This study analyzes variations in the incidence of state involvement in investment treaty arbitration in Latin America and the Caribbean over the 1987–2014 period. Its main contributions are fourfold. First, by focusing on the balance of incentives and opportunities facing political leaders and foreign investors, the study establishes a new basis for understanding the reasons actors opt for the risks and uncertainties of international arbitration instead of resolving international investment disputes via alternative means. Second, by restricting the focus of research to the Latin American region, the study is able to move beyond the analysis of relatively time-invariant structural and institutional conditions and crude indicators to address the role played by the preferences of political actors. Third, by disaggregating disputes by sector of investment, the analysis documents the variable role of ideology and electoral incentives in investment treaty arbitration. Finally, by underlining the distinctiveness of the Latin American experience with investment treaty arbitration, the study offers new insights into the global backlash against investment treaty arbitration, which has gone farther in the region than anywhere else. Overall, the results underline the potential payoffs of breaking down the international experience with investment treaty arbitration into regional patterns to obtain a deeper and more granular understanding of the political economy of investor-state dispute settlement.

This essay reviews the following works:

The Lords of Tetzcoco: The Transformation of Indigenous Rule in Postconquest Central Mexico. By Bradley Benton. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. viii +195. $99.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107190580.

Polygamy and the Rise and Demise of the Aztec Empire. By Ross Hassig. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 186. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780826357120.

Pueblos within Pueblos: Tlaxilacalli Communities in Acolhuacan, Mexico, ca. 1272–1692. By Benjamin D. Johnson Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 252. $31.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781646420148.

The Aztecs at Independence: Nahua Culture Makers in Central Mexico, 1799–1832. By Miriam Melton-Villanueva. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 249. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780816533534.

Portraying the Aztec Past: The Codices Boturini, Azcatitlan, and Aubin. By Angela Herren Rajagopalan. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018. Pp. 212. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781477316078.

When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting That Changed History. By Matthew Restall. New York: Ecco Press, 2018. Pp. 526. ISBN: 9780062427267.

Dressing the Part: Power, Dress, Gender, and Representation in the Pre-Columbian Americas. Edited by Sarahh E. M. Scher and Billie J. A. Follensbee Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2018. Pp. vii + 497. $125.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780813062211.

The Woman Who Turned into a Jaguar: And Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico. By Lisa Sousa. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 404. $65.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780804756402.

The Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs. By Camilla Townsend. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xiii + 336. $29.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780190673062.

This essay reviews the following works:

La Verdad: An International Dialogue on Hip Hop Latinidades. Edited by Melissa Castillo-Garsow and Jason Nichols. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016\. Pp. ix + 317. $89.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780814213155.

On Site, in Sound: Performance Geographies in América Latina. By Kirstie A. Dorr Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Pp. vii + 241. $25.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822368670.

Moving Otherwise: Dance, Violence, and Memory in Buenos Aires. By Victoria Fortuna. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. ix + 256. $35.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780190627010.

Performance Constellations: Networks of Protest and Activism in Latin America. By Marcela A. Fuentes Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019. Pp. ix + 164. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780472054220.

Power in Practice: The Pragmatic Anthropology of Afro-Brazilian Capoeira. By Sergio González Varela. New York: Berghahn Books, 2017. Pp. viii + 166. $135.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781785336355.

Staging Brazil: Choreographies of Capoeira. By Ana Paula Höfling. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2019. Pp. ix + 225. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780819578815.

Honest Bodies: Revolutionary Modernism in the Dances of Anna Sokolow. By Hannah Kosstrin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 255. $38.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780199396931.

The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles. Edited by Josh Kun. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. Pp. vii + 303. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780520294400.

The Invention of Latin American Music: A Transnational History. By Pablo Palomino. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. vii + 259. $35.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780190687410.

Laban plural: Arte do movimento, pesquisa e genealogia da práxis de Rudolf Laban no Brasil. By Melina Scialom. São Paulo: Summus, 2017. Pp. 192. $8.99 e-book. ISBN: 9788532310712.

In the 1930s the Bolivian and Mexican governments decreed the nationalization of their respective oil industries, thus starting a juncture of tensions in their relationship with the United States government and companies. In both cases foreign companies quit the respective host countries, but Bolivia was less successful than Mexico in maintaining its initial stand in face of the external pressure. Following a most-similar-system design strategy to compare both cases of asymmetrical confrontation, which share a similar set of conditions regarding simultaneity, starting causes of the conflict, actors involved and international context, we contend that the difference in the confrontation’s resolution is mainly attributable to differing domestic variables. Controlling for the similarity in external conditions, we show that the building and maintenance of a strong internal support coalition was critical for the capacity of the weakest part to advance its interest in an asymmetrical atmosphere.

