bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Caciquismo in Rural Mexico During the 1920s: The Case of Gabriel Barrios
Authors: Brewster Keith
Published: February 2009

This article focuses upon thecacicazgoof the Indian leader, Gabriel Barrios Cabrera, who controlled the Sierra de Puebla, Mexico during the 1920s. An analysis is made of the methods employed by Barrios to establish a loyal following, and how his military potential gave him the opportunity to attain regional political dominance and beneficial relationships with his federal military and political superiors. It is argued that Barrios's actions were so strongly influenced by the Sierra's singular history and socio-ethnic characteristics, that previously identified trends in post-revolutionary regional politics cannot easily be applied to this isolated mountainous region.
Guerrillas and the State: The Role of the State in the Colombian Peace Process
Authors: Boudon Lawrence
Published: February 2009

This article examines the Colombian peace process since 1982, arguing that the government must strengthen the state and expand its presence into the remote areas in which the leftist guerrillas have established para-statal organisations. The traditionally weak Colombian state has allowed rebel groups to flourish in isolated areas. However, President Ernesto Samper has announced a new initiative that features an ambitious plan to strengthen the state. The plan includes judicial and social reforms that address many of the guerrilla demands, but also threaten to undermine their para-statal organisations. Massive oil discoveries and tax reforms could provide the necessary funding.
The Formation and Transformation of Political Identity: Leaders of the Chilean Left, 1968–1990
Authors: Hite Katherine
Published: February 2009

Based on a study of the 1960s generation of Chilean left-wing leaders, this article offers a three-dimensional model of individual political identity to examine how leaders justify their contributions to society and the political programmes of which they are a part. The central dimension of individual political identity is that of cognitive frameworks, that is, individuals' fundamental approaches to politics, rooted in the values they assign to ideas, political organisation and their relationships to fellow political leaders and activists. The article identifies four cognitive ideal-types: political party loyalists, personal loyalists, political thinkers and political entrepreneurs. The article concludes that the conceptualisation of individual political identity is a powerful explanatory framework for understanding the formulation and reformulation of political thinking and action, particularly in periods in which political institutions are in a state of flux or crisis.
Class Conflict, Political Crisis and the Breakdown of Democratic Practices in Costa Rica: Reassessing the Origins of the 1948 Civil War
Authors: Lehoucq Fabrice Edouard
Published: February 2009

The 1948 Costa Rican civil war stands as the most significant breakdown of emerging democratic practices in what many believe is a country with a democratic destiny. No other political conflict has so polarised the country and cost so many lives. Nor has any other civil war so influenced the way analysts view and understand the development of democratic institutions in Costa Rica. Why political actors in Costa Rica settled their disputes on the battlefield, however, is a question that has yet to generate a satisfactory response.
The Politics of Amazonian Deforestation
Authors: Hurrell Andrew
Published: February 2009

Environmental issues have very obviously come to occupy a prominent place on the political agenda, both domestically and internationally. This process has been driven by grass-roots concern for the future consequences of environmental degradation, assisted in many cases by the adoption of the green movement and of green issues as a platform for protest on a broader range of social and political issues. National governments have increasingly taken up the cause of environmental protection, either out of genuine conviction or out of fear of the electoral consequences of not doing so. Internationally the emergence of green issues has been further encouraged by broader shifts in the international system and the declining salience of old issues, above all the changing nature of East/West rivalry.
Chilean Communists, Radical Presidents and Chilean Relations with the United States, 1940–1947
Authors: Barnard Andrew
Published: February 2009

Founded in 1922, thePartido Comunista de Chile(PCCh) had a somewhat chequered career before the mid-1930s.1Although the prestige of its founder, Luis Emilio Recabarren, and its close ties with organized labour gave the party an early significance, its progress towards becoming an important force in Chilean politics halted abruptly when General Carlos Ibáñez came to power in 1927. Forced into clandestinity by Ibáñez, the party emerged on his downfall in 1931 with its membership vastly reduced, its trade union arm, theFederación Obrera de Chile(FOCH), moribund, and its remaining activists deeply divided by ideological, tactical and personal differences.
Underdevelopment in Haiti: Some Recent Contributions
Authors: Lundahl Mats
Published: February 2009

The most persistent theme in social science analyses of Haiti concerns the causes of the country's economic underdevelopment. During the past few years, a number of significant works have been published which touch upon this theme. The present article will comment on some of these contributions to the debate, beginning with the discussion of the Haitian state and the defence mechanisms employed by the peasants against theautorités.I will then move on to examine survival problems in urban areas before ending with a look at some of the controversies regarding the determinants of peasant poverty in Haiti.
New Directions in Soviet Policy towards Latin America
Authors: Cruz Rodolfo Cerdas
Published: February 2009

