This article analyses the role of the public sector in providing social insurance and assistance to the elderly in Argentina between the late nineteenth century and the present day. It assesses the extent to which this involvement embodied clear-cut development paradigms or was driven by political pressures. Between the 1940s and 1970s the public sector enjoyed a monopoly of insurance and assistance provision, with the private and voluntary sectors largely excluded. These monopolies failed to provide satisfactory levels of a welfare and proved financially unsustainable. By the 1980s a gradual process of pluralisation had begun, which culminated with the partial privatisation of social insurance in 1994.

In the image, the body loses its corporeal reality; in the rite, the non-corporeal becomes flesh.

Octavio Paz (1969: 120)

How are images constructed from one of Ecuador's political discourses? This article analyses: (1) the transition in 1857 from a state-centred form of administration of indigenous populations (the tribute system) to a decentralised form in the hands of private and local powers which effectively rendered these populations invisible; (2) the ensuing power-game between Conservatives and Liberals which aimed to forge a symbolic analogue of the indian and create a political field; (3) the manner in which the Liberal Revolution (1895) implanted a ‘ventriloquist's’ political representation which became a channel for indian resistance; (4) the research problems which ‘invisibility’ of the indians and the ‘ventriloquist's’ voice pose for historians.

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.

This article examines changes in gender relations in an Indian pueblo in south-western Nicaragua between Independence and the coffee revolution, when the nation-state was weak and municipal governments exercised considerable power. It analyses landed property, household headship and public control over so-called private morality, and considers how these were influenced by the coffee economy. First, it argues that public regulation of domestic life was important in the consolidation of municipal authority. It legitimated the power of the ladino peasant elite, a key aspect of state formation at the local level. Second, the article examines how the rise of private property altered gendered arrangements. It analyses the relationship between expansion in female land rights and the incidence of female headed households and argues that peasant women's acquisition of land accentuated a pre-existing tendency towards non-marrying behaviour. The study is based on archival sources.

This article explores the effects of changing exposure to world trade and relative factor abundance on the institutional and economic development of a paradigmatic Spanish-American frontier colony, Paraguay. The problem is conceptualized within a neoinstitutionalist staples model in which – during the long sixteenth-century trade expansion – the colonial state delegated the provision of defence onto individuals who financed it by restricting indigenous labour mobility and extracting the resulting monopsony rents. Despite the encomienda's stated intentions, its inefficient incentive system actually contributed to the decline in indigenous population and provincial security shortcomings. As trade contracted and defence needs rose during the seventeenth-century crisis the crown commuted the labour services of Jesuit mission Indians for contributions to defence and payments in kind and money. The mestizo peasantry remained free, but was increasingly burdened with military obligations as well.

Whilst much illuminating research has been conducted into early British diplomatic and commercial activity in the River Plate, few scholars have yet focused upon the lives of individual settlers in any detail. The present article moves some way towards redressing this imbalance through the study of the Gibsons, a prominent Argentine-Scottish family with pioneering interests in commerce and sheep breeding. The analysis gives special weight to letters exchanged by the brothers Robert and George Gibson during the late 1830s, casting light upon the incomers' perspective of political turbulence as dissident forces fought to depose the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas.

As the rebels of Guinea-Bissau fought for independence from Portugal, Cuban military instructors stood by their side and Cuban doctors treated their wounds. Joining the rebellion in 1966, and remaining through the war's end in 1974, this was the longest Cuban intervention in Africa before the despatch of troops to Angola in November 1975. It was also the most successful. As the Guinean paper Nõ Pintcha declared, ‘The Cubans' solidarity was decisive for our struggle’. Cuba's contribution to Guinea-Bissau's war of independence is an important and revealing example of Cuban policy in Africa.

An examination of the evolution of Rómulo Betancourt's views in the 1930s and 1940s shows how he came to look for a close relationship with the United States just as the State Department, and later the Central Intelligence Agency, were coming to view reformist movements such as Betancourt's Acción Democrática as the best possible bulwark against communism in Latin America. The resulting international relationship during the three years of democratic government in Venezuela known as the trienio was cordial and potentially durable. Its failure is indicative of both the importance of local political leadership in the maintenance of democratic openings and the strength of nationalist notions of political legitimacy in US policy.

This article discusses the 1857 African porters' strike in Salvador, Brazil. Mobilisation for this unique movement was organised through work groups, based on ethnic affiliation, within which Africans developed a street culture with its own rules, rituals and symbols, all of which were essential to the creation of the group's identity and to pursue resistance in the urban slavery environment. The movement lasted for a week and it may have been the first of its nature in the history of urban Brazil.

The way in which ruling elites originally responded to pressures for increasing mass participation in the polity is one of the most crucial variables in the path to democracy. In the case of Uruguay, the first two decades of the century – a period dominated by the historical figure of José Batlle y Ordoñez, – were crucial in the setting up of democratic institutions. During this period, because of its late consolidation as much as its early modernisation, the institutionalisation of the political order coincided with its phase of democratic incorporation. This article argues that it was Batlle's strategy for advancing his political project, as much as the substantive aspects of the policies themselves, that would crystallise the working of Uruguay's democratic politics. While the article focuses mainly on Uruguay, a comparative analysis with similar historical developments in Argentina is used to illustrate some specific aspects of the Uruguayan case.

