Cocoliche, that curious dramatic character improvised under the circus tent during the last decades of the nineteenth century, is no longer a vital aspect of Argentine life today. Yet his caricatured presence over a period of fifty years proved critical in the creolization of Italians and natives as well as in the sociocultural redefinition of Argentina's “national character.” Creolization (the cultural redefinition negotiated by two or more diverse groups coming into contact—in this case, Italians and Argentines) yields a new ethic and aesthetic order wherein the presence of each group becomes integral to the national whole. As will be shown, Cocoliche became a key vehicle for this process of creolization.

Scholarship on the decade-long rule of Alberto Fujimori emphasizes the surprising popularity and support for Fujimori's rule. This essay, which analyzes the politics of fear in Fujimori's Peru, suggests that this presents a partial view of the nature of Fujimori's authority. Drawing on a Gramscian conceptualization of power, it explains how coercion achieved a consensual façade by manipulating fear and creating a semblance of order in a context of extreme individual and collective insecurity. It traces the roots of this insecurity in the economic crisis and political violence of the 1980s and 1990s, and explains how the Fujimori regime manipulated fear and insecurity to buttress its authoritarian rule. This essay also complements existing studies on Peruvian civil society, which point to economic factors, such as the economic crisis of the 1980s and neoliberal reforms, to explain civil society weakness. This paper explores the political factors that contributed to this process, particularly the deployment of state power to penetrate, control and intimidate civil society.

The purpose of this paper is to review the evolution of public policy toward the favelas of Rio de Janeiro since 1972–73. I choose these years because they are the ones at which available published accounts on the topic cease. One of my objectives is to re-actualize existing information on that subject. At the same time, I wish to bring forth some considerations on the relationships between civil society, especially its most deprived classes, and the particular form of authoritarian state now dominant in Brazil.

The distinctive blend of authoritarian and technocratic rule in Brazil since 1964 has been well explored in its implications for industrial policy, but the consequences of two decades of military rule for agriculture are only now being studied. This article will analyze state policy in the single agricultural sector of sugar in light of major changes in sociopolitical and economic structures and in view of the particular relations between the state and civil society that have characterized Brazil after 1964. Although debate continues over the precise nature of these relations, it is widely held that the state played the dominant role in the policy process, subordinating elites, excluding popular classes from the decision-making arena, and incorporating international capital as a critical element in economic growth.

If one is to believe what a good number of commentators on the Venezuelan political scene have written over the years, democracy in that country has been in perpetual crisis. By at least the mid-1970s, the view that the democratic system established in 1958 was deteriorating rapidly had become widely accepted in the Venezuelan press and among Venezuelan academic analysts. It was not always clear, however, exactly what was meant by “the crisis” (Peña 1978; Stempel-Paris 1981; Romero 1986). This perception of crisis intensified some years later, to the point that one outsider observed in 1984 that according to the prevailing view of democracy in Venezuela, the political system must be totally bankrupt and its survival could be explained only as the result “of an unprecedented act of political will or of the imbecility of the population” (Baloyra n.d., 2).

José Carlos Mariátegui devoted the most productive years of his short life (1894–1930) to analyzing contemporary Peru. Because of this emphasis, a substantial portion of the research conducted in the past thirty years has addressed his political and social thought. More recent investigations, however, have sought to document the significance of his aesthetic ideas, an appropriate development in light of Mariátegui's extensive writings on literature and the visual arts. For example, the periodical Amauta, which appeared under his editorship twenty-nine times between September 1926 and March 1930, was primarily a magazine of the arts and intellectual life, notwithstanding its political agenda and indigenista orientation. Also, Mariátegui's detailed essay on Peruvian literature, “El proceso de la literatura,” is the most extensive of the Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana (1928). In addition, between 1924 and 1930, the widely read Lima weeklies Variedades and Mundial regularly published his critical articles on national and international topics, including a large number of pieces on literature and the arts. Recent inquiries into Mariátegui's literary thought have addressed such issues as his modern concept of literary realism, the relationship between his artistic concerns and a Marxism that has been repeatedly characterized as “open,” and the role of aesthetic issues in his social agenda for Peru. This research has established Mariátegui's importance in the arts, not as a creative writer (although he did write poetry, plays, and short stories in his youth) but as one of Latin America's first practicing literary critics.

