Through shedding light on traditional Pentecostalism in Brazil this article reveals how middle-class people in São Paulo, Brazil, manage disappointment relating to current socio-economic conditions. Ethnographic research on Brazil's oldest Pentecostal church, which preserves an anachronistic style of practice, shows how people embrace a marginal identity and thereby critique social conditions in the country. In stark contrast to newer forms of Pentecostalism, people featured in this paper respond to an ‘anti-prosperity gospel’, in which failures and setbacks are construed as signs of spiritual purity and development. In a country where a ‘new middle class’ is supposedly finding prosperity, this study shows a religiously-oriented way in which people confront the disappointing gap between the promises of neoliberalism and the realities of jobless growth.

This article chronicles the fifteen-month border conflict between the military regimes of Brazil and Paraguay that occurred between March of 1965 and June of 1966 – a stand-off that paved the way for the Itaipu project that would become the largest dam in the world. In the context of the 1960s Cold War, both governments saw a large-scale dam on the Paraná River as a means to catalyse industrialisation and strengthen the political legitimacy of their respective authoritarian regimes. Yet the border crisis was not a stand-off between equal powers. Brazil was the much stronger force, and, with the backing of the United States, the Brazilian dictatorship brought Paraguay firmly under its sphere of influence while also marginalising neighbouring Argentina. The border question at Guaíra served as a springboard for Brazil's rising power, and subsequently transformed the geopolitical landscape of the Southern Cone.

This article explores the international expansion of Mexican banks and its implications for the domestic banking system during the decade leading up to the 1982 debt crisis. In contrast to the prevalent focus in the literature on profitability and performance, I examine the asset and liability structure of the banking sector and show that there were clear signs of deterioration in its financial condition well before the onset of the crisis. Financial statement analysis reveals that the banks engaged in international lending and foreign funding were the ones with the greatest propensity to be adversely affected by this problem. The international expansion of Mexican banks emerged and developed as an exit option to domestic funding problems and increasing competition from foreign bank loans, in a context of growing needs for financing and foreign exchange in Mexico.

With polling and municipal level data, we analyse the determinants of Salvador Allende's presidential election victory in 1970 and the change in political and electoral support for his government (1970–3). Support for Allende is explained by ideology more than by social class, socio-demographic variables or the economic performance of the country. Allende won in 1970 as an opposition candidate when the outgoing Frei administration enjoyed high approval and the country was experiencing favourable economic conditions. In 1973, when Allende had 49.7% approval, ideology remained the strongest determinant of presidential approval. Economic variables and social class are less important in explaining electoral support for Allende and for his Popular Unity coalition.

This article unpacks the effect that the presence of diffuse licit and illicit power structures has on states and citizens in the modern world. It does so by investigating how a drug cartel undermined social movement organisation around electricity provision in the San Marcos province of Guatemala. The cartel's presence contributed directly to the demise of movement activity and impeded the effective development of movement strategies in the face of menacing – albeit veiled – threats. In addition, the state's inability or unwillingness to prevent the violent assassination of movement leaders undermined the legitimacy of the central state in the eyes of movement leaders. This also contributed to the reproduction of the ‘unrule of law’ on the ground through the movement's subsequent rejection of formal state institutions.

How did governance in Kirchner's Argentina and Chávez's Venezuela interact with popular mobilisation? How have popular sectors engaged with and participated in Left-of-centre governance? Using ethnographic data, we argue that the answers to these questions lie in three social mechanisms that we call recognition, incorporation and selective mobilisation. We analyse how activists and participants interpreted and contested these mechanisms, paying attention to how they informed the everyday life of activism and the situated actions of participants. Underscoring their socially embedded and path-dependent nature, we argue that these mechanisms shaped mobilisation differently in each country.

Following Tulio Halperín Donghi's pioneering work, historians have tried to explain why Argentina experienced a dramatic export-led expansion in the first half of the nineteenth century despite a lack of price incentives. This paradox is resolved by a new estimate of Argentina's terms of trade. It suggests that they probably improved by at least 2,000 per cent from the 1780s to the first decade of the twentieth century, so there were considerable price incentives for export-led growth. Labour and capital moved into the export sector, bringing into production the country's Pampean land – a previously under-utilised resource. This suggests that Argentina's expansion in the long nineteenth century was less a result of internal factors than a response to globalisation.