Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay today account for well over a third of world exports of cellulose, yet this industry only came into existence in the late twentieth century. The evolution of this industry across the three countries is the object of this study. This nascent industry required direct government support in all three countries to be successful. Forestry laws and government investments in research, education, and factory construction were all needed to encourage local and foreign capital. There were differences among these countries in their linkages to other economic sectors as well as their export mix. But in all three countries, the forestry industry was part of a general modernization of agriculture that allowed for successful competition in world markets.

In 1939 an earthquake destroyed south-central Chile, especially the city of Chillán. This event was arguably the most catastrophic socio-natural disaster in Chilean history, yet it has been mostly ignored in historical research. This article shows that the earthquake triggered a critical juncture for the Chilean state and was a determining factor in some of the most important institutional developments of the period. Using primary sources, the article describes this juncture, focusing on the destabilizing effect of the earthquake and linking it to the creation of two new state institutions, the Production Development Corporation (CORFO) and the Reconstruction and Assistantship Corporation (CRA), together with other important changes in state capacities. It concludes that the disaster is crucial in understanding the Chilean transition from an exporting economy to an import-substituting one after 1940, and to account for the strength of the Chilean state in the decades to come.

This article seeks to understand the relationship between populism and participatory democracy through analysis of Rafael Correa’s left populist regime in Ecuador (2007–2017). It argues that rather than adhering to its own standard for participatory democracy, what the Correa regime referred to as the “Socialism of Buen Vivir,” it employed the rhetoric of participatory democracy in the service of populist rule. As a result, the Correa regime failed to promote the participatory form of democracy and citizenship promised in Buen Vivir, its version of twenty-first-century socialism. Accordingly, analysis of the Correa regime demonstrates how the concentration of top-down executive power characteristic of populism in general, and rentier populism in particular, impedes the egalitarian and solidaristic mission of participatory democracy. Thus, inductive analysis of the Correa regime reinforces the conceptual understanding that populism is antagonistic and antithetical to participatory democracy.

¿Qué hacen los trabajadores asalariados para responder a situaciones de injusticia en sus lugares de trabajo? Este artículo examina distintos repertorios de acción desplegados por trabajadores en el contexto laboral chileno, caracterizado por altos niveles de desigualdad salarial y una débil estructura sindical. Se analizan ocho grupos focales en los cuales trabajadores conversaron acerca de cómo responder a injusticias percibidas en el mundo laboral. Se identifican cinco repertorios que cuentan con diversos grados de legitimidad según el nivel socioeconómico del grupo: neoliberal, managerial, sindical, fatalista y resiliente. Se argumenta que el repertorio neoliberal ofrece a los grupos profesionales una mayor capacidad de respuesta ante injusticias distributivas y procedimentales, mientras que el repertorio resiliente ofrecería a trabajadores no calificados un set de herramientas culturales para hacer frente a los agravios a la dignidad en los lugares de trabajo. Los grupos de supervisores adoptarían en mayor medida un repertorio managerial, impulsados por gestionar el clima laboral en contextos de baja legitimidad de los sindicatos y miedo al conflicto. Se concluye que en contextos laborales fuertemente desregulados, como el caso chileno, una apropiación diferenciada de repertorios podría contribuir a reforzar las desigualdades existentes en el trabajo.

This article analyzes the impact of Augusto Pinochet’s autocracy on the Chilean economy. The study compares outcomes under Pinochet’s leadership with those in a synthetic counterfactual made of a weighted average of countries with similar characteristics. It finds that, relative to the control, Chilean income per capita greatly underperformed for at least the first fifteen years after Pinochet’s coup. The results are robust to extending the pool of donor countries and expanding the pretreatment period by switching data sets to capture potential heterogeneity of effects. The evidence suggests that Chile’s remarkable economic growth during the period 1985–1997 did not depend on Pinochet’s autocracy. These results further bring into question the effectiveness of the regime to enhance economic growth and the narrative of the Chilean miracle.

So-called development projects in rural Mexico are heavily contested. Changes in institutional design have had little effect in mediating the exclusivity of the political decision-making processes defining such projects. Why, and how, has the Mexican state been able to maintain a developmentalist agenda, despite growing pressures to incorporate participatory development institutions and consult Indigenous peoples about development projects? This article introduces the geographic concept of scale and the concept of the state’s heterogeneous selectivities into debates on participation to study the politics of development projects. It analyzes the potential and existing obstacles to political participation for Indigenous networks and activists in the corresponding planning processes across institutional scales, examining protest against wind energy development in the state of Oaxaca and the project of “rural cities” in the state of Chiapas. Rather than two separate cases for comparison, both examples represent different planning processes involving the same heterogeneous state and the same promise of progress.

