Comparative analysis of two Salvadoran towns with similar patterns of international migration but different historical land-tenure patterns reveals the emergence of radically different development strategies. Whereas in one case, mostly landed households with a history of farming commercially have been selling land and abandoning agriculture, in the other case, previously landless households whose members worked as sharecroppers before the onset of migration have been acquiring land and farming as much as possible. The opposite processes at work in these two cases raise important theoretical questions for both migration and development studies. Using ethnographic, census, and historical data, I examine how and why land ownership, under particular historical circumstances, conditions the impact of migration on development.

The ethnic-cultural (re)naissance in Chile is currently undergoing an expansion as well as a diversification along lines of minority cultures and gender differentiations. Since the explosion onto the Chilean literary landscape of the bilingual poet Leonel Lienlaf in 1989, Mapuche-Huilliche writers have come into the spotlight of academia, state, and popular culture critics. Younger generations of Huilliche poets are distinguishing themselves through a hybrid, reflexive, and literary expressiveness. In opposition to the poetry that is tied to indigenous cultural institutions, orality, and traditional rural forms of existence, these poets thrive and strive for a pluricultural and complex way of living and expressing themselves. This work explores a selection of poets and their individual circumstances in an attempt to delineate the differences within and between these poets and the more traditional ones, and suggest a greater cultural change that is coming about in south Chile.

Recent studies of the history of Mexican cinema continue to speak of the complex relations between the state and the film industry, and the most frequently analyzed aspects tend to be the same: the reach and forms of censorship, as well as the financial dependence on the state. To broaden this perspective, I propose a classification of cinematic discourses that represent the relations between film characters and state powers. I discuss four basic modes of representation that, determined by historical and economic circumstances, reflect and mediate the attitudes and dispositions of viewers toward the political regime. For each mode, I discuss a sequence in a paradigmatic film, analyzing visual and ideological aspects in relation to the political moment at the time of the film's release. Finally, I argue that, despite the resurgence of the Mexican cinema and a more critical tone in its approach to state institutions, fictional films still rest on indirect and allegorical representations of recent events. This is due to the uncertainty of the prolonged and still-incomplete transition to institutional democracy in Mexico.

Latin American urban areas often comprise large low-income former shantytown areas that originated as illegal land captures and that have been consolidated through self-build over thirty years or more. Today most of the original households still live in their homes, often alongside adult children (and grandchildren). As part of the Latin American Housing Network study (www.lahn.utexas.org), this article reports on survey research for Mexico and describes the stability and nature of these shared arrangements and the considerable asset value now represented by these properties. Although these properties are often considered patrimonio para los hijos, many consolidator pioneers are aging, so that the issue of property inheritance has become salient, especially for second-generation adult children and their families. However, fewer than 10 percent of owners have wills, and most will die intestate, often having made verbal inheritance arrangements regarding their “estate.” This augurs the rise of a new round of informality of property holding that bears little relation to the national and state legal provisions that actually govern inheritance succession, whether through wills or via intestacy provisions. The article describes the various legal codes that prevail in Mexico relating to marriage and acquisition and assigning of property upon death, and it offers several case scenarios of interfamilial and intragenerational conflict, especially insofar as these relate to gender and social constructions of inheritance rights among the poor.

In Latin America, indigenous identity claims among people not previously recognized as such by the state have become a key topic of anthropological and sociological research. Scholars have analyzed the motivations and political implications of this trend and the impacts of indigenous population's growth on national demographic indicators. However, little is known about how people claiming indigenous status constructs the meaning of their indigenous ethnicity. Drawing from sixty-four in-depth interviews, focus-group analyses, and participant observation, this article explores the double process of identity construction: the reconstruction of the Arapium indigenous identity and the creation of the Jaraqui indigenous identity in Brazil's Lower Amazon. The findings reveal six themes that contribute to the embodiment of a definition of indigenous identity and the establishment of a discursive basis to claim recognition: sense of rootedness, historical memory, historical transformation, consciousness, social exclusion, and identity politics.

Analisam-se neste artigo as principais concepções elaboradas por Paulo Freire (1921-1997) a respeito da educação e da mudança social, exercício que permitirá assinalar, no final do trabalho, que sua principal proposta, aquela pedagogia mediante a qual os oprimidos conseguiriam tomar consciência da dominação que sofriam, era uma estratégia complementar a outras formas de luta que assumiam os setores populares, incluindo aquelas que se apoiavam na violência. Para atingir esses objetivos o trabalho contará com quatro seções: na primeira se deterá no processo mediante o qual ele se alfabetizou, na segunda se examinarão as características que fizeram que sua proposta de alfabetização e conscientização tivesse tão boa acolhida, na terceira se contextualizarão suas reflexões no movimento intelectual regional que se propunha contribuir para a construção de uma nova sociedade, e na quarta se precisará o papel que ele outorgava à educação na luta revolucionária.

