This article examines the implications of Latin America's recent wave of state-embraced multiculturalism for the region's indigenous peoples, arguing that state recognition of indigenous difference is not inevitably empowering for indigenous groups or transformative of nation-states. It utilises data from fieldwork with the Kuna Indians of eastern Panama in order to delineate more precisely the contexts and strategies of indigenous peoples which may serve to push outwards more constrained forms of institutional multiculturalism. It explores the links between Panama's historical nationalist project, contemporary state multiculturalism and ethnically specific forms of mobilisation for land rights and autonomy. It also examines the transformative potential of multiculturalism in the context of the simultaneous implementation of global economic and cultural projects of neoliberalism.

This paper focuses on the similarities and differences between contemporary urban organisation and that of the 1960s in Guatemala City and other Latin American cities, mainly using data taken from a re-study of low-income neighbourhoods in Guatemala City. It looks at the impact of sharper patterns of residential segregation, changes in migration patterns, rising levels of crime and violence, and the increase in the relationships of the urban poor with external actors, such as governments and NGOs. Severe inequality persists, but is mediated by an improvement in living standards, by the range of consumer goods accessible to the poor, and by community- and family-based adaptation.

The current enthusiasm for trade liberalisation in Latin America, and indeed for a broad-ranging return to the market, has as its backdrop the widespread disillusion with the protectionist model of the 1950s and 1960s. Import substituting industrialisation (ISI) is seen as having used tariff barriers and controls to generate an extremely inefficient industry, suffering under a weight of state bureaucracy, with often inappropriate direct state participation. Its excessive import needs, for all its import-substituting origin, are directly related to the generation of the debt crisis.1 The high and poorly-structured tariffs brought tariff-hopping foreign investment on inappropriate terms. Repressed domestic interest rates allowed such firms to borrow locally at negative real rates and crowd out locals who then borrowed abroad. This inefficiency, plus the overvalued exchange rates implicit in heavy protection, made exports of manufactures unthinkable, and thus condemned the incipient industry to severe limitations of market size as well as condemning the economies to growing balance of payments non-viability. This in turn severely affected industrial progress by limiting growth and exposing firms to stop-go policies.

In turn, ISI policies themselves are seen as having originated with the turning point of the 1929 depression, when the export-led growth mechanism essentially broke down and at least the more sizeable Latin American economies turned fatally inwards. The trajectory from 1930 to the ‘fully-fledged’ ISI model of the 1950s and 1960s is typically left vague.

This article will attempt to show that recent research now allows us a much fuller and more nuanced view of the evolution from the export economy model of the early century through to the later ISI model.2

This article uses both new and published data on Mexico's foreign trade to measure terms of trade and to investigate the relationship between trade and the early growth of domestic industry. This analysis yields five conclusions: (1) Mexican terms of trade declined, largely due to the dramatic fall in the price of silver; (2) the growing diversity of Mexican exports significantly cushioned the short-term impact of silver depreciation; (3) declining terms of trade did not characterise the entire era, but instead were concentrated in two periods: 1891–97 and 1912–21; (4) although net barter terms of trade declined, Mexico's capacity to import – measured by the income terms of trade – improved markedly, and (5) this proved absolutely crucial in financing the concurrent process of incipient import-substituting industrialisation. In other words, the Porfiriato witnessed a development process in which trade growth and the spread of domestic manufacturing were highly complementary. Without the former, industrialisation would have been severely handicapped.

Peasant movements in Brazil are not a recent phenomenon but have recurred throughout the history of this essentially agrarian nation. The earliest manifestations of peasant discontent were pre-political movements of both a religious and a secular nature. They were primarily local expressions of immediate felt needs, temporary outbursts against misery and oppression. They were largely atomistic movements, confined in time and space, and characterized by a lack of unity and effective communication. More important, they were most often led by social deviants who were generally incapable of expressing realistic social goals which had appeal beyond the local group.

With an ethnographic focus on the prestigious cult of Ifá, this article seeks to account for the recent effervescence of Afro-Cuban cult worship in urban Cuba. It is argued that, since worship involves a marked emphasis on ritual consumption, the cult's rise can be related to wider transformations that have taken place in the field of everyday consumption in Havana during the economic crisis that has followed the collapse of the Soviet bloc. In particular, Ifá has provided an arena for what habaneros call ‘especulación’, a style of conspicuous consumption that has become prevalent among so-called ‘marginal’ groups in recent years.