This study explores some of the changes currently taking place in the USSR and the possible impact of changing Soviet foreign policy on Latin America. The article begins with an analysis of the possible effects of the attempts to separate Party and State on foreign policy and on the interpretation and observance of the so-called internationalist obligations of the Soviet Union towards Latin America. It goes on to investigate the possible impact of perestroika on the internal relations of COMECON countries and any weakening in the commitment of its members to political and social changes in the Latin American republics. These changes are looked at particularly, though not uniquely, with reference to Cuba and Nicaragua. Some predictions are also made as to the possible future moves the USSR might make to strengthen and improve its relations with the largest countries in the region such as Brazil and Argentina.
Oil Politics in Venezuela during the López Contreras Administration (1936–1941)
Authors: Singh Kelvin
Published: February 2009

When the Venezuelan dictator, Juan Vincente Gómez, died on 17 December 1935, after ruling Venezuela with an iron fist for 27 years, an outburst of popular unrest and nationalistic fervour was unleashed against the foreign oil companies operating on Venezuelan soil. The dominant oil interests in Venezuela at the time were Royal Dutch Shell, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and the Gulf Oil Company. There were several smaller companies such as British Controlled Oilfields, a British state-owned company with a network of Venezuelan affiliates, and the Socony Vacuum Company, a New York-based company which was a significant latecomer. It was the first three aforementioned companies, however, that constituted the Big Three.1The oil companies were associated in the popular mind with the odious Gómez dictatorship and partly for this reason became the object of the people's wrath. Yet there were also practical economic and social reasons for the popular feeling against the companies. The latter paid low wages, provided miserable housing and social amenities for their workers and discriminated against Venezuelans in their employment practices.2For more than a year after the dictator's death Venezuela was in the throes of popular unrest.
Bulwarks of Patriotic Liberalism: the National Guard, Philharmonic Corps and Patriotic Juntas in Mexico, 1847–88
Authors: Thomson Guy P. C.
Published: February 2009

In the archive of the now disbanded jefatura política of Tetela de Ocampo is an account of the funeral ceremony of the Puebla State deputy and school teacher, Ciudadano Miguel Méndez, only son of General Juan Nepomuceno Méndez, caudillo máximo of the State of Puebla between 1857 and 1884. The Velada Fúnebre was held in 1888 in the cabecera of Xochiapulco (alias ‘La Villa del Cinco de Mayo’), a municipio of nahuatl speakers on the southern edge of Mexico's Sierra Madre Oriental, adjoining the cereal producing plateaux of San Juan de los Llanos. The ceremony took place in the ‘Netzahualcoyotl’ municipal school room and was organised by the municipality's Society of Teachers. The description of the elaborately decorated room and baroque ceremony fills several pages.1 The teachers had decked the school room (normally adorned by ‘sixty-two great charts of natural history, twenty Industrial diagrams, large maps of Universal Geography, and diverse statistical charts and many engravings related to education’) with military banners and weapons, masonic trophies, candelabra, floral crowns and yards of white and black ribbon. In the centre of the room stood the coffin on an altar, itself raised upon a platform, guarded by four National Guard sentries and attended by the philharmonic corps of Xochiapulco and all the public officials of the cabecera and its dependent barrios. For nine days preceding the ceremony this band had played funeral marches, between six and eight in the evening, on the plaza, in front of the house of the deceased. The service was taken by Mr Byron Hyde, a Methodist minister from the United States. Accompanied by his wife at a piano, Hyde gave renderings (in English) of three Wesleyan hymns.2 There followed three eulogies of Miguel Méndez, extolling his services to the Liberal cause and on behalf of the ‘desgraciada nación azteca’. These speeches were infused with extreme anticlerical and anti-Conservative sentiments, a martial patriotic liberalism, a reverence for the principles of the French Revolution, an admiration for Garibaldi and Hidalgo (in that order), and an obsession with the importance of education as the only means for emancipating the indigenous population from clerical subjection.
Cuba and the Missile Crisis
Authors: Brenner Philip
Published: February 2009

On 16 October 1962, President John F. Kennedy learned that the Soviet Union was building bases in Cuba for ballistic missiles that could destroy major US cities. In the days that followed, US officials focused nearly all their attention on strategies for removing the Soviet missiles, on Soviet motives, and on the Soviet Union's reaction to the naval quarantine. Cuba was the locus of this most dramatic superpower confrontation, but Cuban perceptions, motives, and reactions were largely ignored.
Chile, Spain and Latin America: The Right of Asylum at the Onset of the Second World War
Authors: Grugel Jean , Quijada Monica
Published: February 2009

