In this paper I present the views of a Latin American sociologist, partly trained in the United States, on Latin American Studies in this country. This is not a research paper but a frank and open presentation of my impressions, however opinionated. The aim is to stimulate reflection and debate, not to appease or to compromise. Implicit in all this are the following beliefs: (a) The training of Latin Americanists in the United States today is generally poor; (b) much of the research on Latin America carried out in the United States today is second-rate; (c) this situation can be improved; and, most important, (d) it is to Latin America's advantage, and not to its disadvantage, that such improvement take place.

During the last few years, interest in overall economic growth as the best measure and object of development has increasingly given way to a preoccupation with the distribution of income and thus with how the benefits of economic growth are shared. Within this general concern is a specific preoccupation with the poorest families in less-developed countries, who may remain in dire poverty despite significant increases in income per head or other measures of development.

O objetivo do texto é estudar deforma comparativa a programação e a identidade político-institucional das emissoras de rádio do poder legislativo brasileiro (Rádio Senado e Rádio Câmara), sob a perspectiva da comunicação política em interface com a cultura e a democracia. A hipótese que orienta o estudo é de que, apesar de terem sido criadas em 1998, essas emissoras são herdeiras da tradição de rádio educativo no Brasil, projeto iniciado na década de 1920. Conclui que tal herança persiste, mas com uma nova abordagem, cujo foco é a educação para a democracia e a cidadania. Permanece, porém, o modelo tradicional de comunicação política, baseado no poder unilateral do Estado de decidir o que o cidadão deve saber e de que forma a educação e a cultura devem ser tratadas.

The recent burgeoning of interest in agrarian reform throughout Latin American countries (Schaedel, 1965; Smith, 1965) has been accompanied by unprecedented attention on the part of social scientists in Latin America and elsewhere in what is called colonization. This is largely because what often is designated as official colonization (or projects to establish on the land groups of families headed by the operators of small or medium-sized farms) is one of the major measures used in attempts to achieve agrarian reform, and also because what frequently is referred to as spontaneous colonization (or the process by which settlers established new farmsteads for themselves on portions of the public domain) is another. In this article attention is concentrated upon the books, monographs, and articles dealing with colonization and settlement, and particularly those that have been put into circulation during the last decade.

This issue marks the start of LARR's thirty-sixth year of publication, the twentieth year of LARR's tenure at the University of New Mexico, and the beginning of the process of moving the journal to a new host institution, yet to be determined. The history of LARR is in some ways the history of Latin American studies as an interdisciplinary field. Before LARR, research on Latin America was essentially a disciplinary endeavor, carried out primarily by historians, political scientists, and faculty in literature. LARR's establishment represented a declaration that the complex realities of Latin America and the Caribbean required the interaction of information and perspectives from many fields. It also reflected a leap of faith in the untested notion that those conducting disciplinary research on Latin America would be interested in research from other fields.

O presente artigo se insere na linha de estudos sobre a baixa presença de mulheres na política brasileira. Nesse trabalho, testamos se a eleição de uma prefeita aumenta o número de mulheres disputando o próximo pleito para a prefeitura no mesmo município. A análise deste efeito contágio dialoga com outros trabalhos cujo foco é o momento da apresentação e seleção de candidatas como um dos filtros decisivos para viabilizar a eleição de mais mulheres em disputas eleitorais. Esse estudo tem como base de dados as eleições municipais para prefeito no Brasil entre 2000 e 2012. Chegamos à conclusão de que nos municípios em que houve a eleição de uma prefeita a probabilidade de ter candidatas lançando-se pela primeira vez na próxima eleição é 1,8 vezes maior em comparação com a última disputa eleitoral. Outra constatação é a de que os homens que concorrem ao pleito reagem de forma diferente à eleição de uma mulher. A pesquisa sugere também que, além de fatores mais conhecidos, como arranjos institucionais ou condicionantes socioeconômicos, eventos chaves, como a vitória de mulheres em eleições majoritárias, desencadeiam mecanismos de retroalimentação que resultam na ampliação do espaço das mulheres na política.

One must always make a special case for presenting puerto rican along with other Latin American studies. With public planning this is even more true. Puerto Rico is, after all, legally a part of the United States, and for many decades its well-being has been intimately tied to both general conditions in the U.S. and to U.S. policies, even those not directed specifically at Puerto Rico. For these reasons, planning by the government of Puerto Rico is very constrained: it must act without any of the options available to independent governments, such as the issuance of money or the control of imports; its laws and procedures must accommodate to the constraints of the U.S. legal system; it must permit U.S. citizens who are not Puerto Ricans to participate under conditions of full equality and mobility in Puerto Rico and between Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland.

