Many Bolivians engage in corruption through intermediaries, like civil society representatives and lawyers, instead of paying officials directly. People vocally resent that intermediaries add an extra layer of costs and opaqueness to corruption but still choose to pay bribes through intermediaries that knowingly take advantage of them. Why do intermediaries facilitate corruption? While other studies on corrupt intermediaries find that they reduce uncertainty and transaction costs, this study contributes to corruption research by finding that intermediaries engage in cartel-like behavior by disproportionally helping officials and intentionally increasing uncertainty and costs for the average citizen. Ethnographic evidence from street markets in La Paz demonstrates that civil society actors like street vendors’ union representatives advance their careers by collecting and delivering bribes to specific bureaucrats. Collusive relationships between bureaucrats and intermediaries hide and perpetuate corruption, while giving the appearance of a transparent government that is responsive to civil society.

Although Brazil remains severely affected by civil violence, the state of São Paulo has made significant inroads into fighting criminality. In the last decade, São Paulo has witnessed a 70 percent decline in homicide rates, a result that policy-makers attribute to a series of crime-reducing measures implemented by the state government. While recent academic studies seem to confirm this downward trend, no estimation of the total impact of state policies on homicide rates currently exists. The present article fills this gap by employing the synthetic control method to compare these measures against an artificial São Paulo. The results indicate a large drop in homicide rates in actual São Paulo when contrasted with the synthetic counterfactual, with about 20,000 lives saved during the period. The theoretical usefulness of the synthetic control method for public policy analysis, the role of the Primeiro Comando da Capital as a moderating variable, and the practical implications of the security measures taken by the São Paulo State government are also discussed.

Since the mid-1990s, some rightist governments in Latin America have adhered to a strict market orientation while others have shown less attachment to doctrinaire neoliberal policies, a puzzle as rightists are expected to favor minimal government intervention in the economy. In an environment over the past two decades in which market-oriented policies, in general, have grown increasingly unpopular with many Latin Americans, we contend that rightists have less political cover to endorse neoliberal policies. Using panel data for eighteen Latin American countries from 1995 to 2015, we find that, because of the clarity of responsibility that occurs under political mandates and the unpopularity of market reforms, mandate-holding rightist governments will tend to go against their ideological preferences and decrease neoliberal policies. Our findings indicate that as presidential vote margins increase and responsibility for unpopular economic policies becomes clearer, rightist executives will be less willing to support such policies, but only to a point. The results suggest that clarity of responsibility can influence presidential decision-making concerning unpopular policies, especially microeconomic policies, but this influence diminishes as presidents become more electorally secure.

El presente artículo, cuya base empírica es una entrevista estructurada a quince de las principales organizaciones nacionales de observación electoral latinoamericanas, muestra que los grupos de la sociedad civil de la región más activos en esta área han usado desde 2005 diversas herramientas de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y comunicación para hacer observación colectiva (lo que se conoce en inglés como crowdsourced election observation), ya sea para desarrollar proyectos especializados o para sustituir por completo sus herramientas de observación tradicionales. En opinión de los directivos de las organizaciones, las nuevas tecnologías han servido fundamentalmente para concienciar a la población general sobre la importancia de las elecciones e implicarla en sus actividades, y para abrir a la observación áreas que sin las nuevas herramientas hubieran sido impracticables. La observación colectiva afronta el reto de fijar un estándar comúnmente aceptado de verificación de la información recopilada, al menos potencialmente, por un conjunto de observadores desconocidos y que puede no haber recibido la suficiente capacitación.

This article contributes to the current debate on social movements and popular politics in Latin America by exploring the trajectory of organizations within the unemployed workers movement in Argentina, also known as the piqueteros. Analysts agree that the recent history of this movement is characterized by a pronounced decline due to closing political opportunities. I suggest that a shift in the level of analysis toward organizational dynamics indicates a more complex scenario. While the influence of the movement as a political actor has declined, some piquetero organizations have in some aspects strengthened. I argue that this strengthening took place not despite the post-2003 context, but rather because of it. I advocate for an alternative conceptualization of piquetero groups, emphasizing their immersion in a particular political context and culture rather than their separation from it. I use interviews, participant observation, databases of contentious events, and a diverse literature to sustain my claims.

Mucha de la literatura académica concibe la deportación como un proceso de eliminación de deshechos. Sin embargo, la existencia de una clase significativa de personas deportadas de los Estados Unidos trabajando como agentes de call center en países como México, Honduras, Guatemala y El Salvador sugiere mejor la metáfora del reciclaje, una muestra de las eficiencias cínicas y crueles del capitalismo global neoliberal. Este artículo se basa en entrevistas con trece individuos quienes migraron a los Estados Unidos como menores de edad, fueron deportados a El Salvador después de largas residencias en Estados Unidos, y encontraron empleo en la creciente industria de call center salvadoreña donde brindan servicios virtuales en inglés para clientes norteamericanos. Argumento que este reciclaje laboral se posibilita a través de una extensión de la condición de deportabilidad, que sigue produciendo una población de trabajadores vulnerables para la explotación del capital norteamericano en El Salvador aún después de la deportación, y que este proceso de reciclaje actúa como proceso disciplinario que reproduce un discurso neoliberal de responsabilidad personal, en el cual el trabajo de call center emerge como el instrumento para reformar los deportados transgresores y convertirlos en sujetos neoliberales productivos.

