What happens when scientists, dedicated to basic scientific research, are called forth to participate in politically fraught scenarios? We explore this question through a qualitative study of the intimate experiences of scientists who developed the first Argentine National Glacier Inventory (2010–2018). This inventory was entrusted to IANIGLA, a state-funded scientific institute. It arose from the world’s first glacier protection law, drafted to protect all glacier and periglacial environments as hydrological reserves as mining megaprojects encroached on them. This article examines the failed attempts to turn periglacial environments into “governable objects” (Hellgren 2022). Interviews and an auto-ethnography among scientists involved reveal that these failures can be attributed to unresolved tensions in upscaling and downscaling practices that are needed to simultaneously produce world-class climate science and locally relevant policy science. The failure to anticipate or resolve those tensions, in the context of grassroots opposition to mining, undermined trust in science and government, pointing to the local limits of global climate science.

El Consejo Comunitario Eladio Ariza, en los Montes de María, concibe su territorio como un espacio de vida que preserva sus costumbres afrodescendientes y prácticas colectivas. Como autoridad étnica, organiza y regula el uso del territorio, priorizando lo comunitario. Sin embargo, su territorialidad ha sido impactada por políticas estatales de ordenamiento que, lejos de conciliar con las visiones locales, han generado tensiones entre las lógicas comunitarias y estatales. A ello se suman las consecuencias del conflicto armado interno y las presiones territoriales derivadas de planes de desarrollo que no corresponden a su visión propia. El Programa de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial (PDET), surgido del Acuerdo de Paz, representó una esperanza de transformación, pero no se ha implementado en su totalidad. Así, el territorio de Eladio Ariza se ha visto reconfigurado por estas dinámicas externas, consolidando “territorios de diferencia” donde confluyen intereses y visiones contrastantes.

This article traces the history of how two generations of US archaeologists navigated their relationship with the Guatemalan government, from the Jorge Ubico dictatorship in the 1930s through the democratic opening of the 1940s and 1950s and the subsequent CIA-sponsored coup. Critiques of modern archaeology have focused on the discipline’s history of ideological and material collusion with different projects of US and European imperialism in the Global South. While the archaeologists discussed here benefited from US hegemony in the region, their own correspondence reflects an ambivalent relationship to formal frameworks of international law and a desire to function as autonomous nonstate actors. Rather than reflecting the political context of a given moment, the archaeologists’ behavior was often determined by a generations-old professional culture based on pragmatism and collective entitlement to the control of antiquities.

This article is an environmental history of Anaconda Copper Company’s disposal of hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic waste from its Potrerillos and El Salvador mines into Chile’s Río Salado and Bahía de Chañaral. First, it uncovers a long history of disputes between copper companies and workers who panned the river for tailings. This early water war in Chile was shaped by competing understandings of water’s legal status. While workers claimed rights under the water law’s definition of water as a bien nacional de uso común, mining companies invoked the mining code and contended that the river’s water and waste were private property under civil law. Mining companies claimed rivers’ water by treating rivers in legal terms as mines and property of the state, bienes fiscales, that could be conceded as private property. They argued that human engineering of rivers in dams and canals, and through pollution, made rivers into a commodity and a form of property akin to subsoil minerals. Second, the article describes how, during the social reformist government of Eduardo Frei (1964–1970) and the revolutionary government of Salvador Allende (1970–1973), the state asserted control over Chile’s waterways while balancing centralized state management of water in the name of development with local users’ claims of long-standing riparian use rights. Third, the article traces the long history of the state and mining companies treating water as an economic commodity, often superseding local use rights, and argues that this history built the foundation for the later privatization of water during the Pinochet dictatorship. The article demonstrates that the privatization of water in Chile under Pinochet had its origins in the resolution of the tension between water and civil law in favor of extending property rights to water and building as a subsidy to transnational mining companies. This meant rolling back state management of rivers and often eroding local users’ water rights. Finally, the article concludes by examining the town of Chañaral’s successful 1987 lawsuit against the El Salvador mine to win an injunction against further pollution of the Salado as part of a moment of broader Latin American “environmental constitutionalism” during the 1980s. While this legal victory reflected a significant change in environmental law and an emergent environmentalist movement in Chile and across Latin America, it struck a blow to hundreds of workers who depended on extracting tailings from the river for their livelihood and who responded with unsuccessful protests.