Brazil’s manguebeat of the nineties was one of the most fertile Latin American cultural scenes of recent decades, not only for its rich musical creation but also for the playful, yet profound vision of social and ecological justice it championed. Twenty-some years after the death of Chico Science, its most iconic personality, this essay explores the strikingly relational philosophical bent at its core—one molded by the collectivism typical of its origins in local and global expressions of Black Atlantic cultures. Manguebeat was swamped in everyday philosophical questions about which kinds of knowledge, power, and being served to exacerbate violence, inequality, and harm to the environment, and which could instead encourage greater peace and harmony. Analyzing Chico Science’s three music videos, I discuss the “coexistentialism” of manguebeat, not only in a pacifistic sense or one of environmental rebirth but also in its insistence that all real living is “living with.”

This essay reviews the following works:

An Aqueous Territory: Sailor Geographies and New Granada’s Transimperial Greater Caribbean World. By Ernesto Bassi. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp ix + 360. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822362401.

Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia’s First Drug Paradise. By Lina Britto. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020. Pp. 352. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780520325470.

Crafting a Republic for the World: Scientific, Geographic, and Historiographic Inventions of Colombia. By Lina del Castillo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Pp. 402. $30.00 paper back. ISBN: 9781496205483.

Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia. By Alexander L. Fattal Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Pp. 304. $27.50 paperback. ISBN 9780226590646.

1892: Un año insignificante; Orden policial y desorden social en la Bogotá de fin de siglo. By Max S. Hering Torres. Bogotá: Critica y Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2018. Pp. 245. COP$50.000 hardcover. ISBN: 9789584266606.

Makers of Democracy: A Transnational History of the Middle Classes in Colombia. By A. Ricardo López-Pedreros. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. Pp. 360. $28.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781478002857.

Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas. By Amy C. Offner Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. Pp. 400. $39.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780691190938.

No Limits to Their Sway: Cartagena’s Privateers and the Masterless Caribbean in the Age of Revolutions. By Edgardo Pérez Morales. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2018. Pp. xi + 248. $27.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780826521927.

The Politics of Taste: Beatriz González and Cold War Aesthetics. By Ana María Reyes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. Pp. 328. $27.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781478003977.

This essay reviews the following works:

Sexual Violence during War and Peace: Gender, Power, and Post-conflict Justice in Peru. By Jelke Boesten. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. ix + 231. $100.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781137383440.

Feminist and Human Rights Struggles in Peru: Decolonizing Transnational Justice. By Pascha Bueno-Hansen. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 222. $28.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780252081002.

Necropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in the Age of Human Rights. Edited by Francisco Ferrándiz and Antonius C. G. M. Robben. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 257. $59.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780812247206.

Reflections on Memory and Democracy. Edited by Merilee S. Grindle and Erin E. Goodman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 260. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780674088290.

Mining Memory: Reimagining Self and Nation through Narratives of Childhood in Peru. By Mary Beth Tierney-Tello. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2017. Pp. 302. $90.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781611487732.

Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala. By Kirsten Weld. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2014. Pp. xvi + 335. $28.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822356028.

This essay reviews the following works:

Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of Diaspora. Edited by Evelyn Alsultany and Ella Shohat. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 334. $41.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780472069446.

Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America. By Karoline P. Cook. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Pp. 261. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780812248241.

More Argentine Than You: Arabic-Speaking Immigrants in Argentina. By Steven Hyland Jr. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 304. $65.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826358776.

Islam and the Americas. Edited by Aisha Khan. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015. Pp. vii + 331. $32.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780813060132.

Crescent over Another Horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA. Edited by María del Mar Logroño Narbona, Paulo G. Pinto, and John Tofik Karam. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 344. $60.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781477302293.

The Mexican Mahjar: Transnational Maronites, Jews, and Arabs under the French Mandate. By Camila Pastor. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 352. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781477314623.

Syrian and Lebanese Patrícios in São Paulo: From the Levant to Brazil. By Oswaldo Truzzi. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018. Pp. ix + 173. $30.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780252083631.

Este artigo examina os impactos do neoliberalismo global e do capitalismo racial em comunidades pesqueiras do Recôncavo da Bahia, sobretudo, na Comunidade Remanescente de Quilombo de São Braz. Mais particularmente, buscou-se entender como homens e mulheres têm sido afetados de forma distinta por empreendimentos transnacionais que incidem em seus territórios, suas atividades produtivas e processos identitários; e como, em consequência, estes têm desenvolvido formas de organização política que correspondem a demandas específicas de cada gênero. Os dados para este artigo foram coletados por meio de trabalho de campo realizado com o apoio do Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPQ) e do Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário (MDA), entre os anos de 2010 a 2012, e, depois, de forma intercalada, até 2015.

