Professional Documents
Culture Documents
LARR 45-3 Final-1
LARR 45-3 Final-1
editor’s foreword 3
Indigenous Language Usage and Maintenance
Patterns among Indigenous People in the Era
of Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Mexico and
Guatemala
hirotoshi yoshioka 5
Our Indians in Our America: Anti-Imperialist
Imperialism and the Construction of Brazilian
Modernity
tracy devine guzmán 35
Reconstructing Indigenous Ethnicities:
The Arapium and Jaraqui Peoples of the
Lower Amazon, Brazil
omaira bolaños 63
Electoral Revolution or Democratic Alternation?
maría victoria murillo, virginia oliveros,
and milan vaishnav 87
The Eagle and the Serpent on the Screen:
The State as Spectacle in Mexican Cinema
daniel chávez 115
Precursors to Femicide: Guatemalan Women
in a Vortex of Violence
david carey jr. and m. gabriela torres 142
Philip Oxhorn
McGill University
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
open access would still be cost prohibitive. This is because LASA receives
substantial revenues from royalties with Project MUSE, in particular,
and JSTOR. These royalties would disappear with open access. There are
other nonmonetary elements of risk as well. Open-access initiatives are
still very new, and we know little about their potential implications, both
positive and negative. Any such initiative by LARR is also risky, because
LARR would be the first among its peer journals to do so. Restricting open
access to residents of Latin America and the Caribbean should be viewed
as a compromise and a strategic experiment; we are trying to address a
real need at the same time that we are seeking to minimize risks and un-
derstand the larger implications of open access for possible future LARR
initiatives. Although we have tested the feasibility of open access and
have attempted to ensure that it is consistent with the various copyright
and indexing agreements LARR currently has, we will carefully monitor
this going forward.
The new open-access policy is also made possible by another new
policy of the LASA Executive Committee: this issue will be the last that
is automatically mailed to individuals and institutions located in Latin
America and the Caribbean. For several years, we have been aware of the
economic drain that mailing hard-copy issues of LARR to addresses in
Latin America and the Caribbean entails for LASA. The average cost of
printing and mailing LARR to that region is $80 per member, although
individual membership fees for Latin American and Caribbean residents
are between $27 and $53, depending on one’s income level. This means
that LASA effectively loses between $27 and $53 dollars for each of the
more than two thousand members in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This is obviously a substantial amount of funds. The resulting savings
not only will make open access feasible for all of the region but also will
free up more money for the travel fund that subsidizes the participation
at LASA congresses of people living in Latin America and the Caribbean,
as well as other potential special initiatives. Of course, members can still
request that hard copies of issues be mailed to them, provided that they
pay the difference between their membership fees and the actual cost of
printing and mailing the journal.
Open access to scholarly literature is a dream that many people share.
Although we are still far from reaching that dream, by providing open ac-
cess to all of Latin America and the Caribbean, we have taken a big—and
unprecedented—step in realizing it. As this first experiment unfolds, we
will inform LASA’s membership of its progress. We also will continue to
explore new ways to take advantage of information technology to make
LARR accessible to as large an audience as possible at the same time that
we remain committed to maintaining the highest editorial standards.
Hirotoshi Yoshioka
University of Texas at Austin
Abstract: In both Mexico and Guatemala, indigenous languages are at risk of extinc-
tion. Because languages influence people’s ways of thinking and help them identify
with particular ethnic groups, indigenous language loss can result in severe problems
that extend well beyond the demise of these languages. Although current multicultural
reforms offer indigenous people unprecedented opportunities, these seemingly positive
changes may actually threaten indigenous languages and cultures. Using the latest
demographic census data, I present how socioeconomic, demographic, and community
factors negatively correlate with indigenous language usage. I contend that indig-
enous language maintenance will become more difficult because neoliberal multi-
culturalism endorses indigenous cultural rights without putting forth other necessary
changes. Establishing effective language preservation strategies requires us to rec-
ognize dangers hidden in the current multicultural agenda, to rigorously ask how
we can destigmatize negative images attached to indigenous cultures, and to combat
centuries-long oppression and discrimination against indigenous groups.
INTRODUCTION
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
in 1911, the Mexican government put the Law for Rudimentary Instruc-
tion in force, which prohibited indigenous children from using their ma-
ternal languages in school (Bravo Ahuja 1992). Historically, bilingual edu-
cation, which has been asymmetrical and unidirectional, has discouraged
indigenous people from learning indigenous languages in both Mexico
and Guatemala (Patthey-Chavez 1994; Richards and Richards 1997; Sali-
nas Pedraza 1997).
Since the 1990s, several events, including the awarding of the 1992 No-
bel Prize to Rigoberta Menchú and the Zapatista revolt against the inau-
guration of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, dramati-
cally changed the environment that surrounds indigenous people. And
the quincentenary celebrations led the world to pay unprecedented atten-
tion to indigenous populations in Latin America. Not only did indigenous
populations attract more attention, they are pressing for rights of theirs
that states did not recognize for a long time. For example, in 1992, the
Mexican government started to acknowledge the existence of indigenous
communities in the national legislation through the reform of Article 4
of the Mexican Constitution for the first time since the end of Spanish
colonialism (Kampwirth 2004; Salinas Pedraza 1997). Similarly, the Gua-
temalan government signed the 1995 Accord on the Identity and Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, promising to take measures to recognize and com-
pensate indigenous people (England 2003; Jonas 2000).1
Despite these remarkable changes, inequalities between indigenous
and nonindigenous populations have persisted in Latin America dur-
ing the Indigenous Peoples’ Decade from 1994 to 2004 (Hall et al. 2006).
Hale (2002) has attempted to explain this paradoxical phenomenon using
the concept of neoliberal multiculturalism. The author argues that multi-
culturalism took place in Latin America “in the general context of neolib-
eral political and economic reforms” (Hale 2002, 493). And multicultural
reforms affirm new rights without resolving socioeconomic inequalities
(Hamel 1994). Because indigenous people in both Mexico and Guatemala
belong to the poorest group, despite the recognition of indigenous cul-
tural rights, they continue to face socioeconomic hardships. Therefore, a
chance to achieve upward socioeconomic mobility for most indigenous
people is small because of the high level of inequality in income and ac-
cess to needed services that segregates citizens by their social class (Rob-
erts 2005).
However, the state’s attitude toward indigenous people and the disad-
vantaged socioeconomic status of indigenous groups alone are insufficient
to explain the accelerated rate of language loss in Mexico and Guatemala,
because the relationship between indigenous and nonindigenous groups
has always been unequal. Besides, unlike in the past, bilingual education
today in the two countries emphasizes the importance of ethnic diversity
(Patthey-Chavez 1994; Richards and Richards 1997). Therefore, a close ex-
amination of both micro- and macrofactors is essential to understand the
accelerated language loss rate. It is also necessary to explain why multi-
cultural reforms can threaten indigenous languages.
2. According to the latest census data from Mexico and Guatemala, poor, nonindigenous
households are more likely to live in municipalities with a greater proportion of indigenous
households. The results of those statistical models are available on request.
exclude those children whose household heads were not married because
the most recent census data in these countries do not provide any infor-
mation on a person’s ex-spouse.
The unit of analysis in the first part is individuals who identify them-
selves as indigenous, and in the second part, it is the children of indig-
enous language speakers. In both parts of the analysis, I use multinomial
logistic regression models in which I regress the use of indigenous lan-
guages (0 if a respondent does not speak an indigenous language, 1 if he
or she speaks only indigenous languages, and 2 if the respondent speaks
both Spanish and indigenous languages) on three explanatory variables
(household asset index, individual’s level of education, and migration sta-
tus) and several sociodemographic factors, including respondent’s sex,
urban-rural status, and the proportion of people in a municipality who
speak indigenous languages. As the dependent variable indicates, I divide
indigenous language speakers into two groups (i.e., monolingual and bi-
lingual with Spanish) to closely examine whether independent variables
considered in this study relate differently to indigenous language use on
the basis of whether people use indigenous languages as their only lan-
guage. I used principal component analysis to construct the asset index
for households based on households’ access to or ownership of several
resources, such as electricity, running water, and primary cooking fuel. I
used this asset index as a proxy for household wealth. Because the Gua-
temalan census does not provide any information on income, to make the
study of indigenous language usage comparable between Mexico and
Guatemala, taking into account household wealth it is the most appropri-
ate option for this study.3
I clustered the data set according to municipalities in which respon-
dents lived to obtain robust standard errors, because a person’s place of
residence may influence indigenous language usage. As noted, I also took
into account households’ migration. I defined migration in this study as
whether a person’s current residence of state (Mexico) or department (Gua-
temala) differed between the time the census was taken and five (Mexico)
or six (Guatemala) years prior to it. Therefore, I could not measure tempo-
rary migratory movements such as seasonal migration using the census
data. Hence, with the current data, I could not estimate the correlation be-
tween temporary migratory movements that took place during five or six
years before the census was taken and indigenous language usage, and
it was necessary to take into account this limitation when explaining the
correlation between this variable and indigenous language usage.
3. A list of the variables used to calculate the asset index is available on request. For more
information on the construction and validity of the asset index and principal component
analysis, see Filmer and Pritchett (2001).
H1: Indigenous people with a higher level of education, higher wealth index,
and who live in urban areas are less likely to speak indigenous languages
especially as their only languages. People with a higher socioeconomic sta-
tus and those who live in urban areas are more likely to interact with non-
indigenous people, and they need to speak Spanish more often than people
living in rural areas. The interaction with nonindigenous people may also
lead indigenous people to think that speaking Spanish is more important
and useful than speaking indigenous languages. Furthermore, indigenous
people in urban areas encounter few opportunities to learn and practice
indigenous languages.
H2: The children of household heads who have recently migrated are less
likely to speak indigenous languages as their only languages. Indigenous
people are more likely to engage in agricultural work, and those who en-
gage in agricultural work are, in general, less likely to migrate permanently.
Therefore, migrant households have more contacts with nonindigenous
language speakers and the children of migrant households tend to learn in-
digenous languages less, which I argue is especially the case if households
migrate when a child is very young.
H3: The children of indigenous language speakers with a higher socioeco-
nomic status are less likely to speak the indigenous language. Relating to
the first two hypotheses, people with a higher level of socioeconomic back-
ground tend to live in urban areas and have nonagricultural occupations.
Moreover, parents with a higher level of education may prefer to speak with
their children in Spanish rather than in indigenous languages. Children
living in urban areas are more likely to receive Spanish-only instruction
at their schools, thus limiting their need to speak the indigenous language.
H4: The degree of correlation between a household’s socioeconomic back-
ground and a child’s indigenous language usage is lower when a model
takes into account the household head’s spouse’s indigenous language us-
age. Because people tend to marry a person of a similar socioeconomic and
cultural background, it is probable that indigenous language speakers with
a high socioeconomic status are less likely to marry indigenous language
Mexico Guatemala
Lives in urban area — 36.80
Locality size
Less than 2,500 50.90 —
2,500–14,999 19.82 —
More than 15,000 29.27 —
Percentage of indigenous language
speakers in municipality
Less than 5% 31.36 1.29
5.00–19.99% 11.64 8.63
20.00–49.99% 13.43 7.22
More than 50.00% 43.58 82.87
Female 50.41 51.42
Age
15 and younger 30.26 29.77
15–29 30.57 33.68
30–44 19.49 18.45
45–59 11.38 10.83
60 and older 8.30 7.27
Indigenous language
Do not speak indigenous language 41.87 19.95
Speak only indigenous language 10.85 28.63
Speak both indigenous language and Spanish 47.28 51.42
Education
None or less than primary 18.16 39.98
Primary 56.97 50.80
Secondary 21.91 8.40
Postsecondary 2.96 0.82
Migrated 3.93 2.22
Asset index
40% lowest 74.69 63.82
40% middle 18.06 30.58
20% highest 7.24 5.60
Note: N = 971,074 (Mexico); N = 2,927,568 (Guatemala). Mexican data are weighted. Data
from 2000 Mexican Census; 2002 Guatemalan Census.
