Cycles of bureaucratic corruption in nineteenth-century Cuba evolved according to institutional conditions shaped by interest groups, financial needs, imperatives of colonial governance, and internal conflicts and war. Corrupt gain inimical to general public interest was not a consequence of cultural constants, but of unreconstructed institutional flaws and weaknesses. The risks of engaging in bureaucratic corruption diminished under the systematic condoning of administrative faults, collusive allowance of illegal slave trafficking, and a code of illegal rewards expected by loyalist officials opposing colonial reform. Despite some few anti-corruption initiatives, the prosecution and punishment of corrupt officials was lax. The implicit, yet significant, financial, institutional and political costs of corruption contributed to the demise of Spanish imperial dominion over Cuba and left a damaging burden and legacy for Cuban civil society.

This article argues that the training and employment policies of Chile's transition governments since 1990 have failed significantly to promote the development of human resources and occupational citizenship, and identifies key structural and political causes. In particular, the weak development of the property rights of labour and of markets in skill are seen as enduring economic and institutional legacies of the period of dictatorship which continue to constrain key areas of economic development as well as social citizenship rights. The article advocates an analysis of citizenship and skill development that identifies the problem of institutional coordination between a range of different services in labour markets. It suggests that the social organisation of skill markets in Chile systematically discriminates against long-term investments in workers. Hence, even in Chile where economic reformers have sought to maximise markets, decisions on skill investments are, to an important degree, conditioned by power relations and organisational inertia inside individual firms and, at the aggregate level, by the selective channelling of information and the (unplanned) institutional structuring of training supply.

The origin of illicit economies has been understood as a consequence of ‘low stateness’ (i.e. low reach of the state). Given the limited stateness in many regions, however, this article seeks to explain how only some sub-national territories have become vulnerable to illegal drug trafficking. To make this case, the representative example of the Alto Huallaga valley, in the Peruvian Amazon, is analysed. This article argues that ineffective development and settlement efforts by the Peruvian state in the Alto Huallaga, rather than the absence of the state, produced socio-ecological conditions in the region, in the late 1970s, that made it more vulnerable to the illegal economy. At the same time as international demand for illegal cocaine was expanding, two conditions resulting from frustrated state development plans came together: an enclave of poor peasants who were not self-sufficient and a natural environment impoverished by soil degradation and intensive deforestation, paradoxically not suitable for any crop except coca.

Participatory budgeting (PB) has been one of the most popular local democratic reforms in Latin America in recent decades. This article examines what happened to PB when it was scaled up to the state level and integrated in a participatory system in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (2011–14). Using theories of deliberative systems, multichannel participation, ‘venue shopping’ (the practice of seeking the most favourable policy venue) and countervailing power, as well as a multimethod research design, we explain how the systems approach allowed for both deliberation and direct democracy and mobilised new sectors to participate online. However, on the negative side, the different participation channels undermined each other. Social movements migrated to other spaces, leaving the budgeting process open to control by well-established, powerful public-sector groups.

In the 1940s Bolivia's mineworkers achieved a major impact in national elections. The electoral system was favourable to them (far more so than after the 1952 National Revolution); they acquired a unified and effective national leadership, with extensive back-up organization in all the main mining camps; they, therefore, began casting their votes as a single block, an expression of mineworkers' exceptional degree of solidarity in various parts of the world; and the political parties that courted their votes were constrained by the demands of their electorate, not only to adopt intransigent language but actually to become more radical in their programmes, recruitment and commitments.

The rise of Cuban sugar production from 1800 to world dominance in the 1920s is briefly portrayed, together with its collapse, recovery and subsequent stagnation between the 1930s and the Revolution of 1959. The renewed and further growth of the sugar economy from 1959–89 is considered in the context of the uniquely favourable terms of trade then developed with the USSR and COMECON. These provided expanding markets and financed the technical transformation of the cultivation, harvesting, transhipment and processing of the sugar cane. From 1993 to 2002, following the implosion of the USSR and the dissolution of COMECON, Cuba could produce little more than one half of the average annual sugar output of the 1980s. This collapse and the inability of the island's planners to reverse it are discussed with particularly emphasis on post-1997 efforts to stabilise production and lower costs to meet persistently unfavourable world market sugar prices. A critical appraisal of the drastic ‘restructuring’ programme announced in 2002 is illustrated by primary data collected in fieldwork in 1994, 1996 and 2002 and Cuba's dramatic post-1991 decline from dominance in the international sugar trade is stressed.

