At a time when Cuban immigrants are seeking political asylum at historically unprecedented rates, most press and scholarly accounts consistently mirror earlier portrayals of Cubans’ mass exodus from the island in one key aspect: they ascribe to refugees a primarily economic reason for their decision to leave and offer little discussion of political factors. To illuminate the need for such analysis, this article examines the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, when approximately 125,000 Cubans, most of them thirty years old or younger, left Cuba. No other exodus of Cubans was more demonized than the Mariel, both by Cuba’s supporters and leadership and by exile opponents of the communist state. Exploring how the intensification of ideological criteria for inclusion in the Cuban Revolution undermined the quality of Cubans’ liberation under socialism prior to Mariel, this article explores state policies and the deep politicization of everyday life and identity. Key political factors explain many young people’s alienation and the degree to which the Cuban state sanctioned and directed extreme measures of repression to discredit those who wanted to leave as lazy, sexually degenerate escoria (human trash).

A sense of obligation to obey the police is an important predictor of public cooperation and compliance with the law. Minorities tend to feel less obligated to obey the police than the majority. Previous work based on the social resistance framework shows that the experiences that shape the lives and attitudes of minorities may encourage them to actively engage in a variety of everyday resistance acts against the majority group, which may include high-risk and delinquent behaviours. The present study tests this framework for the first time concerning the self-perceived obligation to obey the police while also considering different minority groups who experience varying levels of marginalization. We use a representative sample of about 1,100 Israelis from four minority groups – Muslims, immigrants from the former Soviet Union, ultra-Orthodox Jews and Jews of Ethiopian origin – along with the Jewish majority group. The results show that Muslims feel the least obligation to obey the police, followed by Jews of Ethiopian origin. Social resistance was negatively related to the self-perceived obligation to obey the police among Muslims and ultra-Orthodox Jews while controlling for demographic characteristics and previous theoretical explanations, namely procedural justice, self-help and anger.

Across Latin America, there continues to be strong resistance to the claim that racism plays a role in the production of urban space. Deemed antipatriotic, this issue remains widely unaddressed in urban planning and geography. Based on qualitative research in Bogotá and secondary literature on other Latin American cities, this article explores the afterlife of mestizaje (racial mixture) as a racial–colonial project from the viewpoint of its materialisation in the city and society–space relations. In particular, it illustrates how racism in the city is transfigured as ‘always something else’ (e.g., culture, class, regionalism, displacement) through a variety of normative, discursive and operational devices. Thus, the article confronts the need to divest from the racial hegemony of mestizaje in urban planning and geography, suggesting that it is hindering the path towards more equitable urban futures.

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.

This study explores the pig-raising practices of Chinese migrants in Los Angeles Chinatown during the Chinese Exclusion Era. Chinese butcher shops sold pork meat, and previous research indicates that they likely sold the more profitable parts outside of Chinatown for additional income while consuming cheaper cuts themselves. Using dental calculus analysis and archival research, this study further explores how Chinatown residents relied on pork to thrive in an anti-Chinese environment. Dental calculus results suggest that Chinese migrants raised their own pigs with food waste and by-products from rice fields; this pork was then sold to meat markets or consumed within the community. The analysis of immigration records indicates that Chinese butcher shops provided employment opportunities as well as housing, banking, and immigration support for Chinese migrants. Pig raising, therefore, not only supplied a source of meat for Chinese migrants but also supported a range of social and financial services for a marginalized group that faced everyday discrimination from dominant society. Overall, this study traces the labor and networks that small businesses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries needed to source and distribute pork, and it highlights how a Chinese diasporic community developed a pork production system to resist racism.

This article examines the construction of a multifaceted collective memory through the main female protagonists in Song of the Water Saints (2002) by the Dominican American author Nelly Rosario. By bridging memory studies, Latin American studies, and Afro-Latinx studies, the book examines racial and gendered constructs, intergenerational struggles, US imperialism, and Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship to show the interconnected nature of memorial articulations for subaltern subjects. Through a literary close reading, this article dissects the lives of three generations of female characters—Graciela, her daughter Mercedes, and Graciela’s great-granddaughter Leila—and how they challenge, reinforce, and suffer racialized, political, and gendered subjectivities. By examining intersectional and historical trauma simultaneously, this study contributes to the field of memory, Afro-Latinx, and Latin American studies by showing the muddled construct of memory for Dominicans and Dominican Americans.

