Mexico's post-1982 economic crisis has produced particularly serious challenges for the organised labour movement. Government austerity measures and economic contraction in the private sector resulted in an estimated unemployment rate of 17.6% in 1987.1 At least another 25–35% of the working-age population was employed in only marginally productive activities. Real minimum wages fell by 41.9% between 1982 and mid-1987 under the pressure of record inflation rates2 and government subsidies for basic commodities, mass transportation, electricity, natural gas and gasoline were also drastically reduced or eliminated. These economic conditions and tight government control over wage increases placed incumbent labour leaders under increasing pressure from the rank and file. The prospect of continued economic stagnation and government efforts to redefine the country's model of economic development raise important questions regarding organised labour's long-term position in Mexico's governing ‘revolutionary coalition’.

Since 1982, most Latin American countries have witnessed slow economic growth and a persistent net transfer of funds to the rest of the world as a result of sharply reduced inflows of private international bank lending and large debt payment obligations. Against this background direct foreign investment (DFI) has received increasing attention as one important element in overcoming the present stagnation-cum-debt crisis as well as in contributing to renewed economic growth. This article explores the possible contributions of DFI to the future economic growth and development of the region.1

On 1st May 1917 m Rio de Janeiro, protesters took to the streets carrying placards and shouting slogans denouncing high prices and miserable living conditions. Over the succeeding months the May Day protest mushroomed into an unprecedented general strike of more than 50,000 workers in the federal capital. Rio de Janeiro had witnessed frequent protests and agitation against taxes, high prices, shortages, poor housing and public services and the cost of transport during the late Empire and first decades of the Republic.1 What was different about May Day 1917 was that complaints over consumer, community-based issues affecting the general populace triggered off a wave of trade-union militancy unique in the city's history.

Bogotá suffered its most severe outbreak of public violence of the nineteenth century on 15 and 16 January 1893. Indeed apart from the bogotazo of 9 April 1948, it was perhaps the worst violence that the Colombian capital has ever experienced.1 For twenty-four hours the city experienced serious social disorder, which was brought under control only by the use of regular army troops at a cost of an unknown number of casualties. Surprisingly, the January 1893 bogotazo has not been subjected to serious historical examination. The role of craftsmen in the outbreak of violence offers a window in the largely unknown course of artisan political activity in Bogotá after the decline of the Democratic Society of Artisans in the mid-century reform period. More broadly, whereas the relationship between wage labourers and violence has attracted many scholars, the propensity of the artisan class to engage in violent activities in nineteenth-century Colombia (and in Latin America as a whole) deserves more scholarly investigation. What were the causes and the nature of the 1893 riot? Were they typical of nineteenth-century urban violence? Finally, how does the 1893 riot fit within the broad sweep of Colombian collective violence?2 Before attempting to answer these questions it is necessary to look briefly, by way of background, at Bogotá in the late nineteenth century, its economy and society, at the nature of Colombian politics and, in particular, at the role of artisans in bogotano politics and in earlier episodes of urban disorder.