In December 1938 an alliance of the Radical, Communist and Socialist parties took office in Chile, the first Popular Front to come to power in Latin America. A few months later, in Spain, the Nationalist forces under Generalísimo Franco occupied Madrid, bringing an end to the civil war. Shortly after, a serious diplomatic conflict developed between Spain and Chile, in which most of Latin America gradually became embroiled. It concerned the fate of 17 Spanish republicans who had sought asylum in the Chilean embassy in the last days of the seige of Madrid, and culminated in July 1940 when the Nationalist government broke off relations with Chile. Initially, the issue at the heart of the episode was the right to political asylum and the established practice of Latin American diplomatic legations of offering protection to individuals seeking asylum (asilados). The causes of the conflict, however, became increasingly obscured as time went on. The principles at stake became confused by mutual Spanish– Chilean distrust, the Nationalists' ideological crusade both within Spain and outside and the Chilean government's deep hostility to the Franco regime, which it saw as a manifestation of fascism. The ideological gulf widened with the onset of the Second World War. This article concentrates primarily, although not exclusively, on the first part of the dispute, April 1939–January 1940. In this period asylum, which is our main interest, was uppermost in Spanish–Chilean diplomatic correspondence.
Towards a Latin American Sociology of Labour
Authors: Zapata Francisco
Published: February 2009

General overviews of Latin American labour (Erickson, Peppe, Spalding, 1974; Roxborough, 1986) have contributed to a synthesis of the major findings on the subject resulting from the work of labour historians and political scientists. Yet the authors have focused on recent contributions without trying to establish the sequence according to which the field has developed. This article discusses the evolution of Latin American labour studies from what was once the privileged domain of ideologues and militants (Mariátegui, 1928; Jobet, 1955; Ramírez Necochea, 1956; Lora, 1967) to a more sociological approach in recent years. Our purpose is to show how the analysis of labour has undergone a profound transformation as a result of this change in focus. While theideological focusgave importance to the historical reconstruction of the different phases of the process of working-class formation and to the narration of the ‘heroic moments’ when labour forged its identity struggling against the State, what we can call thesociological focushas emphasised such factors as the geographical and sectoral distribution of the working population, the process of unionisation, the attitudes of workers in relation to industrial labour, democracy and relations of authority on the shop floor, worker consciousness and the collective bargaining process.1
The Role of Transnational Companies in the Brazilian Defence Tripod
Authors: Neto Raul De Gouvea
Published: February 2009

Within a short time span Brazil became one of the world's largest producers of defence hardware. In 1987, Brazil was the fifth largest exporter of arms worldwide and the second largest arms producer among the newly industrialised countries (NICs). This article argues that the roots of this rapid development of the Brazilian Defence Industry (BDI) lie in the vital role of multinational companies (MNCs) and in the harmonious tripod orchestrated by the Brazilian government. The State, through its interaction with the Brazilian private sector and with subsidiaries of MNCs, brought together the political support, a supply of funds, the manufacturing capability and technology that are vital in any attempt to establish an indigenous defence industry. Above all, the Brazilian government achieved the balanced coordination of these variables essential for maintaining the dynamics of the industry.
Colour by Numbers: Racial and Ethnic Categories in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1532–1824
Authors: Cahill David
Published: February 2009

The distinction between ethnic and racial categories in social analysis is finely drawn, and rarely clear. In the case of Latin American societies, ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ are sometimes synonymous, and far more often deployed as if they were. Researchers are familiar with the ways in which processes of deracination, acculturation and miscegenation iron out the cultural edges that demarcate social groups, one from another; perhaps the classic example is the gradual loss of indigenous characteristics attendant upon native American migration to cities. Yet, even in the complete absence of rural-to-urban migration, such processes have been at work moulding present-day indigenous communities, which once recognised numerous ethnic distinctions within ‘Indian’ society, distinctions that were progressively diluted – though not wholly extinguished – during some three centuries of colonial rule. To draw attention to the protean nature of ethnicity in Latin American societies, however, is not to say that researchers are necessarily unaware of the problem, but rather that they often follow research agendas that may be inconvenienced by attention to such nuances. Thus, for example, a number of broad-brush racialcumethnic classifications provided the basis for the fiscal demands of Crown and Church alike during the colonial period, and as such provide the essential pillars for much of the quantitative fiscal and demographic database that we possess.
Railroads in Nineteenth-century Minas Gerais
Authors: Blasenheim Peter L.
Published: February 2009

The growth of a transportation system in Minas Gerais, especially the construction of a rail network in the province's booming coffee region, the Zona da Mata (the Forest Zone) in the late Empire, is an important chapter in the state's history. A close look at railroads in the Mata and in Minas tells us much about politics and the power and influence of certain groups, particularly planters and planter-politicians. Conflicts over railroad concessions provoked much rivalry within the Mata, but all mineiros agreed that transportation was the most important issue of the day. Meanwhile, flumimnses and paulistas were more preoccupied with the labour crisis. Hindsight permits us to say that transportation is not the key to understanding the development of Minas, at least not to the extent that contemporaries thought it was. Ecological factors, labour conditions and the onset of the national overproduction crisis in 1896 had more to do with the rise and fall of coffee exports than did railroads. However, coffee planters from the wealthy Mata and other mineiros from the province's less prosperous regions always credited railroads with the good things that went with economic development.
Trade and Navigation in the Seventeenth-Century Viceroyalty of Peru
Authors: Clayton L. A.
Published: February 2009

