This article seeks to explain why such a wide range of Cuban cultural producers have opted to remain on the island and work ‘within the revolution’, despite all the notorious problems caused by state censorship, political persecution and material shortages. It accounts for the importance of culture to the legitimacy of the revolutionary government; suggests that the regime has drawn effectively on the long-established significance of culture in Cuba's radical tradition; and illustrates the extent to which the government has backed up its rhetoric of commitment to culture for all with a sustained policy of support for institutions, organisations and events across the island. The main argument is that culture has been a key element – perhaps the only successful element – in the revolution's attempt to implement an alternative model of modernity that was distinctive not only from the Western capitalist version but also from that promoted by the Soviet Union.

This paper investigates how students at the State University of Rio de Janeiro(UERJ), one of the first Brazilian universities to adopt race-based quotas foradmissions, interpret racial categories used as eligibility criteria.Considering the perspectives of students is important to understand the workingsof affirmative action policies because UERJ's quotas require applicants toclassify themselves. Students' interpretations of those categories often divergefrom the interpretations intended by people who shaped the policy. Students'perspectives are formed by everyday experiences with categorisation and by theirself-assessment as legitimate beneficiaries of quotas. In contrast, the policieswere designed according to a new racial project, where blackconsciousness-raising and statistics played an important role.

Current work on Bourbon Mexico presents a divided, not to say schizophrenic image of the age. The traditional view, propounded by Lucas Alamán largely on the basis of Alexander von Humboldt's Essai Politique, and subject to certain qualifications, supported by our own work on the export economy, emphasized both the new quality in government and the remarkable pace of economic growth. Crown revenue, silver output, overseas trade, and the ecclesiastical tithes levied on agricultural production, all experienced a substantial and rapid increase in the years following the Gàlvez Visitation, 1765–71.

This article analyses the surprising emergence of a comprehensive and coherent neo-liberal developmental model during the period of military rule in Chile. Rather than reflecting a clear and definitive choice, the political process that produced this model was characterised by hesitation, policy contradiction, shifting priorities, and incremental choices. This was a result of the military's efforts to deal with two, often conflicting, overarching goals – economic and political stabilisation – as they evolved and were redefined over time. The focus on incremental, iterated decision-making weaves the insights of other explanations based in underlying institutional, coalitional, or ideational factors into a micro-political explanation that is consistent with the substantial variations in policy outcome across different phases of military rule.

In general, we are all aware of the shortcomings of historical statistics. But this may be the moment, as the cliometricians dust off their computers, to take a closer look at one of the more attractive series, the statistics for foreign trade. Assuming that foreign trade figures exist at all and that they are not distorted beyond average by misrepresentation or fraud, the most difficult problems of interpretation are likely to arise over the origin and destination of the trade, the system of valuation of the products traded, and the classifications employed.

Fascination with the history of the South American rubber boom never wanes. Its innate dramatic quality, the extraordinary touches of the bizarre which spice its narrative, and the ironic blend of climax and catastrophe which distinguish almost every aspect of its development have all proved sufficient guarantee against oblivion. Drawn by the curiosity of circumstances such as these, travellers have since penetrated the region to see for themselves the remains of former prosperity, and to marvel upon the strangely assorted flotsam of that great economic bonanza still left littered along the banks by the boom's swiftly retreating tide. A journey along the South American ‘rubber rivers’ is likely to tempt even the most phlegmatic observer to philosophize upon the vagaries of fortune in general—and upon Amazonia's experiences in particular.

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 study of public health policy in Chile uncovers some of the social tensions in that country during the 1880s, and illustrates the fragmentation of the Chilean elite prior to the Revolution of 1891. The Chilean government's controversial and contested public health policies implied the increasing bureaucratic organisation and regulation of society. The justifications offered for these policies by central government officials reveal both the deep roots in Chilean politics of a powerful Executive, and the early linkage between the ‘scientific discourses’ of medical professionals and the bureaucratic centralisation of state power.

Chile's new civilian government, the centre-left Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia, has been strongly praised for its efforts to strengthen the rights of labour and correct Chile's severe social inequalities. After nearly a decade of civilian rule, however, it has become increasingly clear that these efforts have not succeeded. Indeed, one of the defining features of Chile's new democracy is the profound inequality and imbalance of power between capital and labour upon which it has been constructed. This article seeks to explain this outcome and examine its implications for Chile's post-military political and economic order.

Evidence from six Mexican states is analyzed about changes in government organisation and performance arising from decentralisation and the recasting of federalism structures. Spurred by rising pluralism, greater electoral transparency, alternancia, and willingness of the Centre to ‘let go’, a more genuine structure of shared powers is emerging between the executive (governors), the legislature and the judiciary. The government bureaucracy is undergoing modernisation, and governors are seeking to share power with legislatures as a means of sharing the responsibilities of statecraft. Local congresses are exercising greater ‘checks’ and ‘balances’ vis-à-vis the executive branch. Finally, the judiciary is beginning to be reorganised, particularly at the national (Supreme Court) level, where it is starting to develop jurisprudence relating to inter- and intra-governmental relations.

This article examines black criminal agency in the context of drug trafficking and territorial control by the Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Capital Command, PCC), a self-identified criminal organisation in São Paulo's favelas. It argues that black youth's racialised encounters with the police shape their political praxis in the city. Since in the racial imaginary, they are constantly linked to crime and violence, and since their criminalised status justifies mass incarceration and death by the police, criminality appears as a valid category to better understand not only their fate but also their agency. Ethnographic fieldwork carried out in 2009 and 2010 in a hyper-impoverished, predominately black slum community, along with weekly visits to a local detention centre in São Paulo, informs the author's analysis of the PCC's controversial languages of resistance and the gendered and racialised outcomes that emerge from their attempts to fend off the state in such topographies of domination.