En este trabajo analizo la novela Boarding Home (1987) del escritor cubano Guillermo Rosales a partir de su inscripción dentro de las coordenadas que signaron el éxodo cubano por el Mariel en 1980. Exploro cómo Mariel se vuelve un espacio simbólico de significación desde donde se ofrece una mirada mucho más compleja al evento estigmatizado tanto por la revolución, como por los medios de prensa y la comunidad norteamericanos. La operación de “basurización del otro”, de la “escoria” que lleva a cabo el gobierno cubano (Castillo Durante) tiene como consecuencia inevitable a la abyección (Kristeva), y ambos fenómenos se hacen visibles, materiales, en la espacialización del margen, del exilio en la vida del protagonista como se comprueba con su vida en un home de Miami, y tras sus recorridos por la ciudad. Tanto el home como La Pequeña Habana son lugares heterotópicos (Foucault) en donde opera una distorsión de las dos utopías (o distopías) que entrañan la revolución y el exilio. Concluyo que Rosales apela a la literatura como acto de resistencia ante la invisibilidad y el estigma del éxodo.

This essay focuses on the dynamics of (dis)embodiment between national love and the body of the black woman in Cuba. This very discussion lies at the center of Sandra Álvarez Ramírez’s blog Negra cubana tenía que ser, where the black woman’s body becomes an ideal in itself. Álvarez Ramírez’s intellectual interventions impress this body with love and assemble a community whose members share the black feminist goal of a sexual (polyamory) revolution. I propose that Negra cubana’s revolutionary matrix resides in the blog’s networking: a cyberfeminist agenda to connect Cuban black women’s voices with other voices around the world. Contrary to the utopian promise of the Cuban Revolution, Negra cubana’s black feminist promise is that of enactment in the present—in both physical and virtual realms.

Since the late 1960s TV Globo, Brazil’s largest and most commercially successful broadcast network, has been producing long-form serial narratives known as telenovelas. Followed by millions of domestic viewers and exported to more than 130 countries worldwide, these melorealist serials have served as a primary source for what it means to be Brazilian in both the domestic and global social imaginaries. A number of excellent studies, however, have shown that the country’s most important fictional television genre has historically underrepresented Brazilians of color while at the same time producing a symbolic good that emphasizes whiteness as the ideal social marker. This article shifts the focus from the telenovela to an examination of the series, an emerging and understudied area of Brazilian television fiction. By analyzing representations of blackness in two contemporary Brazilian serial comedies: Mister Brau (TV Globo, 2015–) and The Great Gonzalez (O Grande Gonzalez, Fox Brasil and Porta dos Fundos, 2015), the article reveals the initial stages of recent developments that have the potential to significantly alter both the field of television production and the way Brazil is portrayed on the small screen.

Este artigo objetiva analisar representações do indígena na literatura ficcional brasileira da década de 1930, buscando compreender sua incorporação ao imaginário nacional naquele momento. Trata-se de um contexto de aprofundamento do debate sobre a modernização social, produtiva e institucional do país, sobretudo no sentido da promoção da industrialização nas áreas de economia mais dinâmica e da ampliação da presença estatal na vida do país, particularmente através de sua expansão em direção ao interior e às regiões de fronteira. Buscamos observar as formas de sua percepção como objeto, obstáculo e sujeito histórico e para tal foram selecionadas manifestações literárias bastante diversas: a literatura de entretenimento de Menotti del Picchia, a escrita neorrealista de Graciliano Ramos e a ficção mística e introspectiva de Cornélio Penna. Por meio de tal diversidade, intentamos alcançar um amplo horizonte de possibilidades em torno do problema exposto. Observamos, enfim, nos romances em debate, que os indígenas surgem mais frequentemente como figuras ou símbolos que como pessoas ou povos reais e contemporâneos, e que sua imagem participa dos projetos modernizadores, mas também contribui para o debate sobre a formação histórica do país.

Este artículo se propone analizar la propuesta de los saraus de poesía de la periferia de la ciudad de São Paulo (encuentros para leer o declamar poesía en bares de los barrios alejados del centro de la ciudad) en función del cuestionamiento y problematización que establecen respecto del término literatura. La producción literaria, de acuerdo con la lógica de los saraus, es considerada por un lado como un medio facilitador para proyectar ser una “persona” ligada a un “yo” que tiene una conciencia de sí mismo y una valoración específica en el marco de un colectivo que le otorga protección y promueve el desarrollo de un sentimiento de pertenencia. Al mismo tiempo, la producción de los saraus se presenta como un espacio central para repensar los modos de funcionamiento y de legitimación del campo literario brasileño del presente.

