After the world food crisis of the early 1970s, food policies became a ‘national priority’ for Colombian development. Colombia was the first country to implement the multi-sectoral approach proposed by international organisations. However, in the past 30 years Colombian governments have presented nutrition as a minor health issue. During the recent world food crisis, the government insisted that Colombia was one of the most food-secure countries in the world. In seemingly similar circumstances, why was food policy made a priority in the 1970s and not in the new millennium? We address this question with the help of securitisation theory. We argue that in the 1970s, the government successfully securitised the food issue in the context of a reduction of external food aid and a failed land reform. Recent national governments (as opposed to some local governments) have had little interest in a securitising move since the related food sovereignty discourses threaten their free market policies.

The Carabineros de Chile played an active role in the repression and leadership of the Pinochet regime, yet today, the police force is one of the most respected institutions in Chile. Few post-authoritarian democracies have been able to restore such esteem for their police as quickly. But what does respect mean? This study analyses the narratives of approximately 50 police experts in Chile. It finds that police experts regard the positive image of the Carabineros as having more to do with fear and an effective communications strategy than police reform. It is important to understand how those Chileans most involved in policy discussions on policing interpret the reasons for respect, as their interpretations can shape the types of policing advocated or practised.

This article addresses the various mechanisms by which the religious figure of the Christian martyr became a useful notion in Argentine political discourse. It argues that the process by which the idea of the ‘martyr’ was secularised and politicised was actually initiated by religious agents themselves. The analysis considers how commemoration initiatives devised by religious agents, social movements and political actors have brought ‘Catholic martyrs’ into the pantheon of national symbols. It also deals with the various semantic shifts seen in the public discourses of religious agents themselves, shifts that extend the boundaries of an eminently religious category by associating it with other figures in a more specifically political imaginary, such as that of the hero and the victim. The article shows how the political power of the religious figure of the martyr lay in the way various actors could use it to invoke the image of a legitimate and heroic victim of political violence. It thus allowed those actors to sidestep the vexed public question of whether those being commemorated had had any involvement in armed struggle.

Ecuador has emerged as a good case study of the interactions between diasporas and their countries of origin. The recent enactment of external voting rights has mirrored a novel political discourse which emphasises the positive contribution of ‘emigrant brothers’ and their unbroken allegiance to their homeland. Expatriate reactions to these new political developments are at the core of our article, which heuristically reconstructs the social roots and meanings of expatriate participation in the constitutional referendum held in 2008. Questionnaires were simultaneously administered to Ecuadorean voters in nine cities in seven countries. Based on this innovative convenience sample, the expectations and motivations underlying people's electoral involvement and civic participation are explored against the background of transnational connections and attachments. An understanding of voters' involvement on a terrain of symbolic patriotism, identity reassertion and ‘home re-evocation’ – rather than in strictly electoral terms – is advanced. External voting – whatever its impact on domestic politics – should be appreciated as an institutional opportunity for migrants' national identification and belonging to be represented.

Centred around a May 1970 shooting at the Israeli embassy in Asunción, this article traces a chain of actions and reactions that began with Israel's victory in the Six-Day War in June 1967 and ended after the June 1972 verdict of a Paraguayan court regarding two Palestinians. Situated among Israeli officials, Palestinian refugees and Syrian-Lebanese elites, authoritarian Paraguay was not only encompassed by but also accommodated the post-1967 Arab–Israeli conflict, revealing the connection between the ‘areas’ of South America and the Middle East through ideas about relocating Palestinians as well as their actual displacement.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ethos of interculturalidad in Mexico's recently founded universidades interculturales. On the basis of documentation and interviews with faculty in five universities, institutionalisation of intercultural higher education within the state sector can be seen to have created a space in which the politics of recognition meet the radical ideas of educators in the tradition of constructivism and educación popular. Intercultural higher education does not select students on the basis of race, but the location of the campuses and the content of courses are designed to attract indigenous students. The introduction of field research early in the undergraduate course should transform the relationship between students and their communities of origin, and prepare them for leadership roles. The article concludes with a critique of what it calls ‘hard’ multiculturalism.