Una de las cuestiones interesantes de las guerras de liberación y las revoluciones sociales del Tercer Mundo es que las luchas por profundas transformaciones sociales e, incluso, por un horizonte socialista, no tienen como fuerza principal a un partido proletario ni a organizaciones donde la clase obrera constituye el componente principal. El protagonista fundamental de estos movimientos es, antes bien, un complejo conjunto de clases y grupos populares—artesanos, campesinos, semiproletarios, jóvenes, pobres de la ciudad y del campo—donde la clase obrera no es un componente mayoritario. Este perfil social propio de las revoluciones y guerras de liberación del Tercer Mundo obedece en definitiva al modo en que el capitalismo se desarrolló en estos países, articulándose a formas no capitalistas de producción y circulación, subordinándolas pero sin eliminarlas plenamente.

This article will examine the development of labor unrest in Argentina between 1887 and 1907. Because official statistics were not compiled until after 1907, new data on strikes have been generated for the earlier period through a detailed reading of newspapers. These data provide information on the occupational and geographical distribution of strikes, their timing, and the kinds of demands made by strikers. The new data also provide helpful insights into the nature of labor organizations and the causes of labor unrest. Most important, these data indicate that changes in the organization of the workplace were a significant factor in altering the composition of demand for labor and in generating labor unrest. Finally, they show that the organization of the workplace also accounted for significant differences in the forms of action and organization adopted by various sectors of the labor force. Hence insofar as the position of different groups of workers in the labor market was itself shaped by the nature of the labor process and workplace relations, the transformation of these spheres constitutes an important analytical point of departure for explaining the central features of the emerging labor movement.

This article examines the appearance of religious metaphors and imagery—related to the evil eye, envy, energy, and purification—in the narratives of former leaders from Porto Alegre's internationally renowned initiative in direct democracy, the Participatory Budget. The data come from qualitative interviews conducted with female grassroots community leaders who for various reasons have withdrawn from active civic participation. While notions of envy and evil eye are commonplace in everyday life in Brazil, their appearance in discourse around citizen participation appears out of place. This article uses four ethnographic cases to examine how notions of envy and evil eye are drawn upon to explain discontinued civic participation. I argue that the apparent anachronism of religious imagery such as envy and evil eye reflects a widespread assumption among activists, politicians, and scholars that civic participation initiatives like the Participatory Budget are inherently secular. I also advance the broader argument that bringing scholarly attention to nonpolitical metaphors and tropes that shape grassroots political experience leads to a more complete account of citizenship practices and identities in Porto Alegre.

Recent studies of the history of Mexican cinema continue to speak of the complex relations between the state and the film industry, and the most frequently analyzed aspects tend to be the same: the reach and forms of censorship, as well as the financial dependence on the state. To broaden this perspective, I propose a classification of cinematic discourses that represent the relations between film characters and state powers. I discuss four basic modes of representation that, determined by historical and economic circumstances, reflect and mediate the attitudes and dispositions of viewers toward the political regime. For each mode, I discuss a sequence in a paradigmatic film, analyzing visual and ideological aspects in relation to the political moment at the time of the film's release. Finally, I argue that, despite the resurgence of the Mexican cinema and a more critical tone in its approach to state institutions, fictional films still rest on indirect and allegorical representations of recent events. This is due to the uncertainty of the prolonged and still-incomplete transition to institutional democracy in Mexico.

Onipresente na obra de Gilberto Freyre, na qual recebe tratamento diversificado, o tema da culinária e da alimentação evidencia o projeto científico e o programa político do autor pernambucano, bem como seu pioneirismo e sua importância contemporânea. Buscando um esforço de síntese e a sondagem de alguns aspectos mais recônditos da obra freyreana, esse artigo pretende demonstrar que subjazem ao tratamento da culinária em Freyre os temas-chave de raça, identidade e modernidade. A relação e entre nutrição e raça sugere que argumentos baseados na alimentação foram fundamentais para sobrepor ao paradigma racista um culturalista. A relação entre alimentação e identidade evidencia que a culinária brasileira é epítome do caráter mestiço do brasileiro. A relação entre alimentação e modernidade implica que a culinária nacional há de ser defendida das forças descaracterizadoras da modernização.