This article explores the impact of Afrocubanismo on the development of Cuba’s arts during the 1940s and 1950s. The article follows the discursive output of artists, intellectuals, and cultural policymakers of different racial backgrounds over the deployment of lo negro to construct cubanidad. It argues that, if the 1920s and 1930s experienced a movement towards the construction of a homogeneous mestizo Cuba, the following decades reveal an effort by some artists to desyncretize lo cubano. While some intellectuals constructed notions of authenticity that circumscribed black art to black artists, many white Cuban artists in turn embraced elite Hispanic heritage as their main creative language while valorizing some Afro-Cuban artists’ recreations of lo negro. The article also demonstrates that the scholarly debates about cultural appropriation in recent decades have a long history within the Afro-Cuban community. It shows how Afro-Cuban artists and intellectuals pioneered arguments about the exploitative use of lo negro to make national art and the central role of culture in shaping racial inequality.

Cuban emigration in the post-Soviet period has largely been attributed to economic motivations, but without significant racial analysis. Moreover, little is known about how black Cubans on the island think about emigration. It is therefore imperative to re-examine how blacks, once cited as the Cuban Revolution's loyalists, make decisions today about remaining in Cuba and/or pursuing economic security outside of its borders. Using original survey data of black Cubans on the island, I find that economic motivations are prominent among black Cubans, but that these motivations can be multifaceted. In a study of black Cubans and emigration, the issue of increasing racial inequality and racial exclusion has significant influence on economic opportunity, which in turn influences the desire to leave Cuba to achieve economic and professional success. The results have implications for the ways in which we analyse migration throughout the Latin American region, where race has not been factored into why people migrate.

This article explores how late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century ideas of the Spanish American consumer took shape. It argues that Atlantic debates on consumption, on the one hand, and on racial difference, on the other, provided a common ground on which foreign visitors, diplomats and commentators, as well as Colombian elite intellectuals, could jointly create a positive idea of the Spanish American consumer. The article demonstrates that, in the eyes of those who had either political or economic interest in the region, it was possible for Spanish American Indians, Blacks and ‘mixed races’ to gradually overcome their ‘backwardness’ by adopting new practices of consumption. The consumption of new necessities by the Spanish American popular sectors became, for many of these commentators, an irrefutably civilising force.

This article studies the intersections between race and regional identity in the 1940s and 1950s in Salvador, Bahia, a critical site for the African diaspora. It examines how tourist guides produced for domestic consumption, first by Jorge Amado and later by intellectuals Odorico Tavares and José Valladares, sought to frame the city in new ways around blackness. Grounding the production of such guides in national trends for mobility and travel, the article proposes that they provided a foundational site for the crafting of a regional identity. Critically, these texts established early links between a commodified black culture and tourism in ways that would prove exceptionally long-lasting.

Climate change affects the livestock populations. As temperature increases, the rainfall distribution patterns shifts. These indirectly change the ecosystems like changes in crop yield, alter the distribution of animal diseases, geographically restriction of rare breed populations and increased competition for resources. Therefore, the objective of the study was to quantify impacts of climate variability on livestock population dynamics and breed distribution patterns. The study was conducted in Gondar Zuria, Farta and Bahir Dar Zuria districts. The sites were selected based on agro-ecology and livestock distribution potential. Data were collected through desk reviews of different documents and studies, focused group discussions, key informants interviews and different projection models. The results revealed that 70 percent of respondents believed that the trends of livestock breed distribution varied from year to year and from agro-ecology to agro-ecology. The number of cattle and equines are decreasing from year to year due to climate variability. Particularly, the crossbred cattle population decreased in 1998, 2002 and 2008 due to shortage of rainfall, increments of temperature and feed shortage. A correlation analysis was used to quantify impacts of temperature and rainfall on livestock population dynamics and breed distribution. The analyses revealed that sheep (r = −0.535, P < 0.05) and cattle (r = −0. 512, P < 0.05) were negatively affected by climate variability. Whereas goats were having positive relationship (r = 0.345, P < 0.001). As the average maximum temperature steadily increases, the population dynamics of ruminant livestock fluctuated after the year 1996. About 92.2, 78 and 83.3 percent respondents in Farta, Gondar Zuria and Bahir Dar Zuria districts, respectively, stated that there is a fluctuation in amount of rainfall distribution during the main rainy seasons. About 84.5 percent of respondent of the three districts also believed that climate change made variation in rainfall distribution. About 52 percent of the respondents also suggested that if livestock is to be protected from climate change and related effects, changing the farming system with appropriate breed is important and can be achieved with the zero-grazing system. The farmers also recommended with stocking climate change adaptive and productive breeds. In conclusion, climate variability affected livestock population dynamics and breed distribution pattern negatively.

