Most Brazilians believe that racial and socioeconomic inequalities tend to overlap—in other words, blacks are poorer because they have less education and worse jobs. In the past few years, however, several quantitative studies have presented an interesting puzzle: racial inequalities are strongest among those at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy. This article explores the “elitist profile” of racial discrimination through eighty in-depth interviews with black professionals in Rio de Janeiro. The results show that interviewees describe their trajectories of social mobility through mechanisms that involve both socioeconomic and racial exclusion. Their perceptions of injustice, however, are more directly related to experiences of racial discrimination. In narrating incidents of discrimination, interviewees stress the distinction and tensions between what we call generalized prejudice and particularized universalism.

Are individuals opposed to immigration because of perceived job competition with immigrants? Despite almost two decades of research, the literature on immigration attitudes continues to struggle for a clear answer. This study is designed to evaluate the labor competition hypothesis in an alternative and important immigration context, Chile. The cultural proximity of natives and immigrants in Chile mitigates the issue of cultural threat and thus permits a focused appraisal of the role of economic competition. Also, the prevalence of both high- and low-skilled immigrant labor may generate competition in diverse employment sectors in Chile. Using data from an original Internet survey experiment, I test how an immigrant's skill level, country of origin, and ethnicity influence Chilean attitudes toward immigration. The results suggest that individual immigration attitudes are not influenced by concerns over job competition but rather evaluations as to the broader economic effects of certain types of immigrants. Well-educated Chileans, like their European and American counterparts, prefer immigrants who pursue high-skill employment.

This article addresses the way in which the Argentine Supreme Court has set out to redefine its own institutional role through its procedures and decisions, since its institutional reform in 2003. It shows that the Court has developed innovative ways of judicial intervention in public policy and rights issues, which include the participation of new kinds of actors and entail an emerging new relationship between the Court and civil society organizations in Argentina. The article argues that this change can be understood as a way for the Court to rebuild its institutional legitimacy, and that the reform is connected to the presence of strong nongovernmental organizations whose claims for a change in the Court's composition and procedures gained momentum in the aftermath of the social and political crisis of 2001-2002 in Argentina.

The Mexican transition to democracy has not been completed in terms of either the destitution of the authoritarian regime or the establishment of a democratic regime, a situation that explains the continuity of authoritarian practices and culture in public life. Not only did the Partido Revolucionario Institucional preserve impressive veto power over constitutional reforms and even small changes in matters of public policy, but also the other two main political parties (Partido Acción Nacional and Partido de la Revolución Democrática) had no alternative democratic projects and reproduced the clientelistic and particularistic political culture of the past; civil society was (and is) both socially and politically weak, and its popular sectors suffered important strategic defeats along the process. Not surprisingly, democratic innovations have been scarce, and the few interesting ones are at risk. The emergence of new social and political actors, as well as new public spaces, is urgent and necessary to counter the paradoxical combination of depoliticization of public life and overpoliticization of democratic institutions the country suffers nowadays, a situation that explains the current simultaneous crisis of representation and governability.

Despite its important role in the construction of imagined communities throughout the region, the study of silent cinema in Latin America has barely gone beyond an initial stage of unearthing national and regional cinemas to a more comparative and critical study of trends and ideologies from a transnational perspective. This essay outlines such a comparative history by using the spatiotemporal metaphor of triangulation as a framework for theorizing the politics of criollo aesthetics, and by combining a diachronic examination of major trends with synchronic close readings of paradigmatic films. The periodization and selection of films respond, in turn, to a broader consideration of how ideology, aesthetics, and economics intersect in the evolution of filmic practices in Latin America during the silent era. Finally, in the conclusion, I argue that the most important legacy of this period of Latin American cinema on subsequent filmmaking in the region is not so much the elaboration of a criollo aesthetics, which would not survive beyond the silent period, but rather the development of the strategy of triangulation, whereby Latin American filmmakers navigated a global cinematic landscape from a position of marginality.

