Most recent papers:

• Democratic Tradition and the Failed Presidency of Lucio Gutierrez in Ecuador.
  Christopher A. Martínez.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. October 10, 2017
  In April 2005, Lucio Gutiérrez was removed from office in the context of a fast‐growing economy. With no economic hardship to fuel social outrage, the failure of Gutiérrez illustrates how political and institutional factors can be the most important forces determining presidential survival. In this article, we qualitatively analyse the path toward confrontation between Gutiérrez and the congressional opposition which led to his political demise. We find that Ecuador's weak democratic tradition working through more proximate causes – radicalism, normative preference for democratic institutions and a negative institutional equilibrium – coupled with other institutional and political variables accelerated Lucio Gutiérrez's fall from power.

  October 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12705   open full text
• Tales of Fallen Empires: The Andean Utopia in the Eighteenth‐Century British Press.
  Isabel Yaya Mckenzie.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. September 25, 2017
  The upsurge of press titles in eighteenth‐century Britain provided unprecedented public arenas to discuss socio‐political issues within a global context. Imperial sovereignty became an item of debate infusing as much the commentaries on current affairs as the fictional pieces that contributed to the popularity of newspapers and magazines. This article explores a selective stock of press narratives where Britain's imperial aspirations are set against the backdrop of the fall of the Inca Empire, a theme that became increasingly popular in the wider literary spectrum. This corpus is examined in light of the transnational circulation bearing on the Andean utopia discourses.

  September 25, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12596   open full text
• ‘A Desire so Close to the Hearts of all Latin Americans’: Utopian Ideals and Imperfections Behind Latin America's Nuclear Weapon Free Zone.
  Ryan A. Musto.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. September 25, 2017
  In April 1969, Latin America implemented the first nuclear weapon free zone (NWFZ) in an inhabited region of the world. This article explores the creation of Latin America's NWFZ as a utopian impulse. It argues that various Latin American states used the utopian ideals of security, sovereignty, and socio‐economic prosperity to propel the region's denuclearisation forward. Those implementing these utopian ideals had to define the meaning of Latin America, nuclear weapons under a non‐proliferation agreement, and the denuclearisation of an inhabited region. The result was compromise forged from a collision of utopian ideals and dystopian geopolitics.

  September 25, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12557   open full text
• Utopian Visions for Buenos Aires Shantytowns: Collective Imaginaries of Housing Rights, Upgrading and Eviction (1956–2013).
  Adriana L. Massidda.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. September 25, 2017
  This article explores three utopian visions which have shaped past and present experiences within Buenos Aires shantytowns: those of upgraded shantytowns, of universal housing, and of a city where shantytowns have been eliminated. The article argues that these visions are collective conceptions that entail a socio‐political critique which is translated into space and which points to an ideal future. The visions proposed emerge from the examination of historical evidence and are a key conceptual tool for understanding previous and current discussions of shantytowns in Latin America.

  September 25, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12559   open full text
• ‘To Fill Yourself with Goodness’: Revolutionary Self‐Making in Bolivarian Venezuela.
  Matt Wilde.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. September 25, 2017
  This article explores how utopian visions are articulated by chavista activists in Venezuela through the practice of “revolutionary self‐making”. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the city of Valencia between 2008 and 2012, it aims to demonstrate how close attention to the formation of new moral and spiritual selves is an integral part of the way that chavistas enact and experience political protagonism. In doing so, the article seeks to provide a ground level view of utopian visions as they are manifested discursively and practically in everyday life.

  September 25, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12631   open full text
• Introduction.
  Sandra Brunnegger.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. September 25, 2017
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  September 25, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12668   open full text
• ‘The Right to Live with Dignity’: Politicising Experiences of Precarity through ‘Popular Economy’ in Argentina.
  Dolores Señorans.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. September 18, 2017
  This article takes an ethnographic perspective to analyse the ways in which social movements in Buenos Aires, Argentina, politicise experiences of precarity through the creation of popular economy initiatives. I argue that we cannot understand these organising processes exclusively in relation to the pursuit of ‘formalisation’ or the improvement of working conditions. In the context of new forms of State intervention, the notions of ‘rights’—to labour and to the city—that these movements put forward, express ways of envisioning full inclusion in society that encompass notions of worthiness and ‘dignified life’, forged over the course of grassroots political action.

  September 18, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12707   open full text
• On the Shores of Politics: Popular Republicanism and the Magdalena River in Candelario Obeso's Cantos populares de mi tierra.
  Rory O'bryen.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. August 04, 2017
  This article explores discourses surrounding the modernisation of the state and the formation of national literature in nineteenth‐century Colombia, examining the racism at the heart of both, particularly in their representation of Afro‐Colombian inhabitants of the lower Magdalena River. Then, drawing on recent accounts of plebeian politicisation, and in a reading of selected poems from Candelario Obeso's Cantos populares de mi tierra (1877), it argues that beyond functioning as the medium through which criollos interpellated subalterns as alienated subjects, republican ideology also served as the grounds upon which Afro‐Colombians contested exclusion and negotiated forms of political inclusion.

  August 04, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12704   open full text
• Contra‐Associational Strategy in a Hybrid Regime: Ecuador, 2007–2015.
  Catherine M. Conaghan.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. July 26, 2017
  Over the last decade, political scientists have identified Ecuador as one of Latin America's hybrid regimes. This article examines how President Rafael Correa combined legal reforms, bureaucratic controls and other policies in a contra‐associational strategy aimed at extending executive control over civil society. While the strategy significantly altered the operational environment for civil society groups, it did not completely strip them of their capacity to oppose the regime. Ecuador's experience underscores the ambiguity at play in hybrids; in pursuit of regime legitimation, regimes must cede some space to opponents while simultaneously sabotaging civil liberties.

  July 26, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12673   open full text
• The Gender Deficit: Everyday Practices of Differentiation in the Chilean Labour Market.
  Claudia Mora, Osvaldo Blanco.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. July 18, 2017
  We focus on the reproduction of gender inequality in the labour market, analysing everyday practices of social boundary demarcation that exclude women from accessing resources at work. We argue that women's diminished position in the labour market – or gender deficit – is a result of taken‐for‐granted, day‐to‐day practices, conditioning the distribution of resources. Taking Chilean professional women as a case study, we focus on labour market practices that uphold gendered evaluation criteria, reproduce social classifications, and engender exclusion through social boundary work that limits women's access to labour market benefits and rewards.

  July 18, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12672   open full text
• Cemetery Modernisation and the Common Good in Bogotá.
  Christien Klaufus.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 14, 2017
  Cemetery planning in high‐density urban areas is essential for more equitable societies in Latin America. This paper addresses the implementation of a cemetery master plan in Bogotá to explore the effects of public policies. I argue that tensions between the ‘city of the dead’ and the ‘city of the living’ demonstrate how politicians and planners increasingly envision public cemeteries as urban infrastructure rather than public space, making it more difficult to manage cemeteries as a public good. This paper engages with debates about urban planning in contemporary Latin America.

  June 14, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12599   open full text
• Animality, Sexuality and the Politics of Death in Mario Bellatin's Salón de belleza.
  Lucy Bollington.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 09, 2017
  In Bellatin's Salón de belleza aquariums filled with exotic fish function as the symbolic nexus through which queer bodies and destructive power intersect and become involved in mutational processes. This article brings the novella into dialogue with biopolitical philosophy, queer theory and posthumanism in order to conceptualise the multivalent implications of the text's trans‐species reflections and crossings. My analysis moves beyond existing interpretations of the novella as a mournful account of the HIV/AIDS pandemic or as a text that documents violence more broadly, by calling attention to the more affirmative potentialities that are also latent in Bellatin's aesthetics of impersonality.

  June 09, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12670   open full text
• Planners and the Pride Factor: The Case of the Electric Escalator in Medellín.
  Letty Reimerink.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 09, 2017
  The outdoor electric escalator in Medellín's Comuna 13, part of an Integrated Urban Project aimed at bridging the city's socio‐spatial divide, did not fully accomplish the project's goal of increasing the mobility of 12,000 people living in the area, nor did it make a significant contribution to diminishing social inequalities. The escalator project can be considered a prestigious solution to an ill‐defined problem that did not take people's mobility patterns into account. Although the project succeeded in increasing civic pride and improving Medellín's image of modernity and progress, it also led to new social inequalities.

  June 09, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12665   open full text
• The FBI's Role in Expelling Germans from Ecuador During the 1940s.
  Marc Becker.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. May 19, 2017
  The expulsion from Latin America of immigrants from axis countries and their descendants is an important but little‐studied episode of the Second World War. The role of the US, and in particular that of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in their removal has largely disappeared from historical memory. This article examines how the FBI advanced US commercial interests, and in the process harmed vulnerable people who were subject to these expulsions.