The movement of many vessels up and down the coasts of the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century marked the existence of a lively commercial system within the Spanish Empire. In many respects, this maritime economy evolved quite apart and under different influences from the Atlantic world. The nature and dynamics of this trade and navigation within the viceroyalty's domain in this century are the subject of this brief exploration. The primary goal is to outline the major aspects of trade and navigation and describe some meaningful trends. Secondarily, a consideration of the subject seems to reveal die existence of an economy, lively, robust and expansive diat stands in sharp contrast to die ardiridc, decaying state of Spain's general economy in die seventeentii century.
Agriculture and Protectionsm in Chile, 1880–1930
Authors: Wright Thomas C.
Published: February 2009

In searching for the roots of Chile's persistent economic frustrations, numerous investigators have turned their attention to the period between the War of the Pacific and the Great Depression. During that half century Chile's elites enjoyed the bounty of the nitrate age but, perhaps lulled by the glowing trade statistics, generous fiscal revenues and general aura of prosperity which nitrates provided, neglected to develop alternative sources of national income for the future.
Cycles of class struggle and the making of the working class in Argentina, 1890–1920
Authors: Munck Ronaldo
Published: February 2009

There is currently a renewed interest in the relationship between economic fluctations and strike movements which refers back to an article by Eric Hobsbawm1 and an even earlier polemical piece by Leon Trotsky.2 This article offers a contribution to the growing literature, focusing, unlike most other studies, on a Third.World country. It also reflects the increasing influence of social history in Latin American research on the making of the working class.
Hostage Private Companies Under Restraint: British Railways and Transport Coordination in Argentina During the 1930s
Authors: Heras Raul García
Published: February 2009

By 1930 there were £435.1 million of British capital invested in Argentina, 62.3% of which was located in railway companies whose securities duly yielded reasonable annual profits. However, the onset of the Great Depression and the successful 1930 revolution brought this state of affairs to a standstill. Moreover, both events inaugurated years of growing difficulties for the British-owned railways and the British government, for whom these public utilities gradually turned into economic hostages and a potential source of conflict in Anglo-Argentine relations. On the one hand, the railways were slowly squeezed between rising operating costs and regulated tariffs while their net receipts dwindled becausé of the crisis. Furthermore, the companies began to experience the following: growing hostility from a local public opinion who resented their foreign ownership; the adverse effects of the Argentine nationalistic economic policies; and had to find suitable new courses of action to deal with government officials who were not wholly sympathetic to their interests. On the other hand, although Whitehall could not fail to consider that to some extent the railways were the backbone of Britain's economic stronghold in the Argentine, they also had other substantial trading, financial and shipping interests at stake in this highly profitable market. Therefore, the British government began to weigh carefully the role of these public utilities in British policy towards Argentina; the real prospects of a clash with Argentina if the railways' finances deteriorated too much and the Foreign Office intervened on their behalf; and whether their aspirations should be considered on the same standing as other British concerns in the Argentine.
The Brazilian Army and the Problem of Mission, 1939–1964
Authors: McCann Frank D.
Published: February 2009

On 1 April 1980, Brazil concluded sixteen years of military-dominated government. While political scientists have taken the lead in examining the origins and methods of the regime in terms of civil-military relations, the role of the military in society, and what might be called military politics, historians have lagged behind in providing analysis from an institutional perspective.1While the Revolution of 1964 might have occurred even if Brazil had never entered World War II, the Brazilian army's involvement in that conflict and its readjustments to the post-war situation gave shape and substance to that revolution.
The Peruvian Declaration of Independence: Freedom by Coercion
Authors: Anna Timothy E.
Published: February 2009

Peru launched its history as an independent state with one of the world's briefest and most direct Declarations of Independence. In Lima, on 15 July 1821, an open town council meeting (cabildo abierto) called especially to consider the question, declared: ‘All the gentlemen present, for themselves and satisfied of the opinion of the inhabitants of the capital, said: That the general will is decided in favor of the Independence of Peru from Spanish domination, and that of whatever other foreign power…’1 People actually present in the chambers of the city council, in the corridors outside, and in the street below signed the Act there and then.
The Brazilian Economic ‘Miracle’ and Regional Policy: Some Evidence from the Urban Northeast
Authors: Goodman D. E.
Published: February 2009

The so-called Brazilian economic ‘miracle’ has provoked a heated debate on the distribution between different socio-economic groups of the benefits and costs incurred in rapid income growth. This debate has clarified several empirical issues, notably the marked concentration of the personal income distribution and its significant deterioration in the 1960s.
The Political Economy of Recent Conversions to Market Economics in Latin America
Authors: Hojman David E.
Published: February 2009

