Using accounts by militant schoolteachers from a province in the central sierra of Peru, this article attempts to show how and why concepts of race and political commitment among teachers changed at three critical moments in Peruvian history: agrarian reform, mass unionisation, and Maoist insurgency. The article explores how binary representations of race as mestizo or Indian, mestizo or cholo, were both formed and challenged by the everyday experience of teachers as well as their political action. Their reactions to, and negotiation of, racial ascription are framed within three fields of power: racialised social identities, processes of state formation, and opportunities and repertoire of contestatory politics.

In recent years, socio-political crises have challenged democracy across South America. Social movements that succeeded in mobilising marginalised sectors are at the forefront of this turbulence, Ecuador's indigenous movement and the organisations of unemployed workers in Argentina being paradigmatic cases. Recent developments point to an intrinsic weakness of both indigenous and unemployed movements, in that democratic regimes have proved highly successful at ‘taming’ them. By comparing the two movements, in terms of their internal dynamics and interactions with the political system, this article argues that common characteristics that were crucial for successful mobilisation in the first place, at the same time, help explain their vulnerability to division and clientelist integration.

This paper examines the governance of hydroelectric dam planning in Brazil with a particular focus on two factors: first, governmental institutions that aim to provide participatory mechanisms for civil society, and second, new participatory institutions created by civil society to remedy the lack of meaningful participatory measures. One example of the latter are new collaborative research projects, which have changed dam building policies and governmental thinking about participation. It is argued here that these kinds of collaboration are fundamental to making dam-building policy more accountable to local citizens. The analysis demonstrates that lay/expert collaborations provide pathways through which affected people can contest inaccurate official scientific reports, in turn influencing the policy process. I examine six such participatory projects across the country: four are nationally based and two are international in scope. A four-pronged typology is used to analyse the processes and outcomes of these collaborations. This typology reveals multiple types of knowledge-sharing that constitute concrete means to implement participation in environmental policy, hence advancing the democratisation of environmental governance.

The private sector plays a fundamental role in peace negotiations and in the implementation of agreements, as comparison between El Salvador, Guatemala and Colombia indicates. However, private sector involvement in peace negotiations varies: Conflict cost perceptions, degrees of unity of the pro-peace business faction, and varied access to the peace policymaking process account for important differences across the cases. Thus this article points to the need to fine-tune our understanding of private sector behaviour in the context of armed conflict and peace and underscores how private sector characteristics and business-state relations affect the emergence of peace negotiations and shape resultant outcomes.

Mexico's 1910 Centenario reflected a popular trend in Western Europe and its former colonies to use centenaries of important historical events to promote political programmes and philosophies through the construction of historical memory. Centennial organisers in Mexico linked Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and José Maria Morelos to President Porfirio Díaz in words and symbols, and associated state formation and civic culture with Liberal leaders and policies, such as public education, material progress and secularism. The planners also promoted Morelos as a mestizo icon and symbol for national identity and integration, while they simultaneously celebrated Mexico's pre-Columbian cultures and criticised contemporary natives as impediments to progress. The Centennial's audience included hundreds of thousands of Mexicans as well as foreigners from around the globe, who came away with different impressions based on their cultural perspectives, political philosophies and material interests. Following the overthrow of Díaz in 1911, Mexico's revolutionary governments continued to use Independence Day celebrations to promote their programmes, including some whose origins lay in the Porfiriato. As we approach the bicentenary of Latin American independence, competing visions of patrias will likely surface and provide insights into the construction of historical memory and contemporary political discourse.

This article analyses the intellectual and political activities of the newly-created consulados and Economic Societies in Spanish America between 1780 and 1810. It argues that these institutions decisively shaped both the formulation and implementation of metropolitan policy. Colonial elites used the consulados and Economic Societies as a vehicle to pursue licensed privilege and moderate, incremental reform in the context of a revivified, socio-economically stable Old Regime. They embraced the Bourbon reforms and used them to their advantage. Judging from consulado documents, the prevailing relationship between civil society and the state in Spanish America, at least until the late 1790s, was amicable and mutually supportive. After that time, mainly due to the disruption of Atlantic commerce, close co-operation gave way to conflict, but always within the framework of a cohesive empire. Drawing on archives in Argentina, Chile, Cuba and Spain, this essay traces the coalescence of numerous local intelligentsias that collaborated, to varying degrees, in the renovation of imperial governance and, simultaneously, incubated a robust public sphere in the nascent polities which gradually emerged after the collapse of Spanish royal authority in 1808.

