The Fundación John Boulton was established in 1950 as a privately funded institution sponsored by the Casas Boulton of Caracas, Valencia, and Maracaibo. For many years, the Fundación functioned in the Villa Espalmador in El Paraíso, but it has recently moved to new quarters in Torre El Chorro, Avenida Universidad, in the center of Caracas. Founded to facilitate research on the history and culture of Venezuela, the Fundación has assembled a strong collection covering the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, the collection is constantly being augmented by purchases, exchanges, and donations of additional material. The material available in the Fundación is found in the library, in the various archives, and in two museums.

On the basis of data collected by the RETTRANS survey (2011–2012) on Bolivian migrants living in Spain, this article aims to identify the influence of the 2008 economic crisis on the determinants marking the migrants’ return intention. In this regard, there is a need to incorporate the concept of double embeddedness based on migrants’ social networks (meso level), the way migration is imbricated in persons’ lives (micro level); and how, at a macro level, economic and social transformations of different contexts affect these decisions. The article highlights that unexpected changes in living conditions trigger a reconfiguration of these mixed factors that condition return intentions.

Este artículo analiza el humor, la conflictividad social y el lenguaje en la literatura y el proyecto editorial de Washington Cucurto en consonancia con la poscrisis argentina del año 2001, un período de inestabilidad y cuestionamiento de la configuración sociopolítica, económica y cultural del país. Su humor se encarna en la combinación del habla oral con sintagmas que no son propios de la oralidad, abriendo el espacio a la parodia y la tragedia. Este estilo —al que el autor denomina realismo atolondrado—introduce una “extrañeza inquietante” en prácticas sociales automatizadas en las que se naturaliza la violencia, el racismo y la xenofobia social hacia los inmigrantes externos e internos del gran Buenos Aires. El realismo atolondrado está asimismo presente en su proyecto editorial Eloísa Cartonera, el cual construido a partir de lo que la sociedad deshecha mantiene una relación de familiar extrañeza con el curso de la industria cultural global y con el curso de la cultura de las artes en general.

Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay today account for well over a third of world exports of cellulose, yet this industry only came into existence in the late twentieth century. The evolution of this industry across the three countries is the object of this study. This nascent industry required direct government support in all three countries to be successful. Forestry laws and government investments in research, education, and factory construction were all needed to encourage local and foreign capital. There were differences among these countries in their linkages to other economic sectors as well as their export mix. But in all three countries, the forestry industry was part of a general modernization of agriculture that allowed for successful competition in world markets.

The most politically sensitive question in studies of economic growth is: What is the optimal relationship for the distribution of income and wealth to economic growth? The rich often diversify their assets, and thus it is not easy to know the total wealth of an individual, or the distribution of wealth for a nation. For this reason, the analysis presented here for Argentina from 1914 to 1969 makes only brief reference to the influence of the distribution of wealth and focuses instead on the relationship between income distribution and economic growth. Income distribution in other nations also is discussed in order to evaluate the possibility of utilizing their experience to judge the Argentine case. The relationship between increases in workers' and entrepreneurs' income and those in investment is also examined, for an economy will grow only if investment takes place. Moreover, because funds spent on private consumption cannot be invested and much past economic analysis has studied the relationship between changes in income and in consumption, this relationship must be considered in the Argentine case. We will look at several categories of income, taking into account the effects of inflation and of ownership of selected categories of wealth.

Este artículo explora el mundo de las botánicas —consideradas como farmacias invisibles— en la Ciudad de Nueva York en donde practicantes de las religiones afrocaribeñas, especialmente Santería, ejercen un doble rol como líderes religiosos y consejeros espirituales. Las botánicas atienden a una población latinoamericana, a menudo migrante e indocumentada, que llega a ellas buscando soluciones efectivas a una plétora de problemas (ej., desde trastornos orgánicos hasta maltrato laboral y conflictos familiares). Los consejeros entienden los síntomas individuales como una disrupción con el mundo social y espiritual, a menudo provocado por “maleficios” y energías negativas circundantes. Las respuestas terapéuticas mas frecuentes combinan la consulta con el uso de plantas en infusiones, baños espirituales y oraciones (resumidos en la tríada: beber, limpiar y orar). El tema pone en evidencia el rol de los servicios terapéuticos que ofrecen las botánicas por cuanto proveen de respuestas rápidas, prácticas y económicamente accesibles a una población vulnerable.

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the Alzate family, of Medellín, Colombia, grasped the magnetism of the Natural Man (a malleable myth with porous edges that combines both the Edenic and the cannibalistic visions of indigenous peoples) and its economic potential and orchestrated a family craft business of fake pre-Columbian pottery. They created pieces that would engage in dialogue with collectors’, anthropologists’, museums’, and tourists’ desires and imaginaries, as well as authenticity criteria, about indigenous pre-Columbian peoples. This article shows the relationship between these forgeries’ production, circulation, and consumption and the ways Latin American indigenous peoples have been conceived of by others. Moreover, this research stresses how authentic fakes, together with official and popular discourses and images, certain exhibition and validation rhetorics, and other mises-en-scène construct what is sacralized as uncontaminated, original, and traditional. Such fakes operate politically by undermining social hierarchies linked to essentialized race and identity.