10/15/10 1:53:01 PM
P5331.indb 19
30–44 1.311 *** 2.669 *** 2.345 *** 4.483 *** 0.953 2.001 *** 1.158 ** 2.392 ***
45–59 1.650 *** 3.008 *** 3.085 *** 5.112 *** 1.021 2.150 *** 1.312 *** 2.692 ***
Older than 60 1.780 *** 2.810 *** 3.934 *** 5.203 *** 1.105 2.044 *** 1.557 *** 2.709 ***
Education
(None or less
than primary)
Primary 0.192 *** 1.087 * 0.143 *** 0.891 ** 0.187 *** 0.990 0.171 *** 0.935
Secondary 0.007 *** 0.573 *** 0.005 *** 0.451 *** 0.060 *** 0.649 *** 0.056 *** 0.598 ***
Postsecondary 0.004 *** 0.777 ** 0.002 *** 0.452 *** 0.076 *** 0.534 *** 0.078 *** 0.529 ***
Migrated 0.336 *** 0.857 1.662 ** 2.370 *** 0.458 *** 0.930 1.744 *** 2.149 ***
Asset index
(40% lowest)
40% middle 0.015 *** 0.110 *** 0.119 *** 0.349 *** 0.195 *** 0.528 *** 0.273 *** 0.620 ***
20% highest 0.006 *** 0.061 *** 0.163 *** 0.349 *** 0.076 *** 0.270 *** 0.207 *** 0.460 ***
Constant 1.357 ** 1.323 *** 0.033 *** 0.120 *** 6.316 *** 2.760 *** 0.943 0.853
Log-likelihood –731,758.5 –558,441.2 –2,609,128.8 –2,422,133.4
χ2 10,434.06 *** 10,864.81 *** 10,864.81 *** 10,864.81 ***
N 971,074 971,074 2,927,568 2,927,568
10/15/10 1:53:02 PM
20 Latin American Research Review
speak only indigenous languages. Finally, in this model, I found that mi-
gration experience during the past five (Mexico) or six (Guatemala) years
before the census was taken is significantly negatively correlated with
indigenous language use among indigenous monolingual speakers in
both countries.
In Model 2, in addition to the individual characteristics considered in
Model 1, I included two community characteristics: urban-rural status
and an indigenous language prevalence rate at the municipality level.
Taking into account the community characteristics, generational differ-
ences in indigenous language usage are greater in Mexico than in Gua-
temala for both indigenous language monolingual speakers and those
who also speak Spanish. For example, although people age fifteen and
older in Mexico are 1.3 times (age fifteen to twenty-nine) to 4 times (age
forty-five to fifty-nine) more likely to speak only indigenous languages
than are children from the ages of six to fourteen, people ages fifteen and
older in Guatemala are only about 1.1 (age fifteen to twenty-nine) to 1.6
(people age sixty and older) times more likely to speak only indigenous
languages than are children between the ages of six and fourteen. Hence,
the model indicates that Mexican indigenous people are abandoning in-
digenous languages at a more rapid pace than are Guatemalan indig-
enous people.
In Mexico, respondents living in larger towns and cities are significantly
less likely to speak only indigenous languages than those in smaller com-
munities. For example, people living in municipalities with at least 15,000
people are only about 37 percent as likely as those living in communities
with fewer than 2,500 people to speak only indigenous languages. Simi-
larly, in Guatemala, those living in urban areas are only about 48 percent
as likely as those living in rural areas to speak only indigenous languages.
Among people who speak both indigenous languages and Spanish, the
difference in the probability of speaking indigenous languages by the
locality size also exists, although it is not as large. Although the model
does not show any significant difference in indigenous language usage
between people who reside in communities with fewer than 2,500 people
and those with at least 15,000 people among those who speak both Span-
ish and indigenous languages, this is because people who are less likely
to speak indigenous languages (e.g., those with higher levels of educa-
tion and economically more advantaged) tend to concentrate in larger
municipalities.4
In both Mexico and Guatemala, people living in municipalities with a
higher percentage of indigenous language speakers are significantly more
likely to speak indigenous languages. The correlation is especially strong
4. Indeed, without considering other factors, people living in larger communities are
significantly less likely to speak indigenous languages.
and significant among those who speak only indigenous languages. For
example, the probability of people living in municipalities where more
than half of people are indigenous language speakers to speak only indig-
enous languages is more than 305 times that of among those who live in
municipalities where fewer than 5 percent of inhabitants speak indigenous
languages. Similar patterns can also be found in Guatemala, although the
difference in indigenous language usage by indigenous language preva-
lence rates is much greater in Mexico than in Guatemala. This is because
indigenous people with higher education and better economic status are
in Mexico more likely to live in municipalities with fewer indigenous lan-
guage speakers than are indigenous people with similar socioeconomic
backgrounds in Guatemala.
An interesting finding is the correlation between recent migration and
indigenous language usage. Controlling for both individual and commu-
nity characteristics, I found that recent migration is positively correlated
to indigenous language usage in both Mexico and Guatemala. The differ-
ence is statistically significant in both countries and is present regardless
of whether people speak indigenous languages as their only languages or
in addition to Spanish. In Mexico, the probability of speaking only indig-
enous languages among people who migrated during the past five years is
about 1.6 times higher than that among those who did not, and in Guate-
mala, recent migrants are about 1.74 times more likely than nonmigrants
to speak indigenous languages as their only languages. This is most likely
because in Model 2, I control for both individual and community charac-
teristics. The data sets show that, in both countries, people are more likely
to migrate to larger communities with a lower proportion of indigenous
language speakers.
Overall, in both Mexico and Guatemala, I have found that people
with higher socioeconomic status are less likely to speak indigenous lan-
guages. The results are similar in both Mexico and Guatemala, indicating
that among indigenous people in the two countries, whether indigenous
people speak indigenous languages is significantly correlated with their
socioeconomic status and the environment that surrounds them.
Table 3 presents descriptive statistics for both the Mexican and Guate-
malan samples used in the analysis of language maintenance among chil-
dren of indigenous language speakers. About 53 percent of children aged
six to eighteen whose household heads speak an indigenous language can
also speak it in Mexico, whereas in Guatemala, about 83 percent of chil-
dren do the same. In Mexico, fewer than 10 percent of children of indig-
enous language speakers speak only indigenous languages, whereas the
percentage is much higher among Guatemalan children (31.16 percent).
Mexico Guatemala
Lives in urban area — 32.14
Locality size
Less than 2,500 56.76 —
2,500–14,999 20.49 —
More than 15,000 22.75 —
Percentage of indigenous language speaker
in municipality
Less than 5% 17.18 1.14
5.00–19.99% 16.22 5.99
20.00–49.99% 17.67 4.93
More than 50.00% 48.93 87.94
Age of household head
20–29 5.31 4.26
30–44 56.96 55.35
45–59 32.21 34.05
60 and older 5.52 6.33
Education of household head
None or less than primary 20.61 46.27
Primary 62.37 47.97
Secondary 13.32 4.86
Postsecondary 3.71 0.89
Migrant household 2.60 1.87
Household head’s language
Speaks only indigenous language 7.59 26.24
Speaks indigenous language and Spanish 92.41 73.76
Spouse’s language
Spouse does not speak indigenous language 21.45 6.84
Spouse speaks only indigenous language 18.13 43.68
Spouse speaks indigenous language and Spanish 60.42 49.48
Child’s language
Child does not speak indigenous language 47.17 17.30
Child speaks only indigenous language 9.43 31.16
Child speaks indigenous language and Spanish 43.39 51.54
Education of household head’s spouse
None or less than primary 31.48 71.61
Primary 56.97 25.73
(continued)
Table 3 (continued)
Variable Percentage
Mexico Guatemala
Secondary 9.97 2.36
Postsecondary 1.58 0.30
Asset index
40% lowest 85.62 68.24
40% middle 11.85 27.72
20% highest 2.53 4.04
Child’s age (mean) 11.64 11.96
Note: N = 290,615 (Mexico); N = 842,530 (Guatemala). Data from 2000 Mexican Census;
2002 Guatemalan Census. Mexican data are weighted.
P5331.indb 24
Mexico Guatemala
Lives in urban area 0.415 *** 0.618 *** 0.464 *** 0.644 ***
Locality size
(Less than 2,500)
2,500–14,999 0.425 * 0.612 *** 0.406 *** 0.567 ***
More than 15,000 0.072 *** 0.324 *** 0.074 *** 0.275 ***
Percentage of
indigenous language
speaker in municipality
(Less than 5%)
5.00–19.99% 2.072 * 1.078 1.345 0.841 1.374 1.193 0.937 0.849
20.00–49.99% 4.042 *** 2.302 *** 2.252 * 1.503 1.278 1.793 * 0.834 1.153
More than 50.00% 58.365 *** 11.943 *** 19.054 *** 6.199 *** 19.904 *** 7.961 *** 5.463 *** 3.412 ***
Female 0.420 *** 0.852 0.882 0.982 0.480 *** 0.732 *** 1.069 1.045
Age
(20–29)
30–44 0.630 *** 0.831 ** 0.477 *** 0.747 *** 0.707 *** 0.890 ** 0.567 *** 0.821 ***
45–59 0.380 *** 0.665 *** 0.216 *** 0.532 *** 0.558 *** 0.756 *** 0.374 *** 0.635 ***
60 and older 0.263 *** 0.541 *** 0.143 *** 0.412 *** 0.378 *** 0.576 *** 0.274 *** 0.518 ***
Education
(None or less than
primary)
Primary 0.599 *** 0.708 *** 0.814 * 0.878 * 0.538 *** 0.641 *** 0.654 *** 0.733 ***
Secondary 0.206 *** 0.429 *** 0.515 *** 0.712 *** 0.231 *** 0.360 *** 0.455 *** 0.570 ***
Postsecondary 0.045 *** 0.369 *** 0.254 *** 0.746 * 0.145 *** 0.301 *** 0.449 *** 0.657 ***
10/15/10 1:53:03 PM
Migrated 0.617 0.961 0.725 0.954 1.519 1.847 ** 1.386 1.585 *
Head speaks indigenous
P5331.indb 25
language and Spanish 0.068 *** 0.315 *** 0.167 *** 0.428 *** 0.066 *** 0.582 *** 0.220 *** 0.975
Spouse’s language
(Does not speak
indigenous language)
Speaks only indigenous
language 1752.722 *** 87.177 *** 581.565 *** 148.677 ***
Speaks indigenous
language and Spanish 49.910 *** 18.016 *** 18.853 *** 32.763 ***
Education of head’s
spouse
(None or less than
primary)
Primary 1.005 0.799 *** 0.807 ** 0.797 ***
Secondary 0.515 *** 0.680 *** 0.466 *** 0.566 ***
Postsecondary 0.157 *** 0.665 * 0.558 * 0.528 **
Asset index
(40% lowest)
40% middle 0.096 *** 0.409 *** 0.202 *** 0.560 *** 0.236 *** 0.526 *** 0.301 *** 0.574 ***
20% highest 0.134 ** 0.422 *** 0.256 0.840 0.095 *** 0.267 *** 0.166 *** 0.330 ***
Child’s age 0.815 *** 1.055 *** 0.784 *** 1.049 *** 0.901 *** 1.064 *** 0.873 *** 1.055 ***
Migration × urban 0.746 0.628 1.015 0.843
Migration × locality
size 2,500–14,999 1.195 0.795 1.387 0.827
Migration × locality
size more than 15,000 6.701 * 2.312 ** 4.136 * 2.230 **
Constant 6.682 *** 1.159 0.125 *** 0.115 *** 18.579 *** 1.272 0.692 0.065 ***
Log-likelihood –193,826.0 –164,045.6 –642,712.1 –543,401.6
χ2 6,091.3 *** 12,980.7 *** 8,773.3 *** 20,257.9 ***
N 296,150 296,150 842,530 842,530
10/15/10 1:53:03 PM
26 Latin American Research Review
to the indigenous language, his or her children are much less likely to
speak an indigenous language in both Mexico and Guatemala. Therefore,
we can infer that when people speak Spanish, they are less likely to teach
their children to speak indigenous languages, which indicates the diffi-
culty of preserving indigenous languages among younger generations.