Interracial marriage is common in Brazil today despite an overall preference for racial endogamy. Fully one-fifth of all Brazilian unions in 1980 were racially exogenous (Silva 1987), although only a small portion of those marriages involved persons of widely differing colors. Indeed, 93 percent of interracial unions in 1980 were between whites and browns (pardos—persons of mixed race or mulattos) or between browns and blacks; only the remaining 7 percent (1.3 percent of all unions) took place between whites and blacks (Silva 1987, 73). Because intermarriage is the ultimate indicator of social distance or assimilation, these rates suggest little or moderate social distance between persons who are proximate in color but greater social distance between persons at the extremes ends of the color spectrum.

This paper analyzes two aspects of China's economic relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). First, we examine the extent to which China's economic growth is affecting trade and investment flows between China and LAC. Second, we analyze the extent to which the emergence of China as a world exporter affects the ability of LAC countries to compete in world markets both in terms of exports as well as in the capacity to attract foreign investment. For each of these questions, we provide a critical assessment of a new body of work in this area, as well as offer a series of analyses that build on and confirm some of this previous work. Furthermore, we offer implications for policy and future research. We show that there is an emerging consensus regarding China and LAC. With respect to trade and investment flows, China accounts for a significant amount of the boost in LAC exports and foreign investment in recent years, but is exporting more than it imports. In terms of global competitiveness, LAC is not significantly threatened by Chinese exports in global markets, with the exception of Mexico.

The guinea pig (Cavia porcellus) has been raised and consumed throughout the Andean subregion since before the arrival of Spaniards in America. According to sixteenth-century native chronicler Felipe Guarnan Poma de Ayala, the Incas and the indigenous peoples who preceded them used the guinea pig, or cuy, for ceremonial purposes (Guarnan Poma de Ayala 1980, 55). Hundreds of years later, on the brink of the twenty-first century, mass production of cuys outside their native habitat is turning these animals into an exchange commodity that is generating many economic activities.

“Para el camino” Canto a la angustia y a las alegrias. Canto porque es necesario can tar para ir dejando una huella en los dias, para ir diciendo cosas prohibidas.

“For the Road” I sing of anguish and joy. I sing because it's necessary to sing to leave my mark on time, to say forbidden things.

Latin American New Song is distinct from the usual stereotypes of Latin American popular music. Songs such as “Para el camino” do not fit into the common categories of salsa, ballads, Spanish-language versions of U.S. hit songs or popularized traditional styles such as the ranchera and cumbia. Although New Song is not as well known as the more typical styles, its greater social significance has achieved an impact in Latin America far beyond the musical realm.

El régimen militar (1973–1990) ha sido investigado en diversos ámbitos: político, jurídico, institucional, económico, derechos humanos, mediático, entre otros. Sin embargo, poco se ha indagado respecto a los cambios y alteraciones que experimentó el entorno estético cotidiano como consecuencia de la dictadura. Menos aún se ha investigado sobre aquellas actividades culturales y/o manifestaciones artísticas que fueron promovidas o apoyadas por el régimen militar. Éstas, analizadas desde una perspectiva de conjunto, podrían dar cuenta de aquellos rasgos que marcaron su producción simbólica, ya sea promoviendo ciertos modos de ver, ritos y sensibilidades o reprimiendo aquellas prácticas e imaginarios propios del sistema democrático. El presente artículo considera algunos antecedentes del golpe estético que vivió Chile entre los años 1973 y 1975, como consecuencia del golpe militar generado el 11 de septiembre de 1973. La expresión golpe estético simboliza el proceso de transformación y cambio experimentado en aspectos de la vida cotidiana, producto del quiebre que se produjo con el proyecto socio-cultural de la Unidad Popular (UP).

Este artículo problematiza la construcción de las categorías de víctima y victimario en el Informe Rettig (1991) y el Informe Valech (2004) desde la óptica de la teoría de género. El estudio de estas construcciones discursivas compele a mirar hacia atrás y adelante: atrás en el sentido de localizar las raíces de ciertos discursos en los nuevos movimientos sociales y la lucha democrática de los años setenta y ochenta, y adelante en el sentido que la hegemonía de ciertos discursos elegidos por la Concertación como legítimos siguen estableciendo los parámetros del actual escenario político chileno y probablemente lo seguirán haciendo en el futuro cercano. Esta investigación propone que una de las grandes desventajas de la política actual y su forma de enmarcar los discursos, es su capacidad de producir una falsa ruptura entre la violencia de antes y la violencia de hoy, particularmente en relación a la violencia de género.