  May 19, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12638   open full text
• Cultura Viva, a Challenge to the Creative Economy Policy Discourse in Brazil.
  Maximiliano Vila Seoane.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 28, 2017
  During the last decade, Brazil has experimented with two different cultural policy discourses. The creative economy policy was inspired by international experiences and places emphasis on the commercialisation of culture, while, by contrast, the ‘Cultura Viva’ initiative is an autochthonous policy discourse that stimulates access to the cultural consumption and production of lower‐income sectors of the population. Both cultural policy discourses speak of the contributions of culture to ‘development’. However, this shibboleth delineates different projects. This article shows the different connections these two policy discourses make with ‘development’ and describes a number of disparities between them.

  March 28, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12637   open full text
• Goodbye ‘Racial Democracy’? Brazilian Identity, Official Discourse and the Making of a ‘Black’ Heritage Site in Rio de Janeiro.
  André Cicalo.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 24, 2017
  This article explores the racial thinking in Brazilian governance exposed during the creation of a Circuit of African Heritage in the port area of Rio de Janeiro from 2011 on. The Circuit and the policy discourses that have surrounded its establishment are visibly framed within a philosophy of ethno‐racial recognition and multiculturalism, which apparently suggests a rupture from the long‐established discourse of mixture and racial democracy in Brazil. Nonetheless, a careful analysis of the creation of the Circuit of African Heritage indicates that policy discourse is not conclusively unsettling the country's traditional faith in a shared, colour‐blind national identity.

  March 24, 2017   doi: 10.1111/blar.12636   open full text
• Costa Rica's Outward‐Looking Development: From ‘Agriculture of Change’ to Food Insecurity.
  Elisa Botella‐Rodríguez.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. December 28, 2016
  Costa Rica provides an excellent example of the neoliberal approach to agricultural policy implemented during the last two decades in Latin America. In the early 1980s, Costa Rica shifted from limited promotion of import substitution industrialisation to export‐led growth and non‐traditional crops. This article presents important findings about the effects of outward‐looking development policies since the 1990s on Costa Rica's patterns of food production and land tenure. While trade liberalisation has diversified agriculture and increased the levels of export production, it has also had negative effects on food security.

  December 28, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12598   open full text
• Municipal Governance, Environmental Management and Disaster Risk Reduction in Chile.
  Patricio Valdivieso Fernández.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. December 15, 2016
  Given the vulnerability of Latin American countries to extreme events of climatic and geophysical origin and the frequency of these events, how do local governments manage environmental and disaster risk reduction? This article contributes to the Latin American literature about environmental management and disaster risk reduction at the local level. Employing a comparative perspective, the article examines and explains the responses of Chilean municipalities and the role of municipal commitments and social capital.

  December 15, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12595   open full text
• Equal in Poverty, Unequal in Wealth: Ethnic Stratification in Chile, the Mapuche Case.
  Macarena S. Valenzuela, Sergio Y. Toro, Félix Rojo‐Mendoza.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. December 07, 2016
  How does ethnic status affect social stratification in Chile? Despite a rich theoretical debate in the literature on social stratification, there is a shortage of empirical approaches to this phenomenon in Latin America. This research note seeks to bridge the analytical gap by describing the social exclusion of indigenous people in Chile. From a case study in La Araucanía region and using statistical techniques to give equal weightings to indigenous and non‐indigenous groups (specifically Mapuches and non‐Mapuches), we attempt to show that given equal socio‐demographic conditions, the incomes of both groups are similar in the low and middle strata, and differentiated in the higher strata.

  December 07, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12558   open full text
• The Federal Dilemma: Organisational Strategies and the Consolidation of Parties in Mexico and Argentina.
  Juan C. Olmeda, Julieta Suarez‐Cao.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. November 29, 2016
  What accounts for the consolidation of party organisations? The specialised literature has stressed the importance of institutions in shaping the ways in which political parties organise. However, little attention has been paid to the role of federalism. We argue that in federal settings, party territorial organisational strategies condition their capacity to become consolidated parties. We illustrate our theory with an analysis of the development of conservative parties in Argentina and Mexico to explain their different levels of consolidation.

  November 29, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12594   open full text
• ‘This is not a Favela’: Rio de Janeiro's Urban Quilombo Sacopã and the Limits of Multiculturalism.
  Desiree Poets.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. October 12, 2016
  Under Brazil's 1988 Constitution, quilombo communities have the right to the titles of the lands they occupy. This paper assesses quilombo titles' transformative potential through the experiences of Rio de Janeiro's urban quilombo Sacopã, an ethnic Afro‐descendant community once perceived as a favela. Unlike its neighbours, the community managed to resist the widespread favela removals of the 1970s. Based on an ethnographic approach during fieldwork conducted between December 2013 and January 2014, the article asks: how did Sacopã manage to remain, whilst its surrounding favelas were forcefully removed? Who counts as ethnic? What does this imply for Brazil's afro‐descendant majority?

  October 12, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12561   open full text
• Is there a Common Path that could have Conditioned the Degree of Welfare State Development in Latin America and the Caribbean?
  Gibran Cruz‐Martinez.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. October 06, 2016
  The purpose of this paper is to re‐examine from a multidimensional perspective the possible existence of a single path that could have conditioned the degree of welfare state development (WSD) in Latin America. Economic/industrial development, trade‐openness, democracy and the strength of leftist parties‐labour movement are used as explanatory variables in the qualitative comparative analysis. In contrast to previous findings, this paper shows that there is no evidence of a common path followed by countries with a relatively high/medium WSD. Nevertheless, countries that experienced a low economic/industrial development combined with a low democratic experience were conditioned to have low WSD.

  October 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12556   open full text
• Stay or Go? Ecuadorian Immigrants in Spain in Times of Crisis.
  Juan Iglesias Martínez.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. October 04, 2016
  This article studies how the economic crisis affects Ecuadorian immigrants' decisions on staying in Spain or returning to their home country. Before the crisis, Ecuadorians were one of the most significant migrant groups in Spain in terms of volume and degree of settlement. The crisis has destabilised their situation and modified their migratory projects in different ways. This article presents the three main choices facing Ecuadorian immigrants during the crisis: permanence, wait and see, and return/re‐migration. The analysis focuses on how the decision‐making process is carried out and on the different factors that lead Ecuadorians to choose each option.

  October 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12560   open full text
• A Matter of Speculation: British Representations of Argentina, Chile and Perú during the Wars of Independence.
  Marcelo Somarriva Q.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. August 02, 2016
  This article examines how newspapers, periodicals and books represented the southern part of America between 1810 and 1820. Although the region made up of Argentina, Chile and Perú was important for British trade, this article proposes that there was a considerable lack of first‐hand information about it during that decade. Most of the material then printed in Britain regarding these countries was speculative or propagandistic, while at the same time British trade carried out in the area was mostly by ‘speculators’, who profited from general ignorance about the actual situation of those markets. This article suggests that speculation is a word that is key to understanding these representations.

  August 02, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12528   open full text
• Introduction to the Special Section: Social Movements and Social Emancipation in Latin America.
  Ana C. Dinerstein, Sara C. Motta.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. July 25, 2016
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  July 25, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12525   open full text
• Occupying Legality: The Subversive Use of Law in Latin American Occupation Movements.
  Honor Brabazon.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. July 24, 2016
  The social movement tactic of occupying land, factories, and other workplaces has regained popularity in Latin America over the past decade. These occupations have garnered international attention due to the direct confrontation with neoliberalism that they embody, whilst less attention has been drawn to the particular use of law that underpins this confrontation. Through an examination of the use of law by the Landless Peasants' Movement in Bolivia and by the factory occupation movement in Argentina, this paper explores how these occupation movements have combined both an eschewal and embrace of law in what can be understood as a creative ‘radical legal praxis’. The paper sketches the contours of what a theorisation of this approach might look like and suggests that this particular engagement with law challenges traditional understandings of occupation movements and contains important possibilities for emancipatory resistance to neoliberalism.

  July 24, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12527   open full text
• Emancipation in Latin America: On the Pedagogical Turn.
  Sara C. Motta.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. July 24, 2016
  Latin American social movements are reinventing emancipatory politics, in which those invisibilised and excluded by capitalist‐coloniality are emerging as the emancipatory subjects of our times. Rather than a method of learning, pedagogy is understood as a radical educational project of subaltern transformation and politics. Emancipatory pedagogical praxis occurs in multiple spatialities and embraces multiple knowledges and subaltern subjects. These knowing‐subjects become creators of political agency, movement practices and imaginaries, and collective self‐liberation. I develop my analysis with reference to movement educators who I work with in the Brazilian Movimento sem Terra (MST, Landless Workers Movement) and Colombian Escuela Política de Mujeres Pazífica (Political School of Pacifist Women, Escuela).

  July 24, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12526   open full text
• El Helicoide and La Torre de David as Phantom Pavilions: Rethinking Spectacles of Progress in Venezuela.
  Lisa Blackmore.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. July 21, 2016
  This article explores El Helicoide and La Torre de David as remnants of the recurrent boom‐and‐bust cycles and spectacles of progress associated with Venezuela's ‘magical state’ (Coronil). Their redefinition as ‘phantom pavilions’—constructions designed to symbolise development but haunted by crisis and precariousness—serves as a conceptual tool against the amnesia and hysteria these sites provoke. First, I use it to track the buildings' grandiose designs, subsequent curtailment and modified uses through political and economic history. Second, the concept informs the analysis of recent artworks that summon monumentality and ruination to envisage alternate forms of public engagement with truncated sites.