In addition to the covariates included in Model 1, Model 2 includes
spouses’ characteristics. Although most covariates found to be statisti-
cally significant in Model 1 remain significant in this model, their sub-
stantive correlations with indigenous language use are not as strong in
this model as in Model 1. Therefore, the model indicates that a spouse’s
characteristics are also important factors in predicting children’s indig-
enous language use. Indeed, household heads’ spouses’ ability to speak
an indigenous language is most strongly related to children’s indigenous
language usage. In both countries, the probability of children speaking
only an indigenous language is significantly greater (1,753 times more in
Mexico and 582 times in Guatemala) than for children of households in
which spouses of household heads do not speak indigenous languages.
Similarly, among those children who speak both indigenous languages
and Spanish, whether or not household heads’ spouses speak indigenous
languages is an important factor in predicting children’s use of indige-
nous languages.
The fact that a spouse’s characteristics are most strongly correlated with
children’s indigenous languages indicates a few things. First, because
people tend to marry those from similar socioeconomic backgrounds,
children of economically advantaged households are much less likely to
speak indigenous languages. This trend may lead to a further differen-
tiation in socioeconomic status between indigenous language speakers
and nonspeakers. Furthermore, a very strong and significantly positive
correlation between a spouse’s indigenous language use and that of their
children shows that it is very difficult to maintain an indigenous language
even when one of the parents speaks it. In most cases, both parents need
to speak an indigenous language to ensure that their children also speak
it. Because such cases are not very common today, especially in Mexico,
to preserve indigenous languages, it is imperative that children encounter
opportunities to learn and practice indigenous languages outside their
households, such as in bilingual education.
CONCLUSIONS
2003; Watson 2006; Wurm 1991). In fact, indigenous languages are just
one important component of indigenous cultures. Hence, language loss
can also lead to more profound and problematic changes. For example,
language loss can lead people—both nonindigenous and indigenous—to
consider various indigenous cultures, such as their customs, religion, and
languages, as one culture, which is not true: indigenous cultures are very
diverse. Modiano (1988) has stated that, although indigenous people in
Mexico are geographically concentrated, the indigenous people are so
diverse in terms of their languages and culture that it is impossible to
characterize the indigenous population as one ethnic group, except that
they are overwhelmingly rural and poor. Although at the moment Mo-
diano’s argument seems right because of the large number of indigenous
languages that exist in the two countries, and because language is a very
important aspect of many indigenous cultures and the most widespread
symbol of self-identity (Fischer 2001), its loss may finally lead various
indigenous cultures to become one culture, which might not be “indig-
enous” at all anymore.
Makoni and Pennycook (2007) have stated that languages are socially
constructed and that definitions of language have material consequences
for people. I argue that in societies in which boundaries among ethnic
groups are not very clear, including Mexico and Guatemala, concepts of
ethnicity and languages are closely related (Fishman 1989); therefore, such
material consequences can have a significant impact on ethnic groups and
their cultures. In fact, as Fishman (1989) claims, ethnicity is as modifi-
able and manipulable as other human characteristics such as religion and
ideology. The difficulty of defining indigenous groups in Latin America
reflects this fact. This is why preserving indigenous languages is an ex-
tremely important issue in Mexico and Guatemala. And the robustness of
indigenous languages seems to correlate with that of indigenous cultures.
Indeed, Lewin (1986) argued that the reduction in minority languages’ ca-
pacity for social communication as a result of the use of Spanish in many
communal spaces, which is the case for both Mexico and Guatemala, co-
incides with the deterioration of cultural reproductive ability and that of
communicative languages. Hence, as Hamel (1995) has contended, the
survival of indigenous languages in Mexico and Guatemala is a decisive
factor for the nature of the two countries: multicultural or homogenous.
Today’s challenge to preserve indigenous languages is heightened
because more and more people live in urban areas. Bilingual education
needs to be implemented not only in rural areas where a large number of
indigenous people reside but also in urban areas where many nonindig-
enous people live. Nonindigenous people who send their children into
bilingual education are most likely to resist bilingual education for at least
two reasons. First, they will resist because of the low prestige of indig-
enous languages and the stigma attached to indigenous cultures. Second,
REFERENCES
Aubague, L.
1986 “Desplazamiento o afianzamiento de las lenguas indígenas de Oaxaca.” In Etni-
cidad y pluralismo cultural: La dinámica étnica en Oaxaca, edited by A. M. Barabas
and M. A. Bartolomé, 371–399. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e
Historia.
Beck, S. H., and Mijeski, K. J.
2000 “Indígena Self-Identity in Ecuador and the Rejection of Mestizaje.” Latin American
Research Review 9 (1): 119–137.
Bell, C. S.
1996 “Data on Race, Ethnicity and Gender: Caveats for the User.” International Labour
Review 135: 535–551.
Bravo Ahuja, G. R. D.
1992 “The Process of Bilingualism in a Multiethnic Context.” International Journal of the
Sociology of Language 96 (1): 45–52.
Brown, R. M.
1996 “The Mayan Language Loyalty Movement in Guatemala.” In Maya Cultural Ac-
tivism in Guatemala, edited by E. F. Fischer and R. M. Brown, 165–177. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
1998 “Mayan Language Revitalization in Guatemala.” In The Life of Our Language:
Kaqchikel Maya Maintenance, Shift, and Revitalization, edited by S. Garzon, R. M.
Brown, J. B. Richards, and Wuqu’ Ajpub’, 155–170. Austin: University of Texas
Press.
England, N. C.
1996 “The Role of Language Standardization in Revitalization.” In Maya Cultural Ac-
tivism in Guatemala, edited by E. F. Fischer and R. M. Brown, 178–194. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
2003 “Mayan Language Revival and Revitalization Politics: Linguists and Linguistic
Ideologies.” American Anthropologist 105 (4): 733–743.
Filmer, D., and L. H. Pritchett
2001 “Estimating Wealth Effects without Expenditure Data—or Tears: An Application
to Educational Enrollments in States of India.” Demography 38 (1): 115–132.
Fischer, E. F.
2001 Cultural Logics and Global Economics: Maya Identity in Thought and Practice. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Fishman, Joshua A.
1989 Language and Ethnicity in Minority Sociolinguistic Perspective. Clevedon, U.K.:
Multilingual Matters.
Garzon, S.
1998a “Conclusions.” In The Life of Our Language: Kaqchikel Maya Maintenance, Shift, and
Revitalization, edited by S. Garzon, R. M. Brown, J. B. Richards, and Wuqu’ Ajpub’,
188–199. Austin: University of Texas Press.
1998b “Indigenous Groups and Their Language Contact Relations.” In The Life of Our
Language: Kaqchikel Maya Maintenance, Shift, and Revitalization, edited by S. Garzon,
Montejo, V.
2002 “The Multiplicity of Mayan Voices: Mayan Leadership and the Politics of Self-
Representation.” In Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation, and the State in Latin
America, edited by K. B. Warren and J. E. Jackson, 123–148. Austin: University of
Texas Press.
Nagel, J.
1995 “American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Politics and the Resurgence of Identity.”
American Sociological Review 60 (6): 947–965.
Patrinos, H. A.
1994 “Methods and Data.” In Indigenous People and Poverty in Latin America: An Empiri-
cal Analysis, edited by G. Psacharapoulos and H. A. Patrinos, 41–54. Washington,
D.C.: World Bank.
Patthey-Chavez, G. G.
1994 “Language Policy and Planning in Mexico: Indigenous Language Policy.” Annual
Review of Applied Linguistics 14: 200–219.
Ramirez, A.
2006 “Mexico.” In Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Human Development in Latin America:
1994–2004, edited by G. Hall and H. A. Patrinos, 150–197. Basingstoke, U.K.: Pal-
grave Macmillan.
Richards, J. B., and M. Richards
1997 “Mayan Language Literacy in Guatemala: A Socio-Historical Overview.” In In-
digenous Literacies in the Americas: Language Planning from the Bottom Up, edited by
N. H. Hornberger, 189–211. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyer.
Richards, M.
2003 Atlas lingüistico de Guatemala. Guatemala City: Editorial Serviprensa.
Riding, A.
1985 Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Roberts, B. R.
2005 “Citizenship, Rights and Social Policy.” In Rethinking Development in Latin Amer-
ica, edited by C. H. Wood and B. R. Roberts, 137–158. University Park: Penn State
University Press.
Sagarin, E., and J. Moneymaker
1979 “Language and Nationalist Separatist, and Secessionist Movements.” In Ethnic
Autonomy—Comparative Dynamics: The Americas, Europe and the Developing World,
edited by R. L. Hall. New York: Pergamon Press.
Salinas Pedraza, J.
1997 “Saving and Strengthening Indigenous Mexican Languages: The CELIAC Expe-
rience.” In Indigenous Literacies in the Americas: Language Planning from the Bottom
Up, edited by N. H. Hornberger, 172–187. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyer.
Sieder, R.
2002 “Introduction.” In Multiculturalism in Latin America: Indigenous Rights, Diversity
and Democracy, edited by R. Sieder, 1–23. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Snipp, C. M.
1989 American Indians: The First of This Land. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Sonntag, S. K.
2003 The Local Politics of Global English: Case Studies in Linguistic Globalization. Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books.
Wade, P.
1997 Race and Ethnicity in Latin America. London: Pluto Press.
Watson, K.
2006 “Language, Education and Ethnicity: Whose Rights Will Prevail in an Age of
Globalisation?” International Journal of Educational Development 27 (3): 252–265.
Wolf, E. R.
1986 “The Vicissitudes of the Closed Corporate Peasant Community.” American Eth-
nologist 13 (2): 325–329.
Wurm, S. A.
1991 “Language Death and Disappearance: Causes and Circumstances.” In Endangered
Languages, edited by R. H. Robins and E. M. Uhlenbeck, 1–18. Oxford, U.K.: Berg.
Abstract: Indigenous peoples have been used and imagined as guardians of the
Brazilian frontier since at least the mid-nineteenth century. This association was
central to the foundation of the Indian Protection Service (Serviço de Proteção
aos Índios, or SPI) during the early 1900s and culminated with the Amazonian
Vigilance System (Sistema de Vigelância da Amazônia, or SIVAM) at the turn of
the millennium. Throughout the period, the abiding desire to establish defensive do-
minion over disputed national territory subjected individuals and groups identified
as “Indians” to the power of overlapping discourses of scientific progress, national
security, and economic development. A trinity of Brazilian modernity, these goals
interpellated native peoples primarily through the practice and rhetoric of education,
which grounds their historical relationship with dominant national society. Draw-
ing on SPI records, government documents, journalism, personal testimonies, and
visual media, this article traces the impact of this modernist trinity on indigenist
policy and in the lives of those who have been affected by its tutelary power. By
transforming private indigenous spaces into public domain, Brazil’s politics of anti-
imperialist imperialism propagated a colonialist, metonymic relationship between
“our Indians” and “our America” into the twenty-first century.
My thanks to Bianca Premo, Bill Smith, Edilene Payayá, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Jan Hoff-
man French, George Yúdice, Juvenal Payayá, Marc Brudzinski, Kate Ramsey, Sônia Ronca-
dor, faculty and students of the Faculdade 2 de Julho, the Atlantic Studies Working Group
at the University of Miami, and the three anonymous LARR reviewers for their comments
and suggestions on previous versions of this work.
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
1. The Normans conquered territories from Hastings to Syria between the eleventh and
the early thirteenth centuries. The historian David Nicolle (1987, 4) associates them with
military prowess, ruthlessness, “business sense,” and “appreciation for money.”