The objective of this article is to attempt to explain why free market open economy policies (FMOEP) have become so popular in Latin America in the 1990s. There are six possible major explanatory factors: (i) lessons learnt from the debt crisis and its immediate aftermath, (ii) more highly qualified technocrats, (iii) development of an entrepreneurial middle class, (iv) exhaustion of import substituting industrialisation, (v) a combination of tax reform, financial modernisation and export diversification, and (vi) a favourable public opinion. Yet none of these factors by itself was a sufficient condition for FMOEP; necessary factors were different from country to country, and the nature of the interaction between two or more factors was different in each country.
Political Party Decline and the Failure of Liberal Democracy: the PRD in Dominican Politics
Authors: Kryzanek Michael J.
Published: February 2009

The decade of the 1970s has brought a number of changes to Latin America and in particular to the Latin American political scene. The extensive proliferation of harsh, military-run governments, the increasingly strident cries of nationalism and anti-Americanism, the violent demise of the Marxist- oriented regime of Chile's Salvador Allende and the disappointing performance of the Alliance for Progress programs and its modernizing ideology are now all familiar characteristics of Latin America in the modern era.
Living Standards in Rural Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Zacatecas 1820–80
Authors: Cross Harry E.
Published: February 2009

There is much in the literature which laments the condition of the common man in nineteenth-century Mexico. Most of the evidence for this sad interpretation, however, is circumstantial and qualitative in substance and leaves one groping at times for more convincing arguments. This pessimistic view seems inappropriate for the North where historical interpretation in these matters is deeply influenced by generalizations arising from studies of the South and Center. Careful examination demonstrates that for at least one region of the North a distinct and varied natural and human environment produced a different set of living conditions. This study assesses the living standards in low-income hacienda laborers in the State of Zacatecas during the period 1820–80. The results suggest a reconsideration of the notion that all nineteenth-century Mexicanpeoneswere oppressed and malnourished step-children of thelatifundiasystem.
Dependency and the Urban Experience: São Paulo's Public Service Sector, 1885–1913
Authors: Greenfield Gerald Michael
Published: February 2009

In a recent critical survey of scholarly writing on dependency theory, Ronald H. Chilcote noted that, ‘like other theory in an infant stage, dependency theory has spawned a plethora of interpretations and applications, and has been adopted by ideologues on all sides of the political spectrum’. This enthusiastic response, while welcome for the new perspective it affords on underdevelopment, has led some Latin Americanists to caution against the over-application of dependency theory and the unwarranted inflation of its explanatory power. Richard M. Morse, speaking specifically of urban development observes that ‘the “external dependency” thesis … easily leads to dogmatism’, and Phillipe Schmitter warns against the indiscriminate use of the theory to explain all of Latin America's ills. Such caveats have merit, especially in view of the plasticity of current thinking about dependency.
The Tenentes in Power: A New Perspective on the Brazilian Revolution of 1930
Authors: Conniff Michael L.
Published: February 2009

The Club 3 de Outubro, overlooked by most studies of the Brazilian revolution of 1930, played a central role in the tenente movement and in the revolution itself. The 1930s were a watershed in modern Brazilian history, when state, society, and economy were altered, sometimes radically. Although some of the changes were responses to the Depression and international conditions, the revolution as a political phenomenon was a dominant force in shaping contemporary Brazil. State authorities ceded power to the Central Government's interventors (delegates), counteracting Brazil's strong regionalist tradition and assuring the dominance of national institutions. In addition, urban voters in the 19305 for the first time had an influential voice in politics, sometimes as allies of the tenentes. The army, strengthened and unified vis-à-vis the state militias, was subordinated to the Federal Government.
The Nicaragua Canal in the Nineteenth Century: Prelude to American Empire in the Caribbean
Authors: Clayton Lawrence A.
Published: February 2009

On a hot day in early 1890, American steam dredgers lowered their scoops into the mud of the San Juan River in Nicaragua, and so began the job of connecting the seas.
‘For an Organized Nicaragua’: Somoza and the Labour Movement, 1944–1948
Authors: Gould Jeffrey L.
Published: February 2009

The historiography of the Nicaraguan workers' movement suffers from two basic problems: an extreme paucity and dispersion of primary sources and a tendency to compensate with analytic frameworks for what is lacking in substance. The triumph of a revolutionary movement in 1979, genuinely interested in allowing the Nicaraguan people to become ‘dueños de su historia’, has stimulated the search for primary source materials and has awakened the interest of historians in the trajectory of class struggle in Nicaragua. However, if at this moment, we do not confront fundamental methodological problems this new search for the past will offer precious little illumination on the problems of class development and conflict in contemporary Nicaragua.
The Management of Church Wealth in Michoacán, Mexico, 1810–1856: Economic Motivations and Political Implications
Authors: Chowning Margaret
Published: February 2009

