On March 14, 2008, Granma started publication of a new section entitled Cartas a la dirección, which printed letters to the editor containing complaints, criticisms, and suggestions. The section rapidly grew in popularity and became the most closely read portion of the Friday paper. This essay engages with three related questions that have theoretical relevance beyond the specific case of Cuba. First, why would the flagship newspaper in a communist regime solicit citizen letters? Second, why would some of these letters be printed? And third, why would news media seek out responses to the letters and comment on unsatisfactory responses? This essay argues that in Cuba, as in other communist regimes, published complaint letters have two functions: the simple printing of select letters facilitates the collective letting off of steam, whereas the publication of responses to the letters by the authorities that were responsible for the infractions outlined in the initial complaint allows the regime to demonstrate that it takes popular input seriously. Therefore, Cartas a la dirección serves as a nonelectoral mechanism of accountability.

Although a large number of democracies have extended political rights to expatriates, relatively little is known about the depths of transnational political engagement. How attentive are expatriates to politics in the country of origin? When expatriates judge leaders “back home,” are their evaluations based on the same ideological considerations as those of citizens in the country of origin? Drawing from original surveys conducted during presidential elections in Mexico (2006) and Colombia (2010), in which both emigrants and citizens within the country were sampled, this study addresses these questions. The results indicate that for each nationality group, living abroad is not associated with a drop in political attentiveness, and time abroad does not in and of itself depress attention to politics from a distance. Moreover, emigrants and individuals in the country of origin do not vary in the extent to which ideological preferences are used to judge presidents, which is a key marker of political sophistication. These results suggest that in the context of Mexican and Colombian politics, living abroad does not markedly diminish the potential for effective democratic engagement.

Twenty-five years have passed since Haiti’s first free and fair elections. In that time, democratization has been slow and there have been many setbacks. This article offers some observations regarding Haiti’s democratization journey by examining how the government introduced a massive industrial park that required the displacement of a large number of farmers. In a departure from historical practice, when faced with opposition, the government deployed its security forces sparingly. Also, the levels of transparency and civil society engagement were not terrible. Although it is insufficient and superficial, movement is in the right direction. In contrast, local government officials may have lost status and legitimacy during the process, which could hinder future democratization. Finally, the footprint of outsiders in this project was massive, confirming how profoundly Haiti’s democratization is transnationalized. This makes tracking its democratic development extremely challenging and yet necessary given the country is not alone in this predicament.

What are the factors behind citizen support for the use of extralegal violence in Latin America? The prevailing argument is that, in countries overwhelmed by skyrocketing levels of criminal violence, people endorse the use of extralegal violence as a way to cope with insecurity. Other scholars believe that support for extralegal violence is the result of state withdrawal and failure. Few empirical studies, however, have tested any of these arguments. In this article, using regional data from the 2012 AmericasBarometer, we examine different explanations regarding citizen support for the utilization of extralegal violence in Latin America and the Caribbean. We developed a multi-item scale that gauges support for different forms of extralegal violence across the Americas, and we hypothesize that support for extralegal violence is higher not only in countries with extreme levels of violence but especially in countries in which people distrust the political system. Results indicate that support for extralegal violence is significantly higher in societies characterized by little support for the existing political system.

El presente artículo analiza cómo una serie de grupos de capitales argentinos —que a fines de la década del 90 estaban por fuera de las cien empresas de mayores ventas— lograron importantes crecimientos de facturación a partir del año 2003. Esto resulta llamativo, teniendo en cuenta que el contexto general estuvo signado, durante buena parte del mismo, por la extranjerización de varios de los grupos de mayor tamaño. Más allá de la alta atención recibida por parte de la prensa, en especial por la vinculación de parte de estos grupos con el gobierno de turno, desde el ámbito académico no existen trabajos que analicen su crecimiento en forma exhaustiva. El objetivo de este artículo es dar cuenta de este fenómeno, identificando y analizando los vectores de crecimiento de los nuevos grupos.