By April 1938, Lázaro Cárdenas had altered the course of modern Mexican history. The hacienda system had virtually disappeared to be replaced by smallholdings and by collective and semi-collective ejidos. The church-state quarrel, cause of so much bloodshed in the 1920s, had largely subsided; the Catholic Church had supported the government against the foreign oil companies, even seeking to help the government collect money to pay for the nationalization. Both the nation's agrarian and urban workers had formed powerful, well-organized unions ready and able to defend their members' newly won gains. Most important to subsequent developments, however, was the government's expropriation of the foreign oil companies in March of 1938. The oil companies had defied every twentieth-century Mexican government; nationalization temporarily united Mexicans as never before in the nation's history. Although these accomplishments, especially the land reform and oil expropriation, established Cárdenas's credentials as the most radical of modern Mexican presidents, his subsequent behaviour has made many, especially on the extreme left, question his sincerity.

Starting from an understanding that maps of an entire nation-state territory reflect and regulate state projects and expressions of national identity, rather than providing detailed technical information for decision making, this paper examines the national maps of race/ethnicity produced under Ecuador's state-led multiculturalism. Using national-scale cartography as a means to examine contested processes of rearticulating state, citizen and nation, the paper analyses recent transformations in cartography, nation building and geographical knowledge in Ecuador. Directing a critical analysis towards the ways maps of indigenous populations are produced, circulated, authorised and read provides a distinctive lens by which to explore postcolonial questions of belonging, rights and presence. The paper discusses how, despite the emergence of innovative maps, the plurinational project envisaged by indigenous cartographers remains stymied by a series of material, cultural and postcolonial limitations.

This paper argues that the construction of two opposing ideal types of sustainable development – market-friendly and grassroots development – serves as a useful analytical tool for understanding political conflict over environmentally sensitive policy for the native, or autochthonous, forest sector. Explaining the degree to which a country has mostly market-oriented forest policy or whether it also includes significant elements of the grassroots approach requires an examination of when and how four broad factors affect outcomes: ideas, state institutions, social groups and international conditions. Paired comparisons show that cohesive teams of experts in lead ministries may define legislation and decrees proposed by the executive branch, but whether they become law depends on other factors. These are, in the first instance, the capacity of social groups to forge larger socio-political alliances, and secondly, the presence or absence of direct external intervention in the policy process. Such political dynamics also affect the degrees to which future policy begins to resolve the tension between the two approaches to the sustainable development of forests in Latin America.

Cities around the world are developing new ways of governing risks and vulnerabilities. In the new flood-governance measures, technological risk-prevention is linked to programmes of social resilience and cultural adaptation. By focusing on the catastrophic floods in the city of Villahermosa, Mexico, this article argues that new flood-governance strategies rely on complicated forms of neoliberal governance, in which flood governance is turned into a matter of adaptation and self-responsibilisation, while scant attention is paid to the socio-spatial distribution of vulnerabilities. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in three socially differentiated neighbourhoods of Villahermosa, this article demonstrates how flood-governance strategies and the residents' responses to them vary across the city and how the production of flood risk is connected to the uneven production of urban space. The institutional acts of governing aim to render certain population groups governable, whilst being unable to eradicate dispersed contestation efforts.

The arrival of Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva and the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party, PT) at the helm of the Brazilian federal government in 2003 represented the culmination of a slow and deep-rooted process of party transformation. Attributable partly to the inevitable consequences of the party gradually inserting itself into governmental institutions, and partly to strategic decisions made by the dominant coalition that had controlled the PT since 1995, these transformations significantly changed the organisational features of the party, paving its way to the federal government. This article analyses these processes, and the subsequent changes throughout the Lula government, from an organisational perspective, linking exogenous challenges and the party's genetic model with the strategies consciously adopted by the petista leadership.

This article examines the way in which politics amongst the indigenous population became nationalised between the years 1826 and 1921. The problem of land ownership is presented as the catalyst of a process of public action and apprenticeship combining rebellions, legal battles and patronage agreements. The joint analysis of these actions allows, first, the refutation of the image of the Indians as pre-political, passive, incomprehensible and alien to all that was Western; second, to emphasise the important effect the national discourse had on the response of the Indians; and, third, to show the indigenous interest in taking part in the prevailing national project.

This article discusses the 1857 African porters' strike in Salvador, Brazil. Mobilisation for this unique movement was organised through work groups, based on ethnic affiliation, within which Africans developed a street culture with its own rules, rituals and symbols, all of which were essential to the creation of the group's identity and to pursue resistance in the urban slavery environment. The movement lasted for a week and it may have been the first of its nature in the history of urban Brazil.

This study of organised political violence in north-central Nicaragua from 1926 to 1934 focuses on the infamous Conservative gang leader Anastacio Hernández and on Sandino's rebels. The contexts of a weak central state and local-regional caudillismo are outlined. It is shown that after the 1926–27 civil war. Hernández and others produced ritualised spectacular violence in the service of their Chamorrista caudillo patrons. The language, practices, and characteristics of organised violence are examined. It is argued that Sandino's rebels appropriated these tools of political struggle, and that changes and continuities in the organisation of violence in Nicaraguan history merit greater attention.