This article examines support for the restriction of human rights in Latin America, arguing that rising crime rates and personal experience with crime are only part of the story. Despite an emphasis on the protection of human rights in the aftermath of military regimes and civil war in Latin America, some citizens contest the defense of these rights across the region. Arguing that protecting human rights only keeps criminals out of jail, these citizens support policies and crime control measures that violate the rights of criminal suspects and other marginalized groups. Using public opinion data, this article demonstrates a relationship between individuals’ worldviews and their attitudes toward the human rights abuses committed against criminal suspects.

This essay reviews the following works:

Experimentalisms in Practice: Music Perspectives from Latin America. Edited by Ana R. Alonso-Minutti, Eduardo Herrera, and Alejandro L. Madrid. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xxi + 343. $41.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780190842758.

Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins. By David F. Garcia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Pp. xii + 360. $28.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822363705.

Musicians in Transit: Argentina and the Globalization of Popular Music. By Matthew B. Karush. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Pp. x + 268. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822362364.

Entre géneros y sexualidades: Tango, baile, cultura popular. By Mercedes Liska. Buenos Aires: Milena Caserola, 2018. Pp. 172. $32.90 paperback. ISBN: 9789874010021.

Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia. By Ana María Ochoa Gautier. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. xiii + 266. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822357513.

Oscar Alemán: La guitarra embrujada. Sergio Pujol. Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2015. Pp. 340. ISBN: 9789504945628.

Valentino en Buenos Aires: Los años veinte y el espectáculo. By Sergio Pujol. Buenos Aires: Gourmet Musical, 2016. (1st ed. 1994.) Pp. 224. ISBN: 9789873823084.

O artigo apresenta um recorte de uma investigação sobre os “brasiguayos” na mídia paraguaia. A abordagem metodológica procede a uma análise de discurso sobre os sentidos produzidos em matérias jornalísticas e em seus comentários. Dentre os resultados encontrados, há cinco formações discursivas identificadas e aqui apresentamos a primeira, a qual denominamos “subimperialismo brasileiro”. Ela está constituída por sentidos que colocam o Brasil num projeto subimperialista que busca subjugar ao Paraguai em seu projeto político, ideológico e cultural. Tais sentidos estão calcados nas relações históricas entre o Brasil e o Paraguai. Aspectos linguísticos, políticos e econômicos, principalmente no que tange à pose da terra permeiam o discurso do sujeito jornalista e do sujeito leitor para produzir sentidos que colocam os “brasiguayos” como uma extensão do projeto subimperialista do Brasil.

Este artículo estudia la percepción que tienen los individuos sobre el color de su piel como una dimensión ideológica del blanqueamiento. Usando modelos de regresión logística binaria en una muestra nacional representativa del Barómetro de las Américas en Colombia, preguntamos: ¿Existe alguna asociación entre las categorías étnico-raciales, el color de la piel, el estatus social y el deseo individual de tener un color de piel más claro? ¿Qué explica el deseo de tener un color de piel más claro en el seno de una sociedad racializada? Este estudio encuentra que las personas que se autoidentifican como blancas tienen una mayor probabilidad de desear tener un color de piel más claro que las personas negras, después de controlar por el color de la piel. Además, aquellos con un tono de piel intermedio también tienen un mayor deseo de blanqueamiento. Los resultados muestran que, para las personas que se autoidentifican como negras en Colombia, el blanqueamiento parece no constituirse en una ventana de escape de procesos históricos y estructurales de marginación social, ni en una estrategia de evasión de prácticas de discriminación racial.

This essay reviews the following works:

Health Equity in Brazil: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Policy. By Kia Lilly Caldwell. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Pp. xii + 226. $28.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780252082474.

State of Health: Pleasure and Politics in Venezuelan Health Care under Chávez. By Amy Cooper. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. Pp. 216. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780520299290.

Social Policies and Decentralization in Cuba: Change in the Context of 21st Century Latin America. Edited by Jorge I. Domínguez, Maria del Carmen Zabala Argüelles, Mayra Espina Prieto, and Lorena G. Barberia Cambridge, MA: David Rockefeller Center Series of Latin American Studies, Harvard University, 2017. Pp. 282. $24.99 paperback. ISBN: 9780674975309.

Movement-Driven Development: The Politics of Health and Democracy in Brazil. By Christopher L. Gibson Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019. Pp. 328. $30.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781503607804.

A Right to Health: Medicine, Marginality, and Health Care Reform in Northeastern Brazil. By Jessica Scott Jerome. Austin: University Press of Texas, 2015. Pp. 192. $21.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781477311318.

Uneven Social Policies: The Politics of Subnational Variation in Latin America. By Sara Niedzwiecki. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xvii + 256. 256 pp. $34.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781108454896.

