This article examines the implementation of Peru's new water law and discusses how it produces new forms of water citizenship. Inspired by the global paradigm of “integrated water resources management,” the law aims to include all citizens in the management of the country's water resources by embracing a “new water culture.” We ask what forms of water citizenship emerge from the new water law and how they engage with local water practices and affect existing relations of inequality. We answer these questions ethnographically by comparing previous water legislation and how the new law currently is negotiated and contested in three localities in Peru's southern highlands. We argue that the law creates a new water culture that views water as a substance that is measurable, quantifiable, and taxable, but that it neglects other ways of valuing water. We conclude that water citizenship emerges from the particular ways water authorities and water users define rights to access and use water, on the one hand, and obligations to contribute to the construction and maintenance of water infrastructure and pay for the use of water, on the other.

Este artigo examina a atuação do escritor Jorge Amado como redator chefe no jornal literário Dom Casmurro (1937-1946). Conhecido e consagrado por sua produção literária iniciada ainda em 1931, o escritor baiano também foi figura atuante na vida política e cultural nacional. Embora estudiosos considerem a importância de Jorge Amado como literato e militante neste período, a atuação em Dom Casmurro tem recebido pouca atenção. Ao assumir em 1939 a redação deste periódico, num momento marcado por perseguições e censura do Estado Novo, Jorge Amado já militava no Partido Comunista além de ter publicado seis romances de sucesso. Por sua vez Dom Casmurro se constitui em um relevante periódico de literatura e cultura, desenvolvendo em suas páginas intenso debate sobre qual era efetivamente seu papel. Era ele veículo de expressão literária ou representante de uma determinada corrente política? Interessa neste artigo compreender as tensões que marcaram as relações entre os intelectuais, a imprensa e a política durante o Estado Novo através deste jornal e da atuação de Jorge Amado.

El Gran Chaco Argentino constituye la mayor extensión forestal y el más grande reservorio de biomasa del hemisferio sur extratropical. El sector situado al oeste de la isohieta de setecientos milímetros constituye el ambiente del Chaco Semiárido o Seco, ocupando sectores de las provincias de Salta, Chaco, Formosa, Santiago del Estero y Tucumán. Esta área del Chaco tiene una gran diversidad biológica y se caracteriza por un acelerado proceso de deforestación, en especial para la implantación del cultivo de soja. Concebido como un territorio vacío en términos demográficos, prevalece sobre el Chaco la idea de pobreza y marginalidad. Los cambios que están ocurriendo en los márgenes de este ambiente en relación con la expansión de la frontera agropecuaria, afecta a las poblaciones locales, transformando su dinámica demográfica. Este trabajo, por ello, trata de mostrar la magnitud de la deforestación y el impacto del avance de la frontera agropecuaria (especialmente del cultivo de soja) sobre la dinámica demográfica del área.

This note reviews the targeting performance of Bolsa Família and its impact on inequality, poverty, consumption, education, health care, and labor force participation. Bolsa Família has several design and implementation characteristics that distance it from a pure human-capital-based conditional cash transfer model. For that reason, we compare the impact of Bolsa Família to that of other conditional cash transfer programs in Latin America, such as in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Chile. We show that, as have other programs, Bolsa Família has helped reduce inequality and extreme poverty and has improved education outcomes, without having a negative impact on labor force participation. Where the program has failed to have its intended impact, in health and nutrition, supply-side constraints seem to be the principal problem.

This article examines the actions that millions of new-poor Argentine citizens took when confronted with impoverishment during the country's economic crisis in 2002. Drawing on World Bank and Latinobarómetro survey data, it explores how their distinct understandings of citizenship; their possession of human, social, physical, cultural, and financial capital; and aspects of their middle-class identity shaped the very specific forms of resistance that they adopted compared to the structural poor. It provides insights into why some citizens perceived their hardship as a political problem, formed collective grievances, and manifested their resistance through protest, while others located the causes of hardship in their own deficiencies and tended to confine their responses to individual self-improvement strategies. It also finds that differences in personal biographies, experiences of poverty, and the changing spaces available to protest influenced individuals' choice of action.