The main argument of this article is that in order to assess accurately the impact of a market liberalisation programme such as the one Argentina has undergone, one must look beneath the aggregate statistics and analyse underlying changes in critical market structure and organisational variables. While aggregate trade figures imply that the country has been successful at reintegrating itself into the world economy, two underlying trends reveal potential threats to the country's long-term development. These trends relate to the level of value added being created in the country, particularly with regard to its exports, and to changes in the composition of its trading partners.

During his five years as chief US policy-maker towards Puerto Rico, Ernest Gruening strove to create a model – based on the anti-imperialist principles he had outlined in the 1920s – for a reformist policy which the United States could pursue towards the rest of Latin America. The initial support of Franklin Roosevelt allowed Gruening to position his Puerto Rican programme as one of the three ideological alternatives present in the early stages of the Good Neighbour Policy. The collapse of Gruening's scheme provided US policymakers with an early illustration of the difficulty of imposing reform with insufficient local support.

This article examines the role of the Protestant Moravian Church in the politicisation of Miskitu ethnic identity, and on the mobilisation of the Miskitu against the Sandinistas during the 1980s. It argues that changes in the institution of the Church during the 1960s and 70s, as a result of state policy, socio-economic context and internal conflicts within Miskitu society, led to Moravianism becoming a cultural marker of Miskitu ethnicity. At the same time, the encounter with and appropriation of the pastoral tactics of a Catholic priest resulted in a radicalisation of Miskitu Moravian pastors on indigenous issues. When the Miskitu came to mobilise against the Sandinistas, the Moravian Church was the expressive vehicle and the institutional means through which the mobilisation took place. The article reveals how politicised ethnic identities find their expression in religious institutions.

The truth commissions in El Salvador and Honduras attempted to offer the transitional civilian governments a way to balance their moral and legal obligations with practical political constraints; namely to reconcile calls from different sectors of society to either punish or forgive those responsible for past human rights violations; and to establish new and independent institutions without precipitating a backlash from vested interests which could derail the whole democratic transition. This paper examines the parameters in which these truth commissions operated, and evaluates the role they played in trying to facilitate the democratisation processes in Honduras and El Salvador.

For nearly a decade, Mexico has embraced a neoliberal development model based on liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation. Yet, contrary to longstanding claims in the economic development literature, this strategy has yet to produce the high levels of growth and income gains that policy-makers had projected at the outset of the reforms. This article suggests that the lacklustre response of the Mexican economy represents more than a longer-than-expected adjustment lag. Rather, through an analysis of state policy in the urban–industrial and rural–agricultural sectors of the economy, the authors locate the sources of slow growth and wage compression in: (1) the particular mix of policies that have been implemented under the banner of neoliberalism in Mexico; and (2) the failure to properly coordinate macroeconomic stabilisation with longer-term goals of market restructuring.

This paper argues that the construction of two opposing ideal types of sustainable development – market-friendly and grassroots development – serves as a useful analytical tool for understanding political conflict over environmentally sensitive policy for the native, or autochthonous, forest sector. Explaining the degree to which a country has mostly market-oriented forest policy or whether it also includes significant elements of the grassroots approach requires an examination of when and how four broad factors affect outcomes: ideas, state institutions, social groups and international conditions. Paired comparisons show that cohesive teams of experts in lead ministries may define legislation and decrees proposed by the executive branch, but whether they become law depends on other factors. These are, in the first instance, the capacity of social groups to forge larger socio-political alliances, and secondly, the presence or absence of direct external intervention in the policy process. Such political dynamics also affect the degrees to which future policy begins to resolve the tension between the two approaches to the sustainable development of forests in Latin America.

Political change in Mexico since the crisis of 1994 has been characterised by the breakdown of centralised hierarchies and the dispersion of power across geographical regions. We examine the changing relations between regional officials of the National Solidarity Programme (PRONASOL) and local PRI politicians in four Mexican states: Puebla, Nayarit, Tamaulipas, and Baja California. Although PRONASOL was dismantled after 1994, the influence of anti-poverty bureaucrats has varied across geographic regions, depending on whether they had been authorised to engage in grass-roots mobilisation and/or party politics under Salinas. We emphasise the importance of regional politics in transitions from dominant-party regimes, and the impact of conflicts within the political hierarchies of the old regime.

This article examines the demise of the Grenadian People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) in the summer of 1983 and the internal power struggle that destroyed the PRG in October that year, culminating in the execution of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. A detailed analysis of events and interactions between Grenada, Barbados and the United States in the week prior to the crisis period of 19–25 October is provided. I conclude that this pre-crisis period established the foundations for, and direction of, subsequent decision-making and explains why a military intervention solution was chosen and subsequently occurred only five days after Bishop's death.

The collapse of Cuba's import-intensive sugar economy in the 1990s is analysed in the context of the disintegration of COMECON and of the USSR. Salient features of post-revolutionary cane farming are contrasted with those of the 1950s. Falling production in the 1990s, and the main institutional responses to it, are compared with those of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The analysis is illustrated with primary data collected in fieldwork carried out in 1994 and before. The complexities of current ‘technical regression’ from more to less import-intensive agricultural practices are outlined and the impact of acute national investment constraints upon the recovery prospects of the sugar economy are appraised.