The article attempts to identify the principal processes and patterns, divergences and contrasts that operated during the Independence period in Latin America. These are frequently lost among the detail involved in discussing this period either in monographic or general textual form. The method is to take Spanish and Portuguese America together. Comparison takes place here at a number of levels, not just between Spanish and Portuguese America. The article gives prominence to the regional and social dimensions, rather than to the economic, since this would require separate treatment in view of the issues that emerge.

The argument is that: (1) Independence formed part of a broader historical process that covered the readjustments of the period from c. 1770–c. 1870 not just between metropoles and dominions but also within colonial territories; (2) there was not always a clear-cut dichotomy between Empire or Independence, but many different positions between the two polarities; (3) cross-class andmulti-ethnic coalitions emerged in several instances; considerable evidence exists of popular participation; essentially, though, the process of Independence was elite-directed and led frequently to elite-dominated ‘national states’, within which pre-existing social issues remained unresolved; (4) nationalism did not make independent states; nation and national identity would have to be created after Independence.

The implementation of participatory budgeting in Buenos Aires following the crisis of December 2001 was a highly unlikely event. The different parties involved had competing and contradictory agendas that did not coincide with participatory budgeting's stated aims of extending citizen participation in government, but these interacted in a way that contingently created a space for a viable process to develop. Subsequent political shifts led to the demise of participatory budgeting, but the Buenos Aires case is nevertheless important because it highlights the way in which such processes can emerge in the absence of strong programmatic politics, thereby potentially opening new avenues for the promotion of democratic innovation.

In the early half of the eighteenth century, Minas Gerais became the main focus of colonial activity in Brazil. Gold and diamonds made this an immensely profitable colony at the very time when the sugar economy of the Northeast entered one of its most severe downturns. In response to this combination of circumstances, population and resources deserted the northeastern coastlands (and the Portuguese mainland as well) in favor of the rising Center–South. From that point on, this was to become the dominant area within Brazil – in a pattern unshaken either by independence or by the exhaustion of the gold deposits. The transfer of the viceregal capital from Bahia to Rio de Janeiro (1763) only gave official recognition to a process that demography, economy and society had already made quite unequivocal.

This article explores the hidden politics around so-called ‘Merchandise No. 5’, a secret formula extract of Peruvian coca-leaf used in the American beverage Coca-Cola since the early twentieth century. It analyses the peculiar early political economy of US cocaine control which by the 1920s lent the Coca-Cola Company (and its associate, Maywood Chemical Co. of New Jersey) special roles in drug diplomacy with Peru. It then follows the paradoxical transnational politics of this coca flow during the era of emerging world restrictions on cocaine and coca (1915–65). Coca-Cola was deeply engaged in drug politics with Peru.

As the world capitalist system developed during the nineteenth century non-slave labour became a commodity that circulated around the globe and contributed to capital accumulation in metropolitan centres. The best examples are the emigration of millions of Asian indentured servants and European labourers to areas of European colonisation. Asians replaced emancipated African slaves on plantations in the Caribbean and South America, supplemented a declining slave population in Cuba, built railways in California, worked in mines in South Africa, laboured on sugarcane plantations in Mauritius and Fiji, and served on plantations in southeast Asia. Italian immigrants also replaced African slaves on coffee estates in Brazil, worked with Spaniards in the seasonal wheat harvest in Argentina, and, along with other Europeans, entered the growing labour market in the United States. From the perspective of capital, these workers were a cheap alternative to local wage labour and, as foreigners without the rights of citizens, they could be subjected to harsher methods of social control.1

The Mensalão trial was Brazil's most important political corruption trial ever and an emblematic ex post accountability success. More than 28 individuals were convicted in relation to a legislative vote-buying scheme, many by the very officials they helped appoint. We relay the trajectory of the scandal cum trial, explain its successful prosecution and assess its implications. The article argues that the Mensalão has proved pivotal for Brazil's institutional and legal advances and asks – more than a quarter of a century after a new constitution – whether the country is entering into a stronger, more enduring relationship with the rule of law.

This article explores how young Brazilian men from poorer areas transcend socio-geographical boundaries by inhabiting the streets of an elite neighbourhood. Drawing on several periods of qualitative fieldwork, the article demonstrates the complex and dynamic character of the relationship between the young men and the formal residents and traders. It reveals temporal patterns of day and night, where the young men's social positions shift from subordinate diurnal (as serving workers) to dominant nocturnal positions (as potential attackers). Analysing the interactional patterns between the two groups regarding sentiments of trust and fear, the multifaceted and sometimes incoherent relations reveal social inclusion and exclusion as well as street protection and crime. The article also dismantles some common dichotomies within research on crime and fear of crime, emphasising that these young men are both victims and offenders, fearful and fearsome.