Los resultados de una etnografía multisituada desarrollada en 2015 y 2016 entre los saraguros, indígenas del Ecuador, permiten describir nueve factores que intervienen, con paradójicas relaciones, en el turismo místico andino. El neoincaismo esencialista, la concepción de una naturaleza prístina con lugares energéticos, el auge de la medicina ancestral, la idealización de lo comunitario como opuesto al estilo de vida occidental, el reconocimiento institucional de la interculturalidad y las culturas de los pueblos originarios, la ampliación internacional de las redes de la galaxia neoindia, el sincretismo new age, el capital cultural de los yachaks y la posibilidad de mercantilizar lo espiritual bajo formatos de fast rituals muestran la multidimensionalidad de un tipo de turismo que escapa a su simple categorización como auténtico o simulacro, y nos hace comprender —a la luz de un fenómeno glocal— el lugar en el mundo que ocupan actualmente muchos grupos indígenas en Latinoamérica.

This article reports on the current state of collective migrant organizing for two Indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. Strained relations between migrant organizations and village authorities combine with small active memberships to limit the level and type of fund-raising in support of village development and governance. These findings highlight the difficulties that communities face to maintain effective translocal institutions over time, particularly as first-generation migrants “retire” and a lack of new arrivals hinders organizational renewal.

O artigo visa refletir sobre as fundações raciais do Estado brasileiro através da análise da peça Anjo negro de Nelson Rodrigues. A partir de uma abordagem pós-colonial, argumenta-se que a peça de 1948 pode ser lida como uma crítica à influente visão de “democracia racial” associada à Gilberto Freyre e que seu conteúdo antecipa uma série de ideias posteriormente presentes na obra Pele negra, máscaras brancas ([1952] 2008) de Frantz Fanon. O artigo revela as tensões e violências (re)produzidas pelo Estado no Brasil a partir dos encontros e desencontros entre as múltiplas hierarquias—econômica, patriarcal e racial—exploradas por Nelson Rodrigues ao longo da trama.

Urayoán Noel’s poetry has garnered much attention for its promotion of hemispheric politics and poetics, along with its interrogation of technology’s structural and narrative interventions into diasporic cultures. This article investigates the role of sound in the Puerto Rican poet’s articulation of contemporary struggles against overwhelming hypertechnology. The analysis focuses on three poems: “Lino: Employee of the Month,” from Kool Logic/La lógica kool (2005); “babel o city (el gran concurso),” from Hi-density Politics (2010); and the live-recorded version of “Boringkén,” from Boringkén (2008). Drawing on Aldama’s (2013) concept of poetic estrangement and Dowdy’s (2013) analysis of Latinx poetic critiques of neoliberalism, this article examines how exclusionary soundscapes are built through repressive understandings of sonic modernity, and how countersounds attempt to decolonize those spaces. Noel’s poetry shows how creative voices and the reappropriation of sound technologies can help position the diasporic subject and subvert dominant sonic structures.

Years before Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro announced a “thaw” in US-Cuba relations on December 17, 2014 (17D), Cubans were intensifying ties through the transnational circulation of popular culture. To understand Cuba and its diaspora in the twenty-first century, it is essential that we attend to the transnational networks in place before 17D that continue to shape quotidian life for people on and off the island. I begin in Miami, with the “afterlives” of a comic variety show called Sabadazo—popular on the island during the 1990s—to illustrate how what it means to be Cuban, politically and culturally, has shifted away from the exile generation that arrived in the 1960s and 1970s. I complement this analysis with attention to generational tensions within the diaspora and representations of race and sexuality. I then move to the island to examine el paquete (the package), a terabyte’s worth of mostly foreign media updated and distributed across the island weekly. I contend that the economic and cultural impact of el paquete cannot be fully understood without careful consideration of the role of the Cuban diaspora.

