Globalization has exacerbated the impact of three Northern-driven forces on Central American unions. Transnational firms have restructured or enhanced their levels of subcontracting. Governments, while weakening labor-code implemention, have launched extensive privatization schemes. And international supporters of unions have espoused new priorities and rechanneled funding. Although all three trends have caused major difficulties for unions, this article assesses whether or not their traditional spirit of “social-movement unionism” has been undermined. Based on extensive interviews and primary and secondary data, the study documents union resilience in the banana and maquila sectors despite problematic corporate behavior and market conditions. Stung by state privatizations, unions that fragmented following the Central American Peace Accords have partially regrouped to resist public-health takeovers and labor-code harmonization. Facing losses in Northern funding, unions have painfully adapted to fresh organizing strategies and sensitivity to women's issues, which they found to be fundamental to successful collaboration with corporate campaigns, trade pressure, and NGOs. Despite losses, unions have tapped a broader solidarity in their struggle against the demons of globalization.

This article proposes a framework for the analysis of social classes in Latin America and presents evidence on the composition of the class structure in the region and its evolution during the last two decades, corresponding to the years of implementation of a new economic model in most countries. The paper is an update of an earlier article on the same topic published in this journal at the end of the period of import substitution industrialization. Relative to that earlier period, the present era registers a visible increase in income inequality, a persistent concentration of wealth in the top decile of the population, a rapid expansion of the class of micro-entrepreneurs, and a stagnation or increase of the informal proletariat. The contraction of public sector employment and the stagnation of formal sector labor demand in most countries have led to a series of adaptive solutions by the middle and lower classes. The rise of informal self-employment and micro-entrepreneurialism throughout the region can be interpreted as a direct result of the new adjustment policies. We explore other, less orthodox adaptive strategies, including the rise of violent crime in the cities and migration abroad by an increasingly diversified cross-section of the population. The impact that changes in the class structure have had on party politics and other forms of popular political mobilization in Latin American countries is discussed.

This article focuses on environmental protection issue networks (EPINs), defined here as networks among domestic and international environmentally concerned actors that seek to protect local environments. EPINs may be important agents in efforts to promote environmentally sustainable development in Latin America, but their effectiveness has varied considerably. The article presents a model for assessing the effectiveness of EPINs based on their strategic capacity, the environmental visibility of the issues with which they deal, and the nature of their opposition targets. The model was inspired by hypotheses generated in comparing three EPINs established to address environmental and social problems created by development projects financed by the World Bank in Brazilian Amazonia between 1981 and 2000.

This article reviews the recent literature on the so-called myths of racial democracy in Latin America and challenges current critical interpretations of the social effects of these ideologies. Typically, critics stress the elitist nature of these ideologies, their demobilizing effects among racially subordinate groups, and the role they play in legitimizing the subordination of such groups. Using the establishment of the Cuban republic as a test case, this article contends that the critical approach tends to minimize or ignore altogether the opportunities that these ideologies have created for those below, the capacity of subordinate groups to use the nation-state's cultural project to their own advantage, and the fact that these social myths also restrain the political options of their own creators.

The study shows that the new privately managed pension system in Chile has increased gender inequalities. Women are worse off than they were under the old pay-as-you-go system of social security, in which the calculation of benefits for men and women did not differ and women could obtain pensions with fewer requirements than men. Currently, benefits are calculated according to individuals’ contributions and levels of risk. Such factors as women's longer life expectancy, earlier retirement age, lower rates of labor-force participation, lower salaries, and other disadvantages in the labor market are directly affecting their accumulation of funds in individual retirement accounts, leading to lower pensions, especially for poorer women. Lessons from the Chilean reform should encourage scholars, policy makers, and the general public to engage in debates that more adequately incorporate gender variables in designing and implementing policy changes.

Because of the prominence of the president in the Mexican political system, public opinion of the executive is a particularly important political indicator. Two models of public opinion are used here to explain changes in President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's approval rate from 1990 to 1994. The economic-performance model assumes that approval was based on public perception of trends in the economy. The statistical analysis shows that individuals' perceptions of economic performance had a strong positive effect on their opinions of the president. But basic economic indicators such as inflation, the real value of wages, and the level of unemployment are found to explain only partially Mexico City residents' opinions of the economy. The policy-initiatives model assumes that approval of President Salinas was based on public opinion of his economic policy initiatives. Citizens' approval of Salinas's economic initiatives was found to affect their opinions of the president substantially. Because many of these policy initiatives, such as NAFTA, had no immediate direct impact on the economic condition of the country, I conclude that Salinas's extraordinary popularity was largely due to the expectations that these initiatives created.

This study evaluates the role played by the legislature in one of Argentina's most important economic reforms of recent decades: the reform of tax incentives for regional development. As implemented by the last military government, this sytem of tax incentives provoked sharp distributive conflicts among provinces. Although a majority of legislators favored reform after the return to democracy in 1983, interprovincial conflicts created bargaining problems that prevented the passage of reform legislation through regular channels. Pro-reform legislators decided instead to delegate reform authority to President Raúl Alfonsín because he shared their interest in containing the fiscal cost of tax incentives. Subsequent uses of this delegated authority by two presidents promoted the interests of the enacting coalition that supported delegation. These findings support the usefulness of delegation models when carefully applied to Latin America and challenge theories that neglect the different ways that legislators shape economic reform.

This article examines the political interactions in Nicaragua between the NGO-based feminist movement and government institutions on the issue of women's health in the mid-1990s. Analysis of the Nicaraguan feminist movement yields insight into the ability of NGO-based movements to influence state policy and into the strengths and limits of using NGOs as an institutional base on which to build a social movement. By defining the mechanisms of state-NGO interactions and analyzing the democratic potential of an NGO-based social movement, this article contributes to understanding of both NGOs and social movements in the context of newly democratic governments.