or alignment in the policy preferences of legislators and citizens sharing various identities. Congruence may result from shared material interests or from self-selection into an identity group on the basis of policy views, but it can also be a product of networks and organizations that socialize masses and elites into a common worldview. Though political parties were historically the most important agents of political socialization, we argue that religious organizations constitute a more powerful socializing force in many new democracies. Examining the case of Brazil, we draw on three legislative surveys and fifteen mass surveys to analyze congruence across seven issue areas. Legislators and voters from underrepresented groups—women, Afro-Brazilians, evangelical Christians, and those of lower social class—are generally closer in their opinions than those sharing a party or electoral district. Evangelicals are often the most congruent. Analyzing original surveys of congregations and clergy, we argue that this finding results from the socializing role of churches.

This article focuses on the oral and artifact-filled archive of a working-class Afro-Cuban family to create an intimate set of histories that illuminates the Americas as deeply connected and challenges the limits of national borders. The article explores the ways in which national identities assert themselves in the “private spaces” of migratory life through storytelling and the creation of collective memories, and how gender functions within these spaces. This family has created a master narrative about its own racially conscious, respectable, revolutionary Cuban working-class identity and practice that denies the centrality of international marriage and diasporic experiences to its making. Women’s whispered stories, marginalized from the familial narrative, illuminate alternative meanings and motivations for the strategies that propelled their family into the center of the great conflicts of Cuban history.

This essay reviews the following works:

Seams of Empire: Race and Radicalism in Puerto Rico and the United States. By Carlos Alamo-Pastrana. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016. Pp. xvi + 213. $79.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780813062563.

Civil Rights and Beyond: African American and Latino/a Activism in the Twentieth-Century United States. Edited by Brian D. Behnken. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016. Pp. 270. $27.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780820349176.

Afro-Politics and Civil Society in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. By Kwame Dixon. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016. Pp. xiii + 174. $74.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780813062617.

Black Autonomy: Race, Gender, and Afro-Nicaraguan Activism. By Jennifer Goett. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 222. $26.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781503600546.

The Politics of Blackness: Racial Identity and Political Behavior in Contemporary Brazil. By Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xvi + 266. $34.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781316637043.

The Geographies of Social Movements: Afro-Colombian Mobilization and the Aquatic Space. By Ulrich Oslender. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. xiii + 290. $25.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822361220.

Becoming Black Political Subjects: Movements and Ethno-Racial Rights in Colombia and Brazil. By Tianna S. Paschel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 311. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780691169385.

La red de los espejos: Una historia del diario Excélsior, 1916–1976. By Arno Burkholder, Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2016. Pp. 187. 140.00 pesos paperback. ISBN: 9786071637208.

Callar o morir en Veracruz: Violencia y medios de comunicación en el sexenio de Javier Duarte (2010–2016). By Celia del Palacio Montiel. Mexico City: Juan Pablos, 2018. Pp. 424. 300.00 pesos paperback. ISBN: 9786077114598.

Historia crítica del periodismo mexicano. By Humberto Musacchio. Mexico City: Luna Media Comunicación, 2016. Pp. 259. 200 pesos paperback. ISBN: 9786079736705.

Unwanted Witnesses: Journalists and Conflict in Contemporary Latin America. By Gabriela Polit Dueñas. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019. Pp. xv + 168. $40.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780822945833.

“Se solicitan reporteros”: Historia oral del periodismo mexicano en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. By Ana María Serna. Mexico City: Editorial Mora, 2015. Pp. 383. 229.00 pesos paperback. ISBN: 9786079475161.

The Mexican Press and Civil Society, 1940–1976: Stories from the Newsroom, Stories from the Street. By Benjamin T. Smith. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. xiv + 366. $37.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781469638089.

Narcoperiodismo: La prensa en medio del crimen y la denuncia. By Javier Valdez Cárdenas. Mexico City: Aguilar, 2016. Pp. 109.00 pesos paperback. ISBN: 9786073147118.

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.

Report presented at the meeting of the Executive Council of the Latin American Studies Association (online session), May 22–23, 2020.

The widespread violence in Mexico by state and nonstate actors since the government launched a military strategy against drug cartels in 2006 has generated demands for justice, including spaces of mourning and commemoration that recognize hundreds of thousands of Mexican nationals and migrants from other countries who have been killed or disappeared. Creating memorial spaces for ongoing forms of violence whose perpetrators and victims are hard to define has proven difficult from a bureaucratic, political, and aesthetic perspective. This article examines and contrasts three commemorative and transformative memorial interventions to show that in a context that lacks a clear transition and access to justice, memory activists respond to the state in a playing field that is not simply concerned with a politics of memory—who gets to decide how to remember the past—but with delineating the past from both the present and the future in the first place: a politics of time.

In recent years, citizen-run anti-crime organizations have brought important challenges to Mexico and other Latin American countries. Under what circumstances are citizens more likely to seek out their neighbors to confront crime directly? I argue that when citizens do not trust state authorities, their perception of the trustworthiness of their community can increase their likelihood of engaging in anti-crime organization attempts. I analyze data from Mexico and find that an average citizen’s perception of the trustworthiness of his/her neighbors correlates with his/her likelihood of engaging in an anti-crime organization attempt. Further, consistent with the main argument of this paper, I find this link to be stronger among those who distrust the police. These findings contribute by bringing back citizens’ relation to the state as an important moderating force in society, and helping us understand when social trust can translate into controversial forms of state substitution.

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.