Based on an original US survey, this article argues that, on average, US conservatives today feel substantially cooler toward Latin American countries than liberals do. They also desire massively tougher Mexico border policies and much less foreign aid than liberals do. Averages can hide substantial differences within groups, however. Not all liberals and conservatives are alike, and their differences shape attitudes toward Latin America. For instance, our survey reveals that libertarians and economic conservatives oppose foreign aid to places like Haiti out of a belief in the Protestant ethic of self-help and opposition to income redistribution. Communitarians and economic liberals, by contrast, are more supportive of foreign aid to Haiti. Cultural conservatives fear the impact of Mexican immigration on Christian values and a WASP American national identity more than cultural liberals do. But race and racism continue to divide Americans the most consistently in their attitudes and policy preferences toward Latin America. The policy implications of ideologically divided public opinion for US immigration reform are also addressed.

En este trabajo se analizan los procesos económicos en las dos principales unidades económicas y demográficas del territorio argentino en la primera mitad del siglo XIX. Se emplea para ello la abundante información historiográfica disponible y se analizan en detalle dos censos económicos de Córdoba en 1838 y de Buenos Aires en 1839. Por un lado se observa la divergencia creciente en esta etapa entre estas dos economías luego de la independencia, comparando sus dinámicas y sus tamaños relativos. Seguidamente se analiza la relación entre estos desempeños con los niveles de distribución de riqueza, con la intención de ponerlos en discusión con los modelos analíticos vigentes.

¿Cuáles son las condiciones bajo las cuales surgen los gobiernos de corte populista? A partir de un enfoque clásico de representación política (Pitkin 1985) y con datos de encuestas de opinión (Latinobarómetro 1996–2008), este trabajo analiza (1) en qué medida los deficientes resultados de las políticas públicas y la ausencia de rendición de cuentas aumentan la desconfianza ciudadana en las instituciones representativas y cómo esta desconfianza contribuye al surgimiento de liderazgos populistas como una forma de resolver un problema de principal y agente, a través de una rendición de cuentas simbólica. Según se propone aquí, en un inicio los liderazgos populistas contribuyen a disminuir la distancia de los ciudadanos con el sistema político y aumentan la calidad de la representación, en especial la percepción ciudadana de una rendición de cuentas efectiva a través del vínculo directo del pueblo con el líder. Paradójicamente, el aumento de esta dimensión informativa y argumentativa de la rendición de cuentas va de la mano del deterioro progresivo de la dimensión electoral o sustantiva, haciendo difícil su sostenibilidad —analítica y empírica— desde el enfoque de la teoría democrática.

The striking development of Chilean public primary education during the nineteenth century has often been noted. Existing explanations emphasize industrialization and social change in shaping societal demand for schooling, and elite consensus, the role of individual leaders, and low levels of inequality and social heterogeneity in shaping the state's educational provision. This article complements existing state-centered arguments by showing that the institutions of local and regional administration were also crucial in transforming policy changes into real progress in primary education. As Chilean schooling spread and became systematized over the course of the nineteenth century, local state officials not only effectively carried out the state's educational policies but also refined it independently and even pushed for the deepening of educational development, and particularly the systematic control of schooling.

This article highlights the interfaces between micro-level livelihoods, social networks, and macroeconomic trends and policies. Specifically, it analyzes the role of farmer groups in livelihood adaptation of smallholder maize producers in southern Mexico. We show how neoliberal market changes have shaped the local social structure with constraining and enabling effects on households' ability to adapt, while in turn the outcomes of the neoliberal policy reforms are being (re)shaped by the responses of the farmers, thereby changing the structural context. We provide evidence for the heterogeneity of adaptation processes and show that farmers' participation influences the outcomes of neoliberal policy reforms.

El autor, abogado y consultor independiente, nos da cuenta, de primera mano, de la conflictiva Asamblea Constituyente de Bolivia (AC), donde delegados constituyentes elegidos produjeron una nueva constitución política del Estado en 2006–2007. En la AC, movimientos sociales desafiaron modelos de democracia tradicionales representativos, empujando nuevos modelos participativos los cuales incorporaban reivindicaciones étnicos para la justicia. El artículo examina los principales actores (partidos políticos, movimientos sociales, organizaciones no gubernamentales y grupos opositores) y los obstáculos al proceso como la falta de consenso sobre metas y estrategias, la capacidad institucional limitada y una estructura reglamentaria que facilita el veto minoritario de la decisión mayoritaria. El autor concluye que estos problemas finalmente hicieron posible que los intereses y partidos alrededor de la AC dictaran los resultados en lugar de los delegados elegidos.