Nowhere, perhaps, is the often-remarked historiographical bias in favour of social/economic studies for the colonial period and political/ institutional studies for the national period more jarring than in treatments of the activities of the Mexican church before and after independence.1 The position of the church in the colonial economy has been the subject of several specialised works and is widely regarded in broader histories as most significant.2 But students of independent Mexico have usually focused on the church's role in the political arena, characterising the politics of the period from 1821 to 1856 as, in essence, a battle for supremacy betweenthe church and the state, or in a slightly different formulation, as a struggle between liberalism and conservatism.3
From Reagan to Bush: The Transition in US Policy Towards Central America
Authors: Leogrande William M.
Published: February 2009

Many foreign policy analysts in the United States expected a shift in US policy towards Latin America when George Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan as president. Though Bush had been a loyal supporter of Reagan's policies throughout the preceding eight years, Bush nevertheless seemed more pragmatic than his mentor. Whereas Reagan was the leader of the Republican Party's right wing, Bush was a scion of the East Coast Republican establishment, stronghold of the party's moderate centre.
Latin American Intellectuals and the City, 1860–1940
Authors: Morse Richard M.
Published: February 2009

Given the historic role of cities in Latin America as an instrument for appropriating territory and for ordering society, one may wonder why more attention is not paid to the Latin Americans' own vision of the city. We are sometimes asked to believe that only in the 1940s did the urban phenomenon loom in their world and that our knowledge of it comes from foreign demographers and anthropologists. Colonial sources like Solórzano and theRecopilación, however, demonstrate that the IberoCatholic political tradition gives central importance to the organizational and paradigmatic functions of the urban unit. After independence, to be sure, this tradition was eclipsed by the ‘ruralization’ of Latin American societies as urban, bureaucratic structures decayed and power flowed to the agrarian domain. At this time also, intellectual horizons opened to offer release from scholastic constraints, encouraging the intelligentsia to make eclectic, sometimes euphoric assessments of their new nations' future potential. Of thesepensadoresSarmiento almost alone dealt directly with the city's role in nation building. Yet his very plea that the city — whether Buenos Aires or a new ‘Argirópolis’ — assume ‘modernizing’ or ‘developmental‘functions reverts to the old Mediterranean notion that the city (civitas) is one with ‘civilization’. For this Alberdi attacked him, reminding Sarmiento that in Argentina town and country, civilization and barbarism, were not disjoined but fused in a single society and polity.
Religion, Collectivism, and Intrahistory: the Peruvian Ideal of Dependence
Authors: Pike Fredrick B.
Published: February 2009

The Inca ruling elites of ancient Peru based their right to leadership on a claim not only to aristocratic but also to divine blood. They were, they assured their subjects, descendants of Manco Capac, the son of the sun who according to official Inca history had founded the Empire of Tahuantinsuyo (the four corners). For the Incas, therefore, legitimacy rested on charisma, in the sense in which Max Weber used that word: ‘It is the quality which attaches to men and things by virtue of their relations with the “supernatural,” that is, with the nonempirical aspects of reality in so far as they lend theological meaning to men's acts and the events of the world.’
French Policy in Spanish America: 1830–48
Authors: Morgan Iwan
Published: February 2009

The governments of the Orléans Monarchy pursued a very active policy in Spanish America. In 1838–9 France fought a brief war with Mexico. From 1838 to 1840 she was engaged in a dispute with Governor Rosas of Buenos Aires which escalated into an attempt to overthrow him. The French Navy played a distinctly un—neutral role during the Argentine siege of Montevideo in the early 1840s. In 1845 France and Britain cooperated in an attempt to impose a peace settlement upon the belligerents in the Río de la Plata. These two powers also seriously considered a plan to block American expansion in 1845 by offering certain guarantees to Texas and Mexico. The French were also involved in several minor disputes – involving New Granada, Chile, and Mexico again – which nearly led to blows. The armed forces of France were in more constant action only in North Africa. Yet French political and economic interests in Spanish America were hardly as important as these activities implied. In fact, French policy was based upon a misconception of the potential importance of their interests. The error was made worse by the nature of the French policy-making process. The aims of this paper are ito explain how these erroneous conceptions of French interests were formulated, why they were not rectified, and why it was the French rather than the British, despite their greater interest in Spanish America, who appeared to wave ‘the big stick’ there during this period.
Army Politics in Socialist Cuba
Authors: Perez Louis A.
Published: February 2009

Many of the essential early qualities of the Cuban Revolution emanated from the experience of armed struggle. In the Sierra Maestra microcosmic features of the socialist order acquired their earliest expression, assumed recognizable form, and established the foundations upon which the radical transformation of Cuban society would proceed. The exigencies of armed struggle created a new consciousness and at once proletarianized bourgeois revolutionaries and militarized civilian combatants. The guerrilla war conferred on the revolutionary order a powerful legacy of struggle which, in its earliest forms, expressed itself most compellingly in the Rebel Army.
The Peronist Left, 1955–1975
Authors: James Daniel
Published: February 2009