The settlement and expansion of the Portuguese colonies in South America were made possible by slave labour; however, the historical size of enslaved Native and African groups is largely unknown. This investigation compiles extant statistics on the population of «Brazil» by race and state for the pre-census period from 1545 to 1850, complementing them with headcount estimates based on sugar, gold, and coffee production; pre-contact indigenous populations; and trans-Atlantic slave voyages. The resulting panel of demographic data illustrates national and regional racial transitions encompassing the colonial era. Brazil's population was of Native descent but became predominantly African in the 18th century; people of European ancestry remained a minority for another 200 years.

Genomic research in Latin America has looked into the African, Amerindian and European ancestry of local populations. This article explores how indigeneity and blackness figure in genomic science in the light of previous and current representations of indigenous and Afro-descendent people. These categories have been cast as ‘other’ in Latin America, but they have occupied different locations in ‘structures of alterity’. I look briefly at these similarities and differences in the colonial and republican periods and in recent multiculturalist reforms. I look at the gendered sexual imagery surrounding each concept, before examining in detail how blackness and indigeneity figure in gendered ways in genomic science research on admixture and ancestry in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. I conclude that, in the context of multiculturalism, genomics works to re-centre imaginaries of the nation around the mestizo and mixture, while casting blackness and indigeneity, in sexualised and gendered ways, as different kinds of others.

For many years, there has been debate about the suitability of traditional and conventional pig breeds in low-input and organic production systems. This review compiles reproductive and finishing performance of traditional and conventional breeds in low-input and organic production systems in Europe, based on literature studies and farm surveys until 2010. In comparison with traditional breeds, conventional breeds wean many piglets, have efficient and fast growth and lean carcasses. They thrive well in North West European climatic conditions with temperate summers and mild winters. Optimal housing may be indoors with outdoor runs, because this provides a controlled environment in which large litters are more easily managed. The lean meat of conventional breeds is suitable for the commodity organic pork market. Traditional breeds comprise a group of prolific breeds with good finishing performance (e.g. Saddlebacks, Pulawska) and breeds kept for special meat production (e.g. Ibérico, Cinta Senese). The prolific and leaner traditional breeds are suitable for commodity organic pork production, especially when crossed with conventional white boar breeds to give some extra leanness to the carcass. Special meat breeds are unsuitable for commodity organic pork production owing to their low fertility and high carcass fatness, but extra added value is obtained by their specific meat and fat quality.

Populations of the six equine breeds registered by the Indian National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources have drastically decreased due to indiscriminate breeding and their low utilization. In this study, 15 biometric indices along with typical breed characteristics were recorded for 50 animals of each breed except Bhutia breed (35) for their phenotypic characterization. On the basis of their heights at wither, Kathiawari and Marwari breeds were grouped under “horse”, while Zanskari, Manipuri, Bhutia and Spiti fell under “pony” breeds. Marwari was the tallest and significantly different from other breeds in most of the biometric indices. Spiti was the shortest breed among all the six horse and pony breeds. Sex-wise differences were also observed in some of the biometric indices in different breeds. In Marwari and Kathiawari breeds, both stallions and mares can rotate their ears at an angle of 180° making the ear tips meet in the centre, which is a typical characteristic of the two breeds. This report aims at providing reference data for identification and comparison of different breeds of equines in India with a view to raise awareness among animal geneticists and breeders for production of true to breed animals, conservation and better management of these precious genetic resources.

This paper investigates how students at the State University of Rio de Janeiro(UERJ), one of the first Brazilian universities to adopt race-based quotas foradmissions, interpret racial categories used as eligibility criteria.Considering the perspectives of students is important to understand the workingsof affirmative action policies because UERJ's quotas require applicants toclassify themselves. Students' interpretations of those categories often divergefrom the interpretations intended by people who shaped the policy. Students'perspectives are formed by everyday experiences with categorisation and by theirself-assessment as legitimate beneficiaries of quotas. In contrast, the policieswere designed according to a new racial project, where blackconsciousness-raising and statistics played an important role.