  July 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12524   open full text
• Sexiled in Mexico City: Urban Migrations Motivated by Sexual Orientation.
  Jose A. Langarita Adiego, Maria Alejandra Salguero Velázquez.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. July 15, 2016
  Migration processes have been studied primarily from an economic or work‐related standpoint. We analyse the extent to which sexual orientation becomes a key factor in the decision, made by men who are attracted to other men, to move to Mexico City. A qualitative study was carried out based on in‐depth interviews and participant observation. With this data, we analysed: (a) the men's motivations and strategies for moving to Mexico City; (b) the process of coming out; (c) the role of support networks in the city; and (d) the perception of their place of origin, having completed the migration process.

  July 15, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12523   open full text
• Institutional Transnationalism, Parental Values, and the Next Generation.
  Jack Durrell.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. July 15, 2016
  This paper examines ‘next’ generation institutional transnationalism, a concept that refers to individuals born and/or brought up in a country of settlement who are involved in transnational organisations oriented towards their country of origin – in this case Mexican and Salvadoran groups active within the United States. Building on previous research which views parental transmission as a major cause of next‐generation transnationalism, this paper explores an additional and previously overlooked influence – parental involvement in cross‐border organisations or causes.

  July 15, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12522   open full text
• Special Section on Dictatorship and Its Legacies in Brazil.
  Rebecca Atencio, Nina Schneider, Ann M. Schneider.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 20, 2016
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  June 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12520   open full text
• Legislative Efforts against Impunity in the 1979 Amnesty Debate in Brazil.
  Ann M. Schneider.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 20, 2016
  The 1979 amnesty marked the beginning of the end of military dictatorship in Brazil. It has since been both a help and a hindrance to the transition to democracy and the implementation of mechanisms of transitional justice. Two sections of the first Article of the proposed amnesty were especially controversial. One section explicitly excluded individuals convicted of specified national security crimes and the other implicitly included state agents complicit in torture. This article looks at the efforts by legislators to alter the amnesty bill on either or both of these points. Although unsuccessful, the strategies behind and the reactions to their efforts add to our historical understanding of accountability work and the persistent problem of impunity in Brazil.

  June 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12521   open full text
• The US Role in the 1964 Coup in Brazil: A Reassessment.
  Anthony W. Pereira.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 20, 2016
  The role of the US in the 1964 coup in Brazil is controversial. When did US policymakers decide to support the coup conspirators, and why? This article reviews some recent works on the 1964 coup and makes two arguments. First, recently declassified documents show that the US joined the coup conspiracy only in 1963 not, as some claim, in 1961 or 1962. Second, many scholars do not explain the actions of US policymakers, or see their decisions as the inevitable consequence of US imperialism. This article argues that shifts in US domestic politics during the Cold War, as well as the pattern of post‐war foreign policy in Latin America, help explain US support for the coup.

  June 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12518   open full text
• The Debate over Military (or Civilian‐Military?) Dictatorship in Brazil in Historiographical Context.
  Marcelo Ridenti.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 17, 2016
  This article highlights the renewed interest in the history of the coup of 1964 and the dictatorship that followed in Brazil, as well as some debates involved in the production of memoirs, investigative journalism and academic research on the topic. It analyses at more length one of the polemics: the increasing use of the term ‘civilian‐military’ to qualify the coup, the rule, and the dictatorship. It argues that – independent of the use of the term – the most important aspect is to understand the complex relationship between the military and civilians as part of a broader process of conservative modernisation during this period.

  June 17, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12519   open full text
• Stains of the Past: Space, Memory, and Postdictatorship in Luis Fernando Veríssimo's A mancha.
  Andrew C. Rajca.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 16, 2016
  This article examines the relationship between space, memory, and the effects of Brazil's military dictatorship (1964–1985) presented in Luis Fernando Veríssimo's 2004 short story, A mancha (‘The Stain’). Although simple in structure, the narrative touches upon complex themes in postdictatorship: engaging with past trauma and political differences that cut across family relationships, conflicting notions of betrayal, the urban processes associated with capitalism, and the commodification of memory itself. I argue that the ‘stain’ traced in A mancha goes beyond the normalised rhetoric of postdictatorial memory, as the narrative both maintains and traces marginalised subjectivities of postdictatorship through its engagement with material and discursive spatial production in Brazil.

  June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12517   open full text
• Using Critical Junctures to Explain Continuity: The Case of State Milk in Neoliberal Chile.
  Jael Goldsmith Weil.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 08, 2016
  This paper advances the concept of path‐prolonging critical junctures, a category used for eventful historical episodes marked by high levels of contingency that lock in path maintenance. It contributes to recent debates in comparative‐historical social science, adding a pathway of continuity that is the product of agency and activism. The analysis is grounded in the 1985 interruption of Chile's long‐standing state milk programme and argues that against a backdrop of economic, social and policy turmoil, expert and grassroots efforts combined to pressure the military regime to reverse retrenchment. The implications of this juncture help explain Chile's favourable infant malnutrition and mortality indices and the maintenance of a state‐run infant‐maternal primary healthcare network despite neoliberal reform.

  June 08, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12516   open full text
• Restoring Damage or Pursuing Justice? The Dilemma of Communitarian Miskitu Women Seeking a Life Free of Violence.
  Dolores Figueroa Romero, Arelly Barbeyto Rodriguez.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 06, 2016
  This article analyses the options Miskitu women from Krukira have for negotiating the contradictions between two systems of justice – state justice and communitarian justice – in their pursuit of a life free of violence. While these two systems operate under different conceptions of justice and gender‐based violence, the communitarian system represents the most accessible option women can turn to for the reparation of damages. With a reflexive approach to the dynamics of the communitarian space, this article employs an intercultural perspective to contribute to the design of a regional model of justice that meets Miskitu women's demands.

  June 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12488   open full text
• Toward a Geography of Solidarity: Afro‐Nicaraguan Women's Land Activism and Autonomy in the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region.
  Courtney Desiree Morris.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 06, 2016
  This article explores efforts by Afro‐Nicaraguan women activists to enact their communal land rights in Bluefields during a 2009 land occupation. Creole women's interpretation of state power, underdevelopment, and the failure of the autonomy process suggest that a critical race understanding of regional politics not only reveals the persistence of structural anti‐black racism but also demonstrates how the state's disregard for the region as the nation's imagined site of racial Otherness harms all Costeños, including poor Mestizos. Creole women's articulation of a geography of solidarity rooted in racial justice rather than blame offers new strategies for confronting regional inequality and state neglect in the construction of regional autonomy.

  June 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12490   open full text
• Territorial ‘Fix’? Tenure Insecurity in Titled Indigenous Territories.
  Mary Finley‐Brook.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 06, 2016
  Indigenous territorial governments in Nicaragua's North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region experience ongoing land and resource contests, in many cases building from longstanding disputes or problems, even after titling. I argue that it is naïve to expect that granting titles – a supposed territorial fix – will resolve conflicts created across decades as a result of ineffective policies and economic pressures. As shown with three demarcated Miskitu territories, tenure insecurity arises from challenges with the state, private firms, non‐indigenous colonists, and even from the activities of territorial leaders. These cases suggest the need to move beyond perceptions of Miskitu territories as simple bounded remnants of the past and acknowledge they are complex, porous, trans‐local, and transgressed by processes such as migration, urbanisation, and neoliberal economic integration. Indeed, new territorial governments are encouraged by foreign donors and state laws to mirror government agencies and prioritise market linkages.

  June 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12489   open full text
• The Challenge of ‘Territory’: Weaving the Social Fabric of Indigenous Communities in Nicaragua's Northern Caribbean Autonomous Region.
  Anne M. Larson, Fernanda Soto, Dennis Mairena, Edda Moreno, Eileen Mairena, Jadder Mendoza‐Lewis.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 06, 2016
  In Nicaragua, indigenous and afro‐descendant peoples' demands for territorial rights have become inseparable from demands for the exercise of autonomy in the Caribbean Coast. Alone, the new titles obtained by these communities, like the autonomy regime, will not guarantee legal security over collective lands, control over natural resources or the exercise of free determination. Through the analysis of three indigenous territories in Nicaragua's Northern Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (RACCN), the article argues that the state is still setting the terms of debate. It suggests that the defence of rights should be anchored not only on the ownership of territory but also on the social fabric of indigenous communities and territories.

