This article explores how the editors and contributors of Revista de Avance formulated an idiosyncratic version of visual modern art and how that discernment shaped their idea of a nationalist and regional culture. Their artistic disquisitions were influenced by complicated political agendas and funding. After the collapse of the Cuban economy in the early 1920s, the magazine’s editors, who held socialist and anti-American imperialist beliefs, looked to Spain as a cultural model. In its pages, the magazine privileged Spanish civilization and conflated it with both European modernist culture and Cuban art and literature. At the same time, Revista de Avance voiced the ideas of the Institución Hispano-Cubana de Cultura, led by Fernando Ortiz.

This article explores Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s (1648–1695) strategic poetic approach, aimed at democratizing writing and knowledge among women during her period. It examines her engagement with the literary academy, Casa del Placer, believed to have included nuns from Portuguese convents and women of the nobility. Specifically, the study analyzes Sor Juana’s final poetic work, the Enigmas ofrecidos a la Casa del Placer (1695), comprising twenty unanswerable poetic enigmas. In this collection, Sor Juana departs from individual lyric expression, a shift I call a “poetics of dedication,” advocating for a communal cultural identity centered on her persona’s fame. Through this gesture, Sor Juana appropriates and challenges patriarchal narratives that labeled her as a “monster” due to her perceived exceptionalism. My article shows how, toward the end of her life, Sor Juana embraces and subverts discussions about her exceptional status and transatlantic identity, fostering a sense of transoceanic sorority among women writers of the colonial period.

Populists emerge when distrust of state institutions or dissatisfaction with democracy convince voters that claims about conspiring elites blocking the general will are valid. We propose that these dynamics change when populists are incumbents; once they command institutions, their sustained support becomes contingent upon trust in the new institutional order, and they are held accountable for making people think democracy is working well. Newly collected data on party populism and survey data from Latin America show that support for populist parties in the region is conditioned by satisfaction with democracy as well as the incumbency status of populists. Dissatisfied voters support populist opposition parties, but support for populist incumbents is higher among those satisfied with democracy and its institutions. While democratic deficits and poor governance provide openings for populists, populists are held accountable for institutional outcomes.

Fuentes Históricas del Perú (FHP) se ha convertido en un recurso imprescindible para la investigación histórica en el país. Esta iniciativa, liderada por estudiantes de universidades peruanas, representa un avance significativo en el proceso más amplio de creación de recursos digitales para la investigación histórica y el desarrollo de las humanidades digitales en Perú. En esta entrevista, realizada a fines de 2023 por Paulo Drinot con Jair Miranda Tamayo, Erika Caballero Liñán y Carlos Paredes Hernández, los tres fundadores de FHP, se ofrece una perspectiva sobre los orígenes de FHP, sus características y sus objetivos.

Whether referendums, initiatives, and other mechanisms of direct democracy enhance representative systems is a matter of debate. Skeptics note—among other criticisms—that turnout tends to be low in referendums, often lower than in candidate elections in the same country. If citizens do not care enough to participate, how useful can these mechanisms be for improving the quality of democratic systems? We argue that low referendum turnout has as much to do with parties’ disincentives to mobilize voters as it does with voter disinterest. Prior research on political behavior in referendums has focused largely on Europe and assumes that voters view them as elections of lesser importance. By shifting focus to Latin America, we introduce more variation in the features of political parties that influence levels of turnout. We draw on cross-national evidence, qualitative research in Colombia, and quantitative analysis of municipal-level referendum voting behavior in Brazil. The key to understanding low voter turnout in these settings is the relatively weaker incentives that political parties have to turn out the vote when control over office is not at stake. We demonstrate that, in clientelistic systems, party operatives have particularly weak incentives to get their constituents out to the polls.

This article examines how, why, and with what limitations judges have adopted a gendered perspective (perspectiva de género) in Chile. It addresses why the Supreme Court’s Secretariat of Gender and Nondiscrimination advocates for a particular understanding of the concept, how judges understand and apply it, and the barriers they perceive to its implementation. Drawing on interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and analysis of court rulings, the study identifies four ways in which judges understand a “gendered perspective”: as a method to detect stereotypes, a tool to analyze context, an instrument to reach a fair result, and a rejection of the notion of loosening evidentiary standards. The article argues that in contemporary Chile, different legal cultures shape disparate understandings about a gendered perspective. There is significant contestation between understandings endorsed by the dominant textualist legal culture and those favored by the emerging interpretive legal culture. By illuminating the limitations Chilean judges face in this evolving area of the law, the study contributes insights of relevance for our understanding of the factors that affect gender and judging in Latin America and beyond.