Banking on Health: The World Bank and the Health Sector Reform in Latin America. By Shiri Noy. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Pp. 241. ISBN: 9783319617657.

Nas últimas duas décadas, a quantidade de estudos dedicados a investigar questões raciais em Machado de Assis aumentou consideravelmente. Recentemente, os estudiosos começaram a abordar mais explicitamente suas opiniões sobre escravidão e raça. Considerando as, relativamente novas, abordagens que adotam a raça como elemento imprescindível para uma melhor compreensão das obras de Machado, este artigo amplia o escopo da discussão por meio de um exame de questões raciais em “Missa do galo” e “Teoria do medalhão”. Usando o conto “Recitatif” de Toni Morrison como ponto de partida, eu examino os contos de Machados a fim de revelar a, até o momento desprezada, importância da questão racial nesses dois contos.

This article explores the governing logics and political implications of citizen security in Puebla, Mexico, specifically, the Programa Nacional de Prevención del Delito (National Program for the Prevention of Crime, PRONAPRED). Taking a biopolitical perspective, the article centers on how citizens are produced through the application of citizen security initiatives. This production operates at two levels: the regulation of populations and the molding of subjects. First, vital statistics and risk-related variables highlight those populations that exceed the median for risk. Second, those at-risk groups are targeted for training to reduce their susceptibility to violence. Training focuses on the individual, asking citizens to identify and minimize risk in a manner that emanates from and contributes to security governance. The political ontology of citizen security is this citizen/citizenry coincident with official measures. The democratic aspirations of citizen security are consequently muted, as security governance locates citizens within the confines of state power and, at the same time, holds them separate from this power to produce citizen existence.

This article analyses how religious orientations and ideological preferences have coevolved in Chilean society between 1998 and 2014. On the basis of the premise that people experience religion heterogeneously, we develop four hypotheses that describe possible changes in the association between these two variables. Using data from yearly national probability surveys and multinomial regression models, we obtain two general results. First, we observe a general process of political “dealignment,” whereby the proportion of the population, religious and irreligious, that ceases to identify with ideological positions strongly increases. Second, the magnitude of this dealignment is moderated by religious denomination and frequency of church attendance. Irreligious people have ceased to identify with ideological positions at higher rates than Evangelicals and Catholics, whereas frequently attending Catholics have become more reluctant than nonattending Catholics to abandon their traditional right-wing preferences. These results imply that as Catholics have reduced their size in the population, they have also become more politically heterogeneous.

This article contends that Mexican writers have drawn on the picaresque to ponder what they regard as the precariousness of intellectual labor in Mexico. It analyzes the role that the afterlives of the picaresque have played in the portrayal of writers as disenfranchised and vulnerable subjects, two of the most relevant features of the archetype of pícaros. In addition, this project also suggests that picaresque narratives embody a discourse of precarity that goes beyond pícaros and applies to all subjects who engage in the production and circulation of literature, turning the picaresque in a suitable form in which Mexican writers can reflect on the value of literature in Mexican society.

The analytic paradigms of race and nation have dominated scholarship on the Dominican Republic and have framed social and cultural analysis in ways that have limited the theorizing of Dominican materials to a narrow focus on identity. These gatekeeping concepts have been especially influential in shaping Dominican studies in the United States and in defining the predominant questions of interest in the field. This article assesses the conceptual limits of race and nation as persistent modes of analysis applied to the Dominican Republic and evaluates how these restrictive themes both shape and are shaped by conventional ideas about Dominican society. We argue for deeper engagement with homegrown scholarship and voices on the ground in order to move beyond repetitive and provincial concerns with “Dominicanness” and to trouble the far-too-common portrayal of the country as a novel racial problem.

This article analyzes the conservative narratives underlying current changes in Brazilian rural development public policies. It first presents an overview of the recognition and institutionalization of family farming and the main policies created in support of this segment. Subsequently, it discusses how a conservative narrative started to question the ability of these policies to integrate family farmers into modern agricultural markets. Focusing on how this narrative tries to legitimate a new “referential” for public action, the article analyzes the discourse on newly occurring segregation between agricultural policies for productive farmers and social policies for unproductive ones. It demonstrates how this discourse excludes family farmers from the social pact that prevailed over the past three decades and depended on the state as an actor to mediate the contradictions in the unstable coexistence of agribusiness and family-farming logics. Finally, it analyzes how rural social movements are reacting to this process.

This essay reviews the following works:

The El Mozote Massacre: Human Rights and Global Implications. By Leigh Binford. Revised and expanded ed. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016. Pp. 400. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780816532162.

Stories of Civil War in El Salvador: A Battle over Memory. By Erik Ching. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. 362. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781469628660.