  June 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12365   open full text
• The Unmaking of Self‐Determination: Twenty‐Five Years of Regional Autonomy in Nicaragua.
  Miguel González.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 06, 2016
  The Nicaraguan autonomous regime has confronted important challenges in the promotion of multi‐ethnic citizenship, as it has been hindered by successive national administrations. This contribution reviews the performance of the autonomous regime by exploring the ongoing contentious reform process of what has become a hybrid model of subnational governance. The argument suggests that the FSLN (Sandinista Front for National Liberation) has continued to press forward its vision of national integration for the Caribbean Coast, and has promoted a political agenda which ultimately aims at subduing autonomy as an avenue for realising the right to self‐determination of Indigenous and Afro‐descendant Peoples.

  June 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12487   open full text
• The Historical Roots of Autonomy in Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast: From British Colonialism to Indigenous Autonomy.
  Luciano Baracco.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 06, 2016
  This article reviews historical forms of localised government on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast and contrasts them with the contemporary struggle to attain a communal form of autonomy undertaken by the region's indigenous population. It suggests that the contemporary autonomy process shares few features with the historical precedents of localised government which are commonly invoked to legitimise it. Instead, its roots can be located in the emergence of a Moskitian nationalism amongst the Miskitu which occurred to counter the assimilating impulse of an increasingly developmentally determined national state during the 1960s under the Somoza dictatorship, and then more thoroughly during the Sandinista revolution.

  June 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12329   open full text
• Ethnicity and Religion in the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina.
  Dario Ranocchiari, Gloria Calabresi.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. May 06, 2016
  Moving between historic reconstruction and ethnographic data, this article analyses the close relationship existing between memory, religion and ethnicity in the case of the Raizal people of the islands of San Andrés and Providencia (in Colombia's Western Caribbean). The dual colonial history of the islands and the peculiar modalities of the emergence of Creole society there, which is closely related to the establishment of the Baptist Church in a context of relative isolation, contributed decisively to defining the current political demands of the Raizal ethnic movements.

  May 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12475   open full text
• Power in Transition in Marcelo Cohen's ‘La ilusión monarca’.
  Niall Geraghty.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. May 06, 2016
  This article examines the changing nature of power relations engendered by the Argentine transition to democracy, as reflected in Marcelo Cohen's short story ‘La ilusión monarca’ (1992). By examining contextual markers dispersed throughout the story, Cohen is shown to problematise Foucault's conception of ‘disciplinary society’ as a means to criticise the legacy of corruption bequeathed by the military dictatorship of 1976–1983. Subsequently, the work of Gilles Deleuze is deployed to demonstrate that Cohen's story philosophically examines the change in power and resistance concomitant with the transition from ‘disciplinary’ to ‘control society’ precipitated by the adoption of neoliberal economics in Argentina.

  May 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12485   open full text
• The Chilean Economy during the 1810–1830s and its Entry into the World Economy.
  Manuel Llorca‐Jaña, Juan Navarrete‐Montalvo.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. April 22, 2016
  This article discusses Chile's entry into the international economy, the performance of the national economy and institutional change during the 1810–1830s. It argues that the country consolidated a successful process of entry into the expanding world economy. GDP per capita was poor, but alternative indicators suggest a more optimistic picture (e.g., agricultural, copper and silver production increased, population grew and terms of trade improved). Furthermore, there were some positive institutional developments. All these changes made possible the sustained growth that took place from the 1830s and must be seen as more important than the growth record itself during the 1810–1820s.

  April 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12482   open full text
• One Local Dimension of a Global Project: The Introduction of the Monitorial System of Education in Post‐Independent Chile, 1821–1833.
  Andrés Baeza.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. April 22, 2016
  This article explores the reception and adaptation of the Monitorial system of education in Chile after the struggles for independence. This process was characterised by the confluence of the ‘civilising’ discourses of those who diffused (the Quakers of the British and Foreign School Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society) and received (the Chilean liberal elite and Catholic clergy) the system. As a result, the original model was adapted to local circumstances and interests during the 1820s, according to the specific type of citizen that the political leaders sought for the new republic of Chile.

  April 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12483   open full text
• José Joaquín de Mora in Chile: From Neo‐Europe to the ‘Beocia Americana’.
  Graciela Iglesias Rogers.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. April 22, 2016
  The Spanish jurist, poet and journalist José Joaquín de Mora was probably the first foreign political consultant to be hired by several different South American governments in the period immediately following the wars of independence (mid‐1820–1830s). This paper takes a transnational approach to focus on his activities concerning Chile. It argues that Mora fitted the requirements of regional elites who aspired to have the New World drenched in European cultural values to make it a beacon of rational liberty, particularly for the Old World under the autocratic constrains of the Holy Alliance.

  April 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12480   open full text
• The Chilean Republic in the Face of Bolivar's Expansionism (1823–1828).
  Daniel Gutiérrez Ardila.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. April 22, 2016
  In Santiago de Chile the news of the definitive expulsion of the Royalist troops from Peru and Upper Peru was at the same time a source of relief and of uneasiness, because, even though it gave a final blow to the danger of a second Reconquest, it conferred an extraordinary military power to Simón Bolívar. This article studies the reactions of the Chilean press in the face of Bolivar's expansionism. It explores the collective creation of a repulsive portrait of Bolívar, which was to play an important role in the condemnation and collapse of his ambition of lifelong rule in the continent.

  April 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12484   open full text
• No One's Monopoly: Chilean Liberalism in the Post‐Independent Period, 1823–1830.
  Juan Luis Ossa.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. April 22, 2016
  This article begins by arguing that military officer Ramón Freire and his successor, Francisco Antonio Pinto, advocated for a form of liberalism that, although supportive of individual rights, depended upon a centralised system of government. Then it claims that there was a consensus in Chile in the 1820s that the best political regime for the country was republicanism, and that differences between factions did not concentrate so much on ideological issues as on specific aspects of Chilean politics. These included the articles of the Constitution of 1828 that jeopardised the economic supremacy of landlords and debates regarding the limits of the freedom of the press. The third section of the article shows that ‘conservatives’ pushed for a freer Press Law than the ‘liberals’ at the end of the 1820s, thus proving that different liberal traditions emerged in Chile in the aftermath of independence. The conclusion of the article emphasises that liberalism in Chile was no one's monopoly.

  April 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12479   open full text
• Troubled Negotiations: The Mapuche and the Chilean State (1818–1830).
  Joanna Crow.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. April 22, 2016
  This paper explores the complex, dynamic relationship that developed between the Mapuche and Chilean state authorities in the first decades following independence from Spain. The greater part of Mapuche society supported royalist forces during the independence wars, but there were also several leaders who allied themselves with the patriot insurgents and, after the latter's victory, entered into negotiations with the fledgling Chilean republic. This paper investigates the intricacies of these negotiations and, in so doing, draws out some notable continuities between the colonial period and the early independence era. It focuses on the language(s) of negotiation – delving into what Mapuche and Chilean authorities were saying about and to one another – and on the symbolic significance of the parlamentos (mass‐meetings), in order to demonstrate that Chile could have adopted an alternative model of government to the (centralist) one we know now.

  April 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12481   open full text
• Introduction.
  Joanna Crow.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. April 22, 2016
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  April 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12478   open full text
• Mass Higher Education and the 2011 Student Movement in Chile: Material and Ideological Implications.
  Nicolas Fleet, César Guzmán‐Concha.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 16, 2016
  This article analyses the material and ideological implications of a highly commodified mass higher education system on the 2011 students' mobilisations in Chile. Drawing upon quantitative and qualitative data, we show that the grievances denounced by the movement emerged from the differences in the process of socialisation/reproduction of intellectual labour among universities, which in turn correspond to forms of class exploitation. Moreover, we demonstrate that students' engagement in/with the movement varies across universities in accordance with the differentiation of these institutions along class and political cleavages. The article offers insights to understand why a sectoral conflict became the most significant challenge to the neoliberal consensus that has prevailed since the late‐1980s.

  March 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12471   open full text
• Changing Repertoires and Partisan Ambivalence in the New Brazilian Protests.
  Angela Alonso, Ann Mische.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 16, 2016
  This article analyses the June 2013 wave of political protests in Brazil, highlighting student movement participation. We make three arguments. First, this was not a single student movement, but a cycle of protest, consisting of many different actors, issues, and forms of demonstration. Second, protesters built what we call hybrid performances, drawing on three repertoires of contention: socialist, autonomist and patriotic. Third, the protests presented a strong rejection of political parties, problematising the relationship between social movements, political parties, and institutional politics.

  March 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12470   open full text
• Introduction: Student Movements and Political Change in Contemporary Latin America.
  Cesar Guzman‐Concha.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 16, 2016
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  March 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12469   open full text
• #YoSoy132 and the ‘Mexican Spring’ of 2012: Between Electoral Engagement and Democratisation.
  Patrick Gun Cuninghame.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 15, 2016
  This article examines the origins, trajectory and limitations of the Mexican students' movement, #YoSoy132 (YS132, I Am [number] 132), that emerged during the 2012 presidential election campaign in opposition to the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, Institutional Revolutionary Party) candidate, Enrique Peña. The movement's electoral engagement led to internal crisis, and demobilisation following the PRI's return to power. After its creation at a private university, the movement became the first nationwide student movement since 1968. It will be argued that the internal tension between democratisation and electoral inclination and engagement did not allow the movement to develop autonomously from the party system nor to organise around its own political agenda.

