This Study was conducted under the auspices of the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs, the organization of institutional members of LASA. Needless to say, the conclusions expressed here are those of the authors alone, and not those of the project's sponsors. The study focuses primarily on teaching programs, and specifically on the courses announced in the college catalogues. Clearly, there are other ways of proceeding and there are other types of information about Latin American studies programs that would be of value. It should also be borne in mind that the information given in such catalogues is only an approximate description of reality. However, the subject matter covered was believed to be that of greatest interest in view of the limitations of resources and personnel available.

In the village of Ch'umil in northern Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve, competing heritage claims to Maya archaeological sites and artifacts politicize the region's cultural and ecological landscapes. Using a geographical understanding of the production of space (Lefebvre 1991), I ethnographically unpack Ch'umil residents' definitions of cultural and ecological heritage that reflect village-level histories of living and laboring in forests and archaeology sites surrounding Ch'umil. Villagers' definitions of heritage contrast sharply with the spatial claims made by global heritage advocates who campaign to designate the region as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Analyzing the politics of scale underpinning these conservation practices reveals that when global heritage advocates speak on behalf of a universal humanity, they often render local-level heritage claims invisible and illegitimate. This article urges heritage managers and cosmopolitan theorists who debate the ethics of mitigating global and local heritage claims to reconsider this spatial binary altogether.

Northern Veracruz has experienced dramatic transformations in its landscape over the longue durée. Geological forces shaped it into the northernmost tropical rain forest in the Americas. Paleolithic humans appeared as early as 7600 BCE and tinkered with it, exploiting it for their own survival for thousands of years. Their ecological footprint was light enough until the communities grew and adopted agriculture. At that point, around 2500 BCE, the landscape of the Huasteca Veracruzana became more humanized, but the survival of the rainforest was not at risk, even when the first towns formed in the first centuries of the Common Era. Urbanization and civilization were highly localized, collapsing for reasons not well understood. The rainforest thus endured to confront Spanish colonialism in the 1500s. Changes in the land were uneven under the Spanish, however, and the rainforest outlasted colonial rule as well as the turmoil of nineteenth-century national politics. Transformation came in the twentieth century, as a result of oil extraction. Under the oil barons, the Huasteca experienced the full impact of capitalism and industrialization. Between 1900 and 1940, the oil industry eliminated the rainforest, leaving the Huasteca open to further environmental change. In the aftermath of oil, the landscape shifted to grasslands and monocrop agriculture. Oil remained present but largely in disguise: as petrochemical inputs to force poor soils to sustain citrus production and cattle ranching.

The “problem” of U.S. press reporting on Chile during the Allende period is by now well documented. What emerges from articles by journalists, journalism professors, and professors interested in Latin American affairs is a relatively consistent picture of U.S. news media performance: the U.S. press was openly hostile to the Popular Unity government in Chile; maintained its hostile perspective with astonishing homogeneity throughout the United States; and often reduced complex social, economic, and political issues to some of the most disturbing stereotypes found in the cold-war period. The same articles suggest, moreover, that reporting on Chile was not a total aberration but rather related to more general patterns of reporting on Latin America.

This article analyzes the environmental degradation of the Argentine interior, emphasizing the roles played by different income groups. Argentina beyond the pampa is composed of fragile ecosystems that have been substantially degraded through decades or even centuries of overuse and abuse. This study ascertains the nature and extent of environmental degradation for each part of the interior, the relative importance of various income groups in agricultural production, and the differential tendency to degrade the environment of agriculturalists at different income levels. These variables are used to show that both the wealthy and the poor have played crucial roles in the environmental degradation of the Argentine interior.

This essay reviews the following works:

Ação afirmativa: Conceito, história e debates. By João Feres Júnior, Luiz Augusto Campos, Verônica Toste Daflon, and Anna Carolina Venturini. Rio de Janeiro: Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2018. Pp. 190. Open access e-book. ISBN: 9786599036477. https://eduerj.com/?product=acao-afirmativa-conceito-historia-e-debates-ebook.

The Prism of Race: The Politics and Ideology of Affirmative Action in Brazil. By David Lehmann. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018. Pp. xxii + 272. $72.87 hardcover. ISBN: 9780472130849.

Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil: University Quota Students and the Quest for Racial Justice. By Vânia Penha-Lopes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. Pp. xii + 188. $95.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781498537803.

O sistema de cotas para negros da UnB: Um balanço da primeira geração. By Sales Augusto dos Santos. Jundiaí, SP: Paco Editorial, 2015. Pp. 420. R$59,90 paperback. ISBN: 9788546201334.

The Affirmative Action Puzzle: A Living History from Reconstruction to Today. By Melvin I. Urofsky. New York: Pantheon Books, 2020. Pp. xviii + 592. $35.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781101870877.

