A late-comer in the privileged corporate structure of New Spain, the army struggled to wrest a position and to gain recognition. Other jurisdictions such as the merchant consulados, the Acordada, the Mining Guild, and the jealous creole-dominated ayuntamientos, contested military pretensions and triggered numerous judicial and jurisdictional disputes over how far the military could extend its legal powers. Representatives of the reformed Bourbon civil administration, unsure in some instances of the limits of their own authority, did not welcome a dynamic and grasping presence. For their own part, the army officers dispatched to command Mexican regular and militia units often represented the aggressively haughty airs of the European Spaniard – attitudes that rasped at the deep-rooted inferiority of the creoles and left them enraged. Little wonder that there was a constant stream of disputes, misunderstandings, and challenges directed against the army and the fucro militar.1

During the last fifty years a considerable amount of material relating to the institutional structure of the Spanish colonial city in America has appeared. In most instances, however, this material directed itself to a consideration of colonial city governments shortly after the Conquest or during the zenith of the empire. Of equal interest should be a consideration of these institutions at the moment of their disintegration, that is, during the Spanish American Wars of Independence.

Gangs are widely considered major contributors to the high levels of violence afflicting Latin America, including in particular Central America. At the same time, however, the vast majority of individuals who join a gang will also leave it and, it is assumed, become less violent. Having said this, the mechanisms underlying this ‘desistance’ process are not well understood, and nor are the determinants of individuals’ post-gang trajectories, partly because gang desistance tends to be seen as an event rather than a process. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research carried out in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández, a poor neighbourhood in Nicaragua's capital city Managua, and more specifically a set of ‘archetypal’ gang member life histories that illustrate the occupational options open to former gang members, this article offers a longitudinal perspective on desistance and its consequences, with specific reference to the determinants of individuals’ continued engagement with violence (or not).

For the past couple of decades the Latin Americans, like their brethren in Africa and Asia, have been hell-bent in search of ‘development’ or ‘modernization’. While the Latin Americans were on the firing line, scholars and policy-makers in both the rich nations and the poor nations were involved in setting out an intellectual framework for analyzing the developmental process. New concepts to explain the meaning of development were devised; innovative measurements to gauge the level of development were proposed; a new vocabulary to capture the nuances of development was put forth.

By 1930 there were £435.1 million of British capital invested in Argentina, 62.3% of which was located in railway companies whose securities duly yielded reasonable annual profits. However, the onset of the Great Depression and the successful 1930 revolution brought this state of affairs to a standstill. Moreover, both events inaugurated years of growing difficulties for the British-owned railways and the British government, for whom these public utilities gradually turned into economic hostages and a potential source of conflict in Anglo-Argentine relations. On the one hand, the railways were slowly squeezed between rising operating costs and regulated tariffs while their net receipts dwindled becausé of the crisis. Furthermore, the companies began to experience the following: growing hostility from a local public opinion who resented their foreign ownership; the adverse effects of the Argentine nationalistic economic policies; and had to find suitable new courses of action to deal with government officials who were not wholly sympathetic to their interests. On the other hand, although Whitehall could not fail to consider that to some extent the railways were the backbone of Britain's economic stronghold in the Argentine, they also had other substantial trading, financial and shipping interests at stake in this highly profitable market. Therefore, the British government began to weigh carefully the role of these public utilities in British policy towards Argentina; the real prospects of a clash with Argentina if the railways' finances deteriorated too much and the Foreign Office intervened on their behalf; and whether their aspirations should be considered on the same standing as other British concerns in the Argentine.

This article explores how the relationship between luxury, consumption and gender in Argentina changed in response to the introduction of Darwinian ideas. Ideas surrounding consumerism were transformed by the 1870s, influenced by a scientific revolution that gave new meaning to gender categories. The introduction of Darwinism at a time of extreme ideological confusion about how to organise the nation only enhanced the perceived dangers about how economic changes and the expansion of markets would affect elites' ability to govern. The article focuses specifically on changing perceptions of gender and consumerism between 1830 and 1880, paying particular attention to the work of two of the most important intellectuals of the Generación del '37, Juan B. Alberdi and Domingo F. Sarmiento. By closely examining their reflections on the expansion of markets and accumulation of luxury goods, it reveals the nature of the cultural changes introduced by the Darwinian revolution.