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 looks at the response to government anticlericalism in the diocese of Huajuapam de León, Oaxaca. In particular it examines how the dynamic relationship between bishop, priests and parishioners established during the early twentieth century produced a religious culture, which wove itself into the cultural, ethnic, political and economic identities of the indigenous Mixtecs. This religious culture proved key to resistance to post-revolutionary anticlericalism and socialist education in the 1930s and led to the failure of the state project.

After England began what came to be known as the First Industrial Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, industrial technology quickly diffused throughout the nations of the North Atlantic. Within fifty years of the first rumblings of British industrialisation, the factory system had spread to Western Europe and the United States. Latin America, however, lagged behind. It was not until the twentieth century that manufacturing came to lead the economies of Latin America and that agrarian societies were transformed into industrial societies.

This article seeks to understand this long lag in Latin American industrialisation through an analysis of the experience of Mexico during the period 1830–1940. The purpose of the paper is to look at the obstacles that prevented self-sustaining industrialisation from taking place in Mexico, as well as to assess the results of the industrialisation that did occur.

The basic argument advanced is that two different types of constraints prevailed during different periods of Mexico's industrialisation. During the period from 1830 to 1880 the obstacles to industrialisation were largely external to firms: insecure property rights, low per capita income growth resulting from pre-capitalist agricultural organisation, and the lack of a national market (caused by inefficient transport, banditry and internal tariffs) all served as a brake on Mexico's industrial development. During the period 1880–1910 the obstacles to industrialisation were largely internal to firms. These factors included the inability to realise scale economies, high fixed capital costs and low labour productivity. During the period from 1910 to 1930 these internal constraints combined with new external constraints – including the Revolution of 1910–17, the political uncertainty of the post-revolutionary period and the onset of the Great Depression – which further slowed the rate of industrial growth.

Employing new archival sources, this article reappraises the role of human rights in the opposition to Brazil's repressive military regime. While most interpretations pinpoint the protest against the 1975 murder of journalist Vladimir Herzog as the opposition's great awakening, this research focuses on a similar outcry against the 1973 killing of University of São Paulo student Alexandre Vannucchi Leme. His death led students and clergymen to defy riot troops and gather 3,000 people for a memorial service that was the first large-scale anti-regime demonstration of the 1970s and a decisive step in the Roman Catholic Church's development as leader of the opposition.

This article addresses an internal conflict that arose in an Amazonian village when it adopted an officially recognised quilombola identity. It argues that this issue, which tends to be interpreted in terms of identity, is in fact primarily social. Indeed, the divergent positions adopted by different groups of relatives need to be examined in relation to the dynamics of socio-economic differentiation linked to family histories. The article shows that the conflict related back to power struggles between dominant groups of relatives and that the questions about the limits of the group reflected preoccupations concerning who held legitimate authority to make decisions about the future of the village. By analysing some of the assumptions of the current debate about multiculturalism and ethnicity in Amazonia, this article contributes to the wider discussion about these issues in Brazil and, more broadly, in Latin America.

This article evaluates the impact of the Chile Solidario anti-poverty programme. The evaluation is based on propensity score matching and a difference-in-difference estimator along with databases of Social Assistance Committee forms. The results show a positive but small impact on employment and housing along with a slightly negative impact on self-generated income. They also suggest that gains tend to be concentrated in the first phase, during which beneficiaries work with a family support professional, and that these benefits may not be sustainable. Participant families show absolute gains in income and employment, but these may be attributed to environmental conditions rather than the programme; this raises doubts about the premise that these families were initially marginalised from the economy and social networks.

Argentina's labour leaders make up one of the most powerful social groups in the nation's society. Their power is based on the unions' economic resources as well as on their capacity to mobilise rank-and-file workers. However, the group has developed a tendency towards bureaucratisation. On the one hand they are representative of their fellow-workers which is why they are continuously re-elected. At the same time, they have acquired technical and bureaucratic skills which ease their handling of the trade union structure. ‘As long as permanence at the head of the union becomes prolonged, the labour leader draws further away from the cultural and economic criteria of the workers who form the rank-and-file.’1 This tendency towards self-perpetuation in office maintains the acquired social status. In addition, the separation from the rank-and-file increases in order to have a relative autonomy and play the role of intermediary between the worker and the employer. In this sense, the corporativism and verticalism inherent in the Peronist doctrine, as a form of selecting leaders, increases the tendency towards bureaucratisation in the trade union leaders, marking a breach with the historical tendency of the Argentine labour movement previous to 1946–7.

