Several scholars have argued that decentralization benefits states and municipalities, granting them more autonomy for managing their budgets and more resources to deliver their services. Others have questioned this assertion, claiming that decentralization makes subnational units more fiscally dependent on central governments. This article argues that the fiscal impact of decentralization must be differentiated across states. It theoretically specifies and empirically demonstrates which states benefit during periods of decentralization and centralization. It argues that powerful presidents who centralize resources have imposed greater costs on more developed and fiscally independent districts (which prefer to administer their own resources and can be serious challengers to presidential power), thus relying mainly on support from less developed and more fiscally dependent provinces, which prefer more redistribution. I present empirical evidence for Argentina (1983-2004), a developing federation with strong governors and high cross-regional inequality, and discuss some implications for comparative studies on the topic.

El artículo analiza la diversidad del campo judaico en Argentina a través de dos proyectos identitarios: la ortodoxia jabadiana y el Proyecto YOK. Dicho análisis permitirá observar las diferencias en lo que concierne a la definición de la identidad en cada uno de los proyectos identitarios y las relaciones entre identidad judía e identidad nacional. A partir del estudio sobre el campo judaico, pretendemos analizar problemáticas sociales vinculadas a la revitalización de lo religioso y a las tensiones entre identidades étnicas, religiosas y nacionales en la era de la globalización.

To understand the momentous transformation in Argentine-Brazilian relations from rivalry to Mercosur, scholars need to analyze negative cases, when rapprochement was attempted unsuccessfully. This article examines the failed 1972 summit between Presidents Alejandro Agustín Lanusse and Emílio Garrastazú Médici, which is poorly explained by existing theories of international relations and overlooked or misinterpreted in many regional histories. I argue, based on research in the Argentine Foreign Ministry Archives, newly declassified US government documents, and a reexamination of published primary sources, that rapprochement failed in 1972 primarily because bureaucratic interests in the armed forces and foreign ministries of both states depended on the continuation of rivalry. Organizational politics, not popular nationalism or presidential diplomatic errors, best explains the persistence of Argentine-Brazilian conflict in the early 1970s. Successful cooperation between rivals therefore may require not only agreement between national leaders but also the support of the state apparatus on both sides.

The tradition of intermediaries negotiating conflicts between Indigenous and Western worlds in Latin America can be traced back to the colonial period. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, semiprofessional or petty lawyers known as tinterillos assumed a seemingly ubiquitous presence in rural communities in Ecuador. Often local elites with some education, tinterillos commanded respect among their largely nonliterate Indigenous neighbors because of their ability to read, write, and handle documents. These intermediaries commonly exploited their privileged position for their own economic, social, and political benefit. Nevertheless, Indigenous peoples came to rely on tinterillos to petition the government and to challenge landholder abuses. On occasion, rather than feeling disempowered or victimized, Indigenous peoples learned to negotiate these relationships to their advantage. Tinterillos provide a convenient medium through which to examine how power relations were negotiated between different cultures and across deep class divides.

Este artículo analiza la forma en que la construcción e institucionalización de las representaciones sociales sobre Tepoztlán, Morelos, México, han influido en la definición de la actividad turística en esta población. Proponemos el concepto de “economía de la experiencia íntima” para analizar las formas de institucionalización que tienen los lugares, las prácticas, los símbolos y las relaciones que al reunirse producen lo que la mayoría de la gente considera como vivencias auténticas, de recreo y confort. El artículo concluye que el turismo es una compleja red de dimensiones y relaciones sociales donde existe una tendencia a la creación de relaciones asimétricas de explotación del trabajo y la cultura.

We describe and benchmark tienditas (in-home convenience-like retail stores) and the tiendita business sector using a large sample of 850 tienditas from Nicaragua and El Salvador. Three research questions concerning tiendita business dynamism, informality, and competitive scope shape our article. In general, we find that tienditas may range from subsistence operations to dynamic business enterprises primarily run by female microentrepreneurs; they typically skirt government oversight; and they compete fiercely in a monopolistically competitive business environment.

