With an ethnographic focus on the prestigious cult of Ifá, this article seeks to account for the recent effervescence of Afro-Cuban cult worship in urban Cuba. It is argued that, since worship involves a marked emphasis on ritual consumption, the cult's rise can be related to wider transformations that have taken place in the field of everyday consumption in Havana during the economic crisis that has followed the collapse of the Soviet bloc. In particular, Ifá has provided an arena for what habaneros call ‘especulación’, a style of conspicuous consumption that has become prevalent among so-called ‘marginal’ groups in recent years.

Ah, quando fia ch'io possa in Italia tornar? Ha ormai tre mesi, che in questi rei paese Già fatto schiavo, e dal mio ben lontano …

Alas, when might I return to my Italy?

For three months now I have been enslaved in this evil land, so distant from my home

Gioacchino Rossini, L'Italiana in Algeri

Nineteenth-century travel accounts contributed to the existing body of knowledge about the world at the time they were written, and today they serve as witness to the merging of expansionist progress with the scientific state. The primary function of these accounts was to circumscribe the world of rationality. Their authors were enlightened nomads whose duty was to incorporate new and astonishing facts as objects of knowledge into their writing, which created a mise en scène of mysterious plots; this process was in fact the first globalisation. Romanticism organised this narrative into a powerful textual montage on alterity, which combined scientific discourse, aesthetic response, and humanistic concern. Such a multifaceted set of characteristics posed serious challenges for the traveller-writer of that era, and Latin Americans had their own grand tour.

This article examines the politics of literacy during the administration of Chilean President Eduardo Frei. Literacy training was an essential part of Christian Democratic efforts to promote agrarian reform and rural unionisation and incorporate the peasantry into the Chilean political system. Paulo Freire, working for the ministries of agriculture and education, was able to employ his innovative ‘consciousness raising’ techniques throughout Chile. In practice, the campaign often blurred the line between creating a critical consciousness and creating a Christian Democratic consciousness, while Freire himself became caught up in political struggles within the administration over the extent and pace of reform.

Men and women in Chile register and vote at separate polling booths. Election results are also tabulated separately for each sex by the Ministry of Interior, down to commune level. A survey of national elections from 1952 to 1970 shows that women and men have different voting preferences. Moreover, results from the four congressional elections held since democracy was restored in 1989 demonstrate that those preferences persist to the present. By focusing on elections in the capital city of Santiago, which is divided into 52 communes (barrios) whose residents differ in their economic and educational levels, it is possible to see to what extent class and gender affect voting preferences. On the basis of an analysis of this data, this article concludes that women are consistently more likely than men to vote for conservative parties, and that this is true in every social class. Support for the left does rise among both sexes in the lower middle class, proletarian and peasant communes – but less among women than among men. The ‘gender gap’ is not usually very large (although it increases at both ends of the political spectrum), but it is persistent.

Latin American countries have a long tradition of attempting to diversify their external relations. In this context, since the end of the Cold War East Asia has gained increasing importance. However, despite the rising interest in improved political and economic links, these attempts at diversification showed only modest results, Chile being a noteworthy exception within this overall trend. The following analysis presents an empirical overview of the development of relations between Latin America and East Asia with special emphasis on Chile, demonstrating how domestic transformation has affected the Asia-Pacific policies of Latin American countries. The main conclusion is that while in most countries domestic conflicts over the future course of political and economic development have hampered the creation of a consistent Asia-Pacific policy, the elite settlement in Chile has enabled strategic actors to create a policy network which provides the institutional basis for successfully diversifying external relations to East Asia.

In the 1920s oligarchic rule in Brazil was perceived to be constantly under threat from ‘revolution’. Domestic developments and the impact of the First World War had brought about major changes in the political arena. In this context, the resources of the Ministry of Foreign Relations (Itamaraty) were systematically used by the Brazilian government as a means to monitor and counteract presumed overseas connections of a ‘revolutionary’ nature. Actions against tenentismo in the Río de la Plata region and diplomatic efforts to oppose the 1930 Revolution, among other issues, are examined in this article in order to provide further understanding of the role played by Brazilian diplomacy in the final years of the Old Republic.