FINRAF. Between 2000 and 2005, the bogus e-mail persuaded so many
people that the U.S. State Department (2005) and the Brazilian Embassy in
Washington were compelled to post disclaimers on their respective Web
sites attesting to the falseness of its allegations.2
As have other perceived infringements of national sovereignty, spurious
or otherwise, FINRAF draws on a telluric anti-imperialism that pervades
dominant Brazilian culture and has associated the country’s interior with
the heart and soul of Brazilianness since long before the declaration of the
First Republic, in 1889. From nineteenth-century Indianist fiction (Treece
2000) to twentieth-century Amerindian symphonies (Béhague 2006) and
political cartoons “commemorating” Brazil’s colonization at the turn of
the millennium (Bundas 2000a, 2000b; Devine Guzmán 2005), the Amazon
and its inhabitants appear repeatedly in national cultural production as
a patriotic trope to represent the whole or imagined essence of the coun-
try. In policy initiatives and the popular imaginary alike, patriotic re-
sponses to looming violations of territorial sovereignty—like FINRAF—
have triggered the preemptive takeover of “virgin” Amazonian lands
that are deemed lacking of state occupation, control, and ownership.3 But
of course, the original “owners” of these territories have “occupied” and
“controlled” them for thousands of years.
Here I consider these Amazonian imaginaries, the ongoing processes
of Brazilian modernity, and anti-imperialist articulations of national iden-
tity in relation to those whose fate has been implicated in all three sets of
discourse: “the Indians,” real and imagined.4 I argue that the imperialist
logic of rightful possession reflected in the bogus geography textbook is,
paradoxically, analogous to the Brazilian state’s own historical rationale
of interior occupation and border defense.5 This discourse dates to the
6. Although the “Marcha” began officially in 1940, the push westward was marked by
the founding of Goiânia in 1933 and the establishment of the Departamento Nacional de
Estradas de Rodagem (DNER) at the outset of the Estado Novo.
7. These officials included the indigenist functionary Raimundo Vasconcelos Aboim; the
National Museum director Heloisa Alberto Tôrres; the sertanista Orlando Villas Boas; and
the ethnologist Darcy Ribeiro. For a history of PIX (now Terra Indígena do Xingu), see Gar-
field 2004; Pires Menenzes 2000.
8. I have maintained the original spelling and accentuation of primary sources.
9. Early “indigenous education” adhered to nineteenth-century norms, which man-
dated that rural schooling be technical rather than academic (Romanelli 1999, 45). Regional
intellectuals and nation builders considered “educação para o ócio” to be detrimental to
national development (Romanelli 1999, 44). The Peruvian González Prada (1946, 212), for
example, railed famously in his 1904 essay, “Nuestros Indios” against “cerebros con luz y
estómagos sin pan.”
10. See, for example, the Instituto Indígena Brasileiro para Propiedade Intelectual (http://
www.inbrapi.org.br); the Vídeo nas Aldeias project (http://www.videonasaldeias.org.br);
the indigenous teacher-training program of the Ministry of Education of Bahia (http://
www.sec.ba.gov.br/aplicativos/noticia.asp?acao=5¬icia_id=541); and Ramos’s collab-
orative work on “Indigenizing Development” (Poverty in Focus 2009, 305). In contrast, there
13. Brazilian territory is divided into four integrated air-traffic-control and air-defense
centers (centros integrados de defesa aérea e controle de tráfego aéreo, or CINDACTAs). The
area CINDACTA I (Brasília, Rio, São Paulo, and Belo Horizonte) dates to 1973. The area
CINDACTA IV covers the Amazon and began functioning with SIVAM technology and
infrastructure in 2006 (DECEA).
14. Chief of Protocol Júlio César Gomes; Air Force Minister Brigadier General Mauro
Gandra; head of the Federal Police’s Operations Center, Mário Oliveira; and director of the
National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), Francisco Grazziano.
The judicial body that oversees public financing (Tribunal de Contas da União) concluded
that the contracts in the case were legal, whereas the CPI found evidence of bribery and
“influence trafficking” (Taylor and Buranelli 2007, 73–74; see also NotiSur 1995; Ramos 1998,
240–241).
15. The governmental Web site documented financing as follows: U.S. Export-Import
Bank, 73.3 percent; Raytheon, 17 percent; Exportkreditnämnden, 6 percent; and Vendor’s
Trust, 3.4 percent.
17. Rumors circulated that satellites would enable foreigners to target untapped mineral
wealth. U.S. Marine officer Peter Witcoff suggested in a 1999 study that “SIVAM might
benefit U.S. national security interests in Latin America” (Wittcoff 1999, xix–xx). In 2008, a
Raytheon employee who had worked on the project could offer no evidence of U.S. military
use of SIVAM. Clearly, the technology has potential for positive collaboration or abuse.
18. Ramos (2000, 3) has argued, “The tapping of indigenous knowledge and selected cul-
tural features as bait in advertising campaigns has meant profits to non-Indians the dimen-
sions of which the best informed Indians were, until very recently, unable to fathom.”
19. On “desirable” immigrants, see Diégues 1980; Lesser 1999. Abolition in 1888 created a
need for rural workers and spawned intense immigration when the government conceded
unoccupied lands to new settler colonies. Vargas established immigration quotas before
banning immigration entirely in 1932. The ban was lifted in 1934, and the 1937 Constitution
limited newcomers annually to 2 percent of each national immigrant population (Diégues
1980).
20. On the origin and function of the SPI, see Diacon 2004; Garfield 2001; Hemming 2004;
Souza Lima 1995.
21. “Die if you must” but “never kill” was a directive for indigenists to sacrifice them-
selves, if necessary, to protect indigenous lives.
22. These posts were grouped under inspetorias in Manaus, Belém, São Luís, Recife,
Campo Grande, Cuiabá, Curitiba, Goiânia, and Porto Velho, and they functioned according
to local needs. Attraction posts contacted “unpacified” tribes. Frontier posts served popula-
tions in Acre, which was once Bolivian territory, had three lives as an independent republic,
became part of Brazil in 1904, and gained statehood in 1962. Residents of ranching posts
raised livestock for consumption and commerce. Literacy and nationalization posts facili-
tated the economic integration of people in “advanced stages of de-Indianization” (Secção
de Estudos do Serviço de Proteção aos Índios 1942).
23. Berthold (1922, 26–27) argued that U.S., German, and French shareholders financed
Brazil’s communication lines with North America, Europe, and West Africa before
As Horta Barbosa had feared, the 1930s plagued the SPI with severe
budget reductions.24 On July 12, 1934, President Vargas removed the SPI
from the Ministry of Labor, Industry, and Commerce and transferred it to
the War Ministry, where it became part of the Special Inspectorate of Bor-
ders. He then authorized the revision of SPI legislation to address the over-
lapping problems of border defense and nationalization (Vargas 1934).
Propaganda films produced by the SPI after these changes highlighted
the educational work carried out on indigenous posts under the milita-
rized scheme. Microcosms of positivist humanism, the “hygienic and
comfortable” posts were said to accommodate the “aspirations and cus-
toms” of those destined by “order and progress” to live on them (Secção
de Estudos do Serviço de Proteção aos Índios 1942). The film Curt Nimu-
endajú e Icatú explained:
[E]m meio de zona outrora agitada por lutas contra o índio que se defendia con-
tra invasão das suas terras, está hoje localizado este posto com seus índios . . .
apazigüados. [É] a primeira habitação construída por civilizados em terras de
índios, iniciando a mais árdua tarefa e que tem nas crianças os elementos indí-
genas que mais depressa aceitam os costumes dos civilizados. A pecuária é . . .
um ótimo veículo para introduzir a noção econômica entre os índios. . . .
[A] agricultura . . . organiza o trabalho, ensina técnicos, produz renda, ensina os
costumes civilizados e encaminha o índio para a civilização rural brasileira. . . .
[A] escola . . . introduz hábitos novos e socializa os pequenos indígenas. Muitas
vezes na mesma escola aprendem índios e civilizados, iniciando a comunhão so-
cial que o posto vai intensificar entre os adultos. (Secção de Estudos do Serviço de
Proteção aos Índios 1942)
Emphasizing the relationship between Indian vocational training and
the consolidation of a modern economy, the film made little distinction
between people and livestock residing on the posts but promised a “new”
and “productive” life to Indians who “worked happily and satisfied, alone
or in groups.” In keeping with SPI founding principles, technology and
capital would enable the indigenists to integrate neo-brasileiros socially
and economically into dominant society while harnessing their innate,
untapped industriousness to help build the nation.
As the propaganda film revealed, the educational thrust of the state’s
development initiative conflated the indigenous “problem” with the ongo-
ing struggle between man and his environment, positing both in terms of
the regional, postindependence interrogation of “civilization and barba-
rism” (Sarmiento 1986). A final scene depicts Kaingang women in discrete
Western dress weaving traditional cloth as uniformed pupils hoist the
Brazilian flag over their school under the approving gaze of their white
teachers. The narrator exclaims:
Brazilians at opposite ends of the country were able to use similar technologies to com-
municate with one another.
24. Regarding the impact of the financial crisis on the SPI, see Hemming 2003, 210–211.
25. As of 2005, there were fifteen Kaingang living in Icatú (founded as an indigenous
post in 1919) and 28,830 throughout Brazil (Veiga and Rocha D’Angelis).
26. The 1973 Indian Statute kept this practice in place. The 2002 Civil Code likewise spec-
ified the exceptionalism of the indigenous condition but only after explaining the “relative
incapacity” of adolescents, drug addicts, the mentally handicapped, and the financially
insolvent. Article 4 of chapter 1 states: “A capacidade dos índios será regulada por legisla-
ção especial.” See the Web sites of the Presidência da República and FUNAI, respectively,
http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/LEIS/2002/L10406.htm and http://www.funai.gov
.br/quem/legislacao/estatuto_indio.html.
27. The 1988 Constitution altered the legal condition of native peoples to make “Indian”
a permanent ethnic category rather than a transitory phase in the process of becoming Bra-
zilian, but the protective authority of the state remained in place. As a result, “Indians and
communities who are not already integrated into the national communion are subject to the
tutorial regime established in the Law” (chap. 2, art. 7). In the late twentieth century, legal
ambiguity created opportunities for some individuals and groups to gain special rights as
“posttraditional” Indians (Warren 2003, 19). As Hoffman French (2009, 69) argued in the
case of one such community, the imprecise nature of the law has made it an “expandable
and prismatic phenomenon” subject to “post-legislative negotiation.”
28. See his 1815 “Carta de Jamaica.” Following Bolívar, ideologues of American indepen-
dence, including Andrés Bello, José Enrique Rodó, Franz Tamayo, José Carlos Mariátegui,
José Vasconcelos Calderón, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, referred to the region’s “infancy”
and the need to bring it to “maturity” through education. On postrevolutionary Cuba, for
In 1945, three years after the film was produced, President Vargas insti-
tuted National Indian Day to formalize state recognition of the indigene-
ity within Brazilianness. In his commemorative address, the head of SPI’s
Educational Sector, Herbert Serpa (1945), tied the messianic indigenist
mission to the physical integrity of the nation:
É para os índios que devemos voltar de coração e espírito, agradecendo-lhes as
heróicas defesas que primeiro praticaram do solo brasileiro. É para os índios que
devemos volver o pensamento quando alçamos o pendão da América livre que
êles perfeitamente simbolisam. . . . [P]ara que a natureza formidanda não lhe ven-
cesse a luz da inteligência humana, [Rondon] desencantou o homem selvícola,
para que, ouvindo pela primeira vez a voz e o chamamento da pátria, surgisse
de dentro da mata, e punhando o auriverde pendão, como a dizer às gentes das
fronteiras: “Aqui começa o solo da pátria brasileira” [sic].
Until 1967, when the military regime dismantled the SPI and replaced it
with the Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI), this prophecy of racial-
ized modernity would have neo-brasileiros hoisting the flag over the Am-
azon to consolidate national power over precious metals, gems, minerals,
timber, rubber, petroleum, and other potential sources of wealth there-
in.29 This was the precedent to Sivamzinho raising the national flag and
guarding the Amazon in 1999. In both cases, the protection at hand was,
for the most part, fiction.
