We examine the promise and accomplishments of New Social Movement (NSM) theory for understanding recent social movements in Latin America. After delineating and critiquing the key premises and concerns of NSM analyses, we demonstrate how a conceptual frame combining political economy and political sociology accounts better for the origins and trajectories of the social movements, including two of the most important in Latin America, Brazil's Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) and Bolivia's Movement toward Socialism (MAS).

Afro-Brazilian communities (quilombos) hold rights to a collective territory where they live and that supports their livelihoods. Historically, Afro-Brazilian smallholders have been subjected to contradictory programs and policies that either restrain traditional practices such as shifting cultivation or aim at empowering these communities. This is the first attempt to adopt the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) theoretical framework to study the historical transformation of the institutional structure in Afro-Brazilian territories of the Ribeira Valley, São Paulo, Brazil. Our results reveal a history of long-term, continuous relationships between locals and external groups, sometimes combative and at other times cooperative, reflecting tensions and contradictions. As a result, quilombo communities have gradually emerged as leaders in an institutional arrangement that is moving toward co-governance or partnerships. We believe that if these communities achieve full economic and political autonomy, they might be able to self-govern their territories and reconcile the dual goals of local development and environmental conservation.

Migrar desde Centroamérica hasta Estados Unidos comporta un costo económico y social cada vez más elevado. Las tarifas de los polleros se han incrementado; en México los centroamericanos corren un grave riesgo de ser secuestrados, y si logran cruzar con éxito la frontera estadounidense deben permanecer escondidos para evitar ser deportados. Este artículo, fundamentado en una metodología cualitativa que incluye entrevistas en profundidad a treinta y cinco polleros que conducían centroamericanos a Estados Unidos y a cincuenta migrantes de Centroamérica, pretende dar respuesta a la siguiente pregunta: ¿por qué se arriesgan los centroamericanos a transitar por México para llegar a Estados Unidos si el costo económico es tan elevado, la probabilidad de éxito tan baja y el riesgo de sufrir agresiones de carácter grave es tan elevado? El estudio concluye que el principal impulsor de este fenómeno migratorio es el apoyo económico de los empleadores para que los centroamericanos puedan cruzar de modo subrepticio la frontera estadounidense.

This article offers an articulation of liberation philosophy, a Latin American form of political and philosophical thought that is largely not followed in European and Anglo-American political circles. Liberation philosophy has posed serious challenges to Jürgen Habermas's and Karl-Otto Apel's discourse ethics. Here I explain what these challenges consist of and argue that Apel's response to Latin American political thought shows that discourse ethics can maintain internal consistency only if it is subsumed under the program of liberation philosophy.

This article addresses the paradox of unpopular corruption and popular corrupt politicians. It explores why corrupt politicians are reelected, paying particular attention to incumbent provision of public goods and voter information on incumbent misconduct. Using a new data set on mayoral elections (2000 and 2004) in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, we specify econometric models to test the hypothesis that incumbents' performance in delivering public goods might mitigate reputational losses. Our main empirical analysis suggests that (1) corruption decreases the probability of incumbent reelection, (2) public expenditure increases the probability of reelection, and (3) the negative marginal effect of corruption on reelection disappears as public expenditure increases.

Well-financed opposition parties can exert their organizational strength to undercut the territorial advantages of political machines and clientele networks. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, leftist parties in Brazil's Northeast region brought conservative dominance to an end. The Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) led this shift, not only garnering regional majorities in presidential elections but also winning multiple governorships and increasing its share of federal and state legislative seats in the region. In contrast to arguments attributing recent electoral shifts in the Northeast to civil society, aggregate growth, and conditional cash transfers, we argue that the territorial expansion of the PT organization played a central role. A spike in party finances between 2001 and 2003 enabled the PT, for the first time, to establish party offices in northeastern municipalities from the top down. Drawing from underutilized data and sources, we show that the PT leadership eroded conservatives' monopoly on rural territory in the Northeast by strategically targeting hundreds of conservative-dominated municipalities and investing resources to stimulate the formation of local offices. The study demonstrates that this top-down territorial targeting produced considerable electoral gains for PT candidates across federal and state races.

Este artigo aprofunda o viés sociocultural da relação entre a comunidade e os recursos hídricos. O objetivo foi investigar as práticas sociais experienciadas e compartilhadas em relação à água em uma comunidade que vive a margem de dois rios. O estudo é qualitativo e baseia-se nas pesquisas bibliográfica e de campo realizadas em 2011 e 2012. Os sentidos circulantes entre os informantes deixaram entrever duas matrizes culturais principais: a matriz histórica e a matriz simbólica.

Are individuals opposed to immigration because of perceived job competition with immigrants? Despite almost two decades of research, the literature on immigration attitudes continues to struggle for a clear answer. This study is designed to evaluate the labor competition hypothesis in an alternative and important immigration context, Chile. The cultural proximity of natives and immigrants in Chile mitigates the issue of cultural threat and thus permits a focused appraisal of the role of economic competition. Also, the prevalence of both high- and low-skilled immigrant labor may generate competition in diverse employment sectors in Chile. Using data from an original Internet survey experiment, I test how an immigrant's skill level, country of origin, and ethnicity influence Chilean attitudes toward immigration. The results suggest that individual immigration attitudes are not influenced by concerns over job competition but rather evaluations as to the broader economic effects of certain types of immigrants. Well-educated Chileans, like their European and American counterparts, prefer immigrants who pursue high-skill employment.

In the last decade a unique form of struggle developed in Argentina: the appropriation of bankrupt enterprises by their workers. This article combines several sources of data to explain the emergence and development of this practice and its effects on Argentine labor politics. We argue that the recuperation of enterprises is the result of workers' contingent responses to a deep social crisis, the emergence of organizations that promoted this practice, and the presence of a class culture in which wage work is considered a dignified form of work. Furthermore, we argue that the recuperation of enterprises is now part of the repertoire of contention of Argentine workers.

This article highlights the interfaces between micro-level livelihoods, social networks, and macroeconomic trends and policies. Specifically, it analyzes the role of farmer groups in livelihood adaptation of smallholder maize producers in southern Mexico. We show how neoliberal market changes have shaped the local social structure with constraining and enabling effects on households' ability to adapt, while in turn the outcomes of the neoliberal policy reforms are being (re)shaped by the responses of the farmers, thereby changing the structural context. We provide evidence for the heterogeneity of adaptation processes and show that farmers' participation influences the outcomes of neoliberal policy reforms.