Antiracist Discourse in Brazil: From Abolition to Affirmative Action. By Teun A. van Dijk. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020. Pp. vii + 256. $103.26 hardcover. ISBN: 9781793615473.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. By Isabel Wilkerson. New York: Random House, 2020. Pp. 496. $32.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780593230251.

Uno de los libros más comprensivos (y comprensibles) acerca de la revolución mexicana, el de Lorenzo Meyer y Héctor Aguilar Camín (A la sombra de la revolución mexicana) comienza con esta frase enigmática: “No esperaban que llegara” (11). Lo que llega es obviamente la revolución. ¿Pero quiénes son los que quedan sobrecogidos por ese advenimiento? La respuesta es obvia: aquéllos que ejercen la tarea de ver y por lo tanto de preveer, esperar e incluso alumbrar lo nuevo: los intelectuales. La revolución mexicana, por el contrario, se caracteriza por la espontaneidad y por la prescindencia de idearios generales de dirección los cuales (a pesar de los múltiples programas y “planes”) sólo cristalizan y se encarnan en las masas revolucionarias a posteriori y actúan, por lo tanto, retrospectivamente.

El estudio revisa las diferentes teorías sobre las relaciones entre informalidad, competitividad e institucionalidad y las contrasta con lo sucedido en los últimos diez años en el Perú, valorando aquellas que pueden dar cuenta de la articulación de lo formal e informal. Arriba a la conclusión de que en la etapa de auge se produjo una combinación de crecimiento sin competitividad y con un debilitamiento institucional, que es el modelo final de economía y sociedad de la informalidad. Se fundamenta el paso de la informalidad blanda a la informalidad dura, con la consiguiente expansión de una cultura de trasgresión y encarecimiento de los costos de transacción. El ciclo de crecimiento no sostenible que se vivió en la primera década del nuevo milenio produjo un éxito fácil que ahora está a prueba con el cambio en el entorno global y nacional. El estudio se basa en una amplia revisión bibliográfica y documental, así como en bases de datos de estadísticas nacionales e internacionales.

En este artículo describimos algunas de las transformaciones culturales acaecidas en Buenos Aires en las últimas décadas con el desarrollo de una economía simbólica de la ciudad. Desde una perspectiva de políticas culturales analizamos el enfoque de las autoridades locales hacia la creatividad y la deriva de una noción de industrias culturales hacia otra de industrias creativas. Nos centramos en la raigambre y las implicaciones de esa mutación, señalando algunos problemas teóricos y metodológicos irresueltos tanto en el marco de la ciudad como en las propuestas nacionales e internacionales de las que abreva. Consideramos particularmente las derivaciones de iniciativas de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (UNESCO, por sus siglas en inglés) y de la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas para el Comercio y el Desarrollo (UNCTAD, por sus siglas en inglés). Sostenemos que los nuevos enfoques hacia las industrias creativas difuminan las políticas culturales de promoción de la diversidad cultural y los derechos culturales.

In the last four decades, forces and events too obvious and too menacing for restatement here have prompted a dramatic increase in scholarly investigation of all facets of the African experience in the Western Hemisphere. The study of the black man in colonial Spanish America, which dates from the early seventeenth century, has profited as a matter of course from this development. The bibliography for the colonial period increases with every passing year, and virtually every region of Spanish America, from Hispaniola and Mexico to Argentina and Chile, is represented by at least one scholarly work. Further, continuing scholarly endeavor is certain to increase both the depth and breadth of our knowledge in the immediate future.

For most of the past decade, Central America has been wracked by revolution, counterrevolution, military repression, and massive dislocation that have affected the lives of millions of people. Yet despite these dramatic events, little anthropological research has been directed toward Central America in the 1980s. Analysis of the contents of seven major cultural anthropology journals from 1980 to 1986 shows no increased attention to the area over a previous period, 1970 to 1976. Research published in the 1980s has been emphatically non-policy-based, even when fieldwork was conducted in the midst of crisis. This research report will analyze the underrepresentation of Central America in anthropology journals and possible reasons for it. I will suggest that the reticence of anthropology as a discipline to legitimate policy-based research in Central America stems from a tendency that has characterized the field since its beginnings: studying communities as isolated, timeless cultures that are unaffected by regional, national, and international events taking place outside their borders. This bias causes practitioners who wish to advance their careers to turn their backs on what may be considered controversial policy analysis and write instead about subjects endorsed by the discipline.

This essay reviews the following works:

Ancient Maya Pottery: Classification, Analysis, and Interpretation. Edited by James John Aimers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. Pp. vii + 293. $79.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780813042367.

The Huasteca: Culture, History, and Interregional Exchange. Edited by Katherine A. Faust and Kim N. Richter. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 241. $55.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780806147048.