This essay reviews the following works:

The Fates of Political Parties: Institutional Crisis, Continuity, and Change in Latin America. By Jennifer Cyr. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. v + 269. $99.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107189799.

Los sistemas de partidos en América Latina, 1978–2015. Tomo 1: México, América Central, y República Dominicana; Tomo 2: Cono Sur y países andinos. Edited by Flavia Freidenberg. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Instituto Nacional Electoral, 2016. Pp. vii + 465 and vii + 543. Collection ISBN: 9786078510078.

Party Brands in Crisis: Partisanship, Brand Dilution, and the Breakdown of Political Parties in Latin America. By Noam Lupu. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xii + 247. $32.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781107423206.

Changing Course in Latin America: Party Systems in the Neoliberal Era. By Kenneth M. Roberts. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 330. $35.99 paper. ISBN: 9780521673266.

This essay reviews the following works:

Twentieth-Century Latin American Revolutions. By Marc Becker. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017. Pp. viii + 256. $39.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781442265875.

Sandino: Patria y libertad. By Alejandro Bendaña. Managua: Anamá Ediciones, 2016. Pp. v + 472. $49.90 paperback. ISBN: 9789992475485.

Salvador Allende: Revolutionary Democrat. By Victor Figueroa Clark. London: Pluto Press, 2013. Pp. x + 164. $22.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780745333076.

Insurgent Marcos: The Political-Philosophical Formation of the Zapatista Subcommander. By Nick Henck. Raleigh, NC: Editorial A Contra Corriente, 2016. Pp. 311. $19.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781945234033.

Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America: An Oral History. By Dirk Kruijt. London: Zed Books, 2017. Pp. xvi + 287. $27.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781783608027.

Picturing the Proletariat: Artists and Labor in Revolutionary Mexico, 1908–1940. By John Lear. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017. Pp. xiii + 366. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781477311509.

La esperanza and el delirio: Una historia de la izquierda en América Latina. By Ugo Pipitone. Mexico City: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas; Taurus, 2015. Pp. 551. ISBN: 9786071137678.

This article reevaluates often-made assumptions of retrospective voting and voter irrationality in studies of voting behavior in political contexts colored by haphazard, apolitical events. To do so, it leverages the quasi-random 2015–2016 Zika epidemic in Brazil and the accompanying priming of “women’s issues” relating to infant health to empirically assess whether exposure to the virus increased political support for female candidates in the 2016 Brazilian local elections. Results of difference-in-difference analyses suggest that high incidences of the virus in the months immediately preceding the election increased female candidates’ vote shares. Conflicting with theories of irrational retrospective voting, the results are consistent with an understudied theory of rational prospective voting. Robustness and falsification tests and dubious support for alternative explanations lend additional support to the argument. The research contributes to an elucidation of both the complex calculations underlying voting behavior and the conditions favorable to female candidates’ electoral prospects.

En este artículo se analizan dos producciones recientes de Cecilia Vicuña y Ana Tijoux: la instalación Quipu Mapocho (2017) y la canción “Río abajo” (2014), respectivamente. A partir de estos trabajos, se examinan los cruces entre arte y activismo y cómo ambas artistas elaboran retóricas de la resistencia que vuelven porosos los límites entre el arte y lo político e instalan posiciones críticas frente a la racionalidad moderna-colonial-patriarcal-capitalista que aún rige a las sociedades latinoamericanas. Desde esta perspectiva, se propone que Vicuña y Tijoux promueven la descolonización de la naturaleza a partir de la descolonización de los saberes, articulando un discurso ecológico en que los ríos y mares son defendidos desde una “cultura del agua” de raíz indígena, pero sin caer en visiones puristas o arcaizantes.

O artigo toma como referência a abordagem dos regimes de bem-estar proposta inicialmente por Gösta Esping-Andersen e tem como objetivos a caracterização dos regimes de bem-estar nas unidades federativas brasileiras e a identificação dos fatores e complementariedades capazes de explicar a heterogeneidade da proteção social no Brasil. Além disso, inovando em relação a trabalhos precedentes, introduz uma dimensão étnica na construção tipológica, tema quase negligenciado pela literatura especializada. A metodologia utilizada foi uma combinação entre a análise fatorial e a de cluster. A primeira caracterizou os tipos e a segunda agrupou e classificou os estados segundo seus sistemas de proteção social (SPS). Foram encontrados três tipos de SPS etnicamente segmentados, confirmando a inadequação de tratar o País como um tipo único e homogêneo e evidenciando o peso da hierarquia étnica na produção de bem-estar.