Esta investigación plantea que el espacio urbano contribuye a la caracterización de movimientos sociales urbanos. Para ello, hace un análisis espacial cartográfico del Paro Nacional de 2021 en Bogotá y Cali (Colombia), el cual se realizó a partir de un mapeo de los lugares y tipos de protesta mediante revisión de prensa y redes sociales. Se encontraron patrones que permiten evidenciar estrategias de ocupación espacial de la protesta, así como una dispersión que caracteriza la agencia ciudadana. También se evidenció cómo la pobreza determina la selección de lugares por proximidad y visibilidad, mas no intersección, y que los sistemas de transporte guían la dispersión en función de su significado como materialidad del Estado. Finalmente, se identificó cómo tensiones sobre los bordes territoriales consolidan desplazamiento de las acciones del interior de los barrios o a los límites, lo que apoya procesos de territorialización que identifican a los movimientos sociales urbanos emergentes.

This article explores understandings of race, mestizaje, and criollismo among blind people in Chile and Venezuela. It demonstrates that visually perceived markers are not self-evidently constitutive of race as a social category. Participants show sound knowledge of racialized categories but also reveal significant differences in the identification of racial markers and in the way that race informs their understandings of mestizaje and criollismo in Chile and Venezuela. In Chile, where racial markers convey identity fixity and intersect overtly with social class categorizations, mestizaje and criollismo are conceptualized as separate elements of national identity. In Venezuela, where racial markers convey more identity porosity, mestizaje and criollismo are conceptualized as intertwined foundations of national identity. These social configurations counter naturalizing conceptualizations of race and enable a reconsideration of how different notions of admixture continue to permeate ideals of personhood and social relations in Latin American countries. They also erode academic conceptualizations of race that unwittingly contribute to legitimize the naturalization of race in public discourse—and potentially in governmental policy and practice.

Entre 1949 y 1952, funcionarios del Ministerio de Educación Pública del Perú, encabezados por el intelectual peruano José María Arguedas, grabaron alrededor de doscientas piezas musicales vernáculas con miras a formar el primer archivo peruano de música tradicional. Esta iniciativa no logró sobrevivir a las adversas condiciones materiales e institucionales del sector cultural público a pesar de los esfuerzos de sus gestores. Este artículo estudia el proceso a través del cual folkloristas adscritos al Ministerio de Educación Pública construyeron el primer archivo nacional sonoro en el contexto de la temprana gestión cultural pública en el Perú. Tales esfuerzos incluyeron intercambios transnacionales de alto nivel y cooperación entre diversas instituciones culturales peruanas. Nuestro análisis abarca el periodo de 1945 a 1952 y se basa en fuentes administrativas, epistolares y hemerográficas revisadas en archivos institucionales del Perú y Estados Unidos. Argumentamos que la constitución de este archivo musical folklórico estuvo marcada por la precariedad del sector cultural estatal y por el anhelo de los folkloristas/funcionarios del ministerio por construir un repositorio sonoro a pesar de las condiciones adversas. Esta investigación ofrece significativos hallazgos históricos sobre las tempranas iniciativas oficiales de registro de música tradicional y sobre la gestión pública del folklore en el Perú de mediados del siglo XX.

¿Cómo se transforman las universidades latinoamericanas en el contexto del capitalismo académico? Exploramos esta pregunta desde una perspectiva sociológica, que enfatiza el papel de actores locales en la configuración de procesos de cambio social. A partir de una revisión sistemática de artículos periodísticos y de sesenta y seis entrevistas a expertos, docentes y autoridades universitarias, analizamos las dinámicas del sistema universitario peruano desde los orígenes de la reforma de 2014 hasta su crisis en 2023. Basándonos en el trabajo de Pierre Bourdieu, sostenemos que el capitalismo académico no es un fenómeno homogéneo ni inevitable, sino que sus lógicas dependen de negociaciones entre actores involucrados en el campo de la educación superior. En el contexto peruano, se observa un modelo rentista, que privilegia el lucro en el corto plazo, basado en cómo propietarios de universidades, rectores y académicos negocian y adaptan las exigencias de la reforma.