Over the past generation Latin America has experienced high levels of criminal violence associated with extortion, the drug trade, and other criminal rackets. While there has been considerable research into the role of state policy in controlling criminal violence, there has been considerably less investment in analyzing the success of social action to control both police and criminal violence in the high-conflict zones where criminal groups operate. The inadequacy of the existing literature emerges at least in part from the limited data on successful social efforts to control violence in urban areas controlled by organized crime groups. Drawing on over three hundred qualitative interviews conducted in four cities in Latin America and the Caribbean over an extended period of time, this article examines the various strategies used by civic groups to control violent activities on the part of police and criminal groups. The article observes six different forms of social responses to violence and points to the conditions under which these actions emerge.

This article explains why some indigenous communities in Mexico have been able to resist drug cartels’ attempts to take over their local governments, populations, and territories while others have not. While indigenous customary laws and traditions provide communal accountability mechanisms that make it harder for narcos to take control, they are insufficient. Using a paired comparison of two indigenous regions in the highlands of Guerrero and Chihuahua—both ideal zones for drug cultivation and traffic—we show that the communities most able to resist narco conquest are those that have a history of social mobilization, expanding village-level indigenous customary traditions into regional ethnic autonomy regimes. By scaling up local accountability practices regionally and developing translocal networks of cooperation, indigenous movements have been able to construct mechanisms of internal control and external protection that enable communities to deter the narcos from corrupting local authorities, recruiting young men, and establishing criminal governance regimes through force.

Gangs’ territorial control affects the lives of residents in thousands of neighborhoods across Latin America, particularly in northern Central American countries. I argue that gang dominance constrains the ability of neighborhood residents to mobilize politically and consequently resist gang violence through institutionalized channels. Living in gang-controlled neighborhoods results in fewer incentives and opportunities to make political elites accountable for one’s personal safety. Even residents who have already experienced crime firsthand are discouraged from turning to politics as a strategy to change the status quo. My theoretical insights identify mechanisms through which gangs’ neighborhood control affects nonelectoral and electoral participation. To test my hypotheses, I rely on census and public opinion data collected in seventy-one neighborhoods in El Salvador. This article offers the first systematic statistical analysis of the effect of gangs’ territorial control on political participation in the Latin American context. The findings suggest that living under gang rule undermines residents’ right to engage freely in politics in nuanced ways.

This article examines the clandestine connections between participants in the illicit drug trade and members of state security forces to understand how they impact everyday understandings of the law. Drawing on a unique combination of long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a poor, high-crime district in Argentina and wiretapped conversations drawn from a court case involving a drug trafficking group active in the same area, we find that traffickers use illicit relationships to maintain economic control of the territory, and that collusion fosters widespread cynicism about law enforcement among residents. This article expands the literature on the covert relationships between drug trade participants and agents of the state by detailing the inner workings of collusion. Furthermore, it analyzes residents’ perceptions of police complicity as an underexplored source of legal cynicism. Finally, it offers a methodological blueprint of how to access and analyze data that capture state actions usually hidden from public view.

This essay reviews the following work:

The Diary of Heinrich Witt. Edited by Ulrich Mücke. 10 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Pp. ccxx, 7017; incl. 604 images. E-book, open access. ISBN: 9789004307247.

This essay reviews the following work:

Antiracism in Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution. By Devyn Spence Benson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 297. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781469626727.

Revolution within the Revolution: Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, 1952–1962. By Michelle Chase. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Pp. xi + 285. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781469625003.

Revolutionary Cuba: A History. By Luis Martínez-Fernández. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014. Pp. xi + 371. $44.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780813049953.

The Structure of Cuban History: Meanings and Purpose of the Past. By Louis A. Pérez Jr. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. $39.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9781469606927.

Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression. By Margaret Randall. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 221. $23.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822359623.

This essay reviews the following works:

María Izquierdo and Frida Kahlo: Challenging Visions in Modern Mexican Art. By Nancy Deffebach. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 225. $60.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780292772427.

Cosmopolitanism in Mexican Visual Culture. By María Fernández. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014. Pp. x + 438. $60.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780292745353.

The Mobility of Modernism: Art and Criticism in 1920s Latin America. By Harper Montgomery. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017. Pp. xi + 319. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781477312544.

At the Crossroads: Diego Rivera and His Patrons at MoMA, Rockefeller Center, and the Palace of Fine Arts. By Catha Paquette. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017. Pp. xix + 324. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781477311004.