Apesar de alguns autores definirem “indigenismo” e “indianismo” como movimentos ideológicos de amplas proporções—definição compartilhada por indigenistas e indígenas, e por outros segmentos das sociedades nacionais com suas próprias agendas de proteção aos índios—o presente artigo questiona perspectivas estritamente nacionais do indigenismo/indianismo para reinterpretá-lo como uma filosofia social do colonialismo, que adquire a característica geral de ideologia e prática de dominação dos Estados nacionais latino-americanos, em particular no México e no Brasil. O argumento central é o fato de que “indigenismos” e “indianismos” quando observados sob as lentes dos processos latino-americanos deformação dos Estados e de construção nacional, compartilham do contexto da “colonialidade do poder” e, nesse sentido, podem ser interpretados como variações concomitantes de um processo histórico mais amplo de subordinação e potencial aniquilação da diversidade indígena do continente. Ao propor uma etnografia do indigenismo em perspectiva comparada, esse artigo promove uma melhor compreensão das variadas formas adquiridas pelo pensamento social e pela práxis política sobre os índios nas Américas, analisando até que ponto as transformações e movimentos do pensamento social e das ações indigenistas contemporâneas traduzem, de fato, rupturas mais do que continuidades com seu passado colonial. Trata-se de estudar o indigenismo e as políticas indigenistas como ponto de partida para melhor compreender os regimes de indianidade construídos no processo deformação dos Estados nacionais na América Latina e seus efeitos de poder sobre a etnicidade e formas de auto-determinação indígenas.

In this article, I compare the attitudes to the recent democratic transition in Latin America in La fiesta del Chivo, the 2000 novel, and in its 2005 film adaptation. In the novel, Mario Vargas Llosa describes how Joaquín Balaguer, the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo's puppet president, put on the mask of a democrat, absorbed Trujillo's absolute power, and went on to serve as president for twenty-four years. In the novel, Balaguer is a stand-in for the Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori, who prepares to serve as president for a third term in a row. Why do Balaguer and the artificial democratic transition that he enacted go missing in the film adaptation? The film details instead the crimes of the dictator Trujillo and his inglorious end. I argue that the director adapts the novel's message to a changed political reality in Peru: the dictator Fujimori fled, and the newly elected president is restoring democratic institutions and government accountability.

What is the impact of exposure to criminal violence on support for political institutions in Latin America? The increase in criminal violence in the region since the return to democratic rule makes this a timely question. Several scholars have demonstrated the impact of a series of variables (political performance, economic performance, interpersonal trust, perception of corruption) on citizens' support for political institutions (system support). The goal of this study is to assess the impact of two additional variables (victimization and perception of violence) that have been neglected in the literature. I test the impact of exposure to violence on system support by using survey data from the 2004 edition of the Latin American Public Opinion Project. My findings demonstrate that both victimization and high perception of violence have a negative impact on system support in Latin America.

O projeto de integração regional Mercosul inclui o ensino de espanhol e português nos países membros. A Argentina e o Brasil têm leis obrigando a ofertar essas línguas aos estudantes no ensino médio, porém os processos de promoção, financiamento e implementação desses compromissos, como o contexto de implementação dessas iniciativas, são marcadamente diferentes. Neste trabalho analiso os últimos vinte anos de política lingüística regional à luz de fatores extralingüísticos e discuto algumas das razões que podem estar influenciando a maior autonomia regional do ensino de português em Buenos Aires, em contraste com uma maior dependência do ensino de espanhol em São Paulo vis-a-vis a Espanha.

During the 1990s, the Argentine federal government dramatically increased the number of workfare programs targeted to the unemployed. The distribution of employment programs, however, varied across provinces. Previous studies suggest that this uneven distribution has taken place because politicians have not distributed programs according to formal eligibility criteria, but rather, in a clientelistic manner to entice voters' support.

I conduct a balanced pooled time series analysis for twenty-four provinces for the period 1993–2002 and find that partisanship, institutional features of the Argentine federal system, social mobilization, and economic factors strongly determine the way in which presidents have distributed employment programs. The results challenge the assumption that these programs have been exclusively used as clientelistic handouts to buy people's votes, and point to the necessity of looking at institutional, social, and economic variables to better understand the criteria used by federal politicians to distribute means-tested programs.