Based on primary research and fifty interviews, this article analyzes the history, institutions, and politics of agricultural policy formulation in Brazil from 1964 to 1992. It focuses on how trade, credit, and support-price policy evolved in response to economic crisis and democratization in the 1980s. Although the economic crisis caused policy to be redesigned, the change in political regime and in the institutions of interest-group representation significantly influenced the direction of policy reform. The return to a democratic regime permitted the Congress and the Brazilian judiciary to play more significant roles in shaping agricultural policy. Simultaneously, democratization led to the questioning of corporatist institutions and the emergence of more participatory organizations in the agricultural sector. These changes have caused policy making to become increasingly subject to explicit rules, which should lead to more predictable policies and a long-term reduction in discrimination against Brazilian agriculture.

This article is based on research conducted in the archives of the Auditoria Militar do Estado de Pernambuco. It substantiates the violation of the basic principle of equality before the law resulting from the existence in Brazil of two different court systems—one civil and the other military—with varying legal proceedings and sentences for similar crimes committed by civilian police and military police. The article reviews how the authoritarian regime enlarged the scope of military jurisdiction, a situation little changed more than a decade after the authoritarian regime ended. The article also shows that the Justiça Militar do Estado de Pernambuco functions in a hybrid manner. It is an agency of the civil judicial branch, but most of the judges are military, while the lawyers are civilians and the trials are conducted by the Ministério Público. Thus the military police can influence the outcome of judgments without having to assume the burden of rendering decisions because the final responsibility rests with the civil judicial branch. Finally, the article highlights the incompatibility between the continuation of this kind of military justice and a democracy seeking consolidation.

Este trabajo estudia la generificación (la asignación de un género sexual) de los elementos del debate sobre la novela nacional en el siglo XIX en Chile. Analizando el caso de Alberto Blest Gana, sostengo que la novela nacional se propuso como una intermediación entre dos polos. Por un lado, la lectura por placer era socialmente percibida como femenina. La lectura de los textos clásicos era, por otro, masculina porque suponía un trabajo y una dificultad que hacía que el retorno recibido de la inversión de tiempo y dinero en la actividad fuera productivo, es decir, legítimo. En este contexto, la novela nacional y su lectura se construían como formas de mediación de estas polaridades que organizaban y constituían la cultura nacional. La hipótesis general es que la lectura de periódicos y las lecturas hechas en periódicos (como folletines y artículos) ocuparía un lugar intermedio que terminaría por mediar la distancia entre aquellas formas de lectura socialmente construidas.

For the past twenty years, the organized black consciousness movement in Brazil has argued that Protestant Christianity is a highly assimilationist religion that pushes black converts to abandon their racial identity and seek incorporation into dominant white culture. The present study, based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro, challenges this view. By analyzing how Pentecostal churches address the issues of appearance, color, courtship, and womanhood, this research note argues that although evangelical Christianity involves a variety of beliefs that are incompatible with a strong ethnic identity, this religion also includes a range of ideas and practices that nourish rather than corrode black identity. The essay concludes by exploring the historic potential of several churches that have made the intersection of faith and race an explicit part of their agenda.

Because of the prominence of the president in the Mexican political system, public opinion of the executive is a particularly important political indicator. Two models of public opinion are used here to explain changes in President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's approval rate from 1990 to 1994. The economic-performance model assumes that approval was based on public perception of trends in the economy. The statistical analysis shows that individuals' perceptions of economic performance had a strong positive effect on their opinions of the president. But basic economic indicators such as inflation, the real value of wages, and the level of unemployment are found to explain only partially Mexico City residents' opinions of the economy. The policy-initiatives model assumes that approval of President Salinas was based on public opinion of his economic policy initiatives. Citizens' approval of Salinas's economic initiatives was found to affect their opinions of the president substantially. Because many of these policy initiatives, such as NAFTA, had no immediate direct impact on the economic condition of the country, I conclude that Salinas's extraordinary popularity was largely due to the expectations that these initiatives created.

En base a correspondencia original es analizada la importancia que tuvo la Sociedad de Protección a los Inmigrantes Israelitas (SOPRO) para socorrer a los fugitivos judíos que llegaron de Europa a Bolivia entre mediados de 1938 e inicios de la década del 40. Después de exponer las razones que determinaron el flujo migratorio a este país y las dificultades que tuvo para prestar ayuda a la integración de los inmigrantes, se exponen cuatros dimensiones: la creación, las finalidades, los medios financieros y la estructura organizativa de la SOPRO; las formas de respaldo que ella otorgó; los mecanismos que empleó para conceder y recuperar sus créditos; las limitaciones y los éxitos de su labor. Considerando la falta de estudios respecto a la tarea que desempeñaron sociedades de amparo para facilitar la integración de inmigrantes israelitas en países latinoamericanos durante los decenios del 30 y del 40, el aporte busca enmendar esta negligencia y abrir posibilidades para estudios comparativos sobre la materia.