This essay reviews the following works:

Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America: Trauma, Politics, and Resistance. Edited by Aída Díaz de León, Llorente Marina , and Marcella Salvi. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. Pp. vi + 177. ISBN: 9781498507806.

La consagración de la memoria: Una etnografía acerca de la institucionalización del recuerdo sobre los crímenes del terrorismo de Estado en la Argentina. By Ana Guglielmucci. Buenos Aires: Antropofagia, 2013. Pp. 398. ISBN: 9789871238996.

Art from a Fractured Past: Memory and Truth-Telling in Post-Shining Path Peru. Edited by Cynthia E. Milton. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 307. ISBN: 9780822355304.

Ni tan elefante, ni tan blanco: Arquitectura, urbanismo y política en la trayectoria del Estadio Nacional. By Valentina Rozas Krause. Santiago, Chile: RIL Editores, 2014. Pp. 342. ISBN: 9789560100641.

Memorials in Berlin and Buenos Aires: Balancing Memory, Architecture, and Tourism. By Brigitte Sion. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. Pp. xix + 129. ISBN: 9780739176306.

Editor’s foreword

O Brasil tem apresentado, ao longo da história, resultados educacionais pífios em relação a seus vizinhos latino-americanos. A literatura sugere que uma possível causa do atraso educacional tenha sido o viés elitista das políticas educacionais. Este trabalho traz novas evidências de que as políticas educacionais conduzidas pelo governo federal foram elitistas no período 1930–1964. Embora o ensino primário fosse responsabilidade dos estados, grande parte das receitas tributárias estava sob o poder da União. Assim, as políticas educacionais federais eram importantes para determinar os resultados em todos os níveis de ensino. As evidências coletadas em discursos e em dados de financiamento educacional mostram que as políticas do período tenderam a dar pouca importância ao ensino primário. Em particular, há evidências de que os governos de Getúlio Vargas e Juscelino Kubitschek, os mais compromissados com a estratégia de industrialização por substituição de importações, privilegiaram o ensino superior, em detrimento do ensino primário para as massas.

This essay reviews the following works:

Contrary Destinies: A Century of America’s Occupation, Deoccupation, and Reoccupation of Haiti. By Léon Pamphile. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2015. Pp. xviii + 203. ISBN: 9780813061023.

Politics and Power in Haiti. Edited by Kate Quinn and Paul Sutton. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. xi + 202. ISBN: 9781137311993.

Haiti: Trapped in the Outer Periphery. By Robert Fatton Jr. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014. Pp. ix + 227. ISBN: 9781626370364.

This essay reviews the following works:

Representing the Good Neighbor: Music, Difference and the Pan American Dream. By Carol A. Hess. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xix + 303. $49.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780199919994.

Chilean New Song: The Political Power of Music, 1960s–1973. By J. Patrice McSherry. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015. Pp. xxii + 229. $44.95 paper. ISBN: 9781439911525.

Negro Soy Yo: Hip Hop and Raced Citizenship in Neoliberal Cuba. By Marc D. Perry. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 284. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822358855.

Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico. By Petra R. Rivera-Rideau. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 224. $23.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822359647.

Song and Social Change in Latin America. Edited by Lauren Shaw. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2013. Pp.vi + 249. $70.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780739179482.

Following the implementation of the Lei das Cotas (Affirmative Action Law) in Brazil, there has been debate as to whether students who were admitted through affirmative action perform at the same level as students admitted through traditional methods. This article examines the results of the Exame Nacional de Desempenho dos Estudantes (ENADE) from 2009 to 2012 to determine whether there is a relationship between students’ performance at the university level and the manner of their admittance. We find that students admitted to public universities under affirmative action perform at similar levels to students who were not, whereas quota students in private universities perform slightly better than students admitted through traditional methods.

This article explores the reality of entrepreneurship in the favela of Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro. It contrasts the prescriptions of federal and state training programs and support policies for entrepreneurship with the reality of the practice of entrepreneurial activities in Rocinha. It shows that the logic of effectuation can explain microentrepreneurial trajectories in favelas, expanding its original reach from expert entrepreneurs in large firms. It also exposes the severe shortcomings in the training programs and support policies of the Serviço Brasileiro de Apoio às Micro e Pequenas Empresas (SEBRAE). It points to the urgency of reform of the very foundation of entrepreneurship policies in favelas.

This article explores the role of the samba subgenre partido alto as a mode of resistance to modernization and the Brazilian military regime’s disfiguration of samba music in the 1970s. This resistance ultimately led a handful of samba musicians to create the Grêmio Recreativo de Arte Negra Escola de Samba Quilombo in 1975. While it is true that Quilombo nurtured Afro-Brazilian music and culture, the author demonstrates that its leader and cofounder, Antônio Candeia Filho, acted as a samba preservationist and a pioneer, referencing music of the African diaspora, but also as someone who drew the line when it came to espousing Pan-Africanism. The aversion to Pan-Africanism in Rio de Janeiro’s samba community heightened in the late 1970s, as Black Soul, among other foreign sounds and cultural presences, was perceived as a threat to the primacy of samba.