Este articulo analiza el papel que desempeñaron turistas norteamericanos en la redefinición de la vocación productiva de dos localidades mexicanas. Estos visitantes desde sus actividades empresariales tuvieron un papel fundamental en la constitución de estos espacios sociales como lugares turísticos. El trabajo analiza el papel de los emprendedores como agentes en la transformación de la identidad cultural de pequeñas poblaciones que, hasta antes de la presencia de estos emprendedores, no eran considerados destinos turísticos y pasaban por una crisis económica por lo que sus proyectos parecían una aventura destinada al fracaso. El papel que los visitantes norteamericanos han tenido en la definición de la cultura y la actividad turística en México ha sido poco analizado. Los casos de estudio son Taxco (Guerrero) y Álamos (Sonora).

Since 1976 profound changes have occurred in Brazilian national society, changes that have implications for the tribal populations in Brazil as well as for those conducting anthropological and linguistic research among these populations. Many of these changes can be linked to the government policy of abertura (opening). This policy was begun implicitly under the regime of Ernesto Geisel (1974-79) and has been continued more explicitly by the current President, João Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo, who is scheduled to remain in office until 1985. Perhaps equally as important at the infrastructural level have been the global economic changes that were largely linked to earlier increases in oil prices. These steep increases have severely shaken the Brazilian economy, causing annual inflation rates in 1980, 1981, and 1982 of approximately 100 percent.

This article reports the results of a pioneering and in-depth survey of the research and information-seeking behavior of the student members of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) living in the United States and Puerto Rico. The results suggest that the new generation of Latin Americanists in the universities surveyed are confident in their abilities to carry out research on the region within their respective disciplines. However, most of these students have not received formal instruction by course instructors or librarians on how to carry out their research on Latin America. Use of the Internet as a research resource is popular but has not replaced the use of the library and long-standing research strategies such as footnote-chasing. While the reported use of library electronic resources is very high, awareness of Latin America-specific and electronically-available research tools such as HLAS, HAPI, and LAPTOC is low. The survey is the first step in reassessing the ever-changing needs and research patterns of this cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary group of academic library users and future leaders in Latin American studies.

This article analyzes Salvadoran newspaper coverage of a social movement struggle that emerged in 2002 to prevent the privatization of the health-care system. Movement groups pursued their policy goals through both extrainstitutional protest and formal legislative channels. Through an analysis of news content, this article examines whether these different components of the movement's claims-making repertoire influenced the portrayal of the movement's goals, actors, and actions by one of the major Salvadoran news dailies. The analysis reveals that, compared to protest events, legislative processes that the movement set in motion generated coverage that was more sympathetic to the movement and that presented greater interrogation of government and elite plans for health-care reform.

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).

Este ensayo explica la evolución del debate en torno a la legalización de drogas psicoactivas ilícitas en Colombia. Este debate tuvo un protagonista central: el Presidente Ernesto Samper Pizano (1994–1998). En los años setenta fue un activo participante en la polémica a favor de una actitud más liberal y menos prohibicionista sobre la marihuana. Desde el poder dos décadas después, fue el que impulsó la major criminalización del fenómeno de las drogas. Este trabajo traza ese recorrido histórico y analiza los motivos pragmáticos para que Samper se movieira entre la legalización generosa y la prohibición categórica. Su pensamiento y su comportamiento reflejan en buena medida una actitud relativamente extendida en Colombia frente a los narcóticos: la oscilación entre convivir y combatir las drogas. En uno y otro escenario, el papel de Estados Unidos ha sido fundamental. El peso de Washington y su cruzada anti-drogas resultaron notoriamente influyentes en las discusiones colombianas sobre qué hacer con el narcotráfico y los narcotraficantes. Al inicio de un nuevo milenio, Colombia está frente a un abismo, un abismo en parte originado por la prohibición de drogas.