This essay reviews the following works:

Heaven, Hell, and Everything in Between: Murals of the Colonial Andes. By Ananda Cohen Suarez. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 304. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781477309551.

Of Love and Loathing: Marital Life, Strife, and Intimacy in the Colonial Andes, 1750–1825. By Nicholas A. Robins. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Pp. x + 280. $60.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780803277199.

Revolution in the Andes: The Age of Túpac Amaru. By Sergio Serulnikov. Translated by David Frye. Foreword by Charles F. Walker. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 155. $22.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822354987.

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion. By Charles F. Walker. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 341. $29.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780674058255.

This essay reviews the following works:

Enhancing Democracy: Public Policies and Citizen Participation in Chile. By Gonzalo Delamaza. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. Pp. vi + 296. $99.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781782385462.

The Politics of Local Participatory Democracy in Latin America: Institutions, Actors, and Interactions. By Françoise Montambeault. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 265. $65.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780804795166.

Participatory Democracy in Brazil: Socioeconomic and Political Origins. By J. Ricardo Tranjan. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 269. $30.69 paperback. ISBN: 9780268042400.

Activating Democracy in Brazil: Popular Participation, Social Justice, and Interlocking Institutions. By Brian Wampler. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2015. Pp. xi + 297. $39.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780268044305.

This essay reviews the following works:

The Invention of the Brazilian Northeast. By Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Jr. Translated by Jerry Dennis Metz. Foreword by James N. Green. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 277. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822357858.

Brazil and the Dialectic of Colonization. By Alfredo Bosi. Translated by Robert Patrick Newcomb. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 373. $35.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780252080845.

Revolt of the Saints: Memory and Redemption in the Twilight of Brazilian Racial Democracy. By John F. Collins. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 463. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822353201.

The Economic and Social History of Brazil since 1889. By Francisco Vidal Luna and Herbert S. Klein. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. vi + 439. $27.03 paperback. ISBN: 9781107616585.

The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil. By Barbara Weinstein. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 458. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822357773.

The Rio De Janeiro Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Edited by Daryle Williams, Amy Chazkel, and Paulo Knauss. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 390. $20.73 paperback. ISBN: 9780822360063.

This essay reviews the following works:

The Ch’ol Maya of Chiapas. Edited by Karen Bassie-Sweet, with Robert M. Laughlin, Nicholas A. Hopkins, and Andrés Brizuela Casimir. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 251. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780806147024.

Wellness beyond Words: Maya Compositions of Speech and Silence in Medical Care. By T. S. Harvey. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013. Pp. vii + 256. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826352736.

Maya Market Women: Power and Tradition in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala. By S. Ashley Kistler. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 160. $44.68 paperback. ISBN: 9780252079887.

Southern Eastern Huastec Narratives: A Trilingual Edition. Translated and edited by Ana Kondic. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 197. $24.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780806151809.

Indigenous Bodies, Maya Minds: Religion and Modernity in a Transnational K’iche’ Community. By C. James MacKenzie. Boulder: University Press of Colorado; Albany: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, 2016. Pp. ix + 368. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781607325567.

Songs That Make the Road Dance: Courtship and Fertility Music of the Tz’utujil Maya. By Linda O’Brien-Rothe. Forewords by Allen J. Christenson and Sandra L. Orellana. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 244. $72.93 paperback. ISBN: 9781477305386.

Language and Ethnicity among the K’ichee’ Maya. By Sergio Romero. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 123. $50.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781607813972.

This essay reviews the following works:

Freedom from Liberation: Slavery, Sentiment, and Literature in Cuba. By Gerard Aching. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 241. $48.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780253016935.

Slavery and Politics: Brazil and Cuba, 1790–1850. By Rafael Marquese, Tâmis Peixoto Parron, and Márcia Regina Berbel. Translated by Leonardo Marques. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016. Pp. 1 + 351. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780826356482.

Divining Slavery and Freedom: The Story of Domingos Sodré, an African Priest in Nineteenth-Century Brazil. By João José Reis. Translated by H. Sabrina Gledhill. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. xi + 351. $32.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781107439092.

Ever Faithful: Race, Loyalty, and the Ends of Empire in Spanish Cuba. By David Sartorius. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. vi + 312. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822355939.

The Politics of the Second Slavery. Edited by Dale W. Tomich. Fernand Braudel Center Studies in Historical Social Science. Ithaca: State University New York Press, 2016. Pp. xii + 280. $25.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781438462363.

Electric Santeria: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion. By Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 271. $30.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780231173179.

Embracing Protestantism: Black Identities in the Atlantic World. By John W. Catron. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016. Pp. ix + 299. $74.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780813061634.

Black Saint of the Americas: The Life and Afterlife of Martín de Porres. By Celia Cussen. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 285. $90.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107034372.

Afro-Cuban Religious Arts: Popular Expressions of Cultural Inheritance in Espiritismo and Santería. By Kristine Juncker. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014. Pp. xi + 169. $74.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780813049700.

The Black Christ of Esquipulas: Religion and Identity in Guatemala. By Douglass Sullivan-González. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Pp. viii + 199. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780803268432.