The Politics of Transitional Justice in Latin America: Power, Norms, and Capacity Building. By Ezequiel A. González-Ocantos Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. $18.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781108799089.

The Feathers of Condor: Transnational State Terrorism, Exiles and Civilian Anticommunism in South America. By Fernando López. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016. Pp. 375. £57.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781443897099.

Eruptions of Memory: The Critique of Memory in Chile, 1990–2015. By Nelly Richard. Translated by Andrew Ascherl. Pp. xxvi + 189. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018. Pp. 224. $22.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781509532285.

Exile, Diaspora, and Return: Changing Cultural Landscapes in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. By Luis Roniger, Leonardo Senkman, Saúl Sosnowski, and Mario Sznajder. Pp. 304. $82.00 hardcover. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN: 9780190693961.

Surviving State Terror: Women’s Testimonies of Repression and Resistance in Argentina. By Barbara Sutton. New York: New York University Press, 2018. Pp. v + 325. $35.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781479829927.

Memory, Truth, and Justice in Contemporary Latin America. Edited by Roberta Villalón. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017. Pp. vi + 274. $41.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781442267251.

Este artículo explora el mundo de las botánicas —consideradas como farmacias invisibles— en la Ciudad de Nueva York en donde practicantes de las religiones afrocaribeñas, especialmente Santería, ejercen un doble rol como líderes religiosos y consejeros espirituales. Las botánicas atienden a una población latinoamericana, a menudo migrante e indocumentada, que llega a ellas buscando soluciones efectivas a una plétora de problemas (ej., desde trastornos orgánicos hasta maltrato laboral y conflictos familiares). Los consejeros entienden los síntomas individuales como una disrupción con el mundo social y espiritual, a menudo provocado por “maleficios” y energías negativas circundantes. Las respuestas terapéuticas mas frecuentes combinan la consulta con el uso de plantas en infusiones, baños espirituales y oraciones (resumidos en la tríada: beber, limpiar y orar). El tema pone en evidencia el rol de los servicios terapéuticos que ofrecen las botánicas por cuanto proveen de respuestas rápidas, prácticas y económicamente accesibles a una población vulnerable.

O desenvolvimento humano é um termo complexo, que envolve diferentes dimensões, entre elas saúde, educação, emprego, renda, habitação e saneamento básico, as quais são garantidas constitucionalmente no Brasil desde 1988. Diante da importância e da notoriedade acadêmica dessa temática, o presente artigo tem como objetivo analisar a influência das condições sociais no desenvolvimento humano municipal brasileiro, controlada por dimensões demográficas. Para tanto, foi realizada a técnica multivariada de análise fatorial, a partir da qual se identificou quatro fatores; posteriormente, aplicou-se uma regressão logística multinomial para todos os municípios e regiões brasileiras separadamente. Como principal resultado, destaca-se a necessidade de atenção dos municípios com menor nível de desenvolvimento para os fatores de emprego e vulnerabilidade social e saneamento básico e habitação, visto que este exerce influência na saúde pública. Além disso, as desigualdades regionais apontam para diferentes necessidades de serviços públicos. Neste caso, torna-se importante o comprometimento da gestão na elaboração de estratégias de promoção e de expansão do acesso aos serviços de saneamento básico, como forma prioritária para melhoria das condições sociais e do desenvolvimento humano.

This article suggests that transnational motives have remained key components of legitimation strategies for regional realignment in Latin America. Specifically, we assess the legitimation strategy of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and the associated political movement, Chavismo, as a recent case of transnational identity politics. Studies of Chavismo have stressed its role in the changing balance of power in early twenty-first-century Venezuela and the redrafting of global alliances, through a series of organizational moves and petrodollars. Combined with these political and economic boosters, Chavismo’s impact was sustained through a strategy that sought legitimation by drawing on earlier narratives of the solidarity of “Nuestramérica” (Our America), used in reshaping transnational networks within the region and beyond. This identity layer provided a basis for regional and international realignment and organizational creation, even if more recently it lost traction and became criticized for its unfulfilled promises and growing gap between rhetoric and implementation.

This essay reviews the following works:

Comics and Memory in Latin America. Organizado por Jorge Catalá Carrasco, Paulo Drinot e James Scorer. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017. Pp. vi + 262. $27.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822964247.

El Eternauta, Daytripper, and Beyond: Graphic Narrative in Argentina and Brazil. Por David William Foster. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. Pp. xiii + 158. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781477310854.

The Hernandez Brothers: Love, Rockets, and Alternative Comics. Por Enrique García. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017. Pp. xiii + 175. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822964926.

Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America. Por Edward King e Joanna Page. Londres: UCL Press, 2017. Pp. xii + 266. Open-access PDF: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781911576501. ISBN: 9781911576501.

