Aunque Nicaragua sea el país más pobre de Centroamérica, no cuenta con la tasa de mortalidad infantil más alta de la región. La más igualitaria distribución del ingreso en Nicaragua, en comparación con otros países centroamericanos, es un factor que favorece la relativamente baja mortalidad. Empero, la población indígena nicaragüense afronta grandes desventajas en casi todos los aspectos, aunque esto no se refleja en la desigualdad nacional por ser una población minoritaria. Aprovechando el censo de 2005 y la regresión binomial negativa, modelamos la mortalidad infantil. Mostramos cómo los niños indígenas tienen 33 por ciento más riesgo de muerte, e incluso controlando otros factores, la diferencia del riego es casi del 5 por ciento. Hasta ahora no existían investigaciones cuantitativas que compararan la mortalidad entre grupos étnicos en Nicaragua. En nuestro estudio mostramos que los indígenas nicaragüenses están en desventaja a pesar de la baja desigualdad a nivel nacional.

Debates surrounding race in Brazil have become increasingly fraught in recent years as the once hegemonic concept of racial democracy (democracia racial) continues to be subject to an ever more agnostic scrutiny. Parallel to these debates, and yet ultimately inseparable from them, is the question of what it is to be “white.” In this interdisciplinary paper, we argue that whiteness has become increasingly established in Brazilian public discourse as a naturalized category. Seeking afresh perspective on what we perceive to have become a sterile debate, we examine Machado de Assis and his work to illustrate how assumptions surrounding his short story “Pai contra mãe,” and indeed comments on the author's very body, reveal the extent to which whiteness has come to be seen as nonnegotiable and fixed. Placing a close reading of Machado's text at the heart of the article, we explain its implications for the scholarly debates now unfolding in Brazil concerning the construction of whiteness. The article then develops an anthropological reading of whiteness by pointing to the inherent differences between perspectives of race as a process and perspectives of race as a fixed and naturalized given.

The Brazilian film director Jorge Furtado's O homem que copiava centers on two plots, both based on accepted social discourses: how to escape lower-middle-class poverty; and the perennial question of the obstacles to love. These two plots are intertwined when the love quest is made to depend on the former, that is, when success in love is predicated on success in social mobility. However, in making the film's protagonist black, Furtado inserts the question of race into these two discourses and highlights the discursive absence of race in dealing with the problems of poverty and race relations. The film underscores the role of education and the discursive implications of social representation in excluding marginalized groups from social mobility while exploring the underside of the mestiçagem myth, the role of race in the question of national identity.

This article examines the breadth and depth of anti-Americanism in contemporary Latin America. Using individual-level data from 2012, we employ regression analysis to understand why some Latin American citizens are more likely than others to distrust the government of the United States. By examining the attitudes of citizens of countries that are part of different groupings—such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas and the Pacific Alliance—we find great variation in the levels and predictors of anti-Americanism. While citizens' ideology is a common predictor in most countries, other variables such as the receipt of remittances, the perception of insecurity, and nationalism appear as predictors in only some. Furthermore, although there is a positive correlation between presidential approval and anti-Americanism in countries where leaders have an overtly anti-American discourse, this relationship disappears in countries where the president is perceived as neutral, and it is inverse in countries where the president is perceived as pro-American.

Este artículo aborda los debates en torno a la Ley de la Música Autóctona Tradicional Puertorriqueña, aprobada en el 2004, tomando en cuenta el complejo contexto en el que opera: un mercado musical profundamente asimétrico, cuyas dinámicas económicas, parámetros legales y valoraciones estéticas se ven atravesados por las tramas de la globalización y la condición colonial. Partiendo de un repaso histórico de las políticas culturales en Puerto Rico y de un examen de las transformaciones en las prácticas y representaciones de la música puertorriqueña en las últimas décadas, se analiza cómo los discursos sobre lo autóctono y lo tradicional, movilizados en defensa u oposición de la ley, se relacionan con asuntos sensitivos en la sociedad puertorriqueña contemporánea como lo son: el prejuicio racial, la desigualdad social y la subordinación política. Por otra parte, se abordan iniciativas y estrategias generadas por los propios músicos con el objetivo de preservar, transmitir, difundir y desarrollar las tradiciones musicales, al tiempo que agencian espacio laboral y capital simbólico.

This article tells the story of how an important group of social scientists in Latin America turned away from the problems of underdevelopment to the possibilities for democracy. It focuses on a network of leading Latin American intellectuals and their North American counterparts brought together by material stringencies as well as intellectual and political concerns arising from the sweeping wave of authoritarianism in the region. Brokered by private institutions and mediated by personal encounters, the decade-long endeavors of the network reveal the mechanisms through which social scientific paradigms are undone and refashioned.

Scholarly literature has often characterized the popular bandit Chucho el Roto (1835?–1885) in terms of his legend as Mexico's urban Robin Hood, yet no study has attempted to discern how this legend took root and changed over time. This investigation brings together historical documents and literary texts about Chucho el Roto from the 1880s to the 1920s to analyze changing cultural perceptions of social class tensions in Mexico. It finds that Chucho provided a vehicle for both lower and upper classes to critically reflect on the morality of dominant society and to unite behind the resiliency and dignity of the oppressed working class. While the earliest literary text from 1889 criticizes Chucho for refusing to submit to dominant social norms and accept his place in the socioeconomic hierarchy, two post-1910 novels celebrate Chucho's banditry as a socialist-inspired political rebellion that resists assimilation into dominant political paradigms, including that of revolution.