This study examines Emperor Maximilian's efforts in using public rituals, patriotic symbolism, and the emblems of nationalism to devise an appropriate past for his Mexican empire. The ‘republican’ celebration of independence and its heroes formed the cornerstone of an effort to reconcile feuding political factions, build social cohesion, and ultimately legitimate his regime. The article concentrates on the independence ceremonies, speeches, and statuary employed by the empire. Ultimately, the political dissension existing in Mexico could not be surmounted by symbols alone. Nevertheless, the attempt reveals the creative use and limits of public rituals in the political realm.

During an economic crisis in Ecuador, three models of and solutions to the agrarian problem were proposed. A peasant path of agricultural development was formulated by peasant leaders and socialist activists. A large-landholder model was promoted by modernising large landowners. A medium-landholder model was advanced by promoters of European immigration and urban mestizos seeking land through state colonisation projects. The adherents of each approach identified certain groups as the cause of low agricultural productivity and national crisis, articulating racial ideologies by defining those groups as inherently ‘traditional’, and thus debating the boundaries of inclusion to the national community.

The Mexican Revolution can be seen as an effort to promote the modernization of that nation's society and institutions. Social scientists and historians agree that modernization is a complex process, including social, political, economic, and intellectual factors which evolve in different patterns and at different rates according to the particular circumstances under consideration. In terms of social change, political scientist S. N. Eisenstadt, and historian C. E. Black have isolated at least two trends that are of relevance to Mexican education in the 1930S: (1) an increased interest in urban as opposed to rural matters, and (2) the conflict between the representatives of a traditional elitist culture and the advocates of mass society based on modern technology.

The present study comprises the results of the second stage of a research project into the general question of trade between Spain and its American empire in the period 1778–96. The historiographical context of the project, and the significance of the time scale, were explained in an article published in 1981, which analysed the consequences for Spain's economy, its regions, and its major ports of the greater freedom to export to America provided by the decree of free trade of 1778. Using as its basic source the registers of 3,809 ships which sailed from Spanish ports for America between 1778 and 1796, that work produced the following principal conclusions, (i) Free trade promoted a massive expansion in the value of exports from Spain to America. The rise was uneven, but in the period 1782–96 as a whole their average annual value was 400 % higher than in the base year of 1778. (ii) The share of Spanish products in total exports from Spain to America rose from 38% in 1778 to an average of 52% in 1782–96. (iii) Despite the impossibility of measuring with precision the relative importance of Spanish manufactures and agricultural goods in exports, it seems that agricultural producers were more responsive than industrialists to the wider opportunities in the American market offered by free trade.

Prospects for democratisation in those Central American countries that experienced revolutionary processes are discussed in the light of recurrent structural constraints – such as incipient structural differentiation, overwhelming poverty, dependence on foreign financial subsidies – and specific sociopolitical variations, i.e. uneven modernisation of traditional rule; tensions between the recent mobilisation of both ‘old’ and ‘new’ social actors, and political institutions and actors (such as parties, unions, parliaments, government and multilateral agencies) which in some cases lead to current social demobilisation and electoral apathy and in others prevent the effective uprooting of political violence; persistence of traditional authoritarian culture and its articulation to the new ingredients of the post-war political and socioeconomic setting.

Mexico's post-1982 economic crisis has produced particularly serious challenges for the organised labour movement. Government austerity measures and economic contraction in the private sector resulted in an estimated unemployment rate of 17.6% in 1987.1 At least another 25–35% of the working-age population was employed in only marginally productive activities. Real minimum wages fell by 41.9% between 1982 and mid-1987 under the pressure of record inflation rates2 and government subsidies for basic commodities, mass transportation, electricity, natural gas and gasoline were also drastically reduced or eliminated. These economic conditions and tight government control over wage increases placed incumbent labour leaders under increasing pressure from the rank and file. The prospect of continued economic stagnation and government efforts to redefine the country's model of economic development raise important questions regarding organised labour's long-term position in Mexico's governing ‘revolutionary coalition’.

Since Chile returned to democracy in 1990, centre-left governments have tried to reform the provisions on collective bargaining, strikes and unions established by the Pinochet dictatorship. Between 2015 and 2016 President Michelle Bachelet made the latest attempt to reform them. Despite favourable conditions, the changes were modest. This article explains why this is so. Drawing upon the notion of ‘associational power’ and through comparisons with labour reforms in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, this article suggests that the imbalance between workers’ and employers’ collective power is key for explaining why pro-labour reforms fail.