This article examines the discursive construction of male disability in Los informantes, a national Colombian TV show. By combining critical discourse analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, and queer linguistics with (critical) disability studies and crip theory, it examines three TV reports that narrate the lives of a physically disabled Venezuelan migrant, a young Colombian with Down syndrome, and a physically disabled Colombian living in Great Britain. The analysis shows that Los informantes relies on inspirational and individualistic imagery that conceals the role of the neoliberal state in debilitating the lives of these men. By using a set of linguistic, visual, and discursive strategies (the supercrip figure, narrative prosthesis, and inclusionist profitability, among others), the reports mask the social and political aspects of disability. This study contributes to understanding the intersection between language, dis/ability, sexuality, and media in Latin America and questions dominant discursive constructions on disability.

En el presente artículo se analiza cómo la chilena Lina Meruane, en Sangre en el ojo (2012), y la argentina Mercedes Halfon, en El trabajo de los ojos (2017), elaboran una narración fragmentada mediante las voces de dos protagonistas con problemas de visión. El punto de vista de las narradoras se vuelve vacilante, mostrando el esqueleto mecánico de una construcción literaria artificiosa, alertando al lector de que se encuentra ante un testimonio determinado por las experiencias y la forma de mirar de un personaje que, por tanto, es una ficción y como tal es susceptible de resultar alterada e incluso falseada. Es decir, las autoras desafían al lector a sumergirse en un texto cuyo lenguaje se enfrenta a la problemática vulnerabilidad de un cuerpo anormal. De esta manera, estos relatos son las historias de dos mujeres, que lejos de adoptar un rol de víctimas, toman una postura empoderada y resistente ante el sistema, a pesar de sus problemas de visión, a través de unos textos que presentan un lenguaje y estructura alterados.

Since 2008, numerous Argentine documentary films have explored the complexities of prison education. Prison education documentaries from other countries usually focus overwhelmingly on the possible success of “rehabilitation.” In contrast, this article argues that contemporary Argentine prison education documentaries encourage critical, at times quasi-abolitionist, perspectives on imprisonment by challenging both punitive attitudes and liberal beliefs in the reinserción (reintegration) of prisoners into society. Analyzing the documentaries El almafuerte (dir. Roberto Sebastián Persano, Santiago Nacif Cabrera, and Andrés Martínez Cantó, Argentina, 2009), 13 puertas (dir. David Rubio, Argentina, 2014), Lunas cautivas (dir. Marcia Paradiso, Argentina, 2012), and Pabellón 4 (dir. Diego Gachassin, Argentina, 2017), it draws on insights from film studies and criminology to show how these films provide intersectional and structural critiques of imprisonment. “Touristic” and affective encounters between incarcerated and non-incarcerated people serve to challenge comfortable viewing positions predicated on internal-external carceral and cinematic divides. These films teach spectators that outside spaces, people, and institutions are all central to the meaning, problems, and incoherence of incarceration in Argentina.

Durante la primera mitad del siglo XX, el diario Crítica fue uno de los espacios más relevantes de difusión y afianzamiento de la noticia policial en Argentina. Fue, al mismo tiempo, el medio periodístico que mayor relevancia otorgó a la situación de los presos en las cárceles locales. Este artículo parte de la hipótesis de que la prensa, medio con el cual la literatura policial se encuentra indefectiblemente ligada, no solo se ha constituido en muchos casos como el primer soporte de circulación de numerosos relatos y novelas del género, sino que además fue un espacio de construcción y consolidación de las representaciones y procedimientos implementados en las historias del crimen. A partir de esto se propone, en primer lugar, identificar los rasgos escriturarios en los que se hace evidente una combinación de componentes referenciales y ficcionales en un conjunto de notas carcelarias publicadas por entregas en Crítica entre 1922 y 1933. Y, en segundo lugar, analizar los modos en que, desde su misma materialidad y visualidad, Crítica montó y expuso estos artículos en el espacio impreso.

This essay reviews the following works:

Persuasive Peers: Social Communication and Voting in Latin America. By Andy Baker, Barry Ames, and Lúcio Rennó. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. Pp. xxiv + 369. $32.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780691205779.

Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil. By John D. French. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. 520. $32.50 hardcover. ISBN: 9781469655765.

Modern Brazil: A Social History. By Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xv + 419. $36.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781108733298.

State-Sponsored Activism: Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Democratic Brazil. By Jessica A. J. Rich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 256. $29.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781108456807.