Las historietas en Chile 1962–1982: Industria, ideología y prácticas sociales. Por Jorge Rojas Flores. Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2016. Pp. 552. Ch$27.000. ISBN: 9789560006431.

This essay reviews the following works:

¿Quienes deciden la política social? Economía política de programas sociales en América Latina. Edited by Alejandro Bonvecchi, Julia Johannsen, and Carlos Scartascini. Washington, DC: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, 2015. Pp. xx + 200. Digital open access. ISBN: 9781597822190.

Crafting Policies to End Poverty in Latin America: The Quiet Transformation. By Ana Lorena De La O. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 175. $84.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107089488.

Sistemas políticos y bienestar social: Estudios comparados: Brasil, Colombia y Venezuela (2000–2010). By Augusto De Venanzi. Almagro: Editorial Biblioteca Nueva, 2015. Pp. 238. $22.99 paperback. ISBN: 9788416345144.

The Political Logic of Poverty Relief: Electoral Strategies and Social Policy in Mexico. By Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, Federico Estévez, and Beatriz Magaloni. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xvi + 236. $99.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107140288.

Social Policy Expansion in Latin America. By Candelaria Garay. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xvii + 256. $34.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781316606407.

Forbearance as Redistribution: The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America. By Alisha C. Holland. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. 398. $35.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781316626351.

The Quest for Universal Social Policy in the South: Actors, Ideas, and Architectures. By Juliana Martínez Franzoni and Diego Sánchez-Ancochea. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xvii + 256. $34.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781107564893.

Which factors determine support for the armed forces? What is the effect of agency politicization on confidence? Existing studies, which draw largely from bureaucratically neutral militaries, find that interpersonal trust and demographic variables play significant roles in determining public confidence in the armed forces. I argue that this is different for a politicized agency. A loss of bureaucratic neutrality activates voters’ partisan attachments, inducing individuals to judge the agency on the basis of their ties to the governing party or leader. Using survey data from Venezuela, I show that government evaluation has a salient and bifurcated effect on respondents’ perceptions of their armed forces. Respondents sympathetic to the governing leader are more likely to have a favorable view of the military while those identifying as opposition are more likely to have a negative view. The results suggest that politicization of public agencies may impose an upper limit on public support regardless of institutional performance, undermine their representativeness and legitimacy, and weaken their mandates.

This essay reviews the following works:

Illegal Drugs, Drug Trafficking and Violence in Latin America. By Marcelo Bergman. Buenos Aires: Springer International, 2018. Pp. v + 170. $89.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9783319731520.

More Money, More Crime: Prosperity and Rising Crime in Latin America. By Marcelo Bergman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. vii + 392. $39.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780190608774.

Tough on Crime: The Rise of Punitive Populism in Latin America. By Michelle D. Bonner. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019. Pp. vii + 204. $40.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780822945826.

Argentina’s Missing Bones: Revisiting the History of the Dirty War. By James P. Brennan. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. Pp. xi + 195. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780520297937.

Modernity at Gunpoint: Firearms, Politics, and Culture in Mexico and Central America. By Sophie Esch. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018. Pp. vii + 284. $28.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822965381.

A History of Political Murder in Latin America: Killing the Messengers of Change. By W. John Green. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015. Pp. v + 360. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781438456645.

Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: Subnational Structures, Institutions, and Clientelistic Networks. Edited by Tina Hilgers and Laura Macdonald. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. v + 298. $99.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107193178.

Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning, and Accountability. By Antonius C. G. M. Robben. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Pp. vii + 294. $65.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780812250053.

Organized Crime, Drug Trafficking, and Violence in Mexico: The Transition from Felipe Calderón to Enrique Peña Nieto. By Jonathan D. Rosen and Roberto Zepeda. Lanham, MA: Lexington Books, 2016. Pp. vii + 158. $80.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781498535601.

Las Cortes influyen de forma directa e indirecta en el proceso legislativo. Hasta el momento, los estudios sobre Congreso en Colombia se han enfocado mayoritariamente en la influencia directa de la Corte Constitucional. Este artículo explora su influencia indirecta. Usando la Reforma Penal Militar de 2012 como estudio de caso, mostramos cómo la Corte cambia los cálculos y comportamiento de los congresistas. Debido a su independencia y accesibilidad, la Corte Constitucional amplía el abanico de estrategias disponibles a las coaliciones minoritarias de oposición en el Congreso. Aquí identificamos dos prácticas de obstrucción: invitar a la Corte (mediante la motivación o aprovechamiento y la documentación de vicios de procedimiento), y demandas ante la Corte. Juntas, estas estrategias les permiten a oposiciones minoritarias bloquear leyes adversas y avanzar su agenda en el proceso de construcción de políticas públicas.