The ‘Peronist Left’ has become one of the chief actors in the often violent drama of Argentine politics today. It is the object of this article to place the events of the more recent past, at least since the return of Peronism to power in 1973, within the framework of the development of the ‘Peronist Left’ since the fall of Perón in 1955. Obviously the article makes no claim to be a comprehensive treatment of the subject. Such a treatment could only be part of a much more extensive study of the Argentine working class and the Peronist movement. In particular, the article concentrates on an analysis of the political ideology of the different currents that have made up the ‘Peronist Left’ since 1955, whilst recognizing that this ideology must ultimately be seen in the far wider context of the social and economic development of Argentine society. The first part will highlight the main features of this Left in the 1955–73 period and analyze the main currents within it. In the second part of the paper the events of the last two to three years will be looked at within this context.
Admiral William B. Caperton and United States Naval Diplomacy in South America, 1917–1919
Authors: Healy David
Published: February 2009

In May 1917, the United States Navy dispatched a South Atlantic patrol squadron to Brazil under the command of Admiral William B. Caperton, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet. Caperton, who soon saw his mission as more diplomatic than military, became the United States' best-known representative in South America and worked closely with civilian diplomats to maximize United States influence in the area. His two-year tour of duty from 1917 to 1919, therefore, constitutes a little-known case study in the attempted use of naval forces for diplomatic purposes, and in the development of some aspects of United States policy in South America.
Chilean Elites and Foreign Investors: Chilean Nitrate Policy, 1880–82
Authors: O'brien Thomas F.
Published: February 2009

Chile's seizure of Peru and Bolivia's nitrate regions during the War of the Pacific (1879–83) opened a new and unprecedented era of prosperity for the Chilean economy. During the next forty years the export duty on nitrates fuelled a rapid increase in government revenues, and the entire domestic economy benefited from the development of the industry. Yet the incorporation of the nitrate industry into the national economy also appeared to signal a decline in the dynamism of the Chilean economic elite. Despite the dominant role which Chilean entrepreneurs had played in the development of the national economy prior to the war, 69 per cent of the nitrate industry was in British hands by 1890.
The Social Origins of Protectionism and Free Trade in Nineteenth-Century Lima
Authors: Gootenberg Paul
Published: February 2009

Nineteenth-century Peru is customarily taken as a hyperbolic example of how the triumph of economic liberalism in Latin America hindered prospects for sustained economic development. While historians now agree that guano-age liberalism triggered adverse economic and social consequences, the roots of Peruvian free trade policy remain shrouded in mystery. Most recently, dependency writers elevated free trade into a major component of their posited transition to ‘neocolonialism’ after Independence. However, this new periodization is not convincing for it fails to explain how liberal policies actually took hold, symptomatic of the insufficient attention given to internal dynamics of change.
A Note on Political Incorporation: the Argentine Plan Político of 1955
Authors: Little Walter
Published: February 2009

The Plan Político of 1955 casts an unusually direct light on contemporary Peronist thinking about the relationship between legitimacy and mass electoral support. It also provides first hand evidence of the then government's determination to use the electoral process as well as various techniques of incorporation in the creation of a mass Peronist identity. Finished early in 1955 for the forthcoming Governors’ Meeting, it was intended as a political blueprint for the run-up period to the elections that were scheduled for 1957.
Survival of Indian Communities in Nineteenth-Century Bolivia: A Regional Comparison
Authors: Grieshaber Erwin P.
Published: February 2009

In describing the impact of haciendas on Indian communities of Meso-America and Andean America, historians generally have emphasized the hacendado's unrelenting appropriation of land and labor from native settlements, which were forced constantly to retreat in the face of this pressure. This view can be represented by James Lockhart's description of hacienda expansion. He saw the great estate as an ‘essentially unitary social institution [that] maintained constant its function as intermediary between growing Spanish towns and receding Indian villages. It evolved along two simple lines — constant rise in legal ownership of land and change in the balance of the labor force, as permanent workers increased and temporary workers decreased.1As the hacienda expanded outward from the cities, said Lockhart, it gradually engaged the Indians in acculturative processes that made the great estate ‘the most powerful instrument of hispanization in Spanish-American culture’.2
The Demographic Structure of Slavery in Puerto Rico: Some Aspects of Agrarian Capitalism in the Late Nineteenth Century
Authors: Wessman James W.
Published: February 2009

The nineteenth century was a critical period in the evolution of Puerto Rican society, as the following citation from Fernández Méndez eloquently indicates: The century of Salvador Brau [the noted Puerto Rican social historian] is the century of the forging on Puerto Rican soil of a native bourgeoisie of planters – padres de agrego or señores de ingenio— born in a movement of cultural transformation which converted the preponderant subsistence economy of the eighteenth century into an active agrarian capitalism of sugar and coffee plantations. This system of plantations in the realm of the Spanish Antilles was in its epoch the revolutionary equivalent of the manufacturing system which transformed life in European society in innumerable ways during the nineteenth century.1
Black Political Protest in São Paulo, 1888–1988
Authors: Andrews George Reid
Published: February 2009