Este artículo discute la relación entre el Fondo Común Municipal (FCM) y la convergencia de ingresos municipales en Chile entre 2001 y 2011. Utilizando cuasi experimentos y ecuaciones dinámicas, se demuestra que este instrumento no tiene un efecto significativo en la velocidad de convergencia. El débil desarrollo de la descentralización y los bajos incentivos de las municipalidades para obtener fuentes propias de financiamiento, podrían promover diversos comportamientos estratégicos que distorsionarían el efecto redistributivo del FCM en las municipalidades, disminuyendo su impacto en la reducción de las disparidades territoriales en Chile.

In many Latin American countries, indigenous populations have recently exhibited rapid growth. Many scholars recognize that this indigenous population resurgence is due to a combination of demographic processes, such as births, deaths, and migration, as well as changing racial-ethnic identities. However, there is little quantitative data verifying the relative importance of these two types of processes for indigenous population growth. We seek to fill this gap by quantifying the relative contribution of both mechanisms in Brazil's indigenous population resurgence. Our findings indicate that during the 1990s, race-ethnic reclassification was more important than demographic processes. This varied regionally, in that identity change was most important in northeastern and southeastern Brazil. These findings bear implications regarding indigenous movements, identity politics, and prospective indigenous population growth in Brazil and elsewhere.

El artículo que presentamos proviene de una investigación sobre trayectorias laborales ascendentes de inmigrantes peruanos en Chile y problematiza las condiciones en que se lleva a cabo su ingreso al mercado del trabajo. Tras las trayectorias laborales que aparecen “exitosas”, se aprecian problemáticas profundas que estos hombres y mujeres viven sin mayores alternativas y que incorporan en sus existencias como habitus. Organizando una mirada sociológica que ingrese en la conformidad económica que los/las caracteriza, descubrimos que permanecen en un “lugar aparte” que contiene elementos jurídicos, históricos, políticos e identitarios, que configuran una inserción parcial a la sociedad chilena a pesar de los esfuerzos realizados. La principal razón que obstaculiza este proceso es el racismo cotidiano que mella sus vidas y que afecta sus relaciones laborales y su posición social. El lugar aparte es un terreno frágil donde organizan sus existencias en torno a una búsqueda de aceptación jamás lograda.

Although it is widely acknowledged that Althusser's writings had a lasting impact in Latin America, the French philosopher's reception in the region has been underresearched. The present article investigates the impact of Althusserianism on the cultural politics of the Argentine New Left during the late 1960s and early 1970s. First, I survey the intellectual trajectory of Juan Carlos Portantiero, a New Left intellectual, scholar, and political activist whose writings left a mark on the Argentine historiography of Peronism. Second, I turn to Los Libros (1969–1976), a journal of cultural criticism run by a 1960 cohort of internationally renowned Argentine intellectuals. I analyze the group's Althusser-inspired intervention into contemporaneous debates on the meaning of Peronism and the link between aesthetics and politics. I close by registering the productive influence of Althusserianism on Argentine intellectual production after the country's transition to democracy in 1983.

Job-market discrimination research in the United States and Europe measures discrimination by a majority against racial minorities, discrimination that stems from historical patterns of inequality and privilege. Chilean researchers have applied these models to study class-based discrimination, finding some evidence to support its existence. Their innovative methods make race as well as class visible, and contradictions in their work show racial differences among Chileans. This research note highlights the interesting research from a new generation of labor economists who have simultaneously pushed the sanctioned limits of social debate and reaffirmed dominant explanations of inequality. Critical race theory is useful for making sense of the contradictions in their work and, it is argued, can improve the quality of Chilean social science research so as to reach a more accurate and self-reflective understanding of the sources and effects of inequality in Chile.

Este texto aborda, a partir da estruturação efuncionamento de canais institucionais, a cooperação e influência norte-americana sobre o Exército Brasileiro na década de 1940 e início de 1950. Estes canais foram as comissões militares mistas que funcionaram em Washington e no Rio de Janeiro a partir de 1942, os programas de visita e treinamento de militares brasileiros nos EUA e os programas de assistência norte-americana às instituições de ensino militar no Brasil. Tais programas, somados às transferências de material bélico, resultaram numa forte influência organizacional, doutrinária e política norteamericana sobre as Forças Armadas brasileiras, particularmente sobre o exército. Tal influência, contudo, também gerou resistências, adaptações e tensões no corpo de oficiais.