The traditional literature on Mexico's formerly hegemonic party, the PRI, notes the importance of the ‘informal rules of the game' in determining outcomes, such as who will be the PRI's presidential candidate. This article argues that the onset of electoral competition allowed weaker actors within the party to strengthen their position by reforming the statutes in order to give them decision-making power previously denied them. However, this was a difficult process. President Salinas was able to overturn statutory reforms, while President Zedillo was not. Now that the PRI has lost the presidential elections, internal mechanisms of distributing selective benefits become even more important because of the loss of the omnipotent president who once exacted cooperation from all actors within the party and the regime.

This article uses a diachronic study of Argentina to explain how the nascent democracies of Latin America build the rule of law. The changing relationship between Argentina's executive and judicial branches demonstrates that the construction of the rule of law is not a linear process. There have been periods of regression away from, as well as progress towards, the rule of law. This article uses party competition to explain Argentina's varying levels of judicial independence. The rule of law results from a balance of power between at least two political parties, neither of which has monolithic control, meaning that no highly disciplined party sustains control of both the executive and legislative branches. Competitive politics creates a climate in which an autonomous judiciary can emerge.

Where is the Cuban economy heading? The economy has been recovering at an average rate of four per cent per year since 1994 (after GDP declined by 35 per cent between 1989 and 1993). Many reforms have been undertaken in the direction of a market economy, but it is far from clear what kind of economy the Cuban ruling party has in mind after recovery. This article discusses the successes and shortcomings of the reform process in Cuba since the downfall of communism in Europe and the Soviet Union. It also addresses the salient issues in what appears to be a new development strategy in Cuba, and what could be said about the reforms and the strategy in the light of the debate on transition ‘ten years after’.

Introduction: the genesis of ‘informal empire’

In 1953 John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson published an article entitled ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, which has since become a landmark in the study of nineteenth-century British imperialism. Seeking to overturn long-cherished notions of a mid-Victorian ‘indifference’ and a late-Victorian ‘enthusiasm’ for empire, it proposed a basic continuity of policy whereby British industrialisation caused an ever-extending and intensifying development of overseas regions for both strategic and economic purposes. Hence the suggestion of a working definition of imperialism as ‘the sufficient political function of this process of integrating new regions into the expanding economy’. In switching the focus of a definition of imperialism from the way in which Britain was able to assert her superiority over weaker, subordinate nations to the impetus and motivation behind such expansion, traditional conceptions of empire were suddenly shattered. Indeed, as Robinson and Gallagher maintained, ‘The conventional interpretation of the nineteenth century empire continues to rest on the study of formal empire alone, which is rather like judging the size and character of icebergs solely from the parts above the water-line’.2

The whole framework of reference for a study of British imperialism was being recast, the revised assumption being that the empire of formal dominion, which can loosely be defined as control through annexation and constitutional subordination, is not comprehensible in isolation. Rather, the assertion of British paramountcy, which for Robinson and Gallagher lies close to the very heart of imperialism, was achieved by informal means if possible, or by formal annexation when this was deemed necessary.

The mechanisms by which the world economic crisis has been transmitted from developed to developing economies are conditioned by domestic factors that may attenuate or accentuate external economic shocks and their adverse social effects. Cuba is a special case: it is an open economy and hence vulnerable to trade-growth transmission mechanisms, but at the same time, it is a socialist economy with universal social services. This article reviews the literature, summarises Cuba's domestic socio-economic strengths and weaknesses prior to the crisis, evaluates the effects of the crisis on the macro-economic and social services indicators, assesses the government response and suggests alternative socio-economic policies.

The shift towards legally plural multicultural and pluri-national citizenship regimes in the Andes formally recognised indigenous peoples’ community-based governance systems. These tend to emphasise participation, deliberation and service to the collective, but are often criticised for discriminating against women. We argue that recent constitutional reforms and legislation combining recognition of collective rights claims with institutional guarantees for gender equality have in fact amplified indigenous women's different strategies of ‘negotiating with patriarchy’, allowing them to further the transformation of their organisations and ‘custom’. Such strategies are necessary because of the intersections of race, class and gendered exclusions that indigenous women experience, and possible because of the diverse and dynamic nature of community governance systems. Despite systemic and structural constraints on the guarantee of indigenous peoples’ rights, the actions of organised indigenous women over the last two decades point to new ways of imagining more plural, less patriarchal forms of citizenship.