Because, according to SPI doctrine, Indians in frontier regions near Bo-
livia and Peru had to be seduced from nomadism, settled, nationalized,
and trained to secure contentious borders, indigenist education was also
a question of national security. Following Foucault (1990), modernization
and its burgeoning capitalist order were overlapping projects of biopower
that relied on the seizure and controlled insertion of human beings—in
this case, as individuals and communities—into an increasingly global-
ized and foreign-owned machinery of production. Brazilian modernity
meant not only the appropriation and transformation of traditional indig-
enous places—a process that the anthropologist Antonio Carlos de Souza
Lima (1995, 131) characterized as “a massive siege of peace”—but more
succinctly, what Foucault (1990, 140) might have called “the calculated
management of [indigenous] life.” The process of interior development
was thus twofold. On the one hand, it meant the demarcation, takeover,
and settlement of traditional indigenous territories. On the other hand, it
example, Guevara (1979) wrote, “La sociedad en su conjunto debe convertirse en una gigan-
tesca escuela (7). . . . [T]odavía estamos en pañales (11).”
29. Renato Ignácio da Silva (1970, 334) characterized the struggle over Amazonian riches
as a Cold War conflict, asserting that Brazil was “cobiçado por dois lôbos que rondam o
mundo inteiro.” Although covetous explorers hailed from many countries, North Amer-
icans were the most egregious: “[P]rocuram levar tudo, inclusive minérios atômicos! . . .
[F]izeram o levantamento aerofotogramétrico da região em 1965 (e de todo o território na-
cional!) como se nós os brasileiros vivêssemos em 1500!” (da Silva 1970, 333–334)
Figure 3 Community unidentified in SPI records (circa 1930). Courtesy of the Museu do
Índio/FUNAI Archive.
30. The proceedings read: “Los países de América deberán proporcionar a sus masas
indígenas una educación que les permita, más tarde, participar en forma directa en la vida
y el desenvolvimiento de sus respectivos países” (Instituto Indigenista Interamericano
1940, 23). As a result of budgetary constraints, Brazil did not ratify the early III Convention
(Oliveira 1946) but became a signatory in 1953. Nonetheless, Edgard Roque Pinto partici-
pated in the 1940 meeting (Correio da Manhã) and Rondon corresponded with his regional
counterparts, including the III’s director Manuel Gamio and U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs
representative John Collier (Gamio 1946; Rondon 1947).
31. Now affiliated with the Organization of American States, the III supports collabora-
tive policy to promote “indigenous development” across the region. Current members in-
clude Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guate-
mala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. The United
States was a member until 2000.
32. Once Northern Goiás, Tocantins gained statehood in 1988.
“West,” Rondon proposed that a key strategy of the joint endeavor would
be to create among native communities new material needs through the
provision of modern tools, thereby turning them into consumers and pro-
ducers of new wealth.33 The market logic of modernity therefore allowed
indigenous peoples to be reconfigured from within the indigenist imagi-
nary by modifying their status as obstacles to national progress to vital, if
perhaps unwitting, agents of the same. In the overlapping processes of the
modernist incursion into the Amazon, victims would be warriors, com-
modities would be customers, and slaves would be citizens.
33. Darcy Ribeiro (1970, 496–503) identified this dependency as a stage of “ethnic trans-
figuration,” which would transform “tribal Indians” into “generic Indians,” but never “de-
Indianize” them.
34. This is the title of an article published in A Noite (Rio de Janeiro) on June 12, 1947.
35. The commission, set up by the military regime to discredit the SPI, found it complicit
with rape, torture, murder, and genocide (see Hemming 2003, 227–234).
36. The document, also studied by Seth Garfield (1997), is typewritten on Ministry of
Agriculture letterhead and titled “Memorial do Sr. Lírio Arlindo do Vale, diretamente ao
Sr. Dr. Getúlio Dorneles Vargas.” It is dated September 1945 but has a distribution date
of October, and it contains many errors and spelling inconsistencies, including in the au-
thor’s name. Although Valle claimed to have written the letter, SPI functionaries may have
typed (or retyped) it. At best, then, Valle’s enthusiasm for Vargas’s policies offers insight
into the ambiguous nature of “neo-Brazilian” thought. At worst, it is another instance of the
indigenist appropriation and manipulation of indigenous subjectivity.
37. The current FUNAI president, Márcio Augusto Freitas de Meira, originally from
Pará, is a nonindigenous Brazilian with academic training in French, history, and anthro-
pology. As of June 2010, members of the Brazilian Indigenous Movement were campaign-
ing intensely for his removal and for the election of indigenous leadership.
38. The Potiguara warrior, immortalized by the novelist José de Alencar in Iracema,
fought alongside the Portuguese against the Dutch during the first half of the seventeenth
century.
39. Dicionário Aurélio explains that Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Goujaud Bon-
pland used hylea (from the Greek hylaîa, meaning “of the forest”) to refer to the Amazon
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. NB: This is not the oft-cited 1952 UNESCO
study of race relations led by Charles Wagley, Thales Azevedo, Roger Bastide, Florestan
Fernandez, Luiz de Aguiar Costa Pinto, and Renée Ribeiro. On that report, see Chor Maio
2001; Ribeiro 1997.
40. A model of international collaboration established in the spirit of postwar diplomacy,
the IIHA had its headquarters in Rio before moving to the Amazon. Though staffed with
Brazilian scientists and led by National Museum director Heloisa Alberto Tôrres, the or-
ganization was accused of marginalizing national science, turning the country’s natural
wealth over to foreigners, and threatening national sovereignty (Diário do Congresso Nacio-
nal 1949).
41. Even in more urbanized areas, however, “exhausted and malnourished” students
sat in “badly lighted, crowded rooms” to receive instruction from “tired teachers through
hopelessly outmoded, inadequate texts.” The 1933 Vargas Report cited by Mishkin (1947b, 9)
had concluded that only 3 percent of the national population had an elementary-level
education.
lingual indigenous children who would never enjoy the full rights of na-
tional citizenship.42
Shortly after completing this study, Mishkin (who would later be placed
under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a possible
communist spy43) published a controversial critique of the good-neighbor
policy in the Nation. Contrary to what one might expect from the author
of the UNESCO reports, he called not for a softening of political and eco-
nomic imperialist practices but for their intensification:
Any attempt to save democracy in South America would put the United States
in the position of a doctor who rushes into a house to discover that the patient
not only is not ill, but does not live there. In none of these countries is there a
democratic basis of government. . . . The continent was compelled to stew in its
own juice. A juice whose salient characteristics were and are a backward eco-
nomic structure, feudal mentality, poverty, . . . ignorance, illiteracy, . . . and acute
despair. . . . [S]outh America is made for exploitation, gets a living from it, pre-
carious though it may be, and is unprepared for any other kind of existence. The
exclusion of foreign imperialism at this point would bring disaster. . . . [These] are
the first principles of a revolution calculated to break up an anachronistic social
system whose continued survival is inimical to the interests of the United States.
(Mishkin 1949, 510–515)
Considering that these comments—more seemingly written by a Da-
vid Norman than by a communist sympathizer—were published just fif-
teen years before the U.S.-supported coup ousted Brazil’s democratically
elected government, it would seem that some in Washington were indeed
sympathetic to Mishkin’s critique. As is well known, the military regime
that would come to power made the industrial exploitation of the Amazon
and its peoples a cornerstone of national development policy, planting the
seeds for SIVAM (and FINRAF) along the way.
42. The year the SPI was dissolved, the teacher Angelina da Silva Vicente (1967) from the
indigenous post Capitão Vitorino documented lessons on the national anthem, Indepen-
dence Day, “respecting the flag,” voting, and elections. On the content SPI schooling, see
Devine Guzmán 2003. On the question of indigenous citizenship, see Ramos 1998, 89–118.
43. Documents that the anthropologist David Price (2004) secured through the Freedom
of Information Act place Mishkin in Brazil during the late 1940s as an employee of the
Nesco Company. They do not mention his work for UNESCO or the documents examined
here. Accusations regarding Mishkin’s political activities remain inconclusive (Price as-
serts his requests for CIA documentation were ignored) and warrant further study.
44. Since this article was written in 2008, indigenous communities in the Amazon have
come to face a new collective threat: the government’s plan to build the third-largest hydro-
electric dam in the world in the south of Pará. A cornerstone of the Growth Acceleration
Program (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento, or PAC), the dam would divert the flow
of the Xingu River, flood indigenous lands, dislocate the town of Altamira, and destroy
the livelihood of those who depend on fishing. The designation Belo Monte is particularly
unfortunate, as inhabitants of the tragedy-stricken community of Canudos at the end of the
nineteenth century used the same name—the vast majority were killed by the Brazilian
army in 1897. As of June 2010, indigenous organizations across the country were staging an
intense and extended protest of the Belo Monte initiative.
centers of political and economic power, and their violent insertion into
communities still organized according to precapitalist modes of produc-
tion, provided the political, social, and economic mechanisms through
which the private places of indigenous life were usurped as a public space
that, in turn, was appropriated to represent the nation—or at least, the
community imagined as national (Anderson 1991).45 This manipulation
has enabled generations of nationalists, regardless of political orientation,
to equate the Amazon with Brazil and “the Indian” with “the people.”46
Never mind that only 8 percent of Brazilians reside in the Amazon or that
“the Indians” represent over two hundred ethnic groups speaking more
than 180 languages, yet comprise less than one-half of 1 percent of the
overall population.
On the verge of the SPI’s institutional crisis many years earlier, the in-
terim director José Bezerra Calvalcanti alluded to the institutionalized ap-
propriation of Indians and their lands:
Antes de tudo, tratamos de amparar os nossos silvícolas onde quer que eles es-
tejam. . . . [N]ós os congregamos em pontos convenientes e ahi os ensinamos a
trabalhar e a economizar os frutos do seu trabalho. . . . [E]m matéria de ensino . . .
o principal intento é ministrar-lhes conhecimentos . . . dos offícios mais ao alcance
da intelligência delles. . . . Para isso foi o território nacional dividido num certo
número de inspetorias [sic]. (Jornal do Brasil 1929)
Each inspetoria was then divided further into the network of postos indí-
genas studied here, where lives were not so much protected as they were
managed according to the regional, national, local—and inevitably—
personal interests reflected in the indigenist agenda at hand. Forty years
before the Figueiredo Commission documented SPI abuse of the populace
it was meant to safeguard, Calvalcanti cut to the heart of the agency’s fa-
tal contradiction by inadvertently disclosing a de facto open-visit policy
operating under his supervision, leading his interviewer to an exultant
conclusion: “[Q]ualquer pessoa pode, em qualquer dia e sem necessidade
de licença especial, visitar qualquer dos estabelecimentos do Serviço de
Indios [sic]” (Jornal do Brasil 1929). This assertion contradicts decades of
official indigenist policy regarding the mission to safeguard indigenous
peoples precisely by safeguarding their territories.
Long before its precipitous decline, the state’s indigenist apparatus was
already flawed—not only by paternalism or the quixotic mission of trying
to turn people into something they were not but also by its vulnerability
to unpredictable, and at times, arbitrary administration. By making pri-
vate indigenous places public—physically, as in the case of Xingu; rhetori-
cally, as according to Calvalcanti; and ideologically, through the notion
45. Giddens (1990, 21) explains “disembedding” as the removal of “social relations from
local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space.”
46. As Antônio Torres (2000, 11) put it: “O índio é o povo.”
Figure 5 Students from São José dos Marabitanas receive Sivamzinho notebooks (1998).
Courtesy of Leila S. R. Guzmán.do Índio/FUNAI Archive.
REFERENCES
1947b Fundamental Education: Second Interim Report on Fundamental Education in the Hy-
lean Amazon. Paris: UNESCO.