En los últimos treinta años, la asignación masiva de soluciones habitacionales vía subsidios estatales ha redefinido la relación entre los pobladores (pobres urbanos) chilenos y el Estado. Dichas transformaciones han tensionado los enfoques tradicionales sobre las movilizaciones por la vivienda, erigidas fundamentalmente desde el examen del llamado “Movimiento de Pobladores”, que tuvo lugar en los años sesenta e inicios de los setenta. Usando material etnográfico recabado entre 2010 y 2014, buscamos subsanar tales vacíos analíticos mediante el examen de la reconfiguración histórica de las protestas por derecho a la vivienda y, en este marco, la rearticulación del poblador como subjetividad política; y la relación de la demanda por vivienda digna con la reivindicación del derecho a la ciudad y la vida digna. Así, mostramos cómo el carácter subsidiario y segregador de las políticas de vivienda desarrolladas durante las últimas décadas es cuestionado por la acción colectiva de los pobladores y los procesos de subjetivación política asociados.

This essay reviews the following works:

Making Up the Difference: Women, Beauty, and Direct Selling in Ecuador. By Erynn Masi de Casanova. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Pp. xix + 239. $55.00 cloth: ISBN: 9780292723863.

Dolores del Río: Beauty in Light and Shade. By Linda B. Hall. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. Pp. xvi + 358. $60 cloth. ISBN: 9780804784078.

Queen for a Day: Transformistas, Beauty Queens, and the Performance of Femininity in Venezuela. By Marcia Ochoa. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 277. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822356264.

Of Beasts and Beauty: Gender, Race, and Identity in Colombia. By Michael Edward Stanfield. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. Pp. x + 280. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780292745582.

Beauty and the Beast. By Michael Taussig. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. x + 172. $18.00 paper. ISBN: 9780226789866.

The Chávez government introduced a ‘Bolivarian’ national curriculum to promote radically different understandings of Venezuelan history and identity. We place the fate of this reform initiative within the broader study of state formation and nationalism. Scholars have long identified mass schooling as the key institution for socialising citizens and cultivating national loyalties, and many states have attempted to alter the nationalist content of schooling with these ends in mind. Venezuela constitutes an ideal case for identifying the specific conditions under which transformations of official national ideologies do and do not gain broader resonance. Using evidence derived from textbook analysis and semi-structured interviews with educational officials and teachers in Caracas, we highlight a new argument, showing that intrastate tensions between the central government and teachers, heightened by a well-established cultural machinery and by teachers’ increasing exclusion from the Chavista political coalition, explain the limited success in government efforts to implement Bolivarian nationalism through the school curriculum.

Este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación que analiza la sentencia T-622/14 de la Corte Constitucional Colombiana en torno a la reasignación de sexo de niños intersexuales. El análisis se centra en el estudio de las voces involucradas y en el examen de las estrategias discursivas utilizadas para construir el concepto de intersexualidad. El estudio —cuyo enfoque metodológico es el análisis crítico del discurso y la teoría queer— permite evidenciar cómo el discurso judicial se apropia de otras instancias discursivas para definir, moldear y construir los cuerpos y las vidas que son dignas de existir en una sociedad heterocentrada. Se concluye que para la Corte Constitucional la autonomía y la capacidad de decisión personal son aspectos fundamentales en los casos en los que los sujetos intersexuales desean modificar quirúrgicamente sus cuerpos; sin embargo, en la sentencia se omiten las relaciones de poder que la matriz heterosexual produce sobre estos sujetos.

This essay reviews the following works:

Neoliberalismo corregido y progresismo limitado: Los gobiernos de la Concertación en Chile, 1990–2010. By Manuel Antonio Garretón. Santiago: Editorial ARCIS, CLACSO, 2013. ISBN: 9789568114961.

Radiografía crítica al “modelo chileno”: Balance y propuestas. Edited by Gonzalo Martner and Eugenio Rivera. Santiago: Lom, USACH, 2013. ISBN: 9789560004420.

Economía política del fracaso: La falsa modernización del modelo neoliberal. By Alberto Mayol and José Miguel Ahumada. Santiago: El Desconcierto, 2015. ISBN: 9789569370151.

Los chilenos bajo el neoliberalismo: Clases y conflicto social. By Carlos Ruiz and Giorgio Boccardo. Santiago: El Desconcierto, 2015. ISBN: 9789569370106.

Chile and the Neoliberal Trap: The Post-Pinochet Era. By Andrés Solimano. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9781107003545. (Reprinted in Spanish as Capitalismo a la chilena. Y la prosperidad de las élites. Santiago: Catalonia, 2012. ISBN: 9789563241426.)