In spite of important recent work on the history of technology and the dynamics of technological change in Latin America, the literature in this field remains relatively undeveloped. In part, this is due to a relative scarcity of available sources for conducting research. This research note argues that national patent records are an important and untapped source for a wide range of studies on technology and technological change. The research note announces the creation of major new comprehensive databases of patent records in several Latin American countries, part of a larger, ongoing project to compile and make publically accessible patent records across the region. We also provide an introduction to the history of patents in Latin America, followed by a discussion of both the use (and misuse) of patents as historical evidence and recent advances in collecting and using patent evidence in Latin America.

Since the 1980s, liberalized and newly stable markets have helped usher in an unprecedented mining boom across the Latin American region. However, despite the fact that this boom contributes to notable economic growth, protests in opposition to the expansion and practices of mining companies have also grown, often with violent results. How protests are policed matters, but more important for democracy is how state actors respond when violence is employed. We examine two instances of police repression of mining protests: one in Cajamarca, Peru, and the other in Catamarca, Argentina. We argue that, despite significant differences in context, there are important similarities in state discourse between countries. In particular, a vocabulary of protester wrongdoing and calls for a remedy of “dialogue” are employed in both cases as a way to facilitate the continuation and expansion of both mining and the repression of protests.

This essay reviews the following works:

Sports and Nationalism in Latin/o America. Edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste, Robert McKee Irwin, and Juan Poblete. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Pp. xiii + 307. $95.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781137487186.

Muscling in on New Worlds: Jews, Sport, and the Making of the Americas. Edited by Raanan Rein and David M. K. Sheinin. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 2014. Pp. x + 196. $135.00 cloth. ISBN: 9789004284487.

Sports Culture in Latin American History. Edited by David M. K. Sheinin. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 239. $25.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822963370.

The Sovereign Colony: Olympic Sport, National Identity, and International Politics in Puerto Rico. By Antonio Sotomayor. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Pp. xix + 360. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780803278813.

This essay reviews the following works:

Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy. By Richard E. Feinberg. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 264. $22.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780815727675.

Miradas a la economía cubana: Análisis del sector no estatal. Edited by Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva and Ricardo Torres. La Habana: Editorial Caminos, 2015. Pp. 163. $5, paper. ISBN: 9789593031080.

Entrepreneurial Cuba: The Changing Policy Landscape. By Archibald R. M. Ritter and Ted A. Henken. Boulder, CO: First Forum Press, 2015. Pp. xiv + 374. $79.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781626371637.

Retos para la equidad social en el proceso de actualización del modelo económico cubano. Edited by María del Carmen Zavala et al. La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 2015. Pp. vi + 362. $20 paper. ISBN: 9789590616105.

El artículo analiza la elección presidencial de 1964 en Chile. Dicha elección fue protagonizada por dos candidaturas reformistas, encabezadas por Eduardo Frei Montalva, representante de la Democracia Cristiana, y por Salvador Allende, representante de la coalición de partidos de izquierda Frente de Acción Popular. Mediante la documentación de diferentes instancias de elaboración programática participativa y un análisis de la estrategia electoral en su conjunto, el artículo propone la necesidad de complejizar la comprensión que se ha tenido hasta el momento de una elección fundamental para el desarrollo político chileno. Dado que la mitad de los votantes participaba por primera vez de comicios presidenciales, no puede comprenderse el triunfo de Frei Montalva y la magnitud de la votación que alcanzó solamente por la campaña del terror y el apoyo de las cúpulas partidarias de la derecha. La campaña presidencial de la Democracia Cristiana se caracterizó por la introducción de nuevas prácticas políticas, cuyo efecto en el escenario social y político chileno va incluso más allá de la propia elección.

This article explores the transition from nationalism to postnationalism through food in Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile’s Hunger for Home (2007), by playwright Eduardo Machado. The framework used is Sigmund Freud’s narrative of the Oedipus complex. I suggest that the exilic condition of Oedipus and his rebellious behavior make the Oedipal narrative a useful tool for approaching the postnational rejection of the oppressive nature of the nation. I replace the phallus as the source of pleasure with food, and argue that the memories that ensure the continuity of the nation are largely alimentary. A study of what Eduardo Machado eats or refuses to eat to keep recognizing himself as Cuban leads me to explore ways in which the nation shapes subjectivity and the subject informs the postnation, adding to the scholarship on Cuban American literature.