  March 15, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12473   open full text
• The Discreet Charm of University Autonomy: Conflicting Legacies in the Venezuelan Student Movements.
  Mariya P. Ivancheva.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 15, 2016
  The recent history of Venezuela's student movements illustrates the paradox of academic autonomy. The student left used autonomy to resist repression during Venezuela's liberal democracy (1958). Yet, after 1998, the former supporters of the parties which had violated that autonomy started to capitalise on it in order to block the progressive reforms. The Bolivarian government's decision not to interfere with autonomous universities, but to create a parallel Bolivarian university system instead replicated one of the reform patterns of previous governments. Despite the government's intention to fight inequality, the reform contributed to further stratification of higher education and polarisation among the student movements.

  March 15, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12472   open full text
• Beyond Domestic Violence Survivor Services: Refocusing on Inequality in the Fight against Gender‐Based Violence in the Americas.
  Anne Marie Choup.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 08, 2016
  Despite a consensus in the Americas that gender‐based violence is rooted in inequality and historic precedent and exacerbated by socio‐economic hardship, government programmes and institutional evaluations of programmes to combat violence against women tend not to tackle the problem at source. Instead, governments and policy evaluations tend to focus on domestic violence survivor services. This article analyses current work to evaluate government efforts to fight violence against women and unpacks scholarly and policy consensus on the root causes of the violence. I then illustrate the disconnect between root causes of violence and government programmes, to emphasise the need to link programmes more closely to agreed‐upon causes of violence.

  March 08, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12486   open full text
• Oil's Colonial Residues: Geopolitics, Identity, and Resistance in Venezuela.
  Donald V. Kingsbury.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 08, 2016
  This article argues oil occupies a central role in the discursive universe of Venezuelan underdevelopment, producing anxieties of vulnerability and dependency. These anxieties are internalised and reproduced in what I describe as the coloniality of oil. Coloniality naturalises, hides, and rewrites maldevelopment – a process in which the developed world stymies growth elsewhere through the machinations of hard or soft power – as underdevelopment – a neutral category suggesting the developing world need only to catch up to the North Atlantic. Animated by the formation of new political subjectivities, the Bolivarian Revolution has attempted to break with this coloniality of oil.

  March 08, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12477   open full text
• Armed Violence and the Politics of Gun Control in Brazil: An Analysis of the 2005 Referendum.
  Roxana P. Cavalcanti.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 01, 2016
  This article analyses the factors behind the paradoxical result of the Brazilian gun‐control referendum. It adopts a qualitative approach to explore the dissemination of ideologies surrounding crime, gun control and security. For this purpose, interviews were conducted with activists involved in the referendum's campaign. The results reveal that ideologically driven campaigns in a context of corruption scandals, high levels of violence and fear influenced the result. The neoliberal discourse of individual freedoms played a role, as did the phrasing of the referendum's question, fragile confidence in public institutions and unequal campaign funding and regulation.

  March 01, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12476   open full text
• Rethinking the Politics of the Shift Left in Latin America: Towards a Relational Approach.
  Sarah Hunt.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. January 05, 2016
  The shift left in Latin American politics has revealed critical weaknesses within the dominant structural, state‐ and society‐based explanations concerning the politics of development in the region. This article argues that while elements of each remain relevant, there is a strong case for adopting a ‘relational’ frame of analysis that can capture the specific ways in which the Left came to power, and the unfolding implications for democracy and development. This relational approach focuses on how the new social and political economy basis of the new ruling coalitions and alternative geopolitical alliances shape politics and the prospects for development in the region.

  January 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/blar.12416   open full text
• The Role of the Peruvian Guerrilla in Che Guevara's Continental Guerrilla Project.
  Jan Lust.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. December 11, 2015
  The Peruvian guerrillas of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN, National Liberation Army) played a key role in Che Guevara's continental guerrilla project. When Guevara left from Africa, his idea was to strengthen this organisation that was supposedly fighting in the department of Ayacucho. After the defeat of this guerrilla in 1965 he turned his eye on Bolivia. The Peruvian guerrillas of the ELN maintained their importance in Guevara's project as evidenced by their attempts to build a guerrilla force nearby the border of Bolivia. This article sheds light on the role of the Peruvian ELN in Che Guevara's continental guerrilla project.

  December 11, 2015   doi: 10.1111/blar.12435   open full text
• Mais Médicos: Cuba's Medical Internationalism Programme in Brazil.
  John M. Kirk, Emily J. Kirk, Chris Walker.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. November 20, 2015
  In 2014, at the request of the Brazilian government and under the sponsorship of PAHO, the Cuban government sent 11,400 doctors to work in underserved areas. This article examines the origins and development of this programme, Mais Médicos. The significance of this programme is explored, as well as what it illustrates about south‐south cooperation as a whole.

  November 20, 2015   doi: 10.1111/blar.12418   open full text
• From Planning to Market: A Framework for Cuba.
  Mauricio Font, David Jancsics.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. October 01, 2015
  The measures introduced by Raúl Castro since 2008 and the most recent US–Cuba policy change indicate that Cuba is shifting from a planned and highly centralised state socialist economic model toward one in which economic actors and markets become main drivers of the economy. The examples of Asian and Central and Eastern European socialist countries suggest four distinguished pathways for such transition. The question is which one may provide a feasible model for Cuba. Based on the country's economic and population structure, this study places the Cuban case within the framework of socialist economic transitions and explores some policy implications.

  October 01, 2015   doi: 10.1111/blar.12409   open full text
• Peruvian Infotainment: From Fujimori's Media Dictatorship to Democracy's Satire.
  Paul Alonso.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. September 21, 2015
  This article explores how Peruvian sensational and spectacular media served the authoritarian discourse of Alberto Fujimori's government (1990–2000), and how TV infotainment evolved under democracy after 2000. Through interviews with producers and hosts of the TV shows and by reviewing specific episodes and media events, this article analyses five of the most representative Peruvian infotainment TV shows of the last two decades in Peru. Building upon a theory on media spectacle, infotainment and tabloidisation, this research shows how an increasing process of media hybridity–the blending of journalism, entertainment, politics, and popular culture–has challenged traditional notions of journalism and has become a prevalent strategy of new political communication forms in Peru, connecting with the global trend towards political infotainment in the media.

  September 21, 2015   doi: 10.1111/blar.12408   open full text
• Metropolitan Change and Uneven Distribution of Urban Sub‐Centres in Mexico City, 1989–2009.
  Adrian G. Aguilar, Josefina Hernandez.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. September 01, 2015
  The spatial expression of urban centrality in big cities is generally associated with several urban nodes. The major purpose of this article is to identify the spatial pattern of urban sub‐centres in Mexico City during the period 1989–2009 and how changes in urban centrality have given way to a more polycentric urban structure. A double‐threshold method was used for comparing the polycentric structure of a single city over time examining the variables of number of jobs and tertiary employment density; this approach for identifying employment centres is proven in a megacity of a developing country.

  September 01, 2015   doi: 10.1111/blar.12407   open full text
• Gender Equality as a General Interest of a Pluralistic Society: An Analysis of Constitutional Precedent in Colombia.
  Felipe Jaramillo Ruiz, Ana C. Erazo.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. July 14, 2015
  The article explores the relationship between the legal principles of general interest and gender equality, both consecrated in Colombia's 1991 Constitution. Through an analysis of the precedents set by the Constitutional Court, the article provides a hermeneutical approximation of the behaviour of jurisprudence concerning the general interest. It demonstrates how this principle could be used to foster a more encompassing definition of gender equality. The precedents set by the Constitutional Court have opened up the spectrum of women's rights so as to grasp their relation to the principle of general interest as well as their basis as fundamental rights.

  July 14, 2015   doi: 10.1111/blar.12370   open full text
• Genetics and Racial Difference in Contemporary Brazil: Haemoglobinopathies, Whiteness and Admixture in Biomedical Literature.
  Elena Calvo‐González.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. July 03, 2015
  The historical role of biomedicine in shaping and legitimising ideas of race in Brazil has long been documented. Much less discussed, however, is how contemporary biomedicine helps recreate notions of race. In this article I explore some of the uses of race, and particularly whiteness, in current biomedical research, using as a case study articles published on the prevalence of haemoglobinopathies, including sickle cell anaemia and β‐Thalassaemia. One can only properly understand how race features in these texts by pointing to the links between ideas about admixture and purity, existing historical discourses about difference and Nation and new genetic knowledge.

  July 03, 2015   doi: 10.1111/blar.12371   open full text
• Assessing the Changing Roles of the Brazilian Development Bank.
  Mahrukh Doctor.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. May 26, 2014
  Since it was founded in 1952, the Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES; Brazilian National Bank for Economic and Social Development) has been at the centre of Brazil's industrialisation and development strategy. It played a key role in the evolution of policies from import substitution to market‐opening and privatisation, to the ‘new developmentalism’. The article evaluates and discusses whether BNDES fulfils the three typical functions expected of national development banks: financial sector development; business climate enhancement; and knowledge services.

