Although the study of populism has traditionally been the domain of Latin Americanists, research here has become increasingly comparative. One of the most important payoffs of this comparative work is conceptual. Rather than defining populism in structuralist, economic, or political-strategic terms, a growing number of scholars around the world are using an ideational conceptualization that draws heavily from earlier discursive theories. By employing the ideational approach, scholars have been able to provide empirical measures of populist discourse. In this article we explain and show the advantages of this ideational approach to a Latin American audience by presenting a new historical dataset measuring the discourse of Argentine, Chilean, and Peruvian presidents across the twentieth century. Our main intent is to clarify the ideational approach as well as to enliven the conceptual debate. While we are critical of alternative definitions, we acknowledge and reassess their theoretical insights.

Latin America’s largest federations have significantly reduced their levels of income inequality in recent years, perhaps reflecting a structural change toward egalitarianism. However, we argue that the political geography of federalism in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico strongly shapes preferences against centralized redistribution likely to promote equity in the long term. While federalism does not necessary lead to lower redistribution in theory, the geographic spread of income and malapportioned political institutions limit egalitarianism in these nations. These dynamics help explain why fiscal structures are distinct in Latin American federations as compared to federations in high-income countries. First, we show that the territorial structure of inequality and malapportionment are associated with lower redistributive effort in the global context and that the Latin American federations have extreme values for both variables. Second, using a new data set of income distributions within and across Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico over time, we demonstrate that the conditions that favor fiscal transfers from the national to subnational governments are consistently strong, but conditions are rarely favorable for centralized policies to equilibrate national income. Unequal income patterns are reinforced by legislative malapportionment, which encourages interregional transfers to regions and limits the political voice of more populated and unequal regions that would benefit from centralized redistribution.

Paid domestic workers represent a historically discriminated-against group comprising mostly ethnically marginalized, resource-poor migrant women. In twenty-first-century Peru, social and labor rights have not improved significantly for those in the sector despite more than a decade of sustained economic growth that took off in 2002 and lasted until 2014. Though the present national trend suggests that the absolute number of workers in this sector is dropping and that the tendency of workers to “live in” with their employers is reversing (trends that might signal improved working conditions for those in the sector), significant gaps still exist between the rights of domestic workers as compared to other workers. This article analyzes the intersectionality of gender, ethnicity and/or migration status, and class as one possible explanation for the continued vulnerability of paid domestic workers. We examine statistical information on the present situation in Peru, including a trends analysis of the National Household Survey from 2004 to 2013, and share the results of our qualitative research on the sector for the same period. We conclude with recommendations for future studies.

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la dinámica de los procesos de segregación residencial y las desigualdades económicas en la ciudad de Montevideo desde los años 90 hasta la primera década y media de los 2000. En Montevideo en las últimas dos décadas se han registrado avances significativos en la reducción de las desigualdades económicas, a pesar de lo cual, las desigualdades en el espacio urbano no han disminuido en igual medida. Se elabora una metodología de construcción de índices e indicadores cuantitativos de desigualdad y pobreza a través de fuentes estadísticas oficiales (encuestas nacionales a hogares). La evolución de estos indicadores entre los años 1996 y 2015 se observa y compara para diferentes regiones de la ciudad. Éstas surgen de un índice de segregación residencial a partir de información socioeconómica de los hogares a nivel de segmento censal, para esto se utiliza como fuente los censos de población, vivienda y hogares del año 1996. Los principales, indicadores de desigualdad económica considerados son el índice de Gini, la incidencia de la pobreza y los índices de entropía generalizada; también se ensaya un análisis comparativo del valor de la vivienda a nivel de barrios en Montevideo para los años 1996 y 2015 con el fin de identificar áreas que han depreciado o apreciado su valor.

The study developed by Stock and Watson (1991) has served as a catalyst for the construction of monthly indicators of economic activity. However, its application has been focused on national statistics. In this article we develop a new empirical strategy of three steps to build regional economic indicators on a monthly basis that can be replicated in provinces or municipalities in Latin America. We apply this empirical strategy to develop the Monthly Indicator of Economic Activity (in Spanish, IMAE) for one of the main regions of Colombia: Valle del Cauca.

This article seeks to shift the framework of decades-long debates on the nature and significance of machismo, debunking the commonly held notion that the word describes a primordial Iberian and Ibero-American phenomenon. I trace the emergence of machismo as an English-language term, arguing that a tradition of unself-consciously ethnocentric scholarship in the 1940s and 1950s enabled the word’s entrance, by the 1960s, into popular sources. In fact, machismo was rather a neologism in Spanish, but midcentury US scholarship presumed the category’s empirical validity and applied to it to perceived problems in the “Latin” world. Much of machismo’s linguistic purchase—the reason it has become a global shorthand for hypermasculinity—stemmed from mid to late twentieth-century anxieties about hemispheric security, the Cold War, immigration, and overpopulation, particularly vis-à-vis the United States’ near neighbors, Mexico and Puerto Rico. I have sought out the word’s earliest appearances in various English-language media (books, scholarly articles, newspapers, magazines, and television) and explained how it has long escaped scrutiny as a construct in and of itself. As a result, machismo has resisted the most earnest and well-intentioned of challenges to its scholarly primacy and remains a pathologizing point of departure in approaches to Latin American gender systems.