1947c Problems of Fundamental Education in the Amazon Area. Mexico City: UNESCO.
1949 “Good Neighbors.” Nation, November 26, 510–515.
Nicolle, David
1987 The Normans. Oxford, U.K.: Osprey.
NotiSur
1995 “Administration of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso Rocked by SIVAM
Scandal.” Latin American Political Affairs 5 (47): n.p.
O Carnaval
2009 “Viviane Castro com Tapa-Sexo no Carnaval 2009.” O Carnaval (accessed at http://
ocarnaval2009.com/viviane-castro-com-tapa-sexo-no-carnaval-2009).
Oliveira, A. S., Jr.
1946 “Bilhete da Guanabara.” A Época (São Paulo), April 14, n.p.
O Paiz (Rio de Janeiro)
1925 “Integrando o Índio na Civilização.” May 20, n.p.
1955 “Falemos um Pouco dos Donos da Nossa Terra.” November 11, n.p.
O Radical (Rio de Janeiro)
1940 “O índio é a maior preciosidade que encontramos na marcha para oeste.” Sep-
tember 4, n.p.
Pires Menenzes, Maria Lucia
2000 Parque indígena do Xingu. Campinas: UNICAMP/Imprensa Oficial.
Poole, Deborah
1997 Vision, Race, and Modernity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Pratt, Mary Louise
1991 Imperial Eyes. London: Routledge.
Price, David H.
2004 Threatening Anthropology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Ramos, Alcida Rita
1994 “The Hyperreal Indian.” Critique of Anthropology 14 (2): 153–171.
1998 Indigenism: Ethnic Politics in Brazil. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
2000 “The Commodification of the Indian.” Série Antropologia 281: 2–17.
Ramos, Alcida Rita, Rafael Guerreiro Osório, and José Pimenta
2009 “Indigenising Development.” Poverty in Focus 17: 3–5,
Raytheon
2002 “SIVAM Presentation,” November 13, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (ac-
cessed at http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2006/kvh/sivam.html).
2009 “Border and Critical Infrastructure Protection” (accessed at http://www.raytheon
.com/capabilities/rtnwcm/groups/public/documents/content/rtn09_hmlnd
_brdr_pdf.pdf).
Ribeiro, Darcy
1970 Os índios e a civilização. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
1997 Confissões. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
Rohter, Larry
2002 “Deep in Brazil, a Flight of Paranoid Fancy.” New York Times, June 23 (accessed at
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/23/weekinreview/ideas-trends-deep-in-
brazil-a-fl ight-of-paranoid-fancy.html?scp=1&sq=Deep%20in%20Brazil,%20a%
20Flight%20of%20 Paranoid%20Fancy&st=cse?pagewanted=1).
Romanelli, Otaíza de Oliveira
1999 A história da educação no Brasil. Petrópolis: Vozes.
Rondon, Cândido Mariano da Silva
1947 Letter to John Collier. January 28, SPI Archive.
Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino
1986 Facundo: Civilización y barbarie. 1845. Barcelona: Planeta.
Secção de Estudos do Serviço de Proteção aos Índios
1942 Curt Nimuendajú e Icatú: Dois postos indígenas de nacionalização. Filmstrip. Rio de
Janeiro: Secção de Estudos do Serviço de Proteção aos Índios.
Serpa, Herbert
1945 “Saudação.” Unpublished document, Ministry of Agriculture, April 19. SPI
Archive.
Souza Lima, Antonio Carlos de
1995 Um Grande Cerco de Paz. Petrópolis: Vozes.
Summerhill, William
2003 Order against Progress: Government, Foreign Investment, and Railroads in Brazil,
1854–1913. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Taunay, Visconde de
1923 Campanha de Matto Grosso. São Paulo: Livraria do Globo.
1931 Entre os nossos índios. São Paulo: Companhia Melhoramentos.
Taylor, Matthew, and Vinícius Buranelli
2007 “Ending Up in Pizza: Accountability as a Problem of Institutional Arrangement
in Brazil.” Latin American Politics and Society 49 (1): 59–87.
Torres, Antônio
2000 “Entrevista com Luis Pimentel.” Bundas, May 9, 6–11.
Treece, David
2000 Exiles, Allies, Rebels. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
U.S. State Department
2005 “The ‘U.S. Takeover of the Amazon Forest’ Myth” (accessed at http://usinfo.state
.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jul/07–397081.html).
Vargas, Getúlio
1934 “Decreto 24.715.” Diário Oficial (Rio de Janeiro), July 12, n.p.
Veiga, Juracilda, and Wilmar Rocha D’Angelis
2006 Portal Kaingang, “Terra Indígena Icatu” (accessed at http://portalkaingang.org/
index_icatu.htm).
Vicente, Angelina da Silva
1967 “Relatórios da Atividade da Escola Indígena Capitão Vitorino, 1°–4° ano.” SPI
Archive.
Wagley, Charles
1995 Bernard Mishkin, 1913–1954.” American Anthropologist 57 (5): 1033–1035.
Warren, Jonathan
2003 Racial Revolutions. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Wittcoff, Peter
1999 “Amazon Surveillance System (SIVAM): U.S. and Brazilian Cooperation.” Mas-
ter’s thesis. Monterey, CA: Navy Postgraduate School.
Omaira Bolaños
Rights and Resources Group
Abstract: In Latin America, indigenous identity claims among people not previ-
ously recognized as such by the state have become a key topic of anthropological and
sociological research. Scholars have analyzed the motivations and political implica-
tions of this trend and the impacts of indigenous population’s growth on national
demographic indicators. However, little is known about how people claiming indig-
enous status constructs the meaning of their indigenous ethnicity. Drawing from
sixty-four in-depth interviews, focus-group analyses, and participant observation,
this article explores the double process of identity construction: the reconstruction
of the Arapium indigenous identity and the creation of the Jaraqui indigenous iden-
tity in Brazil’s Lower Amazon. The findings reveal six themes that contribute to the
embodiment of a definition of indigenous identity and the establishment of a discur-
sive basis to claim recognition: sense of rootedness, historical memory, historical
transformation, consciousness, social exclusion, and identity politics.
INTRODUCTION
I thank the Tropical Conservation and Development Program and the Amazon Conserva-
tion Leadership Initiative at the University of Florida and the Education for Nature/World
Wildlife Fund fellowship for their support of my studies and research project in Brazil.
I also thank the anonymous LARR reviewers for their insightful comments.
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
zation process in Latin America in the past three decades has favored
the public reclaiming of indigenous identity and collective rights (Brysk
2000; Posteros 2007; Yashar 2005). With the consolidation of neoliberal
policies, macroeconomic changes, and structural reforms of state institu-
tions, indigenous peoples have undertaken major political mobilizations
to challenge structural forms of inequality that have traditionally defined
the relationship between the nation-state and indigenous peoples (Pos-
teros 2007; Yashar 2005). In Bolivia and Ecuador, indigenous movements
have skillfully used the discourses of social exclusion and dominate-
subordinate relationships to pressure constitutional reforms and create a
new set of democratic principles and inclusive citizenship rights that pro-
mote respect for ethnic and racial diversity (Canessa 2007; Yashar 2005). In
Colombia, different forms of interethnic dialogues and regional activism
among indigenous intellectuals, local indigenous leaders, native politi-
cians, civil society, and anthropologists have created a way to negotiate
diversity and operate creative tactics of indigenous politics (Rappaport
2005).
Brazil regained democracy in 1985 after twenty-one years of authoritar-
ian rule, and with it, the restoration of political freedom, citizenship rights,
the revitalization of political institutions, and a new cycle of economic
growth. The 1988 Brazilian Constitution modified the assimilationist in-
digenous policy that for five centuries had defined the relationship be-
tween the state and indigenous peoples. The new constitution recognized
indigenous peoples’ rights to their own institutions, social organizations,
languages, cultural traditions, and their original lands (Ramos 2003). Un-
der this new climate of human rights legislation, Brazil has experienced
a remarkable increase in its indigenous population, contrary to what
had been predicted—a progressive decline and extinction of indigenous
groups. For example, Ribeiro (1996) presented figures that demonstrated
the continuous decline of the indigenous population and predicted they
would eventually become totally acculturated and assimilated into the
national society. In the 2000 national census, however, seven hundred
thousand people reportedly identified themselves as indigenous peoples
(Kennedy and Perz 2000; Ramos 2003). The explanations for this popula-
tion growth are complex and diverse, but among them, the assertion of
indigenous identity is one of the most contentious.
The emergence of several indigenous groups claiming recognition
of indigenous status started in northeastern Brazil during the 1970s
(J. Oliveira 1999), reached the Southeast during the 1980s (Santos and
Oliveira 2003; Warren 2001), and in the late 1990s emerged in the Lower
Amazon in the state of Pará (Bolaños 2008; Ioris 2005; Vaz 2004). Schol-
ars have shown that, during the 1950s, there were roughly ten indige-
nous groups in the Northeast, but by 1994, that number had increased to
twenty-three (J. Oliveira 1999). What makes the movement controversial
1. I use the term índio with its new implied positive and political meaning. To be coher-
ent and respectful of people’s own interpretations of their history and identities, I do not
postulate the idea that they have shifted identity from caboclo to índio.
the recognition of their indigenous status and land rights2. The CITA is as-
sociated with the Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia
Brasileira (COIAB), which have jointly participated in several national in-
digenous rights demonstrations. Members of CITA have lost fundamental
characteristics such as language, religious beliefs, and traditional social
structures that distinguish them as indigenous peoples. Thus, CITA is
making efforts to recuperate the língua geral, or Nheengatú, considered
their native language. Nheengatú was the primary language Jesuit mis-
sionaries used during colonial times to evangelize and “civilize” indig-
enous populations. Borges (1994) has asserted that, since the eighteenth
century, Nheengatú has become the main language and symbol of new
identity formation for some indigenous groups. This is particularly true
for indigenous peoples of mixed descent, such as the Baré and Baniwa
of the Negro River (Borges 1994). In 2004, CITA contacted an indigenous
Baniwa from the Negro River to help rescue the language. In addition,
CITA has been encouraging the use of Nheengatú in special celebrations,
meetings, and at schools.
In this article, I examine how the people of the lower Tapajós-Arapiuns
region construct the meaning of their indigenous identity and the sources
that contribute to the embodiment of their ethnicity. I specifically provide
analysis of the double process of identity construction, that is, the recon-
struction of the Arapium indigenous identity and the creation of the Ja-
raqui ethnic indigenous identity. These groups share the same territory
and descend from one major family that split to form two communities,
Lago da Praia and Caruci, in the municipality of Santarém, in the state of
Pará. The two communities have maintained a close but competitive rela-
tionship. When they joined CITA, people from Lago da Praia decided to
self-define as Jaraqui, which is the name of the most common fish in the re-
gion. The other group maintained their identity as Arapium. The Arapium
community interpreted self-definition as Jaraqui as a form of betrayal to
their people and an erroneous political strategy that might complicate the
process of land demarcation. None of the Arapium communities of the
region recognizes the Lago da Praia people as of Arapium descent. Never-
theless, this has not constituted a conflict for the Jaraqui people’s member-
ship and active involvement in CITA’s ethnic politics. In fact, this decision
has given the Jaraqui a unique position in the indigenous movement, be-
cause their self-definition represents a new form of resistance—that of not
fitting into the identity categories to which they are supposed to relate.
The analysis here is based on sixty-four in-depth interviews, focus-
group analyses, and participant observation carried out during fourteen
months of field research between 2004 and 2007. In this article, I show
2. These indigenous groups are Munduruku, Maytapú, Arapium, Tapajó, Jaraqui, Cara-
Preta, Borari, Tupinambá, Cumaruara, Arara-Vermelha, Apiaká, and Tapuia.
how both identities are both joined and differentiated. The identities are
based on historical practices and relationship with the land. The recon-
struction of Arapium identity is based on the recovery of old memories
of a neglected ethnicity, whereas the Jaraqui identity appears as a way to
value people’s essential practices of survival and as a form of distinction
between the two communities. I argue that indigenous identity and land
rights claims are not just the products of present sociopolitical struggles.