  May 26, 2014   doi: 10.1111/blar.12210   open full text
• Indigenous Peasant ‘Otherness’: Rural Identities and Political Processes in Bolivia.
  Lorenza B. Fontana.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. April 25, 2014
  Since Morales's election, rural movements have become the new protagonists of Bolivian politics. Previous analyses have emphasised their active role in shaping national politics, often focusing on those organisations as a compact block. However, their relationship is marked by both cooperation and fragmentation. This article provides a narrative of Bolivian socio‐political history over the last 60 years, establishing four main phases of identitarian articulations/disarticulations. It demonstrates the high degree of interdependence and fluidity of ethnic and class identities, as well as their interconnections with the broader socio‐political context and the national legal and institutional changes.

  April 25, 2014   doi: 10.1111/blar.12207   open full text
• Explaining Policy Outcomes in Federal Contexts: The Politics of Reproductive Rights in Argentina and Mexico.
  Debora Lopreite.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. April 25, 2014
  This article explains the political and institutional factors that affect reproductive rights policies in Argentina and Mexico. Consistent with the comparative literature on gender, politics and institutions, the article reveals that federal arrangements define the arenas in which advocates can challenge governments. The comparative analysis suggests that the content and variations of policy outcomes are not only determined by the legal distribution of such rights. Women's positions towards abortion and contraception was greatly shaped by partisanship and ideology, and this was critical to legislative outcomes, while the number of women legislators was only important to introduce the issues. Important for further research are the effects of institutional and party instability on women's organising in legislatures, and the relevance of links between women's groups outside legislature and political parties for the success of gender equality policies.

  April 25, 2014   doi: 10.1111/blar.12209   open full text
• The Cuban Experience in East Germany: Academic Migration from 1960 to 2000.
  Menja Holtz.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. April 09, 2014
  The partnership between revolutionary Cuba and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) offered a route for migration that had not been possible before. While academic exchange aimed to construct a socialist society in Cuba and strengthen the Socialist Bloc, as well as serving the economic and political interests of both states, the creation of a transnational academic elite and of intellectual collectives across borders also occurred as a by‐product of the exchange. This article shows how these ‘by‐products’ came into existence, and how academic exchange can be influenced by political, financial and organisational limitations.

  April 09, 2014   doi: 10.1111/blar.12206   open full text
• Linking Local Plants with Small Handicraft Enterprises among Indigenous Mapuche Communities: Towards a Combined Approach of Local Development and Enhancement of Ethnobotanical Knowledge?
  Maria C. Torri.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. April 04, 2014
  There is a paucity of studies analysing the role of ethnobotanical knowledge for handicraft and local development. Thus, more work is required to expand the range of detailed case studies on which to draw. The objective of this article is to analyse an initiative promoted by a pioneering experience of its kind in the Araucaria region, Chile, which is centred on traditional knowledge of Mapuche communities. By identifying what lessons can be drawn from this experience, this study analyses the factors that can promote synergies between handicraft and conservation of local plants from which resources are derived for handicraft.

  April 04, 2014   doi: 10.1111/blar.12208   open full text
• Indigenous, Mestizo and Afro‐Descendent Women against Violence: Building Interethnic Alliances in the Context of Regional Autonomy.
  Dolores Figueroa Romero, Arelly Barbeyto.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 17, 2014
  This essay analyses the contemporary activism of women's organisations of Nicaragua's North Atlantic Coast autonomous region. Its thesis is that the struggle against gender violence has enabled local women to develop a common agenda over and above whatever ideological–political differences and ethnic–racial hierarchies divide them. It argues that the role of Coast women activists has been central to articulating, in a reflexive way, a position as indigenous, Mestizo and Afro‐descendent women in order to adapt a human rights approach to the regional political–cultural context, and to use it effectively to achieve a life free of violence.

  March 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/blar.12203   open full text
• Love, Family Values and Reconciliation for All, but What about Rights, Justice and Citizenship for Women? The FSLN, the Women's Movement, and Violence against Women in Nicaragua.
  Nadine Jubb.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 06, 2014
  This article explores the apparent contradictions of the FSLN's commitment to both ‘restoring’ women's rights regarding violence against women and promoting Christian family values and reconciliation. It proposes an explanation based on the state's use of moral regulation to make a personified patriarchal social order seem normal by encouraging consent and, when necessary, applying coercion. Improved formal recognition of rights is belied by the continued inappropriate use of mediation and other practices that blame women, naturalise violence, and contribute to aggressors' impunity. Furthermore, the government has sanctioned aggressive tactics against feminists and women's organisations, who counter this social order with active citizenship.

  March 06, 2014   doi: 10.1111/blar.12205   open full text
• Towards a Revival of Indigenous Mobility in French Guiana? Contemporary Transformations of the Wayãpi and Teko Territories.
  Isabelle Tritsch, Cyril Marmoex, Damien Davy, Bernard Thibaut, Valery Gond.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 04, 2014
  The goal of this article is to understand the contemporary transformations of indigenous territories in relation to several factors, including urbanisation, population growth, economic development and conservation policies. Using socio‐economic, governance and land use data, we explain the current territorial reorganisations of the Wayãpi and Teko indigenous peoples. We demonstrate the existence of an emerging ‘multi‐sited’ land use system that allows these indigenous peoples to benefit from resources in both urban and forest areas and ensures sovereignty over the territory. We emphasise the role of the delimitation of protected areas in catalysing identity claims and the process of land use reformulation.

  March 04, 2014   doi: 10.1111/blar.12204   open full text
• Amerindian Agriculture in an Urbanising Amazonia (Rio Negro, Brazil).
  Laure Emperaire, Ludivine Eloy.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 03, 2014
  This article explores the transformations undergone by indigenous agricultural systems in periurban areas of the Rio Negro (Amazonas, Brazil). Rather than losing their characteristics, these systems have basically been transposed from a forest context to periurban areas, maintaining multi‐plot cultivation, dynamic management of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge. But this agriculture is confronted by the values of modernity embedded in urban agriculture. The recognition of the ecological and cultural relevance of indigenous practices depends on new kinds of market integration and partnerships.

  March 03, 2014   doi: 10.1111/blar.12176   open full text
• Confederates and Yankees under the Southern Cross.
  Célio Antonio Alcantara Silva.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 01, 2014
  Following the Civil War in the United States of America, colonies that were predominately ‘Yankee’ and Confederate sprang up in Brazil. In contrast to the subject's historiography, we seek to show how these colonies were the result of in the first case, the actions of Imperial diplomacy and in the second case, spontaneous interest by Southerners due to the existence of slavery in Brazil. This proposition is supported by primary sources, as they indicate the presence of significant teams of slaves in the Confederate colonies in Brazil, while slavery was prohibited in their ‘Yankee’ counterparts.

  March 01, 2014   doi: 10.1111/blar.12202   open full text
• Funding Local Government: Use (and Abuse) of Peru's Canon System.
  John Crabtree.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. January 22, 2014
  While decentralisation, properly understood, implies that sub‐national government involves devolution of authority over revenues, recent experience from Peru suggests that the canon system tends to create perverse incentives in encouraging open and democratic government at the local level. This is particularly the case in regions such as Cusco, which benefit disproportionately from this system. Examination of experiences in four provinces of Cusco shows how – in the absence of a robust civil society – excessive funding tends to encourage clientelism and corruption rather than accountable and transparent administration.

  January 22, 2014   doi: 10.1111/blar.12174   open full text
• Peasant, Patriot, Environmentalist: Sustainable Development Discourse in Havana.
  Marina Gold.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. January 21, 2014
  Private urban agricultural ventures, initially a spontaneous response to food shortages during the Special Period, soon became a state‐sponsored project, related to global notions of sustainability. This article explores the relationship between sustainability discourse and its local dimensions to reveal the role of sustainability in the reformulation of the Revolution. Urban gardeners engage with international discourses of sustainability and interact with the Cuban state's articulation of these discourses. While this process forces urban gardeners to adapt to the changing meanings of growing food, it also provides a different language through which gardeners define themselves, especially in the context of a changing relationship with the state.

  January 21, 2014   doi: 10.1111/blar.12175   open full text
• Struggling Against the ‘Worst‐Case Scenario’? Strategic Conflicts and Realignments of the Feminist Movement in the Context of the 2006 Nicaraguan Elections.
  Delphine Lacombe.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. December 20, 2013
  This article analyses the debates that took place within the Nicaraguan feminist movement during 2006. In the months before the election of Daniel Ortega, a new feminist organisation, the Autonomous Women's Movement (MAM), was created. Its members decided to ally themselves with the Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS), which shared the priority of avoiding the return to power of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), because they considered it to be the ‘worst‐case scenario’. This article explains these processes. It studies their consequences for other feminist groupings and the relevance of the revolutionary referent for the strategic divergences within the movement.