Bringing together diverse scholars such as Arthur Ramos, Édison Carneiro and Gilberto Freyre, Brazil's First Afro-Brazilian Congress of 1934 encapsulated a pivotal transition in the history of the social sciences and race in Brazil. The Congress, organised by Freyre, represented an attempt by many scholars to break with racial determinism and to emphasise the importance of culture rather than race. This approach seemed to offer increased potential for social equality. However, the new focus on culture reproduced the same hierarchies that scholars were trying to escape. As this article demonstrates, scholars at the Congress redeemed the black race through the use of a new cultural framework, but the role ascribed to African culture was still bound by the same concepts of superiority and inferiority.

This article traces the development of the political controversy in Argentina over the resolution of border issues between Argentina and Chile during the 1990s, examining provincial opposition to the Menem government's proposals for the Hielos Continentales zone in the far southern Andes. It argues that territorial perceptions held by Argentine opponents of the proposals, whilst highly significant, are insufficient to explain domestic opposition to the territorial accords. Instead it suggests that the sensitivity and longevity of the controversy reflected both specific territorial perceptions and anti-Menem dynamics in Argentina. Whilst the article highlights citizen opposition to government policy, it also points to the key role of Néstor Kirchner, at the time governor of the province of Santa Cruz, and subsequently Argentina's president. Kirchner's role in the decade-long controversy highlights two key factors. First, the potential utility of foreign policy issues, and particularly those centred on territory, as a resource in the domestic political environment, and, second, the fact that Kirchner's opposition itself responded at least in part to disputes within Peronism during the 1990s.

In Brazil, black women are symbolically and practically associated with domestic work. The article examines feminist responses to black women's place in the socio-economic hierarchy of the city of Salvador, Bahia. These include proposals to introduce affirmative action and a ‘politics of presence’, involving the election of black women to represent the city's black female constituency. It describes the racial dynamics at work between black and white feminists in Bahia, signalling the contradictory tendencies that structure their relationship. Arguing against the view that a ‘politics of identity’ necessarily supports a new essentialism of race or culture, the article describes the diverse ideological and political influences upon the ideas and proposals of Bahian feminists. Black feminists construct racial difference as experiential and structural in origin. They adapt academic concepts and language in order to discuss their own lives and the specific social and cultural context of Salvador. The ethnographic and micro-historical perspective adopted here provides insight into ‘native’ understandings of affirmative action and a ‘politics of presence’ and suggests that criticisms of these measures on the grounds that they represent imported, non-Brazilian views of race are misplaced.

At the beginning of Brazil's First Republic (1889–1930), the clandestine lottery called the jogo do bicho or ‘animal game’, which still exists today, gained enormous popularity in Rio de Janeiro, the city of its origin, and soon in the whole of Brazil. Reconstructing the spread and persecution of the jogo do bicho during its first decades reveals the social process of urbanisation evident in the daily, often informal and quasi-legal, interactions between the state and popular commerce in Latin America. The ambivalent official stance and public sentiment that developed toward this lottery suggest that ‘law and order’ concerns in themselves do not explain the criminalisation of vernacular practices.

This article explores the achievements of industrialisation in Latin America in the period before 1930, the date traditionally considered to be the start of the ISI process. It analyses the development of a basic industrial sector, the cement industry, which was driven by a natural substitution of imports. It quantifies the expansion of demand in each of the countries in the region, and then moves on to consider the growth of the industry in Latin America in the period between 1900 and 1930. Although cement consumption grew briskly, particularly in the most underdeveloped economies, disparities in levels of consumption and production among countries in the region continued to be very great in 1930, while the gap between Latin America and the most industrialised economies grew slightly.

This article explores how the relationship between luxury, consumption and gender in Argentina changed in response to the introduction of Darwinian ideas. Ideas surrounding consumerism were transformed by the 1870s, influenced by a scientific revolution that gave new meaning to gender categories. The introduction of Darwinism at a time of extreme ideological confusion about how to organise the nation only enhanced the perceived dangers about how economic changes and the expansion of markets would affect elites' ability to govern. The article focuses specifically on changing perceptions of gender and consumerism between 1830 and 1880, paying particular attention to the work of two of the most important intellectuals of the Generación del '37, Juan B. Alberdi and Domingo F. Sarmiento. By closely examining their reflections on the expansion of markets and accumulation of luxury goods, it reveals the nature of the cultural changes introduced by the Darwinian revolution.

This article focuses on trends in the adult heights of various sectors of Mexican society between 1850 and 1950 as a proxy for their biological and material standards of living. The evolution of biological standards of living is an alternative way to assess whether or not economic development after 1850 was beneficial to the population, using a proxy that relies on a basic natural characteristic, adult height. The recruitment records of the Mexican rural and federal militia provide us with information on the secular trends of heights of the Mexican labouring classes, while a database of passport applications allows us to compare the evolution of living standards across social classes. It is argued that the benefits of industrialisation and improved economic performance fostered by the Díaz regime (1876–1910) did not have a favourable impact on the biological wellbeing of the labouring population. There are, however, signs of improvement in living standards with the launching of welfare programmes at the end of the Cárdenas administration. In contrast, the average height of the elites increased throughout the period, suggesting that there was a growing disparity in the evolution of living standards between social classes.

