This article evaluates postelector al conflicts in Mexico’s Oaxaca state before and after the state government legally recognized usos y costumbres—local leader selection via traditional practices (rather than parties and secret ballots). Assessing usos y costumbres within the normative debate between multiculturalists and pluralists on incorporation of ethnic minorities, the article compares the level of postelectoral conflict in usos y costumbres and non-usos y costumbres municipalities. It argues that since such conflicts have increased in Oaxaca over the last decade while simultaneously diminishing dramatically in Mexico’s other 31 states, the cause is probably unique to Oaxaca. Conflict may be at least partially attributed to perverse implementation incentives created by the law’s provocation of conflicts requiring mediation (rather than judicial verdicts). While further research is needed to test normative claims that usos y costumbres increase governing institutions’ credibility and foster positive group identities, the article concludes that while the customary practices “experiment” has failed at least by one criterion, it may warrant reconsideration if customary elections can be viewed as a set of evolving, instrumental processes, rather than as fixed, static, and essentialist conditions.

We examine the extent to which social networks among indigenous peoples in Mexico have a significant effect on a variety of human capital investment and economic activities, such as school attendance and work among teenage boys and girls, and migration, welfare participation, employment status, occupation, and sector of employment among adult males and females. Using data from the 10 percent population sample of the 2000 Population and Housing Census of Mexico and the empirical strategy that Bertrand, Luttmer, and Mullainathan (2000) propose, which allows us to take into account the role of municipality and language group fixed effects, we confirm empirically that social network effects play an important role in the economic decisions of indigenous people, especially in rural areas. Our analysis also provides evidence that better access to basic services such as water and electricity increases the size and strength of network effects in rural areas.

Latin American politics has taken a left turn in the past decade, with an increasing number of chief executives hailing from left-of-center parties. We investigate the political and socioeconomic factors explaining political ideology of the chief executive in a sample of one hundred elections taking place between 1975 and 2007 in eighteen Latin American countries. We find that the commodity booms in agricultural, mining, and oil are positively and significantly related to the probability that a country will have a chief executive from a left-of-center political party. However, for oil exports, we observe that this effect holds only for Venezuela. We also show that past political discrimination and government crises are positively and significantly associated with a move to more left-wing chief executives. Openness to trade and having a president from the right in the previous presidential term negatively affects the probability of having a more liberal president, although the effect of trade openness disappears when the incumbent president is a conservative. We also find that when a government crisis occurs during a term with a president from the right, the probability of having a president from the left in the following term increases significantly.

As reflexões sobre música popular com frequência enfatizam os casos de experiência musical voluntários, motivados por adesões identitárias, afetivas e simbólicas que os indivíduos e grupos sociais realizam com as músicas que gostam. Mas nem sempre é assim. Este texto tem como objetivo discutir as situações nas quais a experiência musical compulsória gera incomodo nos ouvintes, irritando e intimidando aqueles que não compartilham do prazer de ouvir determinado repertório. O exemplo debatido aqui é o caso do funk, gênero musical brasileiro com histórica vinculação com o contexto das periferias, morros e favelas e que volta a surgir como tema privilegiado na mídia a partir de seu uso nos fenômenos dos rolezinhos, causando incômodo e rechaço. Pensar sobre o incômodo do popular-funkeiro-periférico significa reprocessar ideias sobre a desigualdade social, num contexto de grandes transformações sociais, políticas e comportamentais no Brasil e no mundo.

Usando como fuente una muestra de sumarios realizados a maestros de escuela en el período 1946–1955 este trabajo describe y analiza el impacto de la emergencia del peronismo en el campo escolar. El artículo explora el uso de la práctica de la denuncia en ese contexto y muestra que la llegada del peronismo puso en jaque la integración de la comunidad escolar. El nivel de conflicto contradice la imagen que el gobierno había construido sobre los maestros al hacerlos responsables de una campaña simbólica que buscaba generar consenso en torno de la figura de Perón y del nuevo régimen. La discusión centrada en el campo escolar sirve para exponer algunas hipótesis generales sobre el peronismo. A través de ésta se muestra cómo los ciudadanos participaron, aunque de una forma heterodoxa, en la construcción de la hegemonía peronista y cómo el peronismo generó al mismo tiempo solidaridades y tensiones nuevas aún dentro del mismo grupo social y/o profesional.

Some deem the Bolsa Família program (BF) in Brazil to be a quintessentially clientelistic tool, thought to have produced colossal sociodemographic transformations in the base of support of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, particularly in the 2006 election. An earlier article (Bohn 2011) maintained that significant changes in Lula's electoral base took place prior to his reelection; other social policies, such as the Benefício de Prestação Continuada, contributed significantly to the changes in Lula's camp; and, most important, that the link between the receipt of social benefits and vote is less straightforward than those who view Bolsa Família as a clientelistic program assume it to be. This work addresses some of the criticisms that the article received and reinforces the need for further research that uses individual-based data to disentangle the complexity of the electoral behavior of the poor in highly unequal societies.

El presente artículo reflexiona sobre una de las maneras a través de las cuales la sociedad boliviana contemporánea ha intentado resolver el brusco vaciamiento de la concepción de lo nacional en la era neoliberal. El artículo argumenta que la hoja de coca ha sido uno de los elementos más importantes en llenar este vacío. Su poder simbólico ha hecho posible bajo determinadas circunstancias (políticas, sociales y culturales) pasar de ser un elemento clave de representación local a otro nacional. Asimismo, la hoja de coca contiene la siempre problemática relación entre lo local y la política global de su erradicación. Precisamente, uno de los aspectos que contribuye al fortalecimiento de la hoja de coca como símbolo en determinado momento es la lucha de los productores de coca en contra de tales políticas. Como marco de referencia de la argumentación se utiliza la noción de sistema-mundo de Immanuel Wallerstein, la idea de globalización de Thomas Barnett y la concepción de representación de Ernesto Laclau.

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.