In this article, I argue that Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s sociohistorical analyses of the formation of Brazilian society in Raízes do Brasil are based on a non-sociohistorical assumption. Holanda prioritizes the influence of the Portuguese colonizer on that formation based on a determinist-organicist standpoint. Although he also attributes deleterious traits to the Portuguese, he describes them as endowed with a consistent character able to adjust to adverse natural conditions and other ethnicities. As for African and Indigenous peoples, conversely, besides deprecating their temperament, Holanda reduces their influence to a peripheral and reinforcing function to the Portuguese temperament. Furthermore, he attributes the leading role in shaping Brazilian identity to the Portuguese. As I demonstrate, Holanda’s overvaluation of the Portuguese and his oversimplification of African and Indigenous peoples’ contribution to the sociohistorical development of Brazil reflect his view of peoples’ identities as naturally given, as organic-like features, and not as socially constructed.

En este artículo, estudiamos qué factores individuales y contextuales explican la confianza en los sindicatos latinoamericanos. Utilizando datos de Latinobarómetro (2018–2020), mostramos que la confianza en los sindicatos es mayor entre personas de clase trabajadora y clase media asalariada, así como entre quienes se identifican con la izquierda y confían más en las instituciones políticas. A nivel contextual, la confianza es mayor en países neo-desarrollistas (por ejemplo, Brasil y Uruguay) y menor en países capitalistas tercerizados (por ejemplo, México y países centroamericanos). Contrario a nuestra hipótesis, también encontramos que la confianza en los sindicatos es alta en Chile (un país liberal-rentista con sindicatos débiles) y baja en algunos países redistributivo-rentistas (Venezuela) y neo-desarrollistas (Argentina). Para explicar estos resultados, analizamos cómo la confianza en los sindicatos depende de aspectos contextuales como la informalidad laboral, el desempleo, la inflación, el poder de los partidos de izquierda y el nivel de movilización social.

Este artículo analiza la importancia de los movimientos sociales rurales en los procesos de transición de la agricultura convencional hacia prácticas agro-sostenibles. A la luz del concepto de decrecimiento, a través de un análisis comparativo entre cuatro unidades rurales (campamento/asentamientos) con y sin presencia del Movimiento de los Trabajadores Rurales Sin Tierra (MST) en el Gran São Paulo, la investigación reflexiona sobre la presencia de elementos esenciales para los procesos de transición agroecológica en estas comunidades, explorando los datos históricos y constitutivos de las prácticas sociales agrícolas que allí se implementan. Identificando la importancia de los procesos de formación política y técnica, como base para las acciones emprendidas por el MST en el campo de la sostenibilidad, este trabajo analiza la experiencia de los campamentos del Movimiento como loci que forman los sujetos sin tierra, capaces de emprender acciones agro-sostenibles. El presente artículo concluye con reflexiones sobre la relevancia de las teorías del decrecimiento para analizar los procesos de transición agroecológica, así como sobre las medidas educativas ambientales como elementos fundamentales de las políticas públicas destinadas a la construcción de sociedades más igualitarias, autónomas, inclusivas y sostenibles.

The preponderance and influence of the public sector in the financial system have long been a defining characteristic of Brazilian capitalism. While exerting control over the national credit system through targeted lending policies and other regulatory tools, the federal government also wields significant weight through its state-owned institutions. This article delves into the role of Banco do Brasil (BB), a prominent financial institution and policymaking instrument of the Brazilian government, during the zenith of the developmental state between 1964 and 1982. In contrast to the prevailing focus on financing public spending, this study investigates the international engagements of BB and unveils its participation in managing the country’s external imbalances. BB’s financing proved crucial in bypassing the IMF and reinforcing the government’s commitment to industrialization and developmentalism. The article offers new insights into the forces of Brazil’s state-led finance and the political economy shaping its current banking and regulatory landscape.

The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) were one of the most important mass organizations in revolutionary Cuba. During the 1960s, the CDR developed a slew of actions among the Cuban masses, organizing cultural, political, and economic activities that shaped the revolutionary process from below. Through their work, the CDR gave meaning to their own idea of Cuban socialism. In the context of revolutionary upheaval, they were born as mass organizations to organize political surveillance against counterrevolutionary enemies. But the CDR also deployed productive power that sought to improve the lives of fellow Cubans. Organizing workers to solve local problems helped to reimagine the purpose of labor as a resource for public utility. For moments, the CDR even became the state. This article highlights the crucial role of the CDR members in the revolutionary process and their impact on the everyday lives of Cuban people.