We examine the promise and accomplishments of New Social Movement (NSM) theory for understanding recent social movements in Latin America. After delineating and critiquing the key premises and concerns of NSM analyses, we demonstrate how a conceptual frame combining political economy and political sociology accounts better for the origins and trajectories of the social movements, including two of the most important in Latin America, Brazil's Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) and Bolivia's Movement toward Socialism (MAS).

Latin American global cities have embraced international tourism as a pillar of economic development. Even as tourism has recently grown dramatically, some cities have succeeded and others have failed at capturing international tourists and delivering benefits to the population. This article examines the role of new public institutions (tourism ministries) and social structure from 2000 to 2010 in Buenos Aires, Havana, and Rio de Janeiro. Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews, the evidence shows that both policy choices and social structure shape the composition of international tourism. Prospect theory and economic crisis help explain the emergence of entrepreneurial and innovative bureaucracies. Buenos Aires is an example of innovative inclusive tourism, Havana exhibits innovative disarticulated tourism, and Rio de Janeiro features stagnant urban enclave tourism.

El régimen militar (1973–1990) ha sido investigado en diversos ámbitos: político, jurídico, institucional, económico, derechos humanos, mediático, entre otros. Sin embargo, poco se ha indagado respecto a los cambios y alteraciones que experimentó el entorno estético cotidiano como consecuencia de la dictadura. Menos aún se ha investigado sobre aquellas actividades culturales y/o manifestaciones artísticas que fueron promovidas o apoyadas por el régimen militar. Éstas, analizadas desde una perspectiva de conjunto, podrían dar cuenta de aquellos rasgos que marcaron su producción simbólica, ya sea promoviendo ciertos modos de ver, ritos y sensibilidades o reprimiendo aquellas prácticas e imaginarios propios del sistema democrático. El presente artículo considera algunos antecedentes del golpe estético que vivió Chile entre los años 1973 y 1975, como consecuencia del golpe militar generado el 11 de septiembre de 1973. La expresión golpe estético simboliza el proceso de transformación y cambio experimentado en aspectos de la vida cotidiana, producto del quiebre que se produjo con el proyecto socio-cultural de la Unidad Popular (UP).

Drawing on the literature on the social construction of public policy, this article pinpoints the emergence of the trope of the “temporary Mexican,” that is, the migrant farm laborer, to the 1920 congressional hearings on the “admission of illiterate Mexican laborers.” I argue that this construction was the brainchild of southwestern agriculture and its congressional supporters who sought to conceive of the Mexican laborer in terms consistent with the eugenic, liberal, and socially conservative sensibilities of the time. What resulted from this strategic creative process was the temporary Mexican, a new breed of peon who had free will and was biologically destined to return to Mexico. This temporariness, which was what made this social construction most palatable in the 1920s, has stayed with Mexicans (and Latinos generally) to the modern day, turning them into an in-between group whose membership is always suspect.

Since 1993 to the present, a group of Mapuche activists has aired the bilingual radio show Wixage anai! in Santiago, Chile; on the other side of the Andes, another Mapuche collective, the Equipo de Comunicación Mapurbe, produced and broadcast a series of brief radio programs between 2003 and 2005 in Bariloche, southern Argentina. In this article, I argue that these radio programs constitute an exercise of Mapuche agency that challenges what I call the acoustic colonialism of corporate and criollo mass media in both countries. This article illustrates how Mapuche activists creatively use radio as a connective medium among Mapuche communities and a space for the public audibility of their own voices, sounds, and modes of speech. I analyze the history, cultural politics, and performative features of these two initiatives, engaging theoretical and critical views on sound media, state cultural policies, and politics of indigenous agency.

Utilizando los datos de las encuestas de Eduardo Hamuy realizadas en Chile antes del quiebre de la democracia de 1973, cuestionamos la supuesta rigidez ideológica del centro. Mostramos que después de 1964, aumentó la identificación con la izquierda, pero la identificación con el centro y con la derecha no varió. Además, mostramos que el Presidente Frei tuvo un apoyo alto y estable, igual que Allende. Evidenciamos que por cada chileno optimista sobre la realidad del país, había tres pesimistas. El pesimismo aumentó en los meses anteriores al golpe. No obstante, los que creían que el futuro sería mejor sistemáticamente superaban a los que pensaban que sería peor, incluso en los meses anteriores a septiembre de 1973. Si bien los de izquierda eran más optimistas, uno de cada tres derechistas o centristas también era optimista sobre el futuro. La población chilena estaba menos polarizada que la elite.

This article analyzes two sets of narratives that describe the area contained within the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) Araripe Basin Geopark, the first such geological preserve in the Americas. The first group includes scientific-sounding accounts of fossils, sediments, and geological formations. The second is a series of “folk” stories that describe the sacred geography of a part of the northeastern Brazilian backlands best known for their economic backwardness and religious mysticism. Although at first glance the two sets of narratives appear wholly divergent, both treat the natural world as ancient, fluid, composed of interrelated elements, mysterious, and deeply worthy of protection. These shared conceptions have important policy implications in strategizing a sustainable tourism that will preserve the region's geological and cultural heritage while bringing economic benefits to the local population.

In this introduction we present the concepts of “lived religion” and “lived citizenship” as tools for understanding the ways in which religious and political meanings and practices are constituted in social movements and locations of poverty and exclusion in Latin America. We first develop the idea of “zones of crisis” as a context in which struggles for rights, recognition, and survival are enacted. We then challenge reified distinctions between the secular and the religious, emphasizing religion's embodiment and emplacement in daily life and politics. Reviewing the empirical findings of the articles in this special issue, we discuss the multiple imbrications of religion and citizenship with regard to democratic politics, geographies of conflict, and safe spaces, as well as selfhood, identity, and agency. In a postsecular world, interrogating religion, secularity, and politics together enables us better to understand the complex construction of democratic citizenship and the dynamism of Latin America's multiple modernities.