On 1 February 1875, a hopeful President Santiago Pérez took pride in informing Congress of the peace and prosperity brought about by a decade or so of Radical rule in Colombia. His optimism was soon disappointed. A week later, he quelled a mutiny only by replacing both his Minister of War and the Army Commander-in-Chief. At the end of the month, the State of Magdalena was showing serious signs of political turmoil, while the recently sacked Minister of War, General Ramón Santodomingo Vila, was in the port of Barranquilla plotting against the government of the Union. By August, the States of Bolívar and Panamá had both officially declared war against Pérez's administration; rumours reached Bogotá which accused ‘Santo Domingo Vila of conspiracy to be President of the Republic of Costa Firme’. Customs-houses in the Caribbean ports were held by rebel forces for almost four months, and rebel steamers on the Magdalena river blocked the country's main artery of trade. Bloody confrontations completed the picture of another civil war, leaving behind an indefinite number of casualties and a Treasury in disarray. When President Pérez again faced Congress to give his annual message in 1876, he had to acknowledge his previous misjudgement.

This article examines numerous spousal homicides occurring all over New Spain (colonial Mexico) during the last seven decades of the colonial period. After killing their spouses, sometimes in an extremely brutal manner, a considerable number of the defendants managed to get away with little more than a slap on the wrist. I argue here that this was not due to the fact that written laws were dead letters. After examining general patterns of spousal homicides, I focus on the legal treatment and punishment afforded to indigenous criminals, several of who were drunk at the time of their crimes. Being an ‘Indian’ or committing a crime while drunk – both characteristics of many defendants in the records – were treated as a mitigating circumstance under law and led to the acquittal of several of the accused. Royal graces, an important legal mechanism, also played a significant role in easing the severity of the treatment of these and other domestic criminals. The judicial treatment of spousal murders thus did not reflect a considerable gap between law and practice at the time. Punishment derived from a complex combination of socio-cultural factors and longstanding legal prescriptions, doctrines and traditions.

A tradition in Latin America of reliance on strong leaders becomes problematic when political parties look outside their ranks for candidates who have popular appeal but do not embody their ideologies. This contradiction emerged in Ecuador in the mid-twentieth century when the Left looked to General Alberto Enríquez Gallo as its champion. His early trajectory in the military made him a most unlikely hero for the Left, but when he promulgated progressive labour legislation he gained its strong support. It was, however, a marriage of convenience, as leftists and populists inherently follow different political logics.

This article analyses strategies for channelling a migrant population out of a country by indirect means. Specifically, we examine the response of the Ecuadorean state to the influx of Venezuelan newcomers since 2015. We argue that this response has been characterised by inaction, rooted not in policy failures or bad governance, but rather in a strategic governmental rationality. We show how migrants are ‘herded’ out of the country as a result of a form of indirect government that works differently from other ‘anti-immigrant’ policies like forced deportations or incarceration at the border, and yet produces similar outcomes.

In recent years there has been significant improvement in terms of the quantity and quality of empirical studies on Latin American urban labour markets.1 The relative degree of ignorance concerning the market for domestic service is therefore particularly notorious. Some important gaps in the current state of our knowledge are the determinants of long-term trends and of short and medium-term fluctuations in this market, the relationship between domestic service and female rural–urban migration, and that between domestic service and the aggregate labour market.

This paper sets out to examine the way in which guano was dug and removed from the Chincha islands in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Peruvian trade was in its most buoyant phase. We shall, in fact, be looking at the physical operation of an entire export sector, up to the point at which the commodity left the shores of Peru for the farms of Western Europe and North America.

For around 15 years Latin America has been undergoing an unprecedented conjunction of political and economic change, from authoritarianism to democracy and from a state-centred matrix of economic development towards free-market economies. This article takes up the theme of the links between politics and economic change in contemporary Latin America. More specifically, it examines the relation between ‘old politics’ and ‘new economics’. It has two main purposes: The first is to re-examine some of modernisation theory's assumptions about the relations between political and economic modernisation. The second, more specific to the Latin American debate, is to question some of the dominant views about the nature of democracy in the region, particularly Guillermo O'Donnell's influential ‘delegative democracy’ model.