This essay reviews the following works:

Del proceso de paz a la masacre de Alaska: Guatemala 1994–2012. By Ricardo Falla. Al atardecer de la vida … Escritos de Ricardo Falla, SJ, Volume 1. Guatemala: AVANCSO, Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala; IEHR, Instituto de Estudios del Hecho Religioso de la Universidad Rafael Landívar; Editorial Universitaria de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 2013. Pp. xvii + 424. ISBN: 9789929663022.

Cuadros sueltos que prefiguran el siglo XXI: Honduras 1993–2001. By Ricardo Falla. Al atardecer de la vida … Escritos de Ricardo Falla, SJ, Volume 2. Guatemala: AVANCSO, Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala; IEHR, Instituto de Estudios del Hecho Religioso de la Universidad Rafael Landívar, 2014. Pp. xxxi + 448. ISBN: 9789929663046.

Ixcán: el campesino indígena se levanta: Guatemala 1966–1982. By Ricardo Falla. Al atardecer de la vida … Escritos de Ricardo Falla, SJ, Volume 3. Guatemala: AVANCSO, Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala; IEHR, Instituto de Estudios del Hecho Religioso de la Universidad Rafael Landívar; Editorial Universitaria de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 2015. Pp. xxxviii + 600. ISBN: 9789929663053.

Ixcán: Masacres y sobrevivencia: Guatemala 1982. By Ricardo Falla. Al atardecer de la vida … Escritos de Ricardo Falla, SJ, Volume 4 (a and b). Guatemala: AVANCSO, Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala; IEHR, Instituto de Estudios del Hecho Religioso de la Universidad Rafael Landívar; Editorial Universitaria de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 2016. Pp. xxxix + 703. ISBN: 9789929663077.

This essay reviews the following works:

Tell Me Why My Children Died: Rabies, Indigenous Knowledge, and Communicative Justice. By Charles L. Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 303. $26.96 paperback. ISBN: 9780822361244.

Una enfermedad monstruo: Indígenas derribando el cerco de la discriminación en salud. By Charles L. Briggs, Norbelys Gómez, Tirso Gómez, Clara Mantini-Briggs, Conrado Moraleda Izco, and Enrique Moraleda Izco. Buenos Aires: Lugar Editorial, 2015. Pp. 198. $17.71 paperback. ISBN: 9789508925022.

Privatization and the New Medical Pluralism: Shifting Health Care Landscapes in Maya Guatemala. Edited by Anita Chary and Peter Rohloff. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015. Pp. vii + 191. $85.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781498505376.

The Good Life: Aspiration, Dignity, and the Anthropology of Wellbeing. By Edward F. Fischer Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 261. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780804792530.

Of Medicines and Markets: Intellectual Property and Human Rights in the Free Trade Era. By Angelina Snodgrass Godoy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013. Pp. vii + 173. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780804785617.

Tarahumara Medicine: Ethnobotany and Healing among the Rarámuri of Mexico. By Fructuoso Irigoyen-Rascón with Alfonso Paredes. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 383. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780806143620.

This essay reviews the following works:

Slum Health: From the Cell to the Street. Edited by Jason Corburn and Lee Riley. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. Pp. xvii, 315. $34.95, paperback. ISBN: 9780520281073.

Cities from Scratch: Poverty and Informality in Urban Latin America. Edited by Brodwyn Fischer, Bryan McCann, and Javier Auyero. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. 293. $24.95, paperback. ISBN: 9780822355335.

Owners of the Sidewalk: Security and Survival in the Informal City. By Daniel M. Goldstein Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv, 334. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822360452.

Housing and Belonging in Latin America. Edited by Christien Klaufus and Arij Ouweneel. CEDLA Latin American Studies, 105. New York: Berghahn, 2015. Pp. xiii, 330. $120 hardcover. ISBN: 9781782387404.

For a Proper Home: Housing Rights in the Margins of Urban Chile, 1960–2010. By Edward Murphy. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015. Pp. ix, 343. $32.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822963110.