This article explores the worship of La Santa Muerte through a geo-mapping of street altars in Mexico City followed by an ethnographic analysis of the devotees' relationships with the saint. I find that this saint has gained momentum among the fast-growing prison population over the last two decades. In contrast to studies that emphasise the desertification of mass incarceration elsewhere, this study finds that La Santa Muerte connects families across the social abyss of imprisonment. I suggest that the family-like relationships that devotees maintain with this saint are crucial to understanding her success. Rather than a one-dimensional sacred defender of criminals and police she is adopted by prisoners, prison officers, police and their families as a capricious ‘family member’, embracing the same ambivalence as the forces she helps to navigate.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ethos of interculturalidad in Mexico's recently founded universidades interculturales. On the basis of documentation and interviews with faculty in five universities, institutionalisation of intercultural higher education within the state sector can be seen to have created a space in which the politics of recognition meet the radical ideas of educators in the tradition of constructivism and educación popular. Intercultural higher education does not select students on the basis of race, but the location of the campuses and the content of courses are designed to attract indigenous students. The introduction of field research early in the undergraduate course should transform the relationship between students and their communities of origin, and prepare them for leadership roles. The article concludes with a critique of what it calls ‘hard’ multiculturalism.

The military coup d'état which installed General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez as President of El Salvador during December 1931 created a crisis involving the 1923 Washington Treaties. By the terms of these accords, the Central American nadons had pledged to withhold recognition from governments seizing power through force in any of the isthmian republics. Although not a signatory of the treaty, the United States based its recognition policy on this principle. Through this means the State Department had attempted to impose some stability in Central America, by discouraging revolts. With the co-operation of the isthmian governments, United States diplomats endeavored to bring pressure to bear on the leaders of any uprising, to deny them the fruits of their victory, and thus reduce the constant series of coups and counter-coups that normally characterized Central American politics.

This essay evaluates the political economy of Mexico during the Porfirian period (1876–1911), with the aim of discussing advances in scholarship and presenting an outline of the elements for a future research agenda. To this end, the essay examines the current state of knowledge on four crucial aspects of the Mexican economy: growth and its dimensions; the state, finance and economic strategies; the construction and functioning of the internal market; and the international economic relations of Mexico during the first period of globalisation. In particular, it assesses the arguments that link features of Porfirian economic organisation with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910.

This article analyses how the Brazilian Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens (Movement of Dam-Affected People, MAB) has been represented in the press, in the context of networks of resistance to large hydroelectric dams in Latin America. We analyse how the press deploys linguistic-discursive resources in producing and constructing meaning and focus in its presentation of news about anti-dam protests. The study analyses print media reporting on anti-dam protests in Minas Gerais between 1998 and 2005, and shows how, at different moments and in different political contexts, representations of social protest have changed and newspaper reports have either ignored, criminalised or provided visibility to MAB in this region.

The regional impact of the economic integration between Mexico and its northern neighbours remains virtually unexplored for Mexico. This research substantiates what had hitherto been no more than conjectures regarding the impact of NAFTA on the most laggardly Mexican regions. The southern states have been unable to share in Mexico's impressive export-growth and attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI) of the 1990s. Neither the insignificant amount of fdi received by these states nor the increase in their small export-value level can be attributed to opportunities created by NAFTA. The strong linkage between fdi and exports, and the predominance of manufacturing observed at the national level and in other northern states does not exist there. In the state of Oaxaca export growth is largely accounted for by a primary commodity whose production has no foreign investment participation. This local scenario is consistent with the interregional divergence trend observed since the start of the process of economic integration.

In 1572 the Viceroy of Peru, Francisco de Toledo, despatched an expedition to the stronghold of Vilcabamba to capture the last claimant to the Inca throne, Tupac Amaru. The unfortunate prince was brought to Cuzco and there before the assembled population executed in the main square. Determined to provide an historical justification for his brutal eradication of the Inca dynasty, Toledo had already earlier in the same year summoned representatives of the Inca nobility to hear a public reading of Sarmiento de Gamboa's Historia Indica, a work written with the express intention of demonstrating that the Inca empire had been an unmitigated tyranny, created but recently by force of arms, and maintained through the merciless exploitation of its subjects. The auditors at this sinister farce were then called upon to sign a notarised declaration testifying to the accuracy of a text which stripped their ancestors of their status as rightful, sovereign lords of Peru.

No aspect of Brazilian history has received so stereotyped a treatment as the position of the female and her contribution to the society and economy of the colony. The white donzela and the lady of the ‘big house’ have been depicted as leading a secluded existence, be it in the innermost recesses of their homes or in conventual cells, immune to harsh realities and safe from brash overtures by pretenders. Of the white woman, it was said, during her lifetime she left her home on only three occasions: to be baptized, to be married, and to be buried. The role of the white woman was seen as essentially passive, victim of the demands of an over-bearing and frequently unfaithful older husband to whom she would bear children, or of a martinet of a father. As for the Amerindian woman, whose beauty led the discoverers to initial raptures of platonic appreciation and then sexual overindulgence, she has rarely been depicted in any role other than that of concubine or lover. The black and mulatto woman, slave or free, became a symbol of sensual arousal and sexual fulfillment.