Debates over shifting gender roles in nineteenth-century Spanish America included the question of women’s participation in the workforce. Writers of fiction and nonfiction posed arguments about paid employment for middle-class women and often represented work itself in ways that reinforced traditional gender norms by envisioning women’s entry into the labor force as an extension of their family and household roles. Nonetheless, the tactics that allowed writers to make stronger claims for women’s right to paid employment often reimposed limitations on women. The complex rhetorical maneuvers that many authors deployed bespeak their anxieties about the potential for social change brought by newly visible options for women. This essay examines novels and nonfictional essays and argues that authors who advance progressive agendas about and for women sometimes undermine their own purported arguments when they fall back on more conventional attitudes about women’s roles in families and society. This article contends that these problematic moments in the selected texts serve to maintain a system in which privilege accrues to male elites.

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.

This essay reviews the following works:

Reconceptualizing Security in the Americas in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Bruce M. Bagley, Jonathan D. Rosen, and Hanna S. Kassab. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. Pp. xix + 368. $49.99 paperback. ISBN: 9780739194874.

Brazil in the World: The International Relations of a South American Giant. By Sean W. Burges. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017. Pp. xi + 280. £30.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781526107404.

U.S.-Venezuela Relations since the 1990s: Coping with Midlevel Security Threats. By Javier Corrales and Carlos A. Romero. New York: Routledge, 2012. Pp. xii + 228. $47.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780415895255.

21st Century Democracy Promotion in the Americas: Standing Up for the Polity. By Jorge Heine and Brigitte Weiffen. New York: Routledge, 2015. Pp. xii + 208. $47.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780415626378.

Aspirational Power: Brazil on the Long Road to Global Influence. By David R. Mares and Harold A. Trinkunas. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2016. Pp. x + 224. $32.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780815727958.

Precarious Paths to Freedom: The United States, Venezuela, and the Latin American Cold War. By Aragorn Storm Miller. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016. Pp. xxi + 278. $65.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826356871.

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.

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.

Venezuela has one of the highest rates of homicide in the Americas. Those who are dying are mostly men, and most are shot. Based on ethnographic research in poor, urban neighborhoods in Caracas, where guns are abundant and the state is absent, this article focuses on the repertoire of responses of mothers of armed young men toward violence. How are mothers responding to meet the extreme challenges of safeguarding the survival of their families? In what ways do they participate in the containment but also in the dissemination of violence? We describe the safeguarding practices deployed by women, which we interpret as political survival strategies. Drawing on women’s narratives, we have identified four strategies that contribute differently to the containment and reproduction of violence: submission and taking refuge, collaborating, resisting, and negotiating or forging of pacts.

This essay reviews the following works:

Theories of the Nonobject: Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, 1944–1969. By Mónica Amor. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. Pp. x + 309. $65.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780520286627.

Brazil through French Eyes: A Nineteenth-Century Artist in the Tropics. By Ana Lucia Araujo. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015. Pp. xxvi + 238. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826337450.

Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil. By Stephanie D’Alessandro and Luis Pérez-Oramas. New Haven: Yale University Press; Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2017. Pp. 192. $50.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780300228618.

Cultural Exchanges between Brazil and France. Edited by Regina R. Félix and Scott D. Juall. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. Pp. 225. $45.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781557537461.

Proust’s Latin Americans. By Rubén Gallo. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2014. Pp. 280. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781421413457.

Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars. By Michele Greet. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. Pp. viii + 288. $27.50 hardcover. ISBN: 9780415933048.

Tropical Travels: Brazilian Popular Performance, Transnational Encounters, and the Construction of Race. By Lisa Shaw. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018. Pp. 231. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781477314791.

Art Systems: Brazil and the 1970s. By Elena Shtromberg. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. Pp. 210. $29.95. ISBN: 9781477308585.

Making the Americas Modern: Hemispheric Art, 1910–1960. By Edward J. Sullivan. London: Lawrence King Publishing, 2018. Pp. 336. $50.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781786271556.

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.

Este trabajo aborda un capítulo clave en la historia de persecución de los sectores radicalizados en Argentina: la represión del comunismo durante los primeros años de la década de 1930, encabezada por la Sección Especial de la Policía. Se trata de sistematizar y caracterizar la actuación de esta sección, denunciada ante la Justicia y el Parlamento, e indagar hasta qué punto implicó (o no) un quiebre con respecto a los procedimientos y concepciones de la fuerza y al marco legal involucrado. Para eso, repaso las concepciones y el accionar represivo desde principios de siglo, atendiendo a la orientación de documentos policiales de distintos períodos, y analizo en particular las reacciones de los distintos bloques de la Cámara de Diputados, inexploradas hasta el momento. La evidencia indica que en base a desarrollos previos se inició una nueva etapa signada por el resquebrajamiento del estado de derecho.

Latin American scholars in the twentieth century often pointed to the agrarian question and the dominance of the large latifundio estates as the key to explaining their countries’ underdevelopment. Yet, in more recent years, the emphasis on agrarian structures has declined and the latifundio is no longer seen as a relevant factor to economic development. In its place have emerged explanations that emphasize international trade relations, institutions, or the capacity of local states. This study makes a case for bringing the latifundio “back in” to explanations of underdevelopment in Latin America, and points to the persistence of particular property relations, low-intensity land use, and low-risk productive strategies throughout the region as barriers to development. Agricultural census data and various other sources on land use suggest that large latifundio estates are still a relevant factor throughout the region, and I argue that they continue to represent a significant barrier for the deepening of industrialization.