Beginning with Brazil's origins as a nation, and continuing to the present, the relationship between race and politics in that country has been a close and integral one. Portuguese state policy made black slavery the very foundation of Brazil's social and economic order during three centuries of colonial rule. That foundation remained in place even after independence, with the paradoxical result that Brazil became ‘the last Christian country to abolish slavery, and the first to declare itself a racial democracy’. Indeed, perhaps nowhere is the connection between race and politics in Brazil more evident than in the concept of ‘racial democracy’, which characterises race relations in that country in explicitly political terminology.

This article explores some of the connections between race and politics in Brazil by examining four moments in the history of black political mobilisation in that country. Geographically, it focuses on the south-eastern state of São Paulo, which by the time of emancipation, in 1888, housed the third-largest slave population in Brazil (after neighbouring Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro), and which has formed a centre of black political action from the 1880s through to the present. Chronologically, it focuses on: the struggle for the final abolition of slavery in the 1880s; the rise and fall of the Frente Negra Brasileira in the 1930s; the black organisations of the Second Republic; and the most recent wave of black protest, from the mid-1970s to 1988.

The purpose of such an exercise is twofold. First, placing these moments of black mobilisation in a century-long time-frame makes it possible for us to see them not as isolated episodes, but as chapters in a long-term, ongoing history of black protest and struggle in Brazil.
Family Affairs: Class, Lineage and Politics in Contemporary Nicaragua
Authors: Vilas Carlos M.
Published: February 2009

As I get older I give more importance to continuities, and try to discover them under the appearances of change and mutation. And I have reached the conclusion that there is only one great continuity: that of blood.

Class structure never entirely displaces other criteria and forms of differentiation and hierarchy (e.g. ethnicity, gender, lineage) in the constitution of social identities and in prompting collective action. Class as a concept and as a point of reference is linked to these other criteria; often it is subsumed in them, thus contributing to the definition of the different groups' forms of expression and of their insertion into the social totality. But class does not eliminate these other criteria nor the identities deriving from them, nor can it preclude the relative autonomy derived from their specificity, as they define loyalties and oppositions which frequently cross over class boundaries. The relevance of these criteria in Latin America is even greater since the society's class profile is less sharply defined because of the lower level of development of market relations and urban industrial capitalism.

Several studies have pointed to the importance of ruling families in shaping the socio-economic structure of Latin American countries, their political institutions and their cultural life. Prominent families have been considered the axis of Latin America's history from the last part of the colonial period until the beginnings of the present century – and until even more recently in some countries. Interestingly enough, these historical studies have contributed to a better understanding of one of the features most frequently discussed in today's sociological studies of Latin America: the weak or inchoate differentiation between public and private life and between collective and individual action.
The Colonial Economy: The Transfer of the European System of Production to New Spain and Peru
Authors: Assadourian Carlos Sempat
Published: February 2009

Research into the economic structures established by Spain in the Indies, based on sources which allow at least an approximate reconstruction of reality, dates only from the last thirty or forty years. The advances made, despite the uncertainty still surrounding certain aspects of the processes of production, appropriation and distribution, enable us to abandon traditional conceptions of this economy as isolated, closed, rustic in its technology, archaic or ‘feudal’.

The dominant profile of the economic structures imposed on New Spain and Peru, especially during a fifty-year cycle the nature and timing of which will be discussed below, was shaped by the transfer of the European system of mercantile production, in terms of both its technological bases and the legal structure and methods of calculation which governed its reproduction. Thus, we retain the adjective ‘colonial’ for this modern economy, in as much as its development was conditioned by the need to maximise shipments of silver to the metropolis and, in pursuit of this aim, the indigenous population was subjected to severe oppression. Likewise, the metropolis maintained a high level of control over the internal economic dynamic of these regions and a monopoly of their foreign trade.

Towards the mid-sixteenth century the expression ‘conquista y población’ was frequently invoked to characterise Spain's dominion in the New World. ‘Conquista’ referred to the initial feat of arms, by which the papal right to grant lands to the Catholic monarchs (hitherto only valid within the order of European nations) was imposed on the indigenous kingdoms and domains of the Indies.
Brazil 1870–1914 – The Force of Tradition
Authors: De Carvalho José Murilo
Published: February 2009

Although in the literature there is almost a consensus that there was an advance of modernity in Brazil after 1870, tradition was sufficiently strong to maintain the values of a rural, patriarchal and hierarchical society. This modernity assumed characteristics that distinguished it from the classic model, represented by the Anglo-Saxon experience. In the period between 1870 and 1914 the ground was cleared for the conservative modernisation of the 1930s.