From the monetary reform of July 1994 until January 1999 Brazil followed the policy of pegging the new currency (the real) to the US dollar. The central rate was initially fixed at 1[ratio ]1 to the US dollar, but no fluctuation band was set and the market rate was allowed to fluctuate substantially. After a sharp appreciation of up to 15 per cent the real remained at a premium to the dollar for two years (until June 1996). In March 1995, following the Mexican crisis, the Banco Central do Brasil adopted a crawling band without preannounced depreciations. This change in policy was meant to increase somewhat the flexibility of the exchange rate regime while still maintaining an anchor for inflationary expectations. The market rate depreciated by 13.9 per cent in the course of 1995 (December 1995 on December 1994), 7.1 per cent in 1996, 7.3 per cent in 1997 and 8.3 per cent in 1998. By December 1998 it had reached 1.2054 to the US dollar, a depreciation of only 20 per cent with respect to the central rate fixed at the end of the hyperinflation but about 40 per cent with respect to the rate prevailing in July 1994.

The relative prosperity which Argentina enjoyed at the beginning of the century made it a candidate to be a major economic power. Despite its abundant natural resources and skilled manpower, Argentina has consistently failed to live up to its potential. Periods of growth have either been too sporadic or political upheavals too frequent for coherent economic policies to be effective. In recent decades the Argentine economy has been characterised by a deterioration in current account,1 exchange rate,2 gross domestic product (GDP) growth,3 investment,4 and has seen inflation become an endemic phenomenon.5 These factors have exacerbated the economy's inability to tackle its mounting foreign debt.

This article addresses the various mechanisms by which the religious figure of the Christian martyr became a useful notion in Argentine political discourse. It argues that the process by which the idea of the ‘martyr’ was secularised and politicised was actually initiated by religious agents themselves. The analysis considers how commemoration initiatives devised by religious agents, social movements and political actors have brought ‘Catholic martyrs’ into the pantheon of national symbols. It also deals with the various semantic shifts seen in the public discourses of religious agents themselves, shifts that extend the boundaries of an eminently religious category by associating it with other figures in a more specifically political imaginary, such as that of the hero and the victim. The article shows how the political power of the religious figure of the martyr lay in the way various actors could use it to invoke the image of a legitimate and heroic victim of political violence. It thus allowed those actors to sidestep the vexed public question of whether those being commemorated had had any involvement in armed struggle.

This article analyses the variables shaping economic relations between Argentina and Brazil in the 1939–5 5 period, namely changes in the international economy, bilateral trade, the industrial structure and domestic politics. It is argued that although rivalry prevailed in most of the period this was qualified by the interest of Argentina and Brazil in securing the gains from trade and in enhancing their position in the international system. The balance of these contending forces was a pattern of limited or restrained cooperation. If significant trade concessions were offered, their institutional framework remained unstable and fragile. This was reflected in the uncertainty that plagued bilateral trade and in the failure of more ambitious initiatives aimed at economic integration, as those proposed in the Pinedo Plan and in the economic union agreements of 1953–54.

Across Latin America, many former presidents have faced criminal prosecutions on corruption charges, with widely varied outcomes. As with an impeachment, law and politics intersect in the prosecution of a president. In this essay, I examine this nexus by mapping the actions of agents who mobilise to influence how the justice system processes presidential prosecutions: first, accountability actors located in state-based institutions and civil society; second, partisan actors in the executive and legislative branches; and third, defendants, and their partisan and civil society supporters. This study argues that variations in the make-up, resources and alignment of these sets of actors fundamentally shape the trajectory of legal cases. Proceedings against three former presidents of Ecuador are analysed: Abdalá Bucaram, Jamil Mahuad and Gustavo Noboa.

Bogotá suffered its most severe outbreak of public violence of the nineteenth century on 15 and 16 January 1893. Indeed apart from the bogotazo of 9 April 1948, it was perhaps the worst violence that the Colombian capital has ever experienced.1 For twenty-four hours the city experienced serious social disorder, which was brought under control only by the use of regular army troops at a cost of an unknown number of casualties. Surprisingly, the January 1893 bogotazo has not been subjected to serious historical examination. The role of craftsmen in the outbreak of violence offers a window in the largely unknown course of artisan political activity in Bogotá after the decline of the Democratic Society of Artisans in the mid-century reform period. More broadly, whereas the relationship between wage labourers and violence has attracted many scholars, the propensity of the artisan class to engage in violent activities in nineteenth-century Colombia (and in Latin America as a whole) deserves more scholarly investigation. What were the causes and the nature of the 1893 riot? Were they typical of nineteenth-century urban violence? Finally, how does the 1893 riot fit within the broad sweep of Colombian collective violence?2 Before attempting to answer these questions it is necessary to look briefly, by way of background, at Bogotá in the late nineteenth century, its economy and society, at the nature of Colombian politics and, in particular, at the role of artisans in bogotano politics and in earlier episodes of urban disorder.