This essay reviews the following works:

Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America: Trauma, Politics, and Resistance. Edited by Aída Díaz de León, Llorente Marina , and Marcella Salvi. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. Pp. vi + 177. ISBN: 9781498507806.

La consagración de la memoria: Una etnografía acerca de la institucionalización del recuerdo sobre los crímenes del terrorismo de Estado en la Argentina. By Ana Guglielmucci. Buenos Aires: Antropofagia, 2013. Pp. 398. ISBN: 9789871238996.

Art from a Fractured Past: Memory and Truth-Telling in Post-Shining Path Peru. Edited by Cynthia E. Milton. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 307. ISBN: 9780822355304.

Ni tan elefante, ni tan blanco: Arquitectura, urbanismo y política en la trayectoria del Estadio Nacional. By Valentina Rozas Krause. Santiago, Chile: RIL Editores, 2014. Pp. 342. ISBN: 9789560100641.

Memorials in Berlin and Buenos Aires: Balancing Memory, Architecture, and Tourism. By Brigitte Sion. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. Pp. xix + 129. ISBN: 9780739176306.

Editor’s foreword

O Brasil tem apresentado, ao longo da história, resultados educacionais pífios em relação a seus vizinhos latino-americanos. A literatura sugere que uma possível causa do atraso educacional tenha sido o viés elitista das políticas educacionais. Este trabalho traz novas evidências de que as políticas educacionais conduzidas pelo governo federal foram elitistas no período 1930–1964. Embora o ensino primário fosse responsabilidade dos estados, grande parte das receitas tributárias estava sob o poder da União. Assim, as políticas educacionais federais eram importantes para determinar os resultados em todos os níveis de ensino. As evidências coletadas em discursos e em dados de financiamento educacional mostram que as políticas do período tenderam a dar pouca importância ao ensino primário. Em particular, há evidências de que os governos de Getúlio Vargas e Juscelino Kubitschek, os mais compromissados com a estratégia de industrialização por substituição de importações, privilegiaram o ensino superior, em detrimento do ensino primário para as massas.

This essay reviews the following works:

Contrary Destinies: A Century of America’s Occupation, Deoccupation, and Reoccupation of Haiti. By Léon Pamphile. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2015. Pp. xviii + 203. ISBN: 9780813061023.

Politics and Power in Haiti. Edited by Kate Quinn and Paul Sutton. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. xi + 202. ISBN: 9781137311993.

Haiti: Trapped in the Outer Periphery. By Robert Fatton Jr. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014. Pp. ix + 227. ISBN: 9781626370364.

This essay reviews the following works:

Representing the Good Neighbor: Music, Difference and the Pan American Dream. By Carol A. Hess. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xix + 303. $49.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780199919994.

Chilean New Song: The Political Power of Music, 1960s–1973. By J. Patrice McSherry. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015. Pp. xxii + 229. $44.95 paper. ISBN: 9781439911525.

Negro Soy Yo: Hip Hop and Raced Citizenship in Neoliberal Cuba. By Marc D. Perry. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 284. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822358855.

Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico. By Petra R. Rivera-Rideau. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 224. $23.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822359647.

Song and Social Change in Latin America. Edited by Lauren Shaw. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2013. Pp.vi + 249. $70.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780739179482.

Following the implementation of the Lei das Cotas (Affirmative Action Law) in Brazil, there has been debate as to whether students who were admitted through affirmative action perform at the same level as students admitted through traditional methods. This article examines the results of the Exame Nacional de Desempenho dos Estudantes (ENADE) from 2009 to 2012 to determine whether there is a relationship between students’ performance at the university level and the manner of their admittance. We find that students admitted to public universities under affirmative action perform at similar levels to students who were not, whereas quota students in private universities perform slightly better than students admitted through traditional methods.