  December 20, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12173   open full text
• Can Rural–Urban Household Mobility Indicate Differences in Resource Management within Amazonian Communities?
  Stephanie Nasuti, Ludivine Eloy, Celine Raimbert, François‐Michel Le Tourneau.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. December 11, 2013
  This article aims to understand the relationships between rural–urban mobility and economic differentiation in Amazonian communities, through a multi‐scaled methodological framework. We focus on Amazonian quilombola communities (Pará State, Brazil), and we use a rural–urban circulation index to untangle the concept of mobility system. We show that individual mobility patterns are embedded in a process of multilocalisation, articulating rural and urban areas at a collective level. Economic diversification relies on complementarity of circulation within households. In this sense, the ability of some families to maintain resource rights in different places is one of the premises for economic differentiation.

  December 11, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12147   open full text
• Is Narco‐Violence in Mexico Terrorism?
  Howard Campbell, Tobin Hansen.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. December 05, 2013
  Mexico's drug ‘war’ produced 100,000 deaths between 2006 and 2012. The extreme violence has raised the notion that Mexico has become a failed state wracked by terrorism. We categorise the forms of narco‐violence in Mexico in light of the literature on terrorism and contemporary Mexican politics. Our study suggests three overlapping dimensions of narco‐violence that should be considered terrorism: (a) narco‐terror as a struggle for regional political control; (b) narco‐terror as a practice ordered by cartel leaders rather than spontaneous violence of foot soldiers; and (c) narco‐terror as an expansion strategy from solely drug trafficking to other kinds of organised crime.

  December 05, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12145   open full text
• Undemocratic Legacies: First‐Wave Feminism and the Somocista Women's Movement in Nicaragua, 1920s–1979.
  Victoria González‐Rivera.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. October 18, 2013
  The most important pre‐1979 women's movements in Nicaragua were first‐wave feminism and the right‐wing Somocista women's movement. I argue that it is useful to examine these two movements jointly in order to assess their legacy with regard to struggles over the relationship between women's organisations and political parties, age/generational differences, electoral democracy versus clientelism, and class and leadership. I conclude that while the pre‐1979 women's movements brought about women's suffrage and increased opportunities for some women, their collective legacy was, in some fundamental ways, undemocratic.

  October 18, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12102   open full text
• Internationalisation as a Democratic Tool: Revisiting Mexico's Double Transition.
  Pablo Calderon Martinez.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. October 10, 2013
  Mexico's double transition—democratisation and internationalisation—offers a good case study to analyse the interaction between internationalisation processes and domestic developments during transitions to democracy. This article explains how the specific way in which Mexico linked with North America worked as a causal mechanism during the country's democratisation. In the end, an inadequate project of internationalisation—spearheaded by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—failed to fulfil its democratising potential.

  October 10, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12121   open full text
• The Challenge of Inclusive Identities and Solidarities: Discourses on Gender and Sexuality in the Nicaraguan Women's Movement and the Legacy of Sandinismo.
  Silke Heumann.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. September 30, 2013
  This article addresses the ways in which Sandinismo has affected the Nicaraguan women's movement from ‘within’, analysing how its legacy is reflected in personal discourses on gender and sexuality within the women's movement. In‐depth interviews show that the women's movement inherited from the Sandinistas specific ideas about social justice and social change based on a primary identity, a corresponding hierarchy of rights and a notion of the state as the privileged site of power and social change. I argue that this legacy has hindered the development of feminism in Nicaragua and especially the mobilisation around sexual and reproductive rights.

  September 30, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12103   open full text
• Is Politics Behind Trade? The Impact of International Trends and Diplomatic Action on Brazil's Exports during Globalisation.
  Vinícius Rodrigues Vieira.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. August 19, 2013
  Although it is well known that domestic and international factors converge to affect a nation's foreign policy orientation and trade, their actual weights vary. Brazil's situation during globalisation sheds light on this issue. Through statistical and qualitative analysis, this article shows how structural factors, rather than diplomatic action, influenced the direction of Brazil's exports as the country became more integrated into the world economy. It was only under Cardoso's presidency that trade had an impact on bilateral diplomacy. The findings contradict conventional wisdom, which emphasises the state's role in driving Brazilian integration into the global economy.

  August 19, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12105   open full text
• The Positioning of Economic Rationality in Colombia.
  Consuelo Uribe Mallarino.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. August 06, 2013
  This article explains how economic rationality in Colombia came to play a growing role in the management of economic policy and social analysis, as a case study of a process that is observed in various parts of the world. In addition to the rise of a technocratic elite, this involved the positioning of economic rationality in managing strategic state institutions and the creation of knowledge about society. We explain the mechanisms that enabled economists to occupy these positions, displacing other social scientists and sociologists.

  August 06, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12074   open full text
• Organising the Hombre Nuevo Gay: LGBT Politics and the Second Sandinista Revolution.
  Karen Kampwirth.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. August 06, 2013
  The LGBT or sexual diversity movement in Nicaragua, which was repressed by the FSLN in the 1980s, is currently supported by that party. I argue that this change in the FSLN's policy responds to shifting international frames regarding sexuality and human rights as well as to efforts to separate the LGBT movement from its allies in the feminist movement, and efforts to incorporate the LGBT movement into the FSLN's clientelistic networks. Despite real gains for LGBT activists as a result of these new policies, ultimately the FSLN has offered sexual diversity activists far more in the area of culture than rights.

  August 06, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12068   open full text
• Chachawarmi: Rhetorics and Lived Realities.
  Kate Maclean.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 28, 2013
  Latin America's turn away from neoliberalism and adoption of decolonising alternatives to development has been spearheaded—nowhere more so than Bolivia—by indigenous movements. The gender ideology of chachawarmi is part of this decolonisation programme, but has been criticised for disguising gendered exploitation. These tensions are explored by looking at, in Escobar's words, ‘the concrete struggles within particular communities’. Based on long‐term research in rural Bolivia, this article situates the chachawarmi ideal in the multiple influences on the recreation of gender identities, and considers the complex ways in which chachawarmi as mobilised politically may influence gendered power.

  June 28, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12071   open full text
• New Challenges for the Realisation of Migrants' Rights Following the Haiti 2010 Earthquake: Haitian Women on the Borderlands.
  Bridget Wooding, Allison J. Petrozziello.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 25, 2013
  Crossing the Dominican–Haitian border in greater numbers than previously, Haitian women and girls, many of whom have been forcibly displaced by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, make multiple decisions about where to go and whom to trust. Thus they are in contact with informal scouts and other agents, while seeking employment as vendors in the frontier market, domestic workers in private homes, and sex workers in brothels in the Dominican Republic. This article argues that trafficking is but one problem along a spectrum of violence and human rights violations facing these women, requiring coordinated social interventions beyond law enforcement.

  June 25, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12073   open full text
• A Vain Fascination: Writing from and about Haiti after the Earthquake.
  Andrew Leak.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 22, 2013
  In the wake of the huge earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010, Haiti instantly became the focus of media attention across the world. At that moment, the tropes that had imprisoned Haiti for two centuries (barbarism, savagery, vodou, the land‐that‐God‐forgot, etc.) began to resurface. Some Haitian intellectuals sought to combat those images, but in so doing they inadvertently revealed their complicity not only in the negative discursive construction of their country, but also in the economic and military re‐colonisation of Haiti over the last decade. Adept in the fabrication of replicas of ‘post‐political’ discourse, These Haitian intellectuals are in reality a subset of that country's morally bankrupt political class.

  June 22, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12072   open full text
• The Problems of Mexico: An Analysis of a Sociological Discourse.
  Dimitri Della Faille.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 18, 2013
  Based on an empirical analysis of articles published between 1987 and 2006 in three major Mexican sociological journals, my research traces the continuities and discontinuities in the study of the alleged malfunctioning of Mexican society. The study of how sociologists represented Mexican society has revealed several discursive dynamics. The traditional economic and political perspectives blaming social problems on elites predominate. Studies of electoral system flaws, political contention, lacklustre democracy in unions, and union collusion with industrial capitalism abound. More recently, however, the introduction of the study of globalisation has transformed the examination of these issues.

  June 18, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12065   open full text
• Portrayals of Colombian and Venezuelan Immigrant Organisations in the United States.
  Magaly Sanchez‐R, Maria Aysa‐Lastra.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 10, 2013
  This article compares the public images of Colombian and Venezuelan immigrant organisations in the United States. Immigrant organisations' web pages and the expression of their main aims and goals serve to identify their major concerns as they create public images not only for the organisation but for the immigrant community itself. To interpret the immigrant organisations' public images and their goals, we offer a multilevel study that considers immigrants' contexts of exit, which are related to the motivation to migrate and the particular socio‐demographic makeup of immigrant groups. This article adds the Venezuelan immigrant experience to the literature on immigrant organisations.

