Some recent works on the relationship between coffee interests and the State during the Brazilian ‘First Republic’ (1899–1930) have shown that the relationship between the national State and ‘coffee bourgeoisie’ was not quite as simple as earlier studies had made it seem. However, these analyses seem to assume that, at the regional level, the federalism of the First Republic placed regional political structures under class control. The goal of this article is to show that the ‘instrumentalist’ thesis is not even valid for the State apparatus when considered at the regional level. The article focuses on São Paulo state, seat of the most powerful interests linked to the coffee economy.

A polarisation of foreign railroad, oil and other business interests in Mexico occurred during the early years of the Mexican Revolution. Some of the American interests resented Porfirio Díaz's favouritism towards Europe and supported Francisco Madero for a change, and later, Venustiano Carranza. There is evidence of limited logistical support by the US government in May 1911 for the Madero revolution, and of financial support by US railroad and oil magnate Henry Clay Pierce. The overthrow of President Madero at the instigation of General Victoriano Huerta and General Félix Díaz, with the tacit support of British railroad and oil magnate Weetman Pearson, had very strong repercussions through President Huerta's subsequent alliance with British interests in Mexico. The US military superpower intervention in Veracruz of April 1914 was the action involving US business lobbying which had the greatest impact on the outcome of the Mexican Revolution, in favour of Carranza.

In recent years Latin American countries have enacted sweeping privatisation measures and major trade, financial and tax reforms, but they have moved much more slowly to reform their pension systems and labour laws. This pattern of reform partly reflects differences in the intensity of organised labour's opposition to the reforms. Organised labour has undertaken greater efforts to block labour law reforms and, to a lesser extent, pension reforms, because these measures impose severe losses on more unions than other types of reforms. These greater efforts, moreover, have had significant effects on policy outcomes. The article shows how organised labour reacted quite differently to various types of market-oriented reforms in Argentina and Mexico in the 1990s, and describes how the reaction of the unions helped shape the fate of the reform proposals.

This article seeks to expand our understanding of the dynamics of the Gómez regime and of its treatment of foreign investment by examining its relationship with a large British enterprise engaged in ranching and frozen meat exports. The company and the regime established mutually beneficial relationships during the First World War, but when the tighter market conditions of the post-war period obliged the company to restrict its purchases of cattle from Gómez, he forced the company to end its exports. The regime's treatment of the Vestey enterprise thus offers a vivid contrast to its treatment of foreign oil companies.

27 February 1989 saw a popular revolt, which was to escalate dramatically, break out in Venezuela. Both Caracas and most of the main and secondary cities of the country were the scene of barricades, road closures, the stoning of shops, shooting and widespread looting. This article describes the events occurring during the Caracazo or Sacudón, as the episode is known, in order to show the key role played by the weakness of a set of social and political institutions in the violent forms of collective action that prevailed. This data, on a comparative basis, may enrich our understanding of other similar uprisings in the region and worldwide.

During the 1990s Peru's Alberto Fujimori and Argentina's Carlos Menem were the two main political successes of Latin American populism. Both completed two successive presidential terms, a unique accomplishment in the continent, and overcame the political instability that previously beset their nations. Scholars who analysed these and other contemporary regimes concluded that Latin American populism was flexible and resilient enough to adapt to a radically different environment from that of the 1930s and 1940s, when it had emerged as a major force. Some political scientists labelled as ‘neopopulism’ the newer variant of populism in the context of globalisation and widespread acceptance of neoliberal policies. These scholars stressed two salient features of neopopulism that contrasted with ‘classical populism’ of the 1930s and 1940s: its social base consisting of members of the informal economy, as opposed to the organised working class; and its implementation of neoliberal policies, as against the model of import substitution and state interventionism.