Excavations in Residential Areas of Tikal: Group 7F-1. By William A. Haviland. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2015. Pp. xi + 133. $65.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781934536810.

Politics of the Maya Court: Hierarchy and Change in the Late Classic Period. By Sarah E. Jackson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 248. $29.95 hardback. ISBN: 9780806143415.

The Ancient Maya Marketplace: The Archaeology of Transient Space. Edited by Eleanor M. King. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 325. $60.54 cloth. ISBN: 9780816500413.

The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak. By Mary Miller and Claudia Brittenham. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 285. $54.05 cloth. ISBN: 9780292744363.

Maya Lords and Lordship: The Formation of Colonial Society in Yucatán, 1350–1600. By Sergio Quezada . Translated by Terry Rugeley. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 248. $34.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780806144221.

Place and Identity in Classic Maya Narratives. By Alexandre Tokovinine. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection/Harvard University Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 180. $39.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780884023920.

The Central Working Document for the Latin American Bishops' Conference, which met in the summer of 1968, in the industrial city of Medellín, after the Eucharistic Congress in Bogotá, mentioned in its introduction neither pastoral nor theological questions. It began with a matter-of-fact analysis of Latin American reality, discussed the underdevelopment of the subcontinent in sociological terms, and demanded finally a commitment from the Church to the social problems of hunger and misery, which the document stated are the urgent questions upon whose solution the future of Latin America depends. Hesitation on the part of the Church to do its share in creating a more free, more just, and more humane society would be tantamount to being in the state of mortal sin.

The scholar examining nineteenth-century Central American (here defined as including Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica) foreign relations, particularly foreign trade relations, constantly finds quite positive statements regarding British, French, and United States economic power in Central America. These often allege political domination of the individual nations through foreign economic influences. Invariably such claims are based either upon “common knowledge,” without supportive data, or upon data of a highly selective, unsystematic, or arbitrary nature. Confronted with the choice of accepting or challenging these allegations, the scholar may choose the previous “general wisdom,” “create” his own “wisdom,” or institute as systematic a study of foreign economic trade and navigation ties as existing data sources permit. For the scholar wishing to undertake a detailed study, this essay will describe the location, abundance, reliability, and accuracy of data relative to nineteenth-century Central American trade and navigation as encountered in sources from Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, the United States, Great Britain, France, Hamburg (until 1873), Bremen, the German Empire (beginning about 1880), Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium. While the following discussion focuses upon the use of United States and European archives and the statistical and commercial serials for gathering data on Central American trade and maritime activity, obviously many of these same sources, archives, or serials possess identical data for most other Latin American countries or regions.

The Salasacas are one of several indigenous peoples in highland Ecuador who consider themselves, and are considered by others, to be a distinct, homogeneous blood group. Throughout the Incaic, Spanish, and national periods, we trace their ethnogenesis from diverse origins to a single, highly unified ethnic community. Using an interdisciplinary methodology that combines historical and ethnographic data and follows the movement of current Salasaca anthroponyms, we identify three seventeenth-century migrations of different groups to Salasaca. These groups were still separate in the eighteenth century, and we follow their fusion into a single, exclusive, and vocal ethnic group in the postindependence period. We focus careful attention on their often novel responses to multiple historical contingencies over the course of five hundred years. Departing from writers who emphasize the political nature of ethnicity, we argue that Salasaca became a zone of cultural refusal as indigenous actors made a conscious decision to maintain a specific indigenous cultural identity.

This article analyzes the image of Brazilian Indigenous minority groups as a figurehead in media discourse, which is based on racializing logics that celebrate historical performances of Indigeneity but minimize attention to the political activity and grassroots movements of the existing population. Using cultural studies as a starting point, this study draws on Diana Taylor's understanding of identity and on postcolonial thinker Homi Bhabha's theorizing on nation to conduct a reading of discourses and performances of Indigeneity as part of cultural memory. I propose an analysis of the limited scenarios allowed in this construction of a nation in Brazilian media outlets, which often claim there is political motivation for identity and are incapable of dealing with contemporary Indigenous groups. Overall, this analysis highlights the need to rethink the way we discuss ethnic identity so as to foster a larger dialogue about identity, heritage, and minority cultures in such a way that we avoid falling into a paradigm of modernization and acculturation when discussing ethnicity, and to promote better understanding of the different ongoing political and cultural movements in contemporary Brazil.

Todo genuino movimiento literario, todo amanecer, toda ruptura, ha tenido indefectiblemente su primera exteriorización en las hojas provocativas de una revista. La revista descubre, polemiza; el escritor de revistas anticipa, es el guerrillero madrugado, el pionero que zampa terrenos intactos. La revista es vitrina y es cartel. El libro ya es en cierto modo un ataúd, quizás más duradero y más perfecto, pero menos jugoso y vital.