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.

¿Cuáles son las condiciones bajo las cuales surgen los gobiernos de corte populista? A partir de un enfoque clásico de representación política (Pitkin 1985) y con datos de encuestas de opinión (Latinobarómetro 1996–2008), este trabajo analiza (1) en qué medida los deficientes resultados de las políticas públicas y la ausencia de rendición de cuentas aumentan la desconfianza ciudadana en las instituciones representativas y cómo esta desconfianza contribuye al surgimiento de liderazgos populistas como una forma de resolver un problema de principal y agente, a través de una rendición de cuentas simbólica. Según se propone aquí, en un inicio los liderazgos populistas contribuyen a disminuir la distancia de los ciudadanos con el sistema político y aumentan la calidad de la representación, en especial la percepción ciudadana de una rendición de cuentas efectiva a través del vínculo directo del pueblo con el líder. Paradójicamente, el aumento de esta dimensión informativa y argumentativa de la rendición de cuentas va de la mano del deterioro progresivo de la dimensión electoral o sustantiva, haciendo difícil su sostenibilidad —analítica y empírica— desde el enfoque de la teoría democrática.

Using data from three surveys of religion in El Salvador from 1988 to 2009, this research looks at changes in the demographic characteristics, religious orientations and practices, and political attitudes of Salvadorans as they transition from civil war to democracy and participation in global capitalism, and from mostly Catholic affiliation to increasing affiliation with Pentecostal Protestant churches. Over the two decades encompassed by the study, the Protestant population has become less clearly differentiated from the Catholic majority in terms of education, income, occupation, and even political beliefs, while remaining distinct in terms of religious beliefs and practices. Unlike much previous research, this study allows for comparisons among practicing and nonpracticing Catholics as well as Protestants and those identifying themselves as unaffiliated.

Fiscal history has become one of the most active new fields of research on colonial Spanish America. This trend has resulted from a number of recent breakthroughs, most notably the reconstruction of colonial treasury records and the appearance of the first revisionist studies based on the new data. These works are challenging traditional views, particularly the general understanding of the colonial economic experience and the evolution of imperial ties. Indeed, the fiscal series now being made available, if properly supported by qualitative research and regional studies, may affect seventeenth- and eighteenth-century historiography as notably as the demographic works of the Berkeley school affected sixteenth- and seventeenth-century historiography.

The Catholic Church in Latin America was until the mid-1960s one of the most ignored topics of research in a neglected continent. It was not only overlooked by North Americans and Europeans; stranger still, it received only cursory attention from Latin American scholars. The meagre consideration it did attract was overwhelmingly historical in nature and frequently came from authors promoting or attacking particular religious beliefs and institutions. The controversy in Colombia over the persecution of the Protestants (Goff, 1965), and the dramatic events caused by the reactions of the Church to the Mexican revolution (Brown, 1964), stimulated a literature that was at times extremely biased.

Yet, it is not easy to explain the neglect of the Church in the literature since, unlike peasant leagues or guerrilla movements, it is not a novelty in the region. The Church was founded simultaneously with the Iberian societies; much of the culture of Latin America derives from within the Church and has evolved in relationship to it; social fields such as education and charity have always been heavily influenced by Church doctrine and organizations; and the vast majority of the population are declared Catholics. In addition the Church is a highly structured organization in a region of low organizational development; in all countries Catholic groups have been politically active and in some cases assumed the form of Christian Democratic parties (Williams, 1967) which have held power; and the political models currently being formulated in Brazil and Peru would appear to owe much of their content to traditional Catholic principles of hierarchy, paternalism, and corporate identity.

This research report explores critical and methodological approaches to game studies, or ludology, contextualizing them within the field of Latin American cultural studies. It provides evidence of the growing influence of video games and explains major ludological concepts such as simulation and remediation, providing the theoretical and critical background necessary for the development of research on games and their cultural impact in the region. The report goes on to offer a preliminary taxonomy of Latin American cultural simulations in video games, thoroughly discussing examples of existing portrayals as well as laying the groundwork for further critical inquiry in this burgeoning field of study.

The present study analyzes the role of collective remittances in promoting democratic consolidation amid the decentralization of political decision making in Mexico. Specifically, 1 analyze how the remittance-matching program 3 × 1 para Migrantes conditions municipal politics in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. To this end, I evaluate 3 × 1 para Migrantes investment patterns across Guanajuato's forty-six municipalities for the period 2001–2011. The results of my study indicate that, under the right conditions, remittances channeled through the 3 × 1 program stimulate higher levels of voter participation and in this manner have the potential to contribute to democratic growth. However, data patterns also indicate that 3 × 1 investments share a positive correlation with election cycles, demonstrating that local authorities may use the 3 × 1 program to garner political support. In this respect, my analysis calls into question the depth of democratic consolidation at the municipal level in the state of Guanajuato.

O índice de volatilidade eleitoral tem sido usado como um dos principais indicadores de institucionalização dos sistemas partidários em países de democracia recente. Contudo, os estudos comparados usualmente analisam esse índice num nível de agregação dos dados muito elevado, avaliando sua variação com base nas médias nacionais. Sob tal perspectiva, nosso objetivo é analisar a volatilidade eleitoral brasileira tomando os 27 entes federativos como unidade de agregação dos dados eleitorais para a Câmara dos Deputados. Na primeira parte do artigo, mostramos que há grande variabilidade no índice entre os estados e entre as sucessivas eleições; na segunda parte, realizamos um teste estatístico do impacto explicativo de variáveis políticas, econômicas e sociais na variação da volatilidade eleitoral em duas dimensões: a temporal (entre as eleições) e a espacial (entre os estados). Os resultados mostram a importância de algumas variáveis políticas na explicação da variação da volatilidade eleitoral brasileira.