This article examines nineteenth-century citations of Silvestre de Balboa Troya y Quesada's Espejo de paciencia (1608, 1838) in Cuban histories and literary anthologies of that period. Although contemporary scholars reference these citations in their study of Espejo, they have not questioned the treatment of Salvador Golomón, the poem's enslaved epic hero, in these texts. Doing so not only elucidates concerns regarding race in Cuban nation building reflected in the trajectory of the nineteenth-century citations of the poem but also places race at the very center of any discussion of Espejo's historical and literary authenticity by contemporary critics and scholars alike.

This article looks into the factors that explain foreign direct investment (FDI) in Brazil by country of origin. We collected a sample of 180 countries with and without FDI in Brazil. We use multiple estimation techniques and controls to isolate the effect of country political risk on outward foreign direct investment and show that countries with lower levels of political risk undertake more FDI in Brazil, and that features of the policy environment of home countries drive the negative relationship between risk and FDI. Furthermore, we show that the aspect of the political and institutional environment that is most likely to drive this negative relation between risk and investment into Brazil is related to the effectiveness of national governments. Our findings broaden the understanding of the puzzling influence of political risk on FDI observed in previous studies, correct for sampling and selection biases, and have substantive implications for policy design to attract FDI.

Latin American urban areas often comprise large low-income former shantytown areas that originated as illegal land captures and that have been consolidated through self-build over thirty years or more. Today most of the original households still live in their homes, often alongside adult children (and grandchildren). As part of the Latin American Housing Network study (www.lahn.utexas.org), this article reports on survey research for Mexico and describes the stability and nature of these shared arrangements and the considerable asset value now represented by these properties. Although these properties are often considered patrimonio para los hijos, many consolidator pioneers are aging, so that the issue of property inheritance has become salient, especially for second-generation adult children and their families. However, fewer than 10 percent of owners have wills, and most will die intestate, often having made verbal inheritance arrangements regarding their “estate.” This augurs the rise of a new round of informality of property holding that bears little relation to the national and state legal provisions that actually govern inheritance succession, whether through wills or via intestacy provisions. The article describes the various legal codes that prevail in Mexico relating to marriage and acquisition and assigning of property upon death, and it offers several case scenarios of interfamilial and intragenerational conflict, especially insofar as these relate to gender and social constructions of inheritance rights among the poor.

Esta nota estudia la territorialidad de las maras en Honduras contribuyendo así a los estudios y debates existentes sobre territorio, espacio y pandillas. La territorialidad se percibe según la noción de Robert Sack (1986) definida como estrategias geográficas de poder con las cuales se pueden influenciar, afectar y controlar relaciones sociales, personas u objetos dentro de un área delimitada. Centrándose en el caso de miembros encarcelados de la Dieciocho en Honduras, este trabajo demuestra que las maras desarrollan estrategias territoriales que desafían el orden territorial de la cárcel y, por otro lado, producen un nuevo espacio social llamado el barrio el cual surge como un centro de reclusión dentro de otro centro de reclusión.

La territorialidad de las maras encarceladas indica la habilidad de desarrollar reacciones y respuestas en distintas situaciones, incluso las políticas represivas de seguridad del estado hondureño; asimismo, es indicador de los altos niveles de violencia y exclusión que viven estos jóvenes marginados.

Carmen Sobalvarro (Nicaragua, 1908–194?), widely known during the 1930s as General Augusto Sandino's “platonic” girlfriend, was the only female poet officially admitted into the Nicaraguan vanguard movement. Despite her significance to Nicaraguan politics and letters, until recently she has been virtually forgotten. In crafting her public persona, Sobalvarro combined traditional and modern stereotypes of womanhood, thus providing Central Americans with a viable model of women in literature and politics. Through her poetry and image, she also shored up the romantic notion of Sandino as a valiant general deserving of international respect and adoration, especially among female followers. In these ways, the poet serves as a significant case study of the cultural anxieties surrounding changing gender roles upon the arrival of the “modern” woman and a growing women's movement in Nicaragua.