This article focuses on how Peruvian elites mobilized representations of masculinities as part of discourses on national progress and as essential elements in their assertions of hierarchy. By addressing intellectual elites’ discourses in two cultural magazines, El Perú Ilustrado and Variedades, and various literary works during the 1884–1912 period, the article presents three arguments. First, elites’ diagnosis of the country’s backwardness emphasized Peruvian men’s deficient masculinity, which included the elites’ own white creole masculinity. Thus, intellectual elites placed great importance on catching up with European “masculine” traits as pathways to progress and modernization. Second, discourses on masculinity were central elements by which elites asserted their legitimacy. Elites mobilized discourses on masculinity selectively—either as self-restraint or as physical prowess—to reinforce their hierarchical status vis-à-vis subaltern men. Third, intergenerational conflicts between the elites’ younger and older cohorts also transpired in terms of masculinity. Each generation depicted the other as embodying abject effeminacy. As a whole, by incorporating the analytical lens of masculinity, the article provides new insights into the construction of elites’ identities and of long-standing hierarchies in Latin America.

This article examines the diplomatic strategies of Revolutionary Guatemala between 1944 and 1951, situating them within the broader continental realignments that occurred at the onset of the Cold War. Contrary to prevailing interpretations that emphasize covert warfare or ideological rhetoric, it argues that Guatemala’s revolutionary governments pursued a deliberate, multilateral diplomatic agenda aimed at reshaping inter-American relations. Drawing on research in multiple archives in the Americas and Europe, the article demonstrates how Guatemala engaged in initiatives such as the nonrecognition of coup regimes, support for the Larreta Doctrine, and campaigns against Francoist Spain while forging alliances with Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and Southern Cone democracies. These efforts reveal both the agency and the limitations of states seeking to promote democracy amid shifting geopolitical pressures. By reframing Guatemala’s role, the article contributes to ongoing debates about Latin American agency, the contested nature of early Cold War alignments, and the evolution of inter-American diplomacy.

This essay reviews the following films:

Cuando las aguas se juntan. Dir. Margarita Martínez Escallón. Prod. La Retratista. Colombia, 2023. 85 minutes. Distributed by Cineplex.

Cantos que inundan el río. Dir. Luckas Perro (also known as Germán Arango Rendón). Prod. Pasolini en Medellín. Colombia, 2022. 72 minutes. Distributed by Briosa Films.

Del otro lado. Dir. Iván Guarnizo. Prod. Gusano Films, Salon Indien Films, RTVC Play. Colombia-Spain, 2021. 83 minutes. Distributed by DOC:CO Agencia de Promoción y Distribución.

In 2019 and 2022, Indigenous leaders mobilized rural comunas in general strikes that forced the national government of Ecuador to negotiate the terms of newly introduced fiscal and policy measures. These mobilizations came despite long-term demographic decline in these same rural comunas. Further, the ministries charged with granting this authority to comunas today exercise little oversight. Why, then, has the comuna persisted as the preferred form of local organization amid widespread shifts to postagrarian ways of life? We have approached this problem through field research in over a dozen rural comunas, a review of comuna registrations, interviews with comuna leadership, and intergenerational dialogues among comuna members. In practical terms, we find comuna leadership consolidating an agenda focused on infrastructure development in the place of activism for land or the pursuit of agricultural investments. At the same time, it is through rituals of registration and management that local authorities not only find legitimacy but also secure a measure of “cultural autonomy” insofar as comuna members associate the disciplined fulfillment of procedures with the historical expansion of social rights. As the younger generation pursues nonagrarian careers, older comuna members underscore the mutuality of comuna life and lay out a moral purpose and a pathway that in effect centers state procedure as essential for indigenous autonomy.

Este artículo analiza los impactos de la expansión de grandes empresas forestales en el Alto Paraná, área central de esta producción en Argentina. Desde fines del siglo XX, el ingreso de capitales concentrados transformó la actividad, aumentando la integración vertical, desplazando productores y reorganizando regímenes laborales. El foco está en las condiciones de reproducción social de trabajadores sin tierra y pequeños productores con acceso limitado a medios de producción. En base a un estudio de caso en Puerto Piray (Misiones), se exploran sus estrategias laborales desde la categoría de “clases de trabajo”. Se argumenta que la diversidad de formas de trabajo y de actividades desplegadas para la reproducción de estas clases l encuentra un eje estructurador en la explotación del trabajo de las mujeres, en tanto son ellas quienes abarcan el continuo entre el trabajo reproductivo y el productivo.