Had massive migration of mexican labor to the southwest not taken place in the twentieth century, it is probable, as Ruth Tuck observed in Not with the Fist: Mexican-Americans in a Southwest City (N.Y., 1946; 29-30), that “side-eddies” of native Spanish-speaking would have been gradually swept into the mainstream of American life, as they almost were in California by 1900. Or perhaps these Spanish-speakers would have remained a picturesque folk in such isolated areas as northern New Mexico and South Texas. But massive migration from Mexico did occur at the opening of this century, adding a new chapter to Southwestern settlement and development, a chapter that differs from the old romanticized Southwest as much as a Chicano barrio or migrant camp differs from a restored Spanish mission or a New Mexico adobe. And yet this chapter—now so important to the ethnic study movement—has been almost totally neglected by Latin Americanists both in the United States and Mexico.

The field of international relations and foreign policy in Latin America is presently experiencing tremendous institutional and intellectual growth. These developments are increasingly emphasizing economic and political determinants at the national and international levels over the traditional focus on diplomacy and international law. This article will address one of the major theoretical issues in the study of international relations: can structural theories provide anything more than very general predictions of international politics? In addition, because most work using this perspective focuses on great powers, I ask whether structural theories can explain the behavior of lesser powers.

This article explores the impact of neighborhood effects on the socioeconomic integration of the inhabitants of three favelas of Salvador da Bahia. Urban research has argued that the spatial concentration of poverty adversely affects individual outcomes. Nevertheless, disagreement persists on whether contiguity between poor neighborhoods and higher-class gated communities widens opportunity structures. Examining the composition of social networks and their mobilization in the struggle for economic mobility, this study confirms that the proximity of Nordeste de Amaralina to upper-class neighborhoods improves access to labor opportunities, though mechanisms of social stratification limit these potentials. Segregation and the scarcity of economic opportunities in Plataforma foster the residents’ social isolation, whereas the socializing effects of public institutions in Fazenda Grande II mitigate the negative repercussions of poverty. The study urges a more holistic approach to urban poverty within public policies.

Tax evasion can be considered as a systemic fraud in which different parties such as taxpayers, lawyers, banks, and multinational entities interact. Here, accountants are key agents owing to their legal liability in tax reporting and their knowledge on accounting rules. The present study analyzes the role that accountants play in firms tax evasion by presenting evidence from a randomized field experiment carried out with microenterprises in Ecuador’s tax system in early 2016. The article evaluates to what extent a notification of accountants is more effective in increasing tax reporting than a notification of taxpayers, through five different treatments. The results show that simultaneous persuasive notifications of both accountants and taxpayers were the unique treatment that significantly increased firms’ declared income tax. Furthermore, it was shown that penalty notifications of accountants, rather than taxpayers only, were the most significant treatment at reducing revenue underreporting.

This article is an effort to update a discussion of Argentina’s international financial relations during the late 1970s that is lagging behind recent scholarly developments on the cases of Mexico and Chile. It focuses on the early restoration of Argentine credit standing with multilateral financial institutions, as well as their loans and technical assistance, achieved by Minister Martínez de Hoz and his team during their early years in office. So far this stage had not elicited detailed analyses of its differences with the controversial and better-known monetary balance of payments approach adopted in December 1978 to finally curb inflation, and which gave international private bankers a leading role in the financing of Argentina’s foreign exchange needs.

El artículo analiza los movimientos indígenas de México, los cuales exigen del gobierno central y de la sociedad en general el reconocimiento de México como una nación cultural y lingüísticamente plural. El municipio, implantado inicialmente en México por los españoles como instrumento de conquista, ha sido esculpido por los indígenas como un espacio desde el cual pueden defender su derecho a ser diferentes y a contrarrestar las políticas estatales. En espacios locales, independientemente de las posiciones políticas y las discusiones ideológicas, los indígenas han mantenido, recreado o elaborado formas de gobierno que se distinguen de aquellas localidades consideradas mestizas o no-indígenas. También las comunidades, localidades, en distintos momentos históricos se han valido de esta institución como un medio de defensa, resistencia e impugnación de las políticas del Estado.

El siguiente informe de investigación tiene por objeto presentar los resultados sobre cuatro de las principales dimensiones medidas en la Encuesta Solidaridad, aplicada en la ciudad de Santiago de Chile: (1) semántica de la noción de solidaridad; (2) niveles de valoración hacia distintos tipos de solidaridad; (3) frecuencia de práctica de distintos tipos de solidaridad; y (4) la relación entre solidaridad y atribución de responsabilidad social. A partir de estos resultados se concluye que el significado que los sujetos le atribuyen a la solidaridad es múltiple y variado, y que al mismo tiempo existe una alta valoración de las diversas prácticas solidarias. Asimismo, se identifica un contraste entre las solidaridades más valoradas y las más practicadas. Por último, los encuestados vinculan fuertemente la solidaridad a una demanda por un Estado más activo y socialmente responsable.