The Peruvian Constitutional Tribunal (CT) is currently an independent institutional actor in Peru's politics. By comparing and contrasting the recent history of the CT and two previous ‘cases’ of ‘failed’ constitutional courts – the CT's role during the Fujimori regime and its predecessor, the Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees – the article tests several theories that aim to explain the emergence of independent courts in democracies. The three cases provide evidence in support of theories that highlight the importance of political pluralism as a necessary condition for the emergence of independent courts, but the cases also show that an institutional design that ‘mirrors’ this pluralism is crucial to attain this outcome. The importance of these political and institutional factors suggests that it is too soon to be optimistic about the likelihood that the present CT can maintain its independence in the future.

Peru, in contrast to neighbouring Bolivia and Ecuador, has neither an important indigenous party nor a strong indigenous movement. Nevertheless, in recent years a growing gap has emerged in the voting patterns of indigenous and non-indigenous areas. This article maintains that this gap has developed because some Peruvian politicians, including Alberto Fujimori, Alejandro Toledo and Ollanta Humala, successfully wooed indigenous voters with a combination of ethnic and populist appeals. Like traditional populist leaders, they denounced the political elites, focused their campaigns on the poor and presented themselves as the saviours of Peru, but also forged ties to indigenous leaders, invoked indigenous symbols and embraced some ethnic demands. Although neither Fujimori, nor Toledo, nor Humala self-identified as indigenous, they successfully presented themselves as more ethnically proximate to the indigenous population than their main competitors, who represented the white Lima elite.

This paper argues that the household has become a renewed space of significance for Cuban women in the post-Soviet period. It draws from existing scholarship and ethnographic fieldwork conducted with women in the city of Santiago de Cuba to discuss the effect of post-Soviet crisis and reform upon women's domestic practices, the management of domestic economies, and longstanding gender ideals that link women to the domestic sphere. Physical, economic and social factors leading to post-Soviet Cuban women's increased concentration upon the household are argued to be both the result of pre-existing social orientations towards households as a womanly space and a response to specific politico-economic shifts since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Though Argentina has long been synonymous with trackless pampas and teeming livestock herds, this common image requires some qualification. Before the late nineteenth century, when refrigerated transport made possible a large international market for Argentine beef, cattle played a less important role in the economy of the Río de la Plata than is usually assumed. Except for Buenos Aires province, where stockraising was predominant even in the colonial period, ranchers often had to struggle hard and insistently to find their niche in the overall commerce of the region. Grazing conditions were excellent in many areas of the Río de la Plata, but because the port of Buenos Aires always enjoyed a near-exclusive control over external trade, the porteños effectively blunted the development of any stockraising that threatened to compete with their own exports. In the northeastern provinces, this resulted in a cattle industry marked by technological backwardness and erratic growth. The chaotic politics of the post-independence era reinforced these conditions, though reform-minded ranchers and government officials consistently tried to improve provincial standards of stockraising.

Since the colonial era Cuba has been the paradigmatic case of a monocultural export economy, dependent upon the production of one primary commodity – sugar – for sale to one principal trade partner. Overcoming dependency was a high priority for Fidel Castro in 1959, yet despite a promising start, his efforts proved ultimately unsuccessful. Only the collapse of communism in Europe freed Cuba from dependent trade relations with the Soviet Union – albeit at the cost of enormous economic disruption. This article examines Cuba's post-1959 pursuit of economic independence, first to explain why the government's initial successes proved unsustainable in the 1980s, and then to examine Cuba's attempt to reinsert its economy into the global market in the aftermath of the Cold War.

Mexico achieved independence in 1821. With the definitive cutting of the imperial ties with Spain, already weakened by the impact of the Napoleonic Wars, the country began to play an individual role in the world economy. The end of Spanish rule and the departure of many Spaniards opened up new positions and new opportunities for Mexicans. Some they seized immediately as in government and the army; others they lacked in some measure the skills, inclination or capital to exploit. One of the more difficult areas was overseas trade, which had been largely the preserve of peninsulares. Their departure provided the occasion for the arrival of numbers of foreigners, who established merchant houses in trading centres, and assumed the role of middlemen in Mexico's foreign trade.

Latin America is one of the world's only regions to have witnessed a fall in income inequality during the 2000s. This paper evaluates the role fiscal policy played in this change. Recent scholarship has examined this in individual countries; lacking is a regional perspective. We examine the effects of nine fiscal instruments on income inequality in 17 countries between 1990 and 2014. Fiscal policy had a positive – albeit small – effect in reducing income inequality, especially from 2003, working best at the urban level. Public spending on education, personal income taxes and social contributions were especially instrumental in reducing income inequality.