A tradition in Latin America of reliance on strong leaders becomes problematic when political parties look outside their ranks for candidates who have popular appeal but do not embody their ideologies. This contradiction emerged in Ecuador in the mid-twentieth century when the Left looked to General Alberto Enríquez Gallo as its champion. His early trajectory in the military made him a most unlikely hero for the Left, but when he promulgated progressive labour legislation he gained its strong support. It was, however, a marriage of convenience, as leftists and populists inherently follow different political logics.

This article examines the ways in which the perception of Rio de Janeiro's drinking water contributed to shaping the city's hydric management in colonial and imperial times. Even though the general assessment of climate and vegetation changed from paradisiacal to noxious in the second half of the eighteenth century in accordance with Enlightenment ideas, this had no effect on the locals’ appreciation of the city's drinking water. The criteria for evaluating the quality and quantity of available water were based on works from classical antiquity and remained essentially unchanged from early colonial times to the end of the empire. Not even population growth and increasing susceptibility to epidemics in the nineteenth century induced the authorities to reform the water supply system, as they were confident that the city was provided with good and abundant water by virtue of its natural predisposition.

Studies of the emergence of the Ecuadorian indigenous movement, which burst onto the national political scene in 1990, have not paid enough attention to indigenous historical consciousness. Using historical and ethnographic evidence, this study examines the emergence of historical consciousness among indigenous peasants involved in the land struggle for the Quinchuquí hacienda, in Otavalo, Ecuador. The research demonstrates that it was only during the struggle for the land that the peasants became aware of the colonial dispossession of indigenous lands. Legitimating their politics in terms of history, they articulated a political identity that increasingly emphasised ethnicity over class.

This essay reviews the following works:

Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina. Edited by Paulina Alberto and Eduardo Elena. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xviii + 373. $120.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781107107632.

Reimagining Black Difference and Politics in Brazil: From Racial Democracy to Multiculturalism. By Alexandre Emboaba Da Costa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. vii + 233. $105.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781137386335.

Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response. By Tanya Katerí Hernández. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. vii + 247. $35.99 paper. ISBN: 9781107695436.

The Color of Love: Racial Features, Stigma, and Socialization in Black Brazilian Families. By Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 311. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9781477307885.

Blackness in the Andes: Ethnographic Vignettes of Cultural Politics in the Time of Multiculturalism. By Jean Muteba Rahier. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. ix + 243. $110.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781137272713.

Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico. By Christina A. Sue. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 234. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780199925506.

Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America. By Edward Telles and the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Pp. xiii + 320. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9781469617831.

Trade in consumer electronics and household appliances in Bolivia operates mainly from popular marketplaces. Multinational corporations enter these once informal, now enhanced economies. This article analyses the expansion of global brands into urban street markets, together with the local branding of electronics and the advancement of popular traders along transnational commodity chains. I argue that these socio-spatial transitions offer a counterintuitive articulation between the informal and the formal. Looking at specific localities along the commodity chain from East Asia to Chile and Bolivia, one sees not mere formalization of informal economies as often expected nor a rampant informalization as attributed to current economic globalization, but piecemeal formalization of traders as much as a partial informalization of all actors involved.

Se presenta un análisis temático de tres debates parlamentarios claves para el tema de la libertad de expresión en el ámbito mediático en Chile desde la vuelta a la democracia: la discusión en torno a la Ley de Prensa 1993–2001, el Informe de la Comisión Especial sobre las Libertades de Pensamiento y Expresión 2007–2010 y el debate de la Ley de Televisión Digital 2008–2014. En todos ellos, la batalla principal se ha librado por el significado mismo de la libertad de expresión, por su contenido meramente negativo —como la libertad de “injerencia” estatal— o el positivo que supone un Estado activo. Los ganadores de los debates argumentaron en contra de la regulación viéndola como una intromisión estatal limitante para el mercado, y reduciendo así la noción de la libertad de expresión a la libertad de empresa.

