Este artigo analisa aspectos do patriarcalismo presentes em obras de Machado de Assis. O objetivo é evidenciar a crítica a uma cultura patriarcal idealizada, segundo padrões de uma antiguidade clássica difundida no século XIX. Trata-se, portanto, da anatomia de uma farsa, oculta na retórica refinada de representantes da oligarquia escravocrata. Machado de Assis revela, em seus escritos, o ethos da oligarquia que estruturou a sociedade brasileira do anos 1800.

This paper analyzes two aspects of China's economic relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). First, we examine the extent to which China's economic growth is affecting trade and investment flows between China and LAC. Second, we analyze the extent to which the emergence of China as a world exporter affects the ability of LAC countries to compete in world markets both in terms of exports as well as in the capacity to attract foreign investment. For each of these questions, we provide a critical assessment of a new body of work in this area, as well as offer a series of analyses that build on and confirm some of this previous work. Furthermore, we offer implications for policy and future research. We show that there is an emerging consensus regarding China and LAC. With respect to trade and investment flows, China accounts for a significant amount of the boost in LAC exports and foreign investment in recent years, but is exporting more than it imports. In terms of global competitiveness, LAC is not significantly threatened by Chinese exports in global markets, with the exception of Mexico.

El propósito de este artículo es contribuir al debate acerca de la cohesión social en América Latina a través de una propuesta conceptual y metodológica para su estudio. En particular proponemos la noción de trasgresión normativa como modo de entender la solidez-debilidad del vínculo social. A partir de los resultados de un estudio piloto realizado en la ciudad de Santiago de Chile, pudimos constatar que los niveles de trasgresión son generalmente bajos, lo que manifiesta la adhesión a los mecanismos sancionados como legítimos para participar en la sociedad. No obstante, los resultados reflejaron también la existencia de un grupo significativo de jóvenes que transgrede no sólo algunas sino que la mayoría de las reglas que rigen el comportamiento esperable en diversas esferas de la vida social (tanto a nivel de la vida privada como pública). Más importante aún, los resultados de nuestro estudio sugieren que tal actitud o comportamiento transgresor está relacionado con el debilitamiento del vínculo social.

In Latin America's young democracies, actors in the private sector may influence military security work through resource transfers, with implications for state accountability and democracy in the region. This analysis finds that in Ecuador and Peru local army commanders—who frequently decide when and where army operations are conducted—make decisions not according to technical evaluations of security requirements but rather on the basis of how much local clients pay. The article's local political economy perspective enables us to identify client influence, even in cases in which client and national security interests overlap. The study also helps bridge two literatures: research on Latin American civil-military relations, which has devoted a great amount of attention to military autonomy vis-à-vis the government without systematically analyzing third-party influence on armed forces, and scholarship on security privatization, which has examined such third-party financing but without underscoring the fact that clients can engage with the military directly, bypassing the national government.

In this article I consider the temporality of postapocalyptic narrative and use a contemporary postapocalyptic novel, Plop (2004), by the Argentine author Rafael Pinedo, to open up new considerations of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's classic Facundo: Civilización y barbarie (1845). Following the method proposed by Jorge Luis Borges (1966) in “Kafka and His Precursors,” it is my position that Pinedos novel invents a new, postapocalyptic Facundo, thus converting Sarmiento into one of the American continent's first postapocalyptic authors. Furthermore, Pinedos novel reframes the “civilization or barbarism” debate under the contemporary sign of ecological catastrophe, allowing the reader to arrive at new and startling conclusions about language, the environment, and disaster.

This article addresses the paradox of unpopular corruption and popular corrupt politicians. It explores why corrupt politicians are reelected, paying particular attention to incumbent provision of public goods and voter information on incumbent misconduct. Using a new data set on mayoral elections (2000 and 2004) in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, we specify econometric models to test the hypothesis that incumbents' performance in delivering public goods might mitigate reputational losses. Our main empirical analysis suggests that (1) corruption decreases the probability of incumbent reelection, (2) public expenditure increases the probability of reelection, and (3) the negative marginal effect of corruption on reelection disappears as public expenditure increases.

Throughout the 1980s one of the Reagan administration's most contested foreign policy initiatives was that toward Central America, where it attempted to defeat the Salvadoran guerrillas and overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Reagan's policy was challenged by civil society organizations, whose efforts to undermine support for Reagan's policy came to be known as the Central American Peace and Solidarity Movement (CAPSM). What were the origins of this movement? I argue that previous explorations of the CAPSM's emergence are inadequate because they neglect the role played by Central Americans as purposive actors in the movement's rise and development. This article documents the ways in which Nicaraguans and Salvadorans, both in Central America and in the United States, played crucial roles in this transnational movement's creation and growth.

Las ciencias sociales por lo general han propuesto lecturas de las clases populares y de lo popular que han tendido a minimizar la existencia de formas de individualidad en su seno, dando lugar a visiones altamente colectivistas de sus miembros. Sobre la base de dos investigaciones empíricas de tipo cualitativo para el caso de Chile, realizadas mediante entrevistas semidirectivas y técnicas grupales, este artículo discute que, sin desconocer la comunidad de experiencias observable entre sus miembros, es posible dar cuenta de ciertos procesos individualizadores específicos en este grupo social. Frente a las numerosas adversidades de su existencia en un contexto de alta inestabilidad posicionai y exigencia de híperactuación, los miembros de los sectores populares urbanos tienden a afirmar su individualidad a partir de tres dimensiones: la fortaleza de carácter; la habilidad y el sentido de oportunidad; y el goce y la irreverencia humorística.