Employing new archival sources, this article reappraises the role of human rights in the opposition to Brazil's repressive military regime. While most interpretations pinpoint the protest against the 1975 murder of journalist Vladimir Herzog as the opposition's great awakening, this research focuses on a similar outcry against the 1973 killing of University of São Paulo student Alexandre Vannucchi Leme. His death led students and clergymen to defy riot troops and gather 3,000 people for a memorial service that was the first large-scale anti-regime demonstration of the 1970s and a decisive step in the Roman Catholic Church's development as leader of the opposition.

This article examines political ideology, cultural nationalism and the contesting of identity in early twentieth-century Chile. It does so by tracing the emergence of a unique cultural construct – the huaso cowboy – in the literary sphere and by exploring a ‘rural idealist’ discourse employed by middle-class, reformist intellectuals who hoped for the mitigation of the ‘social question’ and the displacement of traditional oligarchs from cultural and political centrality. It also seeks to explain how the fiction genre known as criollismo challenged elitist conceptions of ‘nation’ and ‘culture’ in the context of dramatic socio-political, economic and demographic change.

Throughout the Mexican Revolution, the ebb and flow of conflict in the north-central Laguna region (see Map 1) fed directly into the mainstream of national politics. From 1900, the Laguna's workers and peasants expressed economic and social discontent through insubordination, theft, banditry and sporadic – sometimes organised – demands for better wages and working conditions. Following the lead of a discontented, highly competitive and fractious landholding elite, they were among the first to revolt against the Porfirio Díaz government and continued to influence the direction of the revolution as the region was alternately fought over and administered by each of the north's principal factions. The ultimate triumph of any faction in the revolution required control of Mexico's north, and that required controlling the Laguna.

The United States reacted to the revolution which brought General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez to power in 1931 by refusing to recognise him under a 1923 treaty. Martínez broke precedent by entrenching himself in the presidency. The State Department first attempted to subvert him. The outbreak of a peasant rebellion, supposedly under communist leadership, then caused Washington to seek a face-saving accommodation. The bargain failed because of the general's duplicity. Eventually the United States was forced to abandon the 1923 treaty and recognise Martínez. This opened the way to habitual recognition of non-communist dictators in Latin America.

This study challenges the widely held belief that the peasant rebellion of 1932, and the massive military response to it, marked the demise of Indian ethnic identity. Working from documents that have become available only recently, we demonstrate that the Indian population was not decimated by the military repression. The percentage of Indians in the population remained steady and in some regions even increased. We show that the bedrock of Indian identity, the cofradías and the communities, survived the repression as well. We propose that these survivals are due, ironically, in part to the military. Despite their willingness to employ violence on a colossal level, military leaders believed that order in the countryside was to be achieved through reform as well as repression. The military's reformist ideology and reform programme worked to defend individual Indians and Indian communities from ladinos anxious to avenge their losses in the uprising.

The current productive restructuring in Central America is creating significant changes in the region's labour markets. New sectors of tradeables are emerging which, from the point of view of labour, cannot be characterised as formal. Indeed, formal employment is currently in a state of decline while the informal sector is redefining its internal heterogeneity. This article focuses on the new expressions of informality. Three scenarios are identified: the economy of poverty, subcontracting, and the agglomeration of small dynamic enterprises. Various analytical aspects are considered in each of these three scenarios: the context of the globalisation process; the type of informality; the resources which are mobilised; the challenges faced; and the identities generated. The analysis is based on the evidence supplied by three case studies. The first refers to the former public employees of Managua (Nicaragua) who, in the aftermath of state reforms, presently pursue informal activities. The second example concerns a group of women in the community of Puente Alto (Honduras) who work as subcontracted producers for an industrial export firm. Sarchí, Costa Rica's principal artisan centre, illustrates the third scenario.