This study evaluates whether 853 municipalities of Minas Gerais have developed one specific strategy of electronic government. We searched for municipalities that have websites for the executive branch, relating this information to a number of secondary data. These data include variables on the Municipal Human Development Index (HDI-M), municipal budgetary revenues, year of founding of municipalities, the mayor's party affiliation, and a public policy initiative related to the creation of municipal executive branch websites. This analysis was performed to develop descriptive statistics among the variables collected. In addition to exploring descriptive analysis, we attempted to determine statistical models that explain the existence of websites for municipal executives. This allowed us to determine whether municipalities that were established earlier than others, have the highest HDI-M, and have larger budgets are also more likely to have websites. The results indicate that older municipalities, as well as those with higher HDI-M and elevated budgetary revenues, are more likely to have websites. A mayor's party affiliation indicates that municipalities administered by the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT, the center-left-wing party) are more likely to have websites than municipalities governed by the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, or PSDB, the center-right-wing party). Furthermore, municipalities that use the state government program Integraminas (Connect Minas) are less likely to have their own websites, which is an indication that these locations are using policy resources to communicate electronically with the population. Thus, newly founded municipalities with low HDI-M, with low budgetary revenue, and administered by center-right-wing parties may benefit from public policies that encourage greater transparency in the communication of municipal executives with their population.

This research note provides a preliminary discussion of changing agricultural and food procurement strategies in a smallholder farming community in Piribebuy District, Paraguay. Although considerable attention has been paid to the contemporary problems of soy agriculture in Paraguay, it is also important to engage with the experiences of smallholders who are not involved in or affected by soy cultivation, as this highlights farmers' diverse everyday experiences and their agricultural priorities. We consider three issues that have emerged as key to farmer agricultural decision making in this community: farmer perceptions of environmental changes, processes of dietary delocalization via the movement of food from urban centers to rural communities, and the intersection of labor issues and aging farmers.

This article examines the sources of economic growth for a group of Latin American countries in relation to their export performance in China. The analytical framework is based on an extended normalized quadratic profit function. The econometric results confirm that a favorable export record with China represents a positive source of growth for Latin America. However, it also creates long-run dependability conditions in terms of reduced prices and thinner profits that weaken its growth capacity. Latin American countries must seek product diversification away from their current commodity base and aggressively climb up the value chain to remain competitive worldwide.

Job-market discrimination research in the United States and Europe measures discrimination by a majority against racial minorities, discrimination that stems from historical patterns of inequality and privilege. Chilean researchers have applied these models to study class-based discrimination, finding some evidence to support its existence. Their innovative methods make race as well as class visible, and contradictions in their work show racial differences among Chileans. This research note highlights the interesting research from a new generation of labor economists who have simultaneously pushed the sanctioned limits of social debate and reaffirmed dominant explanations of inequality. Critical race theory is useful for making sense of the contradictions in their work and, it is argued, can improve the quality of Chilean social science research so as to reach a more accurate and self-reflective understanding of the sources and effects of inequality in Chile.

This research note provides historical context for the creation of Brazil's labor judiciary and tells the story of an innovative partnership forged between the archive of Pernambuco's regional labor tribunal and the Federal University of Pernambuco. It also engages methodological questions about the use of these labor court cases, reviewing some of the scholarly literature based on these sources and describing some research projects under way. Pernambuco has powerful historical links to the sugarcane industry, and because the history of labor in this industry is the terrain of our work, this note pays particular attention to the relevance of labor court cases for studying Pernambuco's sugarcane region.

La necesidad de mayor transparencia en las organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG) ha llevado al propio sector a elaborar mecanismos de rendición de cuentas denominados mecanismos de autorregulación. Esta información debe estar al alcance público siendo Internet uno de los medios de comunicación más relevantes. En este contexto, el presente trabajo pretende, en primer lugar, ofrecer una comparación de las características de los mecanismos de autorregulación desarrollados por las ONG autorreguladoras de Latinoamérica con las de Estados Unidos y Europa; en segundo lugar, realizar un análisis comparativo del nivel de exigencia informativa en los mecanismos de autorregulación de tales ámbitos geográficos; y, en tercer lugar, el análisis empírico de factores que influyen en la demanda de transparencia informativa. Los principales resultados muestran que existen divergencias entre las ONG autorreguladoras estudiadas en cuanto al nivel de control de los mecanismos de autorregulación y ala exigencia informativa sobre el buen gobierno de la organización. El factor experiencia en la autorregulación es el aspecto que más influye en la demanda de transparencia.