This article examines two cases of folklorization led by teachers in Peru between 1939 and 1971, and characterized by the participation of the indigenous and mestizo subjects whose local cultures were transformed into folklore. These cases show teachers as active agents of cultural change in Andean schools, who were responding to de-Indianization by promoting a serrano (pertaining to the Sierra) regional identity among their students. In this fashion, teachers were reinventing “local traditions” to produce a new popular identity based on a common regional bond, through which indigenous and mestizo populations could negotiate new waves of cultural interaction with modernity and national society. The first case analyzes the projects of José María Arguedas and Emilio Barrantes to bring local folklore to the school curriculum and to promote an Andean popular culture. The second case explores school folklore competitions organized autonomously by provincial teachers, in which traditional dances were folklorized and turned into a popular spectacle. While framing both folklorization cases within the study of teachers as local intellectuals, the article also highlights the importance of a magisterial culture in Peru that, drawing from the progressive education movement, viewed teachers as agents of sociocultural change and nationalism.

This essay reviews the following works:

Reflections on Uneven Democracies: The Legacy of Guillermo O’Donnell. Edited by Daniel Brinks, Marcelo Leiras, and Scott Mainwaring. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Pp. viii + 422. $34.95 paper. ISBN: 9781421414607.

Problems Confronting Contemporary Democracies: Essays in Honor of Alfred Stepan. Edited by Douglas Chalmers and Scott Mainwaring. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Pp. xii + 487. $75.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780268023720.

The Resilience of the Latin American Right. Edited by Juan-Pablo Luna and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 377. $34.95 paper. ISBN: 9781421413907.

Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America: Emergence, Survival, and Fall. By Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán. Pp. xiv + 353 pages. $35.99 paper. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780521152242.

Democracy in Latin America: Between Hope and Despair. By Ignacio Walker. Translated by Krystin Krause, Holly Bird, and Scott Mainwaring. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Pp. xvi + 262. $38.00 paper. ISBN: 9780268019723.

New book review editor’s introduction.

In order to analyze the gender performance and empowerment of Brazilian female drug traffickers, this article compares the character of Marta in Patrícia Melo’s novel Inferno (2000) with the testimonies of four real female drug traffickers collected in MV Bill and Celso Athayde’s book Falcão: Mulheres e o tráfico (2007). It argues that while female drug traffickers highlight their experience and use their kinship relations, Marta’s access to power and gender transgression are temporary because her community and other drug traffickers do not support her. The article also proposes the term “the most desired positions” to replace “hegemonic masculinities” because of the prominence that cisgender and trans women have begun to have in the world of drug trade.

En los contextos post-descentralización, las relaciones intergubernamentales (RIGs) central-locales adquieren gran relevancia para comprender los procesos de asignación territorial de recursos públicos. La elevada autonomía local en la Provincia de Córdoba, Argentina, hace de ésta un caso apropiado para examinar la complejidad de factores involucrados en la distribución de recursos a municipios y, de este modo, generar aproximaciones heurísticas sobre estos procesos a nivel regional. Este estudio (a) da cuenta de la coexistencia de dos subsistemas de RIGs, a través de los cuales los gobiernos locales procuran acceder a recursos públicos de decisión discrecional, uno conformado por redes políticas formales y otro por una diversidad de redes políticas informales; (b) se observa un efecto sistemático de ambos tipos de redes sobre las chances de acceso de los gobiernos locales a recursos de decisión discrecional del gobierno provincial; (c) se advierte que los gobiernos locales adoptan una estrategia combinada de vinculación a ambos tipos de redes, priorizando el mecanismo de la cohesión en las redes formales y la intermediación en las redes informales.

This essay reviews the following works:

Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman. By Jeremy Adelman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. Pp. xv + 740. $39.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780691155678.

Kalman Silvert: Engaging Latin America, Building Democracy. Edited by Abraham F. Lowenthal and Martin Weinstein. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. Pp. vii + 195. $24.50 paper. ISBN: 9781626375550.

Disciplinary Conquest: U.S. Scholars in South America, 1900–1945. By Ricardo D. Salvatore. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. xii + 329. $94.95 cloth. $26.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822360957.