Political parties are crucial for democratic politics; thus, the growing incidence of party and party system failure raises questions about the health of representative democracy the world over. This article examines the collapse of the Venezuelan party system, arguably one of the most institutionalized party systems in Latin America, by examining the individual-level basis behind the exodus of partisans from the traditional parties. Multinomial logit analysis of partisan identification in 1998, the pivotal moment of the system’s complete collapse, indicates that people left the old system and began to support new parties because the traditional parties failed to incorporate and give voice to important ideas and interests in society while viable alternatives emerged to fill this void in representation.

En el articulo analizaré las conmemoraciones del Primero de Mayo en la ciudad de Porto Alegre, capital de Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil, pensándolas como momentos privilegiados de la construcción de la identidad obrera en los cuales el proletariado, ganando las calles, presentaba orgullosamente sus símbolos y la fuerza de su cohesión frente a los otros sectores de la sociedad, y también como momentos de disputas en torno al significado de la fecha, a través de los cuales es posible observar tanto la influencia de la circulación de las ideas como las contradicciones del movimiento obrero internacional en el paso del siglo XIX al siglo XX

Este artículo sigue las sugerencias de Weber de estudiar cómo diferentes tipos de dominación se combinan en experiencias históricas concretas. Se analizan las sinergias y tensiones entre el liderazgo carismático de Rafael Correa y criterios tecnocráticos. A diferencia de líderes neopopulistas que encargaron sus políticas económicas a expertos neoliberales, Correa combina en su persona al experto con el político carismático. En su oratoria y en sus programas de televisión y radio semanales Correa compagina tecnocracia y carisma y se presenta como el profesor y redentor de la nación. Expertos posneoliberales están en las posiciones más importantes del régimen. Comparten con Correa la idea de estar liderando un ciclo de cambios profundos, de encarnar los intereses de toda la sociedad y no de sectores particulares, y la misión de llevar a cabo la refundación de la nación. Las tensiones entre criterios tecnocráticos y carisma se evidenciaron en la crisis política causada por una rebelión policial en la que los criterios carismáticos opacaron consideraciones racionales y estratégicas. Si bien el carisma y la tecnocracia pueden convivir en el discurso, el carisma es inestable y subvierte los intentos de gobernar a través del conocimiento de los expertos.

While political polarization may lead to gridlock and other negative policy outcomes, representation is likely to be enhanced when parties differentiate themselves from each other and make it easier for voters to see the connection between their personal ideologies and the electoral offerings. These differences between parties may be especially important in developing democracies, where voters are still learning parties' priorities and where parties do not always emphasize issues when campaigning. To test this proposition, I develop a measure of elite polarization in Latin America since the early 1990s based on legislative surveys. Individual-level voting patterns from mass survey data confirm that the connection between voters' self-placement on the left-right scale and their electoral choice is stronger in polarized party systems, even when controlling for other party system factors like the age of the party system or electoral fragmentation. This effect on voting behavior is not immediate, however, as voters take time to recognize the new cues being provided by the changing party system.

The transvestite, as a figure that contests both heteronormativity and machismo, has remained in the cinema of Latin America, unlike its literature, a rather unexplored theme. Although some films have attempted to deal with such a figure, they have devoted very little diegetic time either to the process of physical and psychological transformation from man to woman or to showing transvestism as the externalization of the character's self-perceived gender identity. This article aims to show that the lack of on-screen transvestism in Arturo Ripstein's El lugar sin límites (1978), Miguel Barreda's Simón, el gran varón (2002), and Karim Aïnouz's Madame Satã (2002) is caused by a kind of heteronormative filmic fear to depict the fluidity of sexuality beyond the biologically oriented binary man-woman. I suggest that Latin American audiences do not respond positively to transvestitic images (i.e., the cinematic acknowledgment of transvestism) because they transgress the fixity of gender roles within heteronormativity.

Many cross-national surveys examine the extent to which citizens of new democracies believe that democracy is always preferable to any other form of government. There is little evidence, however, regarding how such attitudes affect citizen behavior. This article examines the case of Bolivia, asking whether and how Bolivians' attitudes toward democracy affect participation, including contacts with public officials and involvement in political parties and social movements. Through analysis of nationwide survey data, I show that preferences for democracy have little effect on participation in party meetings or protests. Examining the relationship more carefully, I then show that, for Bolivians who favor institutional methods of representation, support for democracy increases attachment to the traditional political system and decreases protest; for citizens who favor popular methods of representation, it has the opposite impact. I conclude by discussing the implications for scholarship on democratization, which often conflates preferences for democracy with political stability.

Este artículo explica los efectos de la violencia y, en particular, el tipo de violencia relacionado con los cárteles de droga y su influencia sobre la competitividad electoral a nivel local (municipal). Resulta pertinente comprender y estimar este efecto para asegurar que la democracia, definida sobre la base de su requisito más elemental—es decir, elecciones libres y justas —, no se deteriore o transite al autoritarismo en los gobiernos locales. Los resultados revelan un deterioro en la competitividad electoral a nivel local debido a la violencia relacionada con el tráfico ilegal de drogas. Las estrategias represivas del gobierno mexicano no han sido efectivas en prevenir este resultado.