The present set of Research Notes, which were first presented at a forum on Latin America's market reforms held at the 2003 Latin American Studies Association Congress, investigates the economic and social repercussions of the neoliberal wave that swept across the region during the 1990s. Have market reforms brought greater economic stability and stimulated growth? How have they affected crucial social issues, such as unemployment, poverty, and inequality? After Weyland's introductory explication of these questions, the Research Notes by Evelyne Huber and Fred Solt and by Michael Walton advance divergent assessments of neoliberalism's successes and failures. Huber and Solt argue that overall, Latin America's market reforms have yielded disappointing results in terms of economic stability and growth, social equity, and the quality of democracy. In particular, countries that enacted more radical reforms or that took especially drastic steps towards change performed less well than nations that proceeded more cautiously and gradually. By contrast, Walton argues that market reforms have increased growth while not significantly exacerbating economic instability and social inequality. And to the extent that neoliberalism fell short of expectations, the problem did not emerge from market reforms as such, but from deficiencies in the institutional context in which these reforms were enacted.

During the dramatic wave of democratization in the 1980s, Venezuela stood out as South America's wise elder. While neighboring militaries had shifted in and out of power, sometimes ruling for decades, Venezuela had maintained a stable democracy since 1959. After a relatively brief period of adjustment, the country settled into a political system in which two dominant political parties alternated in power and the armed forces remained peacefully in the barracks. Yet twice in 1992, important sectors of the armed forces took up arms to displace what they and many other Venezuelans viewed as a decrepit and corrupt political system. The coups failed, but they left the political system shaken and the military's political subordination seriously in doubt. The coup attempts also raised doubts about Venezuelan strategies for military control that had been a model for the rest of Latin America.

This article revisits debates concerning poverty, inequality, and development in Latin America and explores a possible “high road” to globalization capable of achieving both more rapid economic growth and significant and lasting reductions in poverty and inequality. In reconnoitering the contours of this path, the authors probe a partial convergence in theory, concepts, and policies that may offer new opportunities for bridging the yawning chasms that heretofore have divided multilateral financial organizations, local governing elites, and academics as well as Center-Left political parties, organized labor, social movements, and NGOs. The article concludes with an assessment of the capacity of this emerging political agenda and attendant “polycentric development coalitions” to deepen and extend democracy effectively beyond the electoral arena to include basic issues of justice and equity.

The profile of voters and nonvoters according to age, occupation, and education is described. The study is based on samples of around 30 male mesas from the city of Buenos Aires in four presidential elections1983, 1989, 1995, and 1999and 100 from each of two elections (1997 representatives and 1999 presidential) in the homonymous province. Data from official voter registers (padrones) are analyzed for those obligated to vote (18-69) and for those exempted (70+ years). The level of abstention increased slowly but steadily along the time span considered. Citizens obligated to vote do so more than those who are not. Logistic regression equations showed a positive effect of the lowest occupational status categoriesless educated peopleon the odds of nonvoting, while the opposite was true for the highest occupational status categories.

In the early 1960s, the dramatic mobilization of rural wage laborers and small farmers placed the agrarian question at the top of the Brazilian political agenda. The question facing governing elites was how to modernize an archaic agrarian sector that was widely perceived as posing a major bottleneck for development and a breeding ground for agrarian radicalism. Until that time, wage laborers and small farmers in various forms of land tenure had effectively been excluded from existing labor legislation, social security, and coverage by national law in general. Instead, various traditional and clientelist forms of social control regulated rural social relations. The new rural movements were led by relatively moderate urban groups or individuals seeking to create a rural political base. Their appearance soon after the Cuban Revolution however, and in the larger context of the cold war, triggered fears of possible revolution. National debate quickly centered not on whether but on how the Brazilian state should intervene in the countryside. Attempts by the populist government of President João Goulart to address the agrarian question were cut short by the military coup of 1964. In its wake, the fledgling rural movements were brutally repressed in a wave of state-sponsored repression and private landowner violence.

Based on primary research and fifty interviews, this article analyzes the history, institutions, and politics of agricultural policy formulation in Brazil from 1964 to 1992. It focuses on how trade, credit, and support-price policy evolved in response to economic crisis and democratization in the 1980s. Although the economic crisis caused policy to be redesigned, the change in political regime and in the institutions of interest-group representation significantly influenced the direction of policy reform. The return to a democratic regime permitted the Congress and the Brazilian judiciary to play more significant roles in shaping agricultural policy. Simultaneously, democratization led to the questioning of corporatist institutions and the emergence of more participatory organizations in the agricultural sector. These changes have caused policy making to become increasingly subject to explicit rules, which should lead to more predictable policies and a long-term reduction in discrimination against Brazilian agriculture.

Two radical revolutionary governors of Yucatán, Salvador Alvarado (1915–1918) and Felipe Carrillo Puerto (1922–1923), as well as many Yucatecan men and especially women considered prohibition as the key to reform, as was the case in many other regions of Mexico. Scholars, however, have long ignored the crucial role of alcohol in revolutionary and post-revolutionary Mexico. This article examines the linkages among prohibition, gender, and politics in Yucatán from the revolution to the eve of the Cardenista era. It also considers the role of alcohol as a lubricant in machine politics.

In fact, for the chimas, the defense of their patrimony is a fundamental part of their history.... What is new is the growing interest of different branches of government and of national and international groups, which have realized the importance of the Chimalapas. Voces en la selva

Although often individually weak and marginalized in Mexico, environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and indigenous communities coalesced in the early 1990s around the issue of preserving the Chimalapas rain forest in southeastern Mexico. They then brought the problem to national and international attention and eventually helped force the redrawing of a proposed highway route. This research note will analyze the formation and activities of the Comité Nacional para la Defensa de los Chimalapas (CNDCHIM), a network of environmental NGOs, artists and intellectuals, activists and researchers, and representatives of forty-five indigenous communities in the Chimalapas. CNDCHIM formed in 1991 in response to a proposed highway that was to run through La Reserva El Ocote in the Chimalapas, one of Mexico's last two rain forests. The Chimalapas issue is extremely complex, entailing social justice, land tenure, megaprojects, federal and state politics, and environmental policy. This study will focus mostly on CNDCHIM and its relationship with the Mexican government, placing the organization within the context of agrarian conflict and the political and ecological issues surrounding the potential destruction of the Chimalapas.