From Revolution to Power in Brazil: How Radical Leftists Embraced Capitalism and Struggled with Leadership. By Kenneth P. Serbin. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019. Pp. 462. $60.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780268105853.

Religion and Brazilian Democracy: Mobilizing the People of God. By Amy Erica Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 222. $105.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781108482110.

Decadent Developmentalism: The Political Economy of Democratic Brazil. By Matthew M. Taylor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 340. $99.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781108842280.

Dano colateral: A intervenção dos militares na segurança pública. By Natalia Viana. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2021. Pp. 348. ISBN: 9788547001292.

This essay reviews the following works:

Historia mínima de los feminismos en América Latina. By Dora Barrancos. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2020. Pp. 274. $12.13 paperback. ISBN: 9786075641850.

The Sexual Question: A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s–1950s. By Paulo Drinot. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xv + 328. $31.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781108717281.

Seeking Rights from the Left: Gender, Sexuality, and the Latin American Pink Tide. Edited by Elisabeth Jay Friedman. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. Pp. 344. $28.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781478001522.

An Open Secret: The History of Unwanted Pregnancy and Abortion in Modern Bolivia. By Natalie L. Kimball. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020. Pp. 374. $42.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780813590738.

The Politics of Abortion in Latin America: Public Debates, Private Lives. By Jane Marcus-Delgado. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2019. Pp. 181. $79.95 hardcover. 9781626378063.

Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement. By Katherine M. Marino. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pp. 368. $27.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781469661520.

A Miscarriage of Justice: Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil. By Cassia Roth. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020. Pp. 376. $32.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781503611320.

Demanding Justice and Security: Indigenous Women and Legal Pluralities in Latin America. Edited by Rachel Sieder. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017. Pp. 310. $38.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780813587929.

This essay reviews the following works:

A Future History of Water. By Andrea Ballestero. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. Pp. 248. $25.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781478003892.

Big Water: The Making of the Borderlands between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. Edited by Jacob Blanc and Frederico Freitas. Foreword by Zephyr Frank. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2018. Pp. vii + 344. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780816537143. Open access e-book. ISBN: 9780816541737.

The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean: Waterscapes of Labor, Conservation, and Boundary Making. By Sharika D. Crawford. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. xii + 216. $27.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781469660219.

Cuerpos, territorios y feminismos: Compilación latinoamericana de teorías, metodologías y prácticas políticas. Edited by Delmy Tania Cruz Hernández and Manuel Bayón Jiménez. Quito: Abya Yala, 2020. Pp. 422. ISBN: 9789942096708.

The People of the River: Nature and Identity in Black Amazonia, 1835–1945. By Oscar de la Torre. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. xii + 242. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781469643243.

Landscapes of Freedom: Building a Postemancipation Society in the Rainforests of Western Colombia. By Claudia Leal. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2018. Pp. ix + 352. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780816536740.

Conflictos territoriales y territorialidades en disputa: Re-existencias y horizontes societales frente al capital en América Latina. Edited by Pabel López and Milson Betancourt. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2021. Open access e-book, PDF. ISBN: 9789877229011.

Vital Diplomacy: The Ritual Everyday on a Dammed River in Amazonia. By Chloe Nahum-Claudel. New York: Berghahn, 2017. Pp vi + 302. $140.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781785334061.

This essay reviews the following works:

China y América Latina en una nueva fase: Desafíos en el siglo XXI. Edited by Pamela Aróstica and Walter Sánchez. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 2019. Pp. 270. ISBN: 9789561126268.

China–Latin America Relations in the 21st Century: The Dual Complexities of Opportunities and Challenges. Edited by Raúl Bernal-Meza and Li Xing. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Pp. 289. $79.64 hardcover. ISBN: 9783030356132.

Sino–Latin American Economic and Trade Relations. Edited by Chai Yu and Yue Yunxia. Singapore: Springer, 2019. Pp. 193. $64.50 hardcover. ISBN: 9789811334047.

China, the United States, and the Future of Latin America. Edited by David B. H. Denoon. New York: New York University Press, 2017. Pp. 432. $39.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781479821648.

Globalizing Patient Capital: The Political Economy of Chinese Finance in the Americas. By Stephen B. Kaplan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 390. $84.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107182318.

Dependency in the Twenty-First Century? The Political Economy of China-Latin America Relations. By Barbara Stallings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 75. $20.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781108793032.

Dragonomics: How Latin America Is Maximizing (or Missing Out on) China’s International Development Strategy. By Carol Wise. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020. Pp. 328. $36.57 hardcover. ISBN: 9780300224092.