This article explores the reality of entrepreneurship in the favela of Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro. It contrasts the prescriptions of federal and state training programs and support policies for entrepreneurship with the reality of the practice of entrepreneurial activities in Rocinha. It shows that the logic of effectuation can explain microentrepreneurial trajectories in favelas, expanding its original reach from expert entrepreneurs in large firms. It also exposes the severe shortcomings in the training programs and support policies of the Serviço Brasileiro de Apoio às Micro e Pequenas Empresas (SEBRAE). It points to the urgency of reform of the very foundation of entrepreneurship policies in favelas.

This article explores the role of the samba subgenre partido alto as a mode of resistance to modernization and the Brazilian military regime’s disfiguration of samba music in the 1970s. This resistance ultimately led a handful of samba musicians to create the Grêmio Recreativo de Arte Negra Escola de Samba Quilombo in 1975. While it is true that Quilombo nurtured Afro-Brazilian music and culture, the author demonstrates that its leader and cofounder, Antônio Candeia Filho, acted as a samba preservationist and a pioneer, referencing music of the African diaspora, but also as someone who drew the line when it came to espousing Pan-Africanism. The aversion to Pan-Africanism in Rio de Janeiro’s samba community heightened in the late 1970s, as Black Soul, among other foreign sounds and cultural presences, was perceived as a threat to the primacy of samba.

En los últimos treinta años, la asignación masiva de soluciones habitacionales vía subsidios estatales ha redefinido la relación entre los pobladores (pobres urbanos) chilenos y el Estado. Dichas transformaciones han tensionado los enfoques tradicionales sobre las movilizaciones por la vivienda, erigidas fundamentalmente desde el examen del llamado “Movimiento de Pobladores”, que tuvo lugar en los años sesenta e inicios de los setenta. Usando material etnográfico recabado entre 2010 y 2014, buscamos subsanar tales vacíos analíticos mediante el examen de la reconfiguración histórica de las protestas por derecho a la vivienda y, en este marco, la rearticulación del poblador como subjetividad política; y la relación de la demanda por vivienda digna con la reivindicación del derecho a la ciudad y la vida digna. Así, mostramos cómo el carácter subsidiario y segregador de las políticas de vivienda desarrolladas durante las últimas décadas es cuestionado por la acción colectiva de los pobladores y los procesos de subjetivación política asociados.

This essay reviews the following works:

Making Up the Difference: Women, Beauty, and Direct Selling in Ecuador. By Erynn Masi de Casanova. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Pp. xix + 239. $55.00 cloth: ISBN: 9780292723863.

Dolores del Río: Beauty in Light and Shade. By Linda B. Hall. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. Pp. xvi + 358. $60 cloth. ISBN: 9780804784078.

Queen for a Day: Transformistas, Beauty Queens, and the Performance of Femininity in Venezuela. By Marcia Ochoa. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 277. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822356264.

Of Beasts and Beauty: Gender, Race, and Identity in Colombia. By Michael Edward Stanfield. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. Pp. x + 280. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780292745582.

Beauty and the Beast. By Michael Taussig. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. x + 172. $18.00 paper. ISBN: 9780226789866.

Este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación que analiza la sentencia T-622/14 de la Corte Constitucional Colombiana en torno a la reasignación de sexo de niños intersexuales. El análisis se centra en el estudio de las voces involucradas y en el examen de las estrategias discursivas utilizadas para construir el concepto de intersexualidad. El estudio —cuyo enfoque metodológico es el análisis crítico del discurso y la teoría queer— permite evidenciar cómo el discurso judicial se apropia de otras instancias discursivas para definir, moldear y construir los cuerpos y las vidas que son dignas de existir en una sociedad heterocentrada. Se concluye que para la Corte Constitucional la autonomía y la capacidad de decisión personal son aspectos fundamentales en los casos en los que los sujetos intersexuales desean modificar quirúrgicamente sus cuerpos; sin embargo, en la sentencia se omiten las relaciones de poder que la matriz heterosexual produce sobre estos sujetos.