Este artículo explora la relevancia del Caribe para entender la colonialidad, la decolonialidad, y el giro decolonial. Confronta y comienza a corregir los efectos de cierto latinoamericano-centrismo en las formas usuales de entender el giro decolonial en América Latina, el Caribe mismo, y otras regiones. Se identifican tres sentidos distintos del giro decolonial: el giro decolonial como analítica, el giro decolonial como sociogénesis histórica, y, de forma más estrecha, el giro decolonial como una red de intelectuales que se han distinguido por sus estudios sobre la colonialidad y la decolonialidad. El articulo explica como el Caribe, el pensamiento caribeño, e intelectuales caribeños han jugado un rol importante en cada una de estas dimensiones.

La tensión entre diferentes subjetividades articuladas por la clase social, las performances de género y la homosociabilidad urbana dieron forma a las expresiones culturales y estrategias militantes de los homosexuales argentinos entre las décadas de 1950 y 1980. El modelo homófilo (de “amor al igual,” denominación predominante entre los movimientos homosexuales de los cincuenta y sesenta) de políticas de la respetabilidad y el activismo liberacionista de ruptura con el orden moral burgués estaban enraizados en la conflictiva relación entre los “entendidos”, o u homosexuales de clase media o alta que valoraban el decoro y la masculinidad autodisciplinada, y las “maricas” de clase trabajadora que proyectaban una feminidad sexualizada y hedonista. Las relaciones con el movimiento sexo-disidente transnacional emanaron de y resaltaron el potencial político de estas subjetividades. Al mismo tiempo, el contexto represivo de mediados de los años setenta llevó a un fortalecimiento de las redes de solidaridad internacional, que contribuyeron a la continuidad de las luchas del Frente de Liberación Homosexual de la Argentina tras su disolución en 1976.

This essay reviews the following works:

Securing Sex: Morality and Repression in the Making of Cold War Brazil. By Benjamin A. Cowan. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 311. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781469627502.

Contracultura: Alternative Arts and Social Transformation in Authoritarian Brazil. By Christopher Dunn. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 251. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781469628516.

Hotel Mexico: Dwelling on the ’68 Movement. By George F. Flaherty. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 299. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780520291072.

Speaking of Flowers: Student Movements and the Making and Remembering of 1968 in Military Brazil. By Victoria Langland. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 307. $28.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822353126.

Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture during the Long Sixties. By Jaime M. Pensado. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 213. $32.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780804797252.

A Persistent Revolution: History, Nationalism, and Politics in Mexico since 1968. By Randal Sheppard. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 359. $39.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780826358370.

Este artículo analiza Todos los negros tomamos café (1976) de la narradora cubana Mirta Yáñez como un ejemplo de escritura que celebra la experimentación y que entra en tensión con los moldes estéticos dominantes en la literatura cubana posrevolucionaria. Particularmente, exploro la estratégica posicionalidad de una enunciación polifónica y fragmentada como espacio de contestación a las certezas desde las que se construyeron las narrativas testimoniales. Sugiero que la narrativa de Yáñez se proyecta como una lúcida interrogación acerca de la posición de las escritoras cubanas en un medio que se rehusaba a incorporar voces disidentes, aun cuando la disidencia se manifestara en el plano de la experimentación y la exploración estética. Deslizándose desde los márgenes creados por las normas y políticas de producción cultural, Yáñez configura una narrativa en la que la palabra asume plenamente su calidad de artefacto estético.

Since General Augusto Pinochet’s detention in 1998, an unprecedented number of human rights trials has taken place across Latin America. The main source of evidence employed in these proceedings are victims’ testimonies: in fact, records documenting human rights violations are generally unavailable, having either been destroyed or hidden. When archives do exist, they do not usually identify individual perpetrators or victims, nor do they directly establish criminal responsibility. This article focuses on two criminal trials that unfolded in Argentina and Italy and closely probed the atrocities of Operation Condor. It contends that archival documents only contain remnants of truth and fragments of evidence. These slivers have to be interpreted, contextualized, and sometimes even questioned in order to render them relevant and useful to criminal investigations of past atrocities. Specifically, the article deconstructs the role that different trial actors—including public and private prosecutors, archivists, experts, witnesses, lawyers, and judges—played in the courtroom, engaging in proactive efforts to piece together the evidence that archival records possess and activating their content.