The rise of authoritarian regimes in Latin America has fueled a long-standing interest in the social bases of democratic and authoritarian political systems. One commonly asserted explanation posits a close relationship between political structure and political culture, holding that authoritarian regimes are likely both to stem from and to perpetuate authoritarian political cultures (Kornhauser 1959; Inkeles 1961; Lip-set 1960, 1981). Some theorists have applied this thesis to Latin American politics, linking, for example, Argentina's frequent experiences with authoritarian governments with the presumed authoritarianism of its citizenry (Fillol 1961; Alexander 1968; Lipset 1960, 1981).

Recognizing that the traditional five-state subregion of Central America departed from European colonialism as a federated entity, Ralph Lee Woodward subtitled his seminal history of Central America 'A Nation Divided.“ In his view, ”the social and economic history of the isthmus suggests that its peoples share considerably in their problems and circumstances, even though their political experience has been diverse. But it is also clear that their social and economic unity has been limited by their political disunity“ (Woodward 1985, vii). Following a period of colonial tutelage equal to that of Hispanic Central America, the Commonwealth Caribbean or English-speaking Caribbean also began to edge away from colonization as a federation of ten nations: Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts–Nevis–Anguilla, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Montserrat. Applying Woodward's criteria, these former British colonies in the West Indies appear to have an even stronger claim than Hispanic Central America to substantial past and future national integration. According to Jamaican-American historian Franklin Knight and theorist Gordon Lewis, this subregion demonstrates more cultural and physical commonalities than differences (Knight 1978, x–xi; G. Lewis 1983). Despite the frictions induced by negotiations for independence, substantial regional integration of the nation-states of the English-speaking Caribbean was achieved during the late 1960s and early 1970s. These efforts atrophied in the years prior to 1987, however, because of internal divisions and external pressures.

El abandono del régimen de convertibilidad en 2002 implicó cambios sustantivos a nivel macroeconómico que tuvieron un fuerte impacto en el desempeño de los distintos sectores de la economía argentina. Sin embargo, durante la posconvertibilidad parece haberse registrado también cierta continuidad en determinados procesos económico-sociales: si bien desde los elencos gubernamentales se ha reivindicado sucesivamente la necesidad de recuperar un empresariado nacional fuerte, el peso del capital extranjero entre las empresas más grandes del país no ha disminuido. Esto es sumamente relevante teniendo en cuenta que la Argentina es una economía dependiente y, por lo tanto, el rol del capital transnacional en su proceso de acumulación es determinante. El objetivo del artículo es indagar sobre las continuidades y las rupturas en el proceso de extranjerización del gran capital en la Argentina a partir de un análisis de lo ocurrido con las quinientas empresas líderes de la economía durante el período 1993-2008.

“Social History” should be readily definable as the study of historical phenomena which transcend the individual and manifest themselves in human groups. But such a definition includes almost all meaningful history; it seems to fit precisely those political and institutional studies to which social history is ordinarily contrasted. Since our main concern here is with practical historiography rather than with questions of genre, I will simply indicate through description and elimination the kind of history I mean.

Using data from the National Survey of Standards of Living conducted in Guatemala in 2000, this article tests the hypothesis that Guatemalan households use child labor and reduce child schooling to cope with household shocks. First, the authors use factor analysis to estimate the latent household propensity to natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks. Then, they estimate bivariate probit models to identify the determinants of child labor and schooling, including household propensity to natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks. Results suggest that households use child labor to cope with natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks. In contrast, the authors found no evidence that suggests that households reduce child schooling to cope with shocks. Findings also indicate that poor households are more likely to use child labor and schooling reduction as strategies to cope with socioeconomic shocks.

Debates surrounding race in Brazil have become increasingly fraught in recent years as the once hegemonic concept of racial democracy (democracia racial) continues to be subject to an ever more agnostic scrutiny. Parallel to these debates, and yet ultimately inseparable from them, is the question of what it is to be “white.” In this interdisciplinary paper, we argue that whiteness has become increasingly established in Brazilian public discourse as a naturalized category. Seeking afresh perspective on what we perceive to have become a sterile debate, we examine Machado de Assis and his work to illustrate how assumptions surrounding his short story “Pai contra mãe,” and indeed comments on the author's very body, reveal the extent to which whiteness has come to be seen as nonnegotiable and fixed. Placing a close reading of Machado's text at the heart of the article, we explain its implications for the scholarly debates now unfolding in Brazil concerning the construction of whiteness. The article then develops an anthropological reading of whiteness by pointing to the inherent differences between perspectives of race as a process and perspectives of race as a fixed and naturalized given.

The Catholic Church of Peru supported the use of oral contraceptives between 1967 and 1976, believing that doctrine was compatible with controlling one's fertility. Yet the church did not treat fertility control only as a means to limit births or as an individual prerogative. Rather, it framed distribution of the pill within an education plan to promote the duties of responsible parenting. Joseph Kerrins, a U.S. Catholic physician, began the program in a poor area of Lima. By the late 1970s, the program operated in nineteen parishes. The program thrived even after the 1968 encyclical De Humanae Vitae, thanks to the support of priests, Peruvian and U.S. government agencies, physicians, and users of the program's services. Catholic family planning has been a more pragmatic and creative enterprise than hitherto believed. This article explores these developments within the context of the cold war and the transformations of the Catholic Church in 1960s Latin America.