Traditionally, Western scholars have spoken about “the” Soviet view of this or that question—even about “the” Soviet ideology with respect to it—and hence they have considered it legitimate to draw quotations from a wide range of persons and types of sources in order to assemble a composite summary of that view. Even if it has been recognized that there must be private differences of opinion among Soviet officials and specialists, it has usually been assumed that the censorship prevents any from being expressed in public. This assumption is simply incorrect. In the words of Brezhnev, “a party and state leader. cannot consider himself the sole and indisputable authority in all areas of human activity. ” While jealously guarding their own right of ultimate decision, Soviet leaders now talk about problems being solvable only by “collective reason,” and insist that “it is necessary to listen to specialists and scholars, and, moreover, not only of one orientation or school.”

The Catholic clergy and the military have played crucial roles in Mexican history yet have been largely ignored in recent twentieth-cenury scholarship. The military received some attention in the early post-revolutionary period because it was intertwined with political leadership, but religious elites and the Catholic Church, which were separate from the state and suppressed by it, have not been analyzed. As a rule, cohesive leadership groups in Mexico with values differing from politicians, strong institutional structures, and autonomy from the state have rarely been examined, especially in relationship to the state and politics in general. Conversely, the greater a group's ties to the Mexican political establishment, as measured by exchanges between leadership, the more scholars have learned about that group. Whereas intellectuals, entrepreneurs, military officers, and even opposition politicians share some ties with the state, the Catholic Church has no direct links, and its contemporary leaders, goals, and institutional structures remain relatively unknown and little understood.

Politicized consumer choice among brands and products is increasingly accepted as a novel mode of nonconventional political participation. However, scholars often overlook developing societies and seldom discuss consumers' perception of the marketplace as a political arena. This study reviews evidence of political consumerism in Latin America, measuring individuals' perceptions of corporations as agents that affect public goods, examining feelings of political efficacy over corporations, and analyzing motivations behind market-based activism. Research is grounded on representative samples of urban adults from Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Logistic regression confirms political consumerism as driven by distrust of government and concomitant engagement with politics, suggesting a diversified repertoire of individual political action in Latin America.

In the age of corporate empires and free trade, little attention has been paid to those who live and work on the margins of the mainstream capitalist economies. In Ecuador, these workers constitute a vast sector of the national population. Some 60 percent of urban dwellers and probably a much larger proportion of rural families exist below the poverty line, eking their living out of family plots of land or micro-enterprises (World Bank, cited in Larrea and North n.d.). Many of these belong to indigenous ethnic groups and nationalities. What is the effect of capitalist expansion on these workers and the way in which they organize their economy? Are they destined for Marx's “dustbins of history,” or have they been able to adapt to and even take advantage of capitalism without losing their historical specificity as noncapitalist producers?

In several Latin American countries, social violence has risen to warlike levels. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to the extent of social violence and the new (informal) forms of governance generated by the so-called violent nonstate actors (VNSAs). Where a state’s forces fail to provide for the physical protection and social security of its citizens, some areas are governed by a mix of formal (vertical) and informal (horizontal) forms of governance, mixing state and nonstate actors. In these socially bounded spaces, nonstate actors produce and distribute public goods similarly as the state does. In this article, we explore how hybrid governance has appeared in the South American region, considering the operation of two regional VNSAs, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) in Brazil and the Bandas Criminales (BACRIM) in Colombia. We show that such VNSAs are significant agents for security governance, as they challenge preconceived notions of state authority (legitimacy).

For the last ten years, Central America has been in upheaval, experiencing fundamental social and political change, with the Nicaraguan revolution representing the most dramatic rupture with the past. This revolution, the civil war in El Salvador, two recent coups in Guatemala, and the militarization of Honduras by the United States are all aspects of the crisis currently transforming the region. This article will argue that these dramatic events comprise a general disintegration of what might be called the “old order” in Central America. While the particular characteristics of each country must be taken into account, a process of creative destruction can be identified that is best understood at the level of the region as a whole.