This article examines the internal structure and dynamics of the coffee economy in two districts of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas during the presidency of Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911). In both Palenque, in the northern highlands, and Soconusco, on the Pacific coast, production was oriented to international markets, direct foreign investment was a key aspect of coffee plantation development, and workers were recruited by the payment of wage advances (enganche), which they were then expected to pay off by labouring on coffee plantations. Yet, despite these similarities, the social relations that characterised coffee production in the two districts differed considerably. This article analyses those differences by comparing and contrasting the demographic factors, processes of land privatisation and the relationship between foreign investors, the national regime and local elites that influenced the nature and purpose of debt peonage in each district.

During the second half of the eighteenth century the Spanish Crown monopolised the tobacco industry in its American colonies, creating vertically integrated organisations which included factories for the production of cigars and cigarettes. A detailed analysis of the regulations, organisation and policies applied during the Peruvian viceroyalty suggests that Bourbon officials were effective managers. The monopoly was successful at curbing contraband and extracting rents. The evolution of monopoly policies, however, reflected political constraints on the Crown's efforts to raise revenues. The archival evidence suggests that Bourbon officials closed the tobacco factories in Peru in 1791 as a result of public opposition.

This article assesses the political and socio-economic consequences of the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) in Honduras. The analysis deploys several techniques, including poverty narratives, stakeholder analysis and taxonomy analysis, and is also based on quantitative and qualitative data, including socio-economic indicators, PRS spending execution and interviews with stakeholders. It argues that in Honduras the PRS constituted a missed opportunity to expand the political space in which poverty reduction plans are formulated and to deliver pro-poor growth. The inclusion of multiple actors with different interests, capacities and influence led to an emphasis on constructing consensus, but this was too imprecise to enable a clear set of priorities to be articulated, let alone a pro-poor growth agenda. The article concludes that by unilaterally shifting the growth pillar of the PRS towards infrastructure investments and trade integration, Honduras may have sacrificed an opportunity to support a truly participatory democratic process leading to effective pro-poor policies.

This article examines the unusual public security reform process that took place in Panama in the wake of the US military invasion of December 1989. The changes to the Panamanian security forces that ensued were in equal part a ‘demilitarisation’ process, a police reform and an (imposed) transition to democracy where the political domination of the Panamanian security forces came to an abrupt end. Deploying the concepts of demilitarisation, professionalisation and depoliticisation, the article evaluates the political role and activities of police forces and the nature of their relationship with the main Panamanian political actors through to the present Torrijos administration. It then assesses the implications for wider political processes, suggesting that explanations for the success or failure of reform are unlikely to be found in the examination of the design and implementation of the reform itself, but that broader political processes must be analysed in order to understand the dynamic that underpins it.

This article contributes to a growing body of literature that questions state-centred approaches to analysing politics, adopting a more de-centred and cultural perspective. It does so by presenting a situational analysis and detailed ethnography of a local election rally in Western Mexico. The analysis of this event as a cultural performance highlights the dramatic enactment of culturally significant acts as a central part of electoral behaviour and shows how everyday organisational life, resource flows, public ritual and passion play a part in politics. That such acts are not merely symbolic is demonstrated by what occurs behind the scenes of political ritual: a local political group appropriates a Water Users' Association and draws on its staff, facilities, resources and wider power relations for its political campaign. Such practices also indicate the unanticipated outcomes of recent administrative decentralisation reforms. New producer organisations created by these reforms to administer former government tasks more efficiently are appropriated politically, not simply in an instrumental, but also in a culturally specific manner.

Washington's challenge during George W. Bush's presidency was to define a new relationship with Latin America beyond free trade and neoliberal economics – a relationship responsive to the region's demand for social and economic justice. Preoccupied by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration failed this challenge. The president left his Latin American policy in the hands of conservative cold warriors who reacted with hostility to the election of ‘new left’ socialists and populists. As a result, Washington's reputation and relations in Latin America deteriorated dramatically.

Inspired by recent critical pedagogic and social movement theory, this article explores the cultural production of social movements in Chile at the beginning of the twentieth century. Questioning the belief that the Estado docente was the sole mechanism of social democratisation, it explores the pedagogic proposals developed by workers and their associations during what is referred to as the period of the ‘Social Question’. The article concludes by analyzing the factors which led to the demise of these alternative pedagogic experiments.