This essay reviews the following works:

Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America: Trauma, Politics, and Resistance. Edited by Aída Díaz de León, Llorente Marina , and Marcella Salvi. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. Pp. vi + 177. ISBN: 9781498507806.

La consagración de la memoria: Una etnografía acerca de la institucionalización del recuerdo sobre los crímenes del terrorismo de Estado en la Argentina. By Ana Guglielmucci. Buenos Aires: Antropofagia, 2013. Pp. 398. ISBN: 9789871238996.

Art from a Fractured Past: Memory and Truth-Telling in Post-Shining Path Peru. Edited by Cynthia E. Milton. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 307. ISBN: 9780822355304.

Ni tan elefante, ni tan blanco: Arquitectura, urbanismo y política en la trayectoria del Estadio Nacional. By Valentina Rozas Krause. Santiago, Chile: RIL Editores, 2014. Pp. 342. ISBN: 9789560100641.

Memorials in Berlin and Buenos Aires: Balancing Memory, Architecture, and Tourism. By Brigitte Sion. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. Pp. xix + 129. ISBN: 9780739176306.

University Students Have Been a Highly Visible Participant in Latin American politics for many years. To cite a few examples, they played an important role in the overthrow of the regimes in Cuba (1933, 1959), Guatemala (1944), Venezuela (1958), and Bolivia (1964), and have led significant anti-government demonstrations in nearly every Latin American country at one time or another. No government in the region can afford to disregard students as a political group.

An increasing amount of research has been undertaken in the last decade on the power structure of the Empire of Brazil (1822–89). In common with similar work on the rest of Latin America, many of the studies on Brazil have adopted the concept of the elite for their theoretical framework. And, as elite studies must do if they are to be more than speculative, several of the works have drawn on prosopography, or collective biography, to support the interpretations of the power structure that they advance. If the results have not, in general, been entirely satisfactory, this is largely due to the limitations in the prosopographical materials used. Since the materials have not easily lent themselves to a proper quantitative approach, they have been used selectively in the form of examples, the validity and relevance of which must always be suspect.

In 1955, a monument to Inca warrior Rumiñahui was erected in Otavalo's central plaza. In this article, I study the ways in which competing imaginings of the Ecuadorian nation have shaped the material and symbolic trajectory of the monument. The monument was the outcome of a struggle for hegemony between nonindigenous elites. The current appropriation of the monument by the local indigenous population, however, is at odds with the ideological purpose for which it was built. The initiative to build the monument emerged from the public sphere—which at that time excluded indigenous peoples—in a context of national debates about the Indian problem. The widespread notion that the indigenous people of Otavalo were exceptional propelled the local nonindigenous elite to debate the Indian problem and shape, in the process, a public sphere. Elucidating the workings of the public sphere in the racialization of indigenous peoples, I aim to contribute to the academic literature about the relationship between Indian and nation in Ecuador. This literature has focused on the role that either the state or the private sphere has played in this racialization and has not paid enough explicit attention to the public sphere.

Social conflicts stemming from industrial mining projects in Peru have increasingly been fought in court cases in recent years. This article analyzes the dark side of this judicialization of mining conflicts, a process through which state authorities criminalize participation in social protests and attempt to prevent the mobilization of social movements. This use of the law by public authorities is an example of the so-called shrinking space in which the scope of action of civil society actors is increasingly restricted and constrained worldwide. This article presents an in-depth analysis of a specific court case against a group of mining opponents in the Cajamarca region of Peru. Based on ethnographic field research conducted in Peru, the article discusses three different modalities of the law’s domination, exploring the various ways the law rules those who oppose large-scale extractive projects.