Instead, they are founded on collective historical memories and territorial
meanings that have enabled the Arapium and Jaraqui peoples to recover
and imbue their sense of indigenousness with new meaning. Both the
political struggle to resolve land conflict and the symbolic and cultural
meanings constructed through historical interaction with their territory
frame the claims for recognition.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
groups (Priori and Gomes 2004). The revolt, which developed in the Ama-
zon region from Belém to the margins of Negro River during 1835–1841,
caused a major genocide of indigenous peoples, black slaves, and people
of mixed descent (Cleary 1998). The revolt was a “genuine and deeply vio-
lent rising of oppressed masses” and the governmental reaction to con-
trol it created racial hatred (Hemming 2008, 121). The campaign to regain
military control proposed the extermination of all those considered suspi-
cious of rebellion, such as the tapuios, and indigenous tribes that assisted
the rebels, black slaves, and others of colored skin (Cleary 1998). The effect
of the population reduction was felt for many years after the revolt, espe-
cially and more severely in the Santarém area (Hemming 2008).
Subsequent economic developments in the region, such as the rubber
boom of the late nineteenth century, are considered to have consolidated
the transformation of the remaining indigenous population into a peasant-
type society (Parker 1989; Ross 1978; Wagley 1976). Amazon peasantry has
traditionally been portrayed as the direct antagonist of Amerindian society
and as being at the forefront of colonial and postcolonial economic devel-
opment expansion. Contemporary analysis suggests that the penetration
of merchant capital and availability of land and other resources had been
what has contributed to the formation of the Amazon peasantry, not the
alteration of indigenous social formation (Nugent 1993). Harris (2000, 2003)
has asserted that the traditional representation of Amazonian peasantry
ignores the complex and diverse social reality and the local forms of rela-
tions with capitalist forces through informal economy, petty commodity,
migration, and conflict. He also has pointed out that it is through such dy-
namic interactions that the identity of the Amazon peasantry has evolved.
For these reasons, withdrawal of the Arapium people from the official
written record became a taken-for-granted confirmation of their disap-
pearance as a distinctive people. However, 239 years later, the Arapium
have reappeared in the regional and national context of political struggle
for recognition. To date, sixteen communities in the region assert Ara-
pium identity and seek state recognition.
claim, the indigenous movement rapidly spread over the lower Tapajós
and Arapiuns rivers’ region—thirty-eight communities have since claimed
their indigenous status and land rights. In 2000, CITA was founded, repre-
senting indigenous peoples from the municipalities of Santarém, Aveiro,
and Belterra in the state of Pará.
In 2001 and 2003, respectively, the Arapium and Jaraqui peoples of
the communities of Caruci and Lago da Praia joined the regional indig-
enous movement. Both communities are located along the left bank of
the lower Arapiuns River and share a territory known as Cobra Grande.
Caruci has a population of 89 people, whereas Lago da Praia has 146. The
first phase of the process of land demarcation, which corresponds to the
definition of territorial limits, was initiated by the Fundação Nacional
do Índio (FUNAI) in 2008. The proposal for land demarcation includes
an area of 8,840.25 hectares. Recognition of the land rights has not yet
been decided. Although the Arapium and Jaraqui people have established
well-coordinated efforts in their struggle for land rights, the situation is
not reflected when they seek governmental services, such as indigenous
education. It is here that there are highly marked differences and compet-
ing interests between the groups. The selection of the location of an in-
digenous educational center has become an ongoing conflict between the
two groups. The Arapium, who consider themselves a better-organized
community with stronger leadership, have managed to retain the center.
Meanwhile, the Jaraqui have managed to delay the initiation of the educa-
tional program until the center is relocated to their community.
The collective struggle in CITA for land rights confronts not only a long
and complex administrative process of land demarcation but also ongoing
developmental and environmental disputes that envision the Amazon re-
gion as an area of economic potential and an ecological hot spot of global
concern. In the current context of Brazilian economic growth, the Lower
Tapajós constitutes a key region for the integration of Amazonia into the
global economy and the consolidation of Brazil’s commercial leadership
in South America (Coelho, Castro, and Hurtienne 2001). This is expected
to happen through the consolidation of the soybean industry and the im-
provement of the national transportation system (the paving of Highway
BR-163). In contrast, the creation of new protected and extractive reserve
areas constitutes an environmental strategy to contain further pressures
from development. In this context, the indigenous movement is consid-
ered a new, unwanted political actor that has complicated negotiations
among environmentalists, development agents, and the government. The
cultural and racial mixture of CITA members has been one of the main
issues on which opposition to their rights claims are based.3
3. For a detailed discussion of this issue, which is not the subject of this article, see
Bolaños (2008).
Methodology
I used grounded theory methodology to analyze data from the inter-
views and field notes of this study (Charmaz 2006; Strauss and Corbin
1998). This method allowed for the study of people in their natural set-
ting and a focus on meaning. I followed the constructivist approach of
grounded theory, which assumes the relativism of multiple social reali-
ties, recognizes the mutual creation of knowledge by the viewer and the
viewed, and aims for the interpretative understanding of the subject’s
meanings (Charmaz 2006). To develop the interviews, I used a topic guide
from which I asked questions to help elucidate topics of interest related to
self-definition as indigenous peoples. I also collected personal conversa-
tions and recorded observations that helped contextualize the content of
the interviews. I recorded and conducted all interviews with the informed
consent of the informants. Focus groups provided a space to develop in-
depth discussions about emerging issues from the interviews.
My analysis produced six major themes that constitute the conceptual
sources through which the material and symbolic meanings of the Ara-
pium and Jaraqui ethnicities are explained: (1) sense of rootedness, (2) his-
torical memory, (3) historical transformation, (4) consciousness, (5) social
exclusion, and (6) identity politics. Table 1 presents the themes and the cat-
egories that explain the meaning of the indigenous ethnicities. As a way
to develop the analysis, I present each theme in a separate section to focus
on the internal relationships of the categories of each theme. However,
this strategy does not mean that each theme is independent or unrelated
to the others. The order of presentation also is not intended to indicate a
hierarchy or ranking of themes. It is simply a writing strategy that permits
the narrative flow. In practice, the themes and their categories fit together,
and their relationship and importance vary according to context.
Sense of Rootedness
The unique relationship of indigenous peoples with their land has been
invoked as a critical issue and an irrefutable moral argument to support
claims of indigenous identity (Occhipinti 2003). Sense of rootedness has
been considered the special relationship and emotional attachments that
indigenous peoples have developed for their homelands through long
processes of experience and acquired knowledge (Feld and Basso 1996;
Stewart and Strathern 2003). The way indigenous peoples feel attached to
land has taken on a central discursive role in Arapium and Jaraqui peo-
ples’ claims for recognition. This is especially important for them because
they are not simply claiming a piece of land; they are claiming the rights
over the land to which they feel emotionally embedded, which holds past
People say that Lago da Praia is the place of the jaraqui fish . . . the typical fish of
the region. When the school of fish comes, we get a lot of jaraqui. The fish is what
identifies this place; that is the reason for us to be índio Jaraqui. . . . [T]he fish is our
subsistence. . . . [W]e took its name, because fishing is what we do, jaraqui is what
we eat. . . . [W]e are Jaraqui!”
For the Jaraqui people, the mixture of boiled or roasted jaraqui fish
with farinha represents a symbolic way of nurturing their identity: by
eating, they invigorate their body and their soul with the essential sub-
stance that constitutes what they are—índios Jaraqui. Examples of the
relationship between food and constitution of identity can be found in
other cases among Amazonian indigenous peoples. For example, Vilaça
(2007) found that among the Wari’ of the state of Rondonia, Brazil, food
was central to the constitution of physical identity. For the Wari’, social
relationships, physical proximity, and commensality construct the body
throughout life. By adopting the Jaraqui identity, people from Lago da
Praia manage to represent the symbolic and political meanings that con-
tribute to their self-definition and differentiate them from their Arapium
neighbors. This is important because, in their political struggle, the Ja-
raqui people display a complex sense of who they are by essentializing
their identity as rooted in the land and/or river, but they detach them-
selves from local history. Their identity is tied not to the Arapium people,
who were in the territory before the colonial regime, but to their own
lived historical experience.
Historical Memory
Memory constitutes a crucial element in the construction of identity. It
is a powerful source of knowledge and emotions that helps shape identi-
ties. Memory is the product of social and cultural experience embedded
in objects, places, and practices. Scholars argue that memory as a product
of historical social experience involves processes of remembering and for-
getting (Middleton and Edwards 1990; Misztal 2003). Memory is crucial to
our understanding of present circumstances—it helps us not only explain
the past but also understand the present.
From the interviews, one way to express historical memory is through
the recognition of indigenous descent, which implies looking back into the
family history for a fact, event, or memory that links the person to the no-
tion of indigenousness. The generational component is among the key fac-
tors that nurture peoples’ sense of indigenousness, because it places them
in history as indigenous peoples. Remembering past generations consti-
tutes a key element in the effort to legitimize peoples’ political claims.
In the process of remembering and sharing memories, people reinterpret
and rediscover features of the past that give new meanings to their own
identity:
I knew about my ancestors through my grandmother; she told me that her parents
were Indians. She talked about the índios, the names of the índios that I do not
remember any more. . . . [S]he said that they used to visit her there in the place she
lived . . . that place was inhabited by índios. . . . [S]he told me that she was an índia
mesma [authentic Indian].
same root, but we have changed, though we continue to do the same things they
used to do.
Family memories are full of images of the índio mesmo, from which the
meaning of the present condition as indigenous peoples is derived. More-
over, in the context of the political struggle for indigenous rights, the term
índio mesmo broadens its meaning to refer to political commitment to the
indigenous movement. Indio mesmo is the individual who stands up and
struggles for his or her rights, who self-identifies as índio without shame,
and who speaks out for the indigenous movement. Through this term, in-
dividuals acquire a privileged status that distinguishes them from those
who do not belong to the group and cannot be trusted.
Historical Transformation
Historical transformation refers to the different events and social-
political conditions that induce processes of cultural and ethnic change.
When talking about their sense of indigenousness, the Arapium and Ja-
raqui place themselves in an ambiguous condition. That is, they recognize
that their experience as indigenous peoples is contemporary and differs
from that of past generations. Their assertion of ethnic identity is based
not on concepts of continuity, as if they were the same as those indig-
enous people from centuries ago, but on change. Historical changes gave
origin to new forms, meanings, and understandings of what it means to
be indigenous. The construction of Arapium and Jaraqui ethnic identities
encompass apparently contradictory images, traits, and stereotypes that,
however, do not exclude them from definitions of indigenousness. The
historical transformation contains explanations that depart from what
they interpret as racial and cultural mixture:
Here in the Amazon, there was a mixture of races, especially the mixture of whites
with other different indigenous groups. That is why people call us caboclo . . .
but for us a cabloco is not much different from an índio, it is just the name that is
different. In fact, we are considered as tapuios; the true tapuios of the Amazonian
region. Tapuio is an índio mixed with black, white, and other índios . . . the cur-
rent Arapium is not a “pure” índio. Moreover, the current Arapium varies in term
of skin color, whether brown or almost black, and the type of hair . . . but what
really matters is that the current Arapium believes in his culture, believes that he
is an índio, and behaves as an índio mesmo.
ments of their political claims. Cultural and racial mixture, then, is rein-
terpreted as a form of continuity rather than as disappearance. This is an
assertion that emphasizes change as a critical element of ethnic identity.
Indeed, these ideas remind us that cultural change does not necessar-
ily generate change of ethnic identities, as if it were a linear cause-effect
action (R. Oliveira 2006). Whitten (2007) asserts that the phenomenon of
interculturality offers a new alternative to the racial fixity of the mestizaje
ideology. Interculturality, which stresses movement from one cultural
system to another, valorizes indigenousness and blackness and permits
the confrontation of racial categories born in colonial times.