This article explores Latin American genomic studies of mestizaje and the way mestizaje’s inherent contradiction between equality and hierarchy—a contradiction typical of liberalism—is managed in genomics. In Latin America, ideologies and practices of mestizaje may be seen as an antidote to hierarchies of race and class, but also as a terrain for the enactment of these hierarchies. Mestizaje mediates this contradiction between equality and hierarchy first by deploying the idea of sexual intimacy and family kinship across racial difference, and second by representing blackness and indigeneity as spatially peripheral and temporally backward-looking, thus naturalizing them as other. Multiculturalism can be seen as a recent variant on these themes, as well as a departure from them. Recent genomics research in Latin America strongly reiterates these ideas, while also adding some new twists. Despite its apparent connection with progressive politics and policies (antiracism, better health for all, protection of human rights for victims of oppression), genomics here appears as a mainly conservative force.

Israel’s historical relationships with Argentina, Nicaragua, and Guatemala during the Cold War in the 1980s provides one context for understanding the parameters of Israeli foreign policy in the region. These relationships allied Israel with right-wing military regimes suppressing a variety of subversive others in Argentina and Guatemala, and also a right-wing counterinsurgency in Nicaragua. In the post–Cold War era, the Colombian case is distinctive because conflict is shaped by a number of different armed actors, including the state, right-wing paramilitaries, left-wing insurgents, and the narcotics industries. Israel’s role in the complex Colombian milieu involves relationships with both the state and the parastate, both the military and the paramilitaries. The Israeli and Colombian states are substantively and conceptually intertwined around a common obsession with national security and armed conflict with subversive others of many types. I ask whether a special relationship sutures Israel to Colombia linked to the expanding interventions of paramilitaries and parastate apparatuses. This article provides historical and analytic contexts to elaborate the Colombia-Israel relationship, toward a future in which “peace” may play an important role.

This article examines two approaches to postdictatorship cinema: trauma theory, which has been especially popular in reading this corpus, and semiotics, which has regained popularity in film analysis in general but is not often employed when analyzing postdictatorship films. The article claims that, though highly productive in the 1990s, trauma theory has become less fruitful after decades of continuous scholarship and after the emergence of administrations that have made the representation of the dictatorship the center of their public policies, such as kirchnerismo in Argentina (2003–2015). While trauma theory yields ahistorical analyses, a semiotic approach that takes into account how indexical, iconic, and symbolic signs merge in the cinematic field allows for historical interpretations that are more adequate for reading postdictatorship films, especially after 2003. The article first outlines the main tenets of the two approaches (trauma theory and semiotics), then assesses their suitability for historical interpretation via a brief analysis of Andrés no quiere dormir la siesta, a 2009 Argentine film on the country’s last dictatorship.

Este artículo analiza cómo la textualidad de la novela Bolivia construcciones, del argentino Sergio Di Nucci (seudónimo Bruno Morales), trae a colación el debate en torno al concepto de plagio, así como apunta a la productividad de la reescritura y de la copia en la literatura contemporánea y, además, pone en tela de juicio ciertos supuestos modernos de la literatura y la crítica, como los conceptos de originalidad y autor, en tanto fundamentos creativos. Asimismo, se investigan los procesos de opacidad del lenguaje en la narrativa de la novela, relacionados con los cambios de la enunciación en el evento discursivo promovido por Di Nucci. Se sostiene que la querella en torno al plagio en su textualidad se asocia a la ambivalencia de mecanismos escriturales y de lectura que ponen la novela de Di Nucci al tanto de los desplazamientos y la indecidibilidad frecuentes en las artes del presente.

This essay reviews the following works:

The Admirable Adventures and Strange Fortunes of Master Anthony Knivet: An English Pirate in Sixteenth-Century Brazil. Edited by Vivien Kogut Lessa de Sá. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. x + 230. $25.19 paper. ISBN: 9781107463004.

Privateering, Piracy, and British Policy in Spanish America, 1810–1830. By Matthew McCarthy. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2013. Pp. vi + 184. $115.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781843838616.

Monsters by Trade: Slave Traffickers in Modern Spanish Literature and Culture. By Lisa Surwillo. Stanford, CA: Sanford University Press, 2014. Pp. vii + 251. $55.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780804788793.

Amistad: A Hidden Network of Slavers and Merchants. By Michael Zeuske. Translated from the German by Steven Rendall. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2015. Pp. vii + 267. $24.10 paper. ISBN: 9781558765931.

This essay reviews the following works:

Afro-Latin America: Black Lives, 1600–2000. By George Reid Andrews. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. i + 123. $24.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780674737594.