Most commentaries on the development of chicle (natural chewing gum) in the Yucatán Peninsula have emphasised the connections that were maintained between the chicle entrepreneurs and the companies, like William Wrigley's, which bought the raw gum for processing. The Mexican state is usually depicted as seeking to protect vulnerable forest workers from exploitation by foreign entrepreneurs and the vicissitudes of the free market. Our research, which uses archive material from Mexico City and Chetumal, interviews with former chicleros and entrepreneurs, as well as field research in Quintana Roo, suggests a slightly different interpretation. The Mexican state, far from contributing to the demise of personalistic relations (coyotaje) actually used these forms of mediation to manage and control the producers. The vulnerability of the chicleros to the full effect of market forces, their lack of physical and financial security, as well as corruption among some of the leaders of the cooperative movement, have all contributed to the continuance of coyotaje, often tacitly supported by state institutions. The article goes on to show that the need to meet demanding product and environmental standards, to achieve ‘certification’ as producers of a natural forest product, have compounded the problems of chicle producers today.

This article focuses on Brazilian inflation: its causes, consequences and dynamics from 1980 to 1993. We argue that the main economic cause of the Brazilian inflation was the excessive growth of money, in turn caused by too high budget deficits. Oil and exchange rate shocks also played a role, together with the greater dependence of the Central Bank of Brazil on the government. We measure the degree of Central Bank independence by the variable ‘turnover’ of Central Bank governors defined as the number of months in office. The effect of this variable on inflation is found to be highly significant and positive.

The foundation of cities and the articulation of urban networks are a persistent theme in the history of colonial Spanish America. As administrative-social service centers and as foci of trade and, sometimes, manufacturing, cities were the meeting ground of the policies of the metropolis and the concerns of its subjects, the local creoles, castas, and Indians. This mediating position has influenced the kinds of questions asked about cities by Latin American urban historians. Those who, with this author, believe that the city's administrative function was paramount, consider the following questions most useful in determining the role of urban centers within the Spanish empire: was city government merely the agent of the Crown, was it the spokesman of a local oligarchy, or did it permit some degree of popular participation? Was the operation of municipal government characterized by co-operation or by conflict? What was the relative importance of formal institutions created by the Crown, such as the cabildo and the real acuerdo, and informal institutions, such as the family and the client system, in the conduct of city business?

Extreme nationalism and a web of conspiracy theories make it particularly difficult to distinguish history from myth for the experience of foreign finance in Argentina. Julio Irazusta agrees with Raúl Scalabrini Ortíz that the London Loan of 1824 (the Baring Loan) was part of a system of spoliation, on a continental scale, by which Britons and their Government exacted full payment for the recognition of the newly independent Republics. Ortega and Duhalde report a gentleman’s agreement between London bankers in the mid-1802s; Hispanic America was to be partitioned into spheres of influence and Baring Brothers were left with the River Plate. The British loans of the 1820s were intended to tie the new Republics firmly to Britain; default was welcome, since ‘guarantees’ could then be enforced by Britain's armed might. Baring Brothers are condemned for failing to pay up the full proceeds of the 1824 loan to Buenos Aires, for plotting to overthrow Juan Manuel de Rosas, for negotiating a harsh settlement of the debt in 1857, and for intervening in one way or another at every stage in the politics and economics of Argentina, even to the extent of promoting the Paraguayan War.

I argue here that economic activity fell considerably in the first three decades of Paraguay's early national period, below levels it had attained in the late colonial period and would attain again only after the mid-nineteenth century. I attribute this economic depression primarily to regional political fragmentation and the institutional regression it triggered. In the 1810s, the United Provinces of the River Plate sought to keep the former Viceroyalty of the River Plate under a single federal government, but failed to prevent Paraguay's early secession. Their subsequent trade blockades and military threats had profound economic and political effects on Paraguay: revenues from foreign trade taxation fell, scale economies in defence and justice provision vanished, a standing army emerged, government budget deficits worsened, mercantilist regulations heightened, the fiscal burden increased, and transactions costs generally rose. Proponents of federation, more representative governments, and freer trade progressively declined, while supporters of secession, political absolutism, and government regulation became ever more prominent. In the 1820s, blockade relaxations exacerbated economic intervention by the state, which substantially redistributed property rights in land towards itself. In the 1830s, renewed blockading had more than proportional negative effects on economic activity, which remained below late colonial levels at least until international waterways became freely navigable shortly after mid-century. Colonial absolutism and mercantilism may be said to have been restored with a vengeance. Long-run economic performance worsened.