El presente ensayo examina los modos en que la novela Cadáver exquisito (2017), de la escritora argentina Agustina Bazterrica, habita y desafía la lógica capitalista de la cadena de montaje a través de estrategias literarias que a la vez encarnan y cuestionan el neoliberalismo exacerbado. El trabajo inicia con el rastreo de una propuesta teórico-crítica sobre trayectos literarios de la carne (Giorgi 2014) para luego analizar cómo el texto de Bazterrica dialoga con los conceptos de necroescritura (Rivera Garza 2013), mal de archivo (Derrida 1997) y montaje literario (Benjamin 2004a, 2004b). Este abordaje revela el modo en que diversas estrategias literarias —incluyendo el ensamblaje de escenas desmembradas, el uso del collage verbal, la función performativa del lenguaje, el desplazamiento metafórico-metonímico de las palabras y la tensión generada por eufemismos— socavan la práctica mecanicista y mercantilizante de la producción en serie de cuerpos y lenguajes. El artículo cuestiona, así, la interpretación de Cadáver exquisito como alegoría necropolítica, explorándola, en cambio, como dispositivo estético-político que tensiona las relaciones entre carne y palabra, interrumpiendo los principios rectores de acumulación y violencia que sustentan al sistema capitalista.

A Primeira República (1889–1930) é considerada um divisor de águas da história cultural brasileira graças ao modernismo. No entanto, muito do que foi escrito sobre o período deriva diretamente das concepções nacionalistas dos modernistas, que estabeleceram o paradigma da identidade nacional que ainda hoje é válido, o que leva à desconsideração dos trabalhos da geração que lhes é anterior. O objetivo deste artigo é problematizar emergência de um campo artístico autônomo no Brasil a partir de uma análise das tomadas de posição dos atores da época frente ao par “nacionalismo” e “cosmopolitismo”. O argumento central é que esse período marca o começo da ascensão de um regime artístico moderno no Brasil, que tem como base a ideia de autonomização de campo profissional, que se realiza em um espaço artístico e literário nacional secundário dentro do espaço mundial. Assim, para se autonomizar e proclamar sua liberdade estética, as artes no Brasil devem se libertar não somente da dominação política, mas também da dominação internacional.

Indigenous peoples, rural and peasant populations, and Afro-descendants have increasingly disputed mining and other extractive ventures in the territories they inhabit in various regions of Latin America. This article introduces an open-access digital and bilingual curated repository of data that compiles legal and legal-like actions by various actors in the context of paradigmatic conflicts over mining in Central America and Mexico. It situates the relevance of this digital resource against the background of the increasing global recourse to law in socioenvironmental conflicts—a tendency that may be defined as the juridification of environmental politics. The article also places the database in relation to key debates in digital humanities and discusses potential uses as well as future developments and challenges to expanding and improving such a resource.

This article examines the adverse impact of the La Niña phenomenon in Argentina from 1988 to 1989 on the country’s economy, which led to a profound crisis. The severe drought significantly affected agricultural exports, exacerbating poverty and inflation. The resulting economic downturn was triggered in part by the drought and precipitated a political crisis, ultimately resulting in the resignation of President Alfonsín and paving the way for the election of Carlos Menem as Argentina’s president. This study sheds light on the intricate interplay between climatic events, economic performance, and political dynamics, highlighting the vulnerability of countries heavily reliant on agriculture and emphasizing the need for comprehensive strategies to mitigate the socioeconomic consequences of natural disasters.

Los estudios sobre las acciones colectivas de las trabajadoras sexuales se han centrado principalmente en la esfera pública, abordando procesos de organización sindical, movimientos sociales y articulación de redes para la reivindicación de sus derechos. Sin embargo, han prestado escasa atención a las acciones que les permiten sobrellevar los agravios en su contexto laboral. Este estudio tiene como objetivo comprender las acciones colectivas cotidianas de protesta de las trabajadoras sexuales en entornos laborales estigmatizados por la norma de género. Para ello, realizamos una etnografía etnometodológica feminista durante dieciocho meses en el norte de Chile, donde observamos diversos escenarios del trabajo sexual y realizamos dieciocho entrevistas en profundidad. Concluimos que las trabajadoras sexuales producen acciones colectivas de protesta situadas y efímeras, mediante las cuales buscan restituir, aunque precariamente, el equilibrio de poder en sus escenarios laborales, y que relegan la posibilidad de impugnar directamente el orden social debido al costo que significaría en sus vidas.