  June 10, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12066   open full text
• On the Ruins of the Democratic Transition: Human Rights as an Agenda Item in Abeyance for the Brazilian Democracy.
  Alfredo Alejandro Gugliano, Carlos Artur Gallo.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 06, 2013
  This article discusses one of the main controversies in Brazilian society at this moment: the development of a national policy of human rights and the return of the debate on political crimes committed under the military dictatorship from 1964 onwards. The main hypothesis associates the barriers imposed on that human rights policy to the way in which democracy was retaken in the country and the model on which important segments related to the authoritarian government occupied strategic roles. Even today, this presents a real difficulty in terms of recovery and, if necessary, punishment for the crimes committed by the government during the dictatorship, which in turn makes the development of human rights policies more complicated.

  June 06, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12034   open full text
• Itamaraty on the Move: Institutional and Political Change in Brazilian Foreign Service under Lula da Silva's Presidency (2003–2010).
  Carlos Aurélio Pimenta De Faria, Dawisson Belém Lopes, Guilherme Casarões.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 04, 2013
  This article aims to provide answers to two questions prompted by the latest reforms of Brazilian foreign service during Lula da Silva's presidency: How exactly might these institutional changes generate any impact over the Brazilian diplomatic corporation cohesion at large? How could bureaucratic insulation be undermined as an unexpected outcome of this process? To accomplish their objectives, the authors will briefly review the process of institution‐building in Brazil, with an emphasis on the diplomatic corporation and the transformations it has undergone over the last three decades.

  June 04, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12067   open full text
• Latin American Democracy. What to Do with the Leaders?
  Laura Tedesco, Rut Diamint.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 04, 2013
  The democratic deficit, or the gap between citizens' aspirations and their level of satisfaction, is increasing in Latin America. Such dissatisfaction helps to understand many of the region's presidential crises: since 1985, 23 Latin American presidents have left government abruptly. While civil society may have been able to provoke the fall of presidents, it has not managed to avoid the re‐emergence of deep‐rooted political practices under subsequent administrations. Extreme presidentialism, clientelism and populism have re‐emerged strengthened after deep political crises. This article offers some ideas regarding the impact that different types of political leaders can have on how well democracy works.

  June 04, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12070   open full text
• The Final Frontiers of Healthcare Universalisation in Costa Rica and Panama.
  Mary A. Clark.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 01, 2013
  This article explains how Costa Rica and Panama, two Central American countries with nearly universal public healthcare programmes, have come to enjoy such broad coverage. It then describes the distinct paths each is taking towards reaching the populations still left out of healthcare coverage. Costa Rica is seeking to bring all residents under the umbrella of its ILO‐style social security plan. Panama is targeting the rural poor with a package of defined interventions aimed at maternal and child mortality. The article frames these cases within the literature on the varieties of universalism.

  June 01, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12064   open full text
• From Racial Mixture to Black Nation: Racialising Discourses in Brazil's African Affairs.
  André Cicalo.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. May 30, 2013
  The article links reflections about Brazilian race relations with institutional transnational dialogues between Brazil and ‘Africa’. I point out that although racial/cultural mixture and the ‘brown’ census category have traditionally reflected much of national identity in Brazil, Brazil today is increasingly spelling out its blackness, both on the national and international scenes. I highlight that, not by coincidence, this fact is happening at a historical moment when programmes of ‘black’ affirmative action and other differential politics in favour of Afro‐descendants are taking off in the country, and also at a time when Brazil is expanding its geopolitical and economic interests in Africa.

  May 30, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12063   open full text
• Latency, Biopolitics and the Reproductive Arena: An Alternative Masculinity in Ricardo Larraín's La frontera.
  Amit Thakkar.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. May 23, 2013
  In the Chilean film La frontera (1991), the dissident Ramiro is condemned to internal exile (relegación) under Pinochet's regime. My reading of the film is informed by three theories: I argue that this punishment is an act of Johan Galtung's ‘structural violence’ against Ramiro's masculinity, that strategies of ‘hiding’ individual bodies for the sake of the ‘social body’ are relevant to biopolitics (Michel Foucault), and that La frontera exploits the formal potential of latency to reveal how Ramiro rebuilds his masculinity within what Raewyn Connell would term the ‘reproductive arena’. Ramiro's resulting, alternative masculinity represents a challenge for the reconstruction of post‐Pinochet Chile.

  May 23, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12061   open full text
• Yucatecan–Mexican Relations at the Time of Independence: The Yucatecan Pronunciamiento of 1821.
  Shara Ali.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. May 16, 2013
  This article will explore local Yucatecan politicking and the Yucatecan–Mexican relationship at the time of independence, using Yucatán's pronunciamiento for independence in September 1821 as a case study. This examination will highlight the fact that, while local ambitions played a significant role in Yucatán's bid for independence, this did not necessarily detract from Yucatecans' attempts to not only engage with national political movements, but also to unite with Mexico. This in turn will take further historians' recent attempts to revise the traditional perception of Yucatán as one of the more pro‐autonomous and isolated states of early nineteenth‐century Mexico.

  May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12062   open full text
• Panama's Special Economic Zones: Balancing Growth and Development.
  Thomas J. Sigler.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. April 10, 2013
  The growth of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the Global South has been widespread and well documented. This article provides a comparative analysis of two SEZs in Panama that defy conventional export‐processing strategies by focussing on re‐exports and regional headquartering operations, which are relatively capital‐intensive rather than labour‐intensive. I argue that while this may be a sound economic growth strategy at the national scale, it must be complemented with directed, local strategies to address the country's chronic social development issues, which are underscored by centuries of institutional exclusion.

  April 10, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12035   open full text
• The Death of the Author through False Translation in Mario Bellatin's Orientalised Japan.
  Ignacio López‐Calvo.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. March 13, 2013
  This article argues that Mario Bellatin's exploration of the potential relationship between writing, translation and physical deformity leads, perhaps unconsciously, to the continuation of exoticising stereotypes about ‘Oriental’ cultures. In El jardín de la señora Murakami, Shiki Nagaoka: una nariz de ficción, and Biografía ilustrada de Mishima, Bellatin resorts to Japanese characters to distance himself from his own writings, as if it were the culture that is the most alien to his own. His lucubrations about reading and writing are sometimes accompanied of exocitising and orientalist overtones, which he mocks at times.

  March 13, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12033   open full text
• Cut Loose in the Caribbean: Neoliberalism and the Demise of the Commonwealth Sugar Trade.
  Ben Richardson, Pamela Richardson Ngwenya.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. February 23, 2013
  This article focuses on the way the Anglophone Caribbean succumbed to the overhaul of the European Union sugar trade and how these countries have attempted to restructure their economies in its wake. We show how the protagonists of reform gave a sense of inevitability to the demise of the Commonwealth trade system and conveyed (unrealistic) strategies for how this should be managed for the benefit of the Caribbean. In this way we detail the hegemony of neoliberalism in contemporary trade politics and the need for alternative strategies for rural development in the Caribbean region.

  February 23, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12001   open full text
• Nationalism and the Rise of Peru's General Velasco.
  George Philip.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. February 04, 2013
  Velasco's brand of military nationalism marked a real break from the orientation of the majority of Peruvian military regimes, which were pro‐United States and espoused limited government. Many attempts have been made to explain this outcome, but the release of documents from British and United States archives clarify certain issues. Above all, Velasco's use of the nationalist card enabled him to win over decisive support from both the military and political society. This support gave him sufficient leverage to consolidate his personal position, which he did before launching a major programme of domestic property expropriation.

  February 04, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12031   open full text
• Exile and Diaspora in an Atypical Context: Chileans and Argentineans in the United States (1973–2005).
  Benedetta Calandra.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. January 21, 2013
  This article focuses on two groups of Southern Cone exiles' communities, Chileans and Argentineans, choosing to settle down in an atypical destination: the United States. After estimating some qualitative and quantitative findings, the article delves into the ways these communities settle down, remember their relationship with politics, maintain their connection with exiled fellow‐countrymen worldwide and perceive their national identity. By relying on an empirical, single‐case perspective, with no theoretical ambitions to extrapolate its conclusions to other contexts, this article examines the extent to which the conceptualisation of the exile and diaspora categories changes when applied to these two communities.

  January 21, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12000   open full text
• Racialisation of Immigrants at Work: Labour Mobility and Segmentation of Peruvian Migrants in Chile.
  Claudia Mora, Eduardo A. Undurraga.
  Bulletin of Latin American Research. January 09, 2013
  This article explores the emergent racialisation of Peruvian migrants as one element conditioning the labour segregation that characterises Peruvian insertion in Chile. We understand racialisation as a process of construction of categories in which both individual and collective actors participate, and whose expression is demonstrated by the differentiation and inequality that affects the racialised group. We tackle the articulation of racial differences among individual actors, both Chilean employers and Peruvian migrant workers, to suggest that the attribution of naturalised characteristics to migrants is related to segregation, mobility, and specific trajectories in the labour market.

  January 09, 2013   doi: 10.1111/blar.12002   open full text