Latin America is widely known as a low-tax region, but Brazil defies that description with a tax burden almost double the regional average. Though longstanding, Brazil’s position atop the tax burden ranking is not a historical constant. As recently as the early 1950s three other countries, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, had similar or even heavier burdens. However, by the early 1980s Brazil had emerged as the most heavily taxed country in Latin America, and subsequent decades reinforced that status. This article seeks to uncover the roots of Brazil’s heavy taxation by examining the process through which it rose to the top of the regional ranking and managed to stay there. It emphasises two variables, the social class bases of public sector growth and the degree of support for democracy among key political actors. Despite changing over time, these variables have consistently interacted in ways that favour rising taxation.

Historians of the age of revolution have often pointed out the contradictions inherent in the preservation of slavery within political structures self-defined as liberal. In Latin America many a nineteenth-century apologist stymied the question by citing the countervailing inviolability of property rights as justification for the continued bondage of slaves to their masters; but what, then, explains the discriminatory treatment of free blacks and mulattoes under nominally liberal regimes? Within free society no such ideological impasse can be identified, yet an analogous, if informal, subordination of the rights of the free colored is amply documented. And the analogy may be extended to include the free poor, regardless of color. At this point matters of race and class overlap, raising important questions about social relations and policies that cannot be answered by reference to formal ideology alone.

The 2012 presidential election in Mexico is significant for many reasons, not least of which is that it returned the Partido Revolucionario Institucional to power after two Partido Acción Nacional administrations. This essay reviews more than 50 surveys taken before and during the election to determine significant patterns among Mexican voters, comparing the most influential traditional and non-traditional demographic variables, as well as other variables such as partisanship and policy issues in this election, with those of the two previous presidential races. It also analyses other influential variables in the 2012 presidential race, including social media and the application of new electoral legislation. It identifies significant differences and similarities among voters today in contrast to the two prior elections, and suggests long-term patterns among Mexican voters which are likely to influence voting behaviour in future elections, ranging from regionalism and gender to partisanship and social media.

This article critically examines reasons for the persistent use of states of emergency (SOEs) as a tool of crime control in Jamaica and risks associated with normalising these measures in small, low-capacity, competitive democracies in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). We attend to the question of permanent SOEs as an issue of law and certain policing methods becoming normalised. This differs from scholars who think about the use of permanent SOEs as suspension of law or executive rule and make a clear distinction between law and violence and normalcy and emergency. Our findings show that persistent usage of SOEs in Jamaica reflects the incapacity of the state to control violent crime as well as its effort to strengthen its coercive capabilities and compensate for the ineffectiveness of the police. It is also a response to public demand for SOE policing. State strengthening is a necessary condition for a more peaceful and law-abiding society but is also a carrier of risks of democratic degeneration via rights-disregarding policing. Nonetheless, we have seen authoritarian management of crime without descent into authoritarianism, in general, and strong boundary-marking and patrolling by some state-oversight institutions that enjoy the support of civil society.

The development of Central America in recent decades presents a paradox. As measured by the growth of real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per head, the region's performance compares favourably with the rest of Latin America and other less developed countries (LDCs). At the same time, political convulsions have become more acute, and in no part of the isthmus – not even in Costa Rica – is political stability assured.

Like most of the peripheral countries of Europe in the nineteenth century, Portugal experienced population growth, agricultural expansion and even serious industrial development. By mid-century, in fact, it compared reasonably well in basic economic indices with most comparable late industrialising European countries. Although Portugal continued to develop in the second half of the century, its economy did not grow as rapidly as the rest of Europe and by the end of the century it had fallen seriously behind, becoming one of the poorest societies on the continent. This relative backwardness had several causes. Severe problems of land distribution affected the ability of national agriculture to modernise rapidly, especially in the densely populated north where minifundia land holdings predominated. Portugal's important wine industry was modernised but in only one sector and this sector could not expand its international markets.