From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in the Río de la Plata. By Alex Borucki. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 306. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9780826351807.

Conceiving Freedom: Women of Color, Gender, and the Abolition of Slavery in Havana and Rio de Janeiro. By Camillia Cowling. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 326. $36.95 paper. ISBN: 9781469610887.

Crossroads of Freedom: Slaves and Freed People in Bahia, Brazil, 1870–1910. By Walter Fraga. Translated and with an introduction by Mary Ann Mahony. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2016. Pp. vii + 313. $26.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822360902.

The Work of Recognition: Caribbean Colombia and the Postemancipation Struggle for Citizenship. By Jason McGraw. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. xii + 328. $34.95 paper. ISBN: 9781469617862.

Mestizo Genomics: Race Mixture, Nation, and Science in Latin America. Edited by Peter Wade, Carlos López Beltrán, Eduardo Restrepo, and Ventura Santos. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. vii + 304. $25.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822356592.

This essay reviews the following works:

Authoritarian El Salvador: Politics and the Origins of the Military Regimes, 1880–1940. By Erik Ching. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 496. $55.00 paper. ISBN: 9780268023751.

The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian Atlantic World: The Impact of the Cádiz Constitution of 1812. Edited by Scott Eastman and Natalia Sobrevilla Perea. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 320. $64.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780817318567.

Armies, Politics, and Revolution: Chile, 1808–1826. By Juan Luis Ossa Santa Cruz. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 288. ₤75.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781781381328.

The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. By James E. Sanders. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 352. $25.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822357803.

This essay reviews the following works:

Constitutional Courts and Deliberative Democracy. By Conrado Hübner Mendes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. viii + 272. $42.50 paper. ISBN: 9780198759454.

Crafting Courts in New Democracies: The Politics of Subnational Judicial Reform in Brazil and Mexico. By Matthew C. Ingram. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. xxv + 365. $110.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781107117327.

Making Constitutions: Presidents, Parties, and Institutional Choice in Latin America. By Gabriel L. Negretto. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xxii + 283. $44.99 paper. ISBN: 9781107670983.

Primer Informe Estado de la Justicia. By Programa Estado de la Nación en Desarrollo Humano Sostenible (Costa Rica). San Jose, Costa Rica: PEN, 2015. www.estadonacion.or.cr/justicia.

Constitutional Courts as Mediators: Armed Conflict, Civil-Military Relations, and the Rule of Law in Latin America. By Julio Ríos-Figueroa. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xv + 238. $110.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781107079786.

This essay reviews the following works:

Chávez’s Legacy: The Transformation from Democracy to a Mafia State. By Ari Chaplin. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2014. Pp. vii + 230. $35.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780761862659.

Dragon in the Tropics: Venezuela and the Legacy of Hugo Chávez, 2nd ed. By Javier Corrales and Mark Penfold. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 237. $27.00 paper. ISBN: 9780815725930.

Poder, petróleo y pobreza. By José Antonio Gil Yepes. Caracas: Libros Marcadores, 2015. Pp. 367. Paper. ISBN: 9789804080395.

Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know. By Miguel Tinker Salas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xi + 241. $16.95 paper. ISBN: 9780199783281.

We Are the State! Barrio Activism in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. By Cristobal Valencia. Tucson: University of the Arizona Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 229. $55.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780816531561.

Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela. By Alejandro Velasco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 344. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9780520283329.

This essay reviews the following works:

Faith and Joy: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Priest. By Fernando Cardenal, S. J. Translated and edited by Kathy McBride and Mark Lester. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015. Pp. xxvi + 288. $28.00 paper. ISBN: 9781626981423.

Nicaragua and the Politics of Utopia: Development and Culture in the Modern State. By Daniel Chávez. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2015. Pp. x + 376. $65.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780826520470.

Sandino’s Nation: Ernesto Cardenal and Sergio Ramírez Writing Nicaragua, 1940–2012. By Stephen Henighan. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014. Pp. v + 776. $33.00 paper. ISBN: 9780773543157.

The Awakening Coast: An Anthology of Moravian Writing from Mosquitia and Eastern Nicaragua, 1849–1899. Edited, translated, and annotated by Karl Offen and Terry Rugeley. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014. Pp. viii + 448. $75.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780803248960.

This essay reviews the following works:

Spectacular Mexico: Design, Propaganda, and the 1968 Olympics. By Luis M. Castañeda. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 293. $35.00 paper. ISBN: 9780816690794.

Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico. By Ben Fallaw. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Pp. xx + 329. $27.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822353379.

Deco Body, Deco City: Female Spectacle and Modernity in Mexico City, 1900–1939. By Ageeth Sluis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 396. $35.00 paper. ISBN: 9780803293823.

Portrait of a Young Painter: Pepe Zuñiga and Mexico City’s Rebel Generation. By Mary Kay Vaughan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 279. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822357810.