Consciousness
Consciousness is the process of coming into existence and becoming
active as indigenous peoples. Consciousness includes the task of recap-
turing peoples’ history by dismantling imposed restrictive knowledge
that distorted the understanding of their history. Restrictive knowledge
removed indigenous peoples from their own history and inscribed in
peoples’ minds that they were no longer indigenous. Embedded in social
structures of power, this restrictive knowledge worked as an explanatory
framework of indigenous peoples’ history and fate. These ideas inter-
preted indigenous peoples not only as inferior but also as subjects of im-
minent extinction:
Although we were índios, although we were born índios, and our parents and
grandparents were índios, we did not have knowledge of that. . . . [W]e thought
that we were whites, but now we know that índio is what we really are.
Social Exclusion
Social exclusion in the narratives refers to the negative experiences that
the Arapium and Jaraqui suffered as a result of their ascription to a stig-
matized índio category. In the Brazilian context, a stigmatized or generic
índio constituted an Indian detached from his or her culture and ethnic
identity (Ribeiro 1996). This category placed the Arapium and Jaraqui in
a disadvantageous position that limited their potential to become full hu-
man agents in their own society. They interpret their exclusion as a prod-
uct of the lack of legal recognition of their ethnicity. That is, they suffered
exclusion and discrimination because they were categorized as merely ge-
neric índio. When talking about the many forms of exclusion, stereotypi-
cal definitions of the generic índio category appeared in the narratives:
Some people said that índios were lazy and that índios never constructed any-
thing for Brazil, and it was only because the Portuguese came that we have a
country. . . . Before if we said we were índio, we had difficulty even getting into a
school; that is why I was ashamed of being índio. In Santarém, I never said I was
índio, because of the discrimination we suffered.
Interviewees mentioned stereotypes in connection with racism and
discrimination. In Brazil, ethnic and racial prejudice continues to be a fac-
tor of social discrimination, and skin color determines the degree of so-
cial insertion into the mainstream society, as shown in the report “Racial
Inequalities in Brazil” (Paixão and Carvano 2008). People’s ascription to
the stigmatized índio category implied not only their removal from their
history but also their reduction to stereotypical symbols of isolation, in-
feriority, and alienation. The stigmatization of the índio category placed
indigenous populations in an undesirable subordinate condition with few
legal rights. To be an índio was to be inferior and to have little social value
and citizenship rights. This practice of discrimination and stereotyping
prevented the self-identification as indigenous peoples. Field (2002) asserts
that, because of this discrimination, índios in either colonial or indepen-
dent Latin America would have had no reason to assert their indigenous-
ness. Canessa (2007) shows how in Ecuador more people are identifying
themselves as indigenous, whereas in the past they would have avoided
such a definition. As national and international legislation changed, in-
digenous peoples were able to assert their rights. Self-definition as indig-
enous has become a claim to difference, a claim to rights, and a claim to
moral authority in the face of globalization (Canessa 2007):
In every meeting, in every regional gathering of indigenous peoples, we acquire
more knowledge about our rights. . . . [W]e are discovering our rights; we are put-
ting them out to be known by our people, . . . by knowing our rights, we are more
certain about our indigenous identity. In the meetings, we learned that, like the
whites, we have rights, but we have more; we have rights only for us.
Ramos (2003) explains that for reemerging indigenous groups, the ful-
fillment of rights as citizens has great value because it represents a po-
litical instrument to transform generic exclusion into ethnic reinclusion.
In this case, the assertion of indigenous identity seeks to legitimize their
ethnic distinction and to suppress the vulnerability and limitations they
have in the access to public services and fundamental rights. The recon-
struction of their ethnic identity allows them to be more than mere índios.
They became a people with a particular ethnic identity. People define
themselves not only as índio but also as índio Arapium, Jaraqui, and so
on. The Arapium and Jaraqui not only have rejected previous negative
connotations of the term índio but also have empowered it with a new
positive and political meaning. In doing so, they challenged homogeniz-
ing regimes of citizenship and positioned themselves in a special category
of citizens with special rights, as Posteros (2007) has shown in other Latin
American countries. Rappaport (2005) has shown how the Nasa people of
Colombia experienced a transformation from a generic identity as indig-
enous people to a reaffirmation of the Nasa ethnicity through a process of
revitalization of their ancestral knowledge.
Identity Politics
Identity politics refers to the political meaning of the Arapium and
Jaraqui ethnicities. Identity politics implies the use of ethnic identity, its
symbols, and cultural practices to politically mobilize and claim rights
(Brysk 2000; Posteros 2007). In Latin America, the recent emergence of the
indigenous rights movement and the consequent politicization of indige-
nous identity are considered a result of the changes in citizenship regimes
and a defensive reaction against external threats to local autonomy and
land rights (Yashar 2005). Yashar (2005, 71) argues that indigenous iden-
tity politics have been possible through “transcommunity networks and
political associational space” that permit mobilization among previously
dispersed communities. Arapium and Jaraqui identity politics are not an
individual process. They constitute a collective action through which they
seek to join efforts with other indigenous groups to speak out and claim
their indigenous rights. Identity politics shows how people feel empow-
ered to negotiate identity and contest power structures that constrain
their sociocultural life and self-definition.
In identity politics, symbols of ethnic identity such as history, land, cul-
ture, and belonging play an important role because they contain and dis-
play elements that contribute to their collective definition. The Arapium
and Jaraqui use these meaningful icons to articulate their claims to the
state and to civil society, and to reinforce their identity in the communi-
ties. Belonging to CITA is an important step toward recognition, defense of
their rights, and becoming visible political actors. Through the indigenous
movement, they have worked to raise political consciousness by empha-
sizing two aspects, renewed pride of being índio and political activism,
to achieve improvements in their lives by securing their homelands and
gaining access to governmental services such as education and health:
After I started participating in the meetings of the indigenous movement, I per-
ceived and reflected on where I came from, my real origin, and my ancestors. All
these things made me think about and believe I am an índio.
We [people of Caruci] received an invitation to participate in a meeting in Vila
Franca and we went. There, [CITA] explained how and what we needed to do to
assert our indigenous identity . . . then we got together here and we all recognized
that we were índios and decided to assert our identity.
Throughout Latin America, indigenous identity politics have pres-
sured for important changes in national legislations regarding indig-
enous land rights. In Bolivia, the new land reform law of 1996, known
as the INRA law for the institution it created, the Instituto Nacional de
Reforma Agraria, established collective land titling for indigenous terri-
tories as a result of indigenous mobilization that started in 1990 (Posteros
2007). In the present case, land constitutes the main symbolic and material
concern through which the collective struggle is oriented. Scholars argue
that the establishment of indigenous territories is not just about the claim-
ing of rights; rather, indigenous territories are a lived reality that contain
symbolic meanings. In this sense, land rights claims intend to defend and
revitalize people’s ethnic identity and the collective spaces of social and
cultural production and reproduction (Dávalos 2005). Killick (2008) has
highlighted the importance of the process of land titling in the opposi-
tion of centuries of domination and in the assertion of self-determination
rights of indigenous peoples in Peruvian Amazonia. By comparing the
land-titling processes of two different indigenous groups, Killick shows
how land title claims respond to different perceptions and needs. The de-
sire to control territory and the defense of their collective identity moti-
vated the land claims of one group; for the other, it was the need to secure
education for their children.
In the lower Tapajós region, the promotion of economic development
via the expansion of the agricultural frontier through soybean production
has generated great concern among rural and indigenous communities.
They see this development as a threat to their land rights:
We hope that with the demarcation of our land, everything is going to be peace-
ful. We struggle for land demarcation to end the risk of losing our lands . . . with
the demarcation, the whites cannot enter our lands, because like those grileiros,4
soybean producers, and private loggers, they constitute a big threat for us.
The defense of their lands against this potential threat has inundated
the discursive appeal of the indigenous movement. The symbolic and eco-
nomic meanings of their land as the main source of identity and subsis-
tence became the essential language used to urge the demarcation of their
lands. As in the Arapium and Jaraqui case, indigenous peoples elsewhere
have stressed the importance of their land as part of their own history and
as a way to ensure the continuity of their culture (Occhipinti 2003).
CONCLUSIONS
4. In Portuguese, grilajem refers to the illegal seizure and appropriation of public lands.
Grileiros are the people who illegally take over the lands of other people.
REFERENCES
Gomes, Mercio P.
2000 The Indians and Brazil. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Gordillo, Gaston, and Silvia Hirsch
2003 “Indigenous Struggles and Contested Identities in Argentina: Histories of Invis-
ibility and Reemergence.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 8 (3): 4–30.
Hale, Charles
2002 “Does Multiculturalism Menace? Governance, Cultural Rights and the Politics of
Identity in Guatemala.” Journal of Latin American Studies 34 (3): 485–525.
Harris, Mark
2000 Life in the Amazon: The Anthropology of a Brazilian Peasant Village. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
2003 “Peasants in the Floodplain: Some Elements of the ‘Agrarian Question’ in River-
ine Amazonia.” In Some Other Amazonians. Perspectives on Modern Amazonia, ed-
ited by Stephen Nugent and Mark Harris, 57–81. London: Institute of the Study of
the Americas.
Hill, D. Jonathan, ed.
1996 History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492–1992. Iowa City: Uni-
versity of Iowa Press.
2008 Made-from-Bone: Trickster Myths, Music, and History from the Amazon. Chicago:
University of Illinois Press.
Hemming, John
2008 Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon. New York: Thames and Hudson.
Hoffmann, Odile
2002 “Collective Memories and Ethnic Identity in the Colombian Pacific.” Journal of
Latin American Anthropology 7 (2): 118–139.
Ioris, M. Edviges
2005 “A Forest of Disputes: Struggles over Spaces, Resources, and Social Identities in
Amazonia.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville.
Kennedy, David, and Stephen Perz
2000 “Who Are Brazilian Indians? Contributions of Census Data Analysis to Anthro-
pological Demography of Indigenous Populations.” Human Organization 59 (3):
311–324.
Killick, Evan
2008 “Creating Community: Land Titling, Education and Settlement Formation among
the Ashéninka of Peruvian Amazonia.” Journal of Latin America and Caribbean An-
thropology 13 (1): 22–47.
Leite, Serafim
1943 História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil. Norte—1) Fundações e entradas séculos XVII-
XVIII. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro.
McSweeney, Kendra, and Shahna Arps
2005 “A ‘Demographic Turnaround’: The Rapid Growth of Indigenous Populations in
Lowland Latin America.” Latin American Research Review 40 (1): 3–29.
Middleton, David, and Derek Edwards
1990 Collective Remembering. London: Sage Publications.
Misztal, Barbara A.
2003 Theories of Social Remembering. Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Moran, Emilio
1993 Through Amazonian Eyes: The Human Ecology of Amazonian Population. Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press.
Moreira, Carlos de Araujo
1988 Indios da Amazônia: De maioria a menoria. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Vozes.
Nimuendaju, Curt
1963 “The Maue and the Arapium.” In Handbook of South American Indians. Edited by
Julian H. Steward, 3: 245–254. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, Bureau of
American Ethnology.
Nugent, Stephen
1993 Amazonian Caboclo Society: An Essay in Invisibility and Peasant Economy. Oxford,
U.K.: Berg.
Occhipinti, Laurie
2003 “Claiming a Place: Land and Identity in Two Communities in Northwestern Ar-
gentina.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 8 (3): 155–174.
Oliveira, João Pacheco de
1999 A viagem da volta. Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa.
Oliveira, Roberto Cardoso de
1988 A crise do indigenismo. Campinas: Universidade Estadual Campinas.
2006 Caminhos da identidade: Ensaios sobre etnicidade e multiculturalism. São Paulo: Edi-
tora UNESP.
Pace, Richard
2006 “Abuso Científico de Termo caboclo? Dúvidas de Representação e Autoridade.”
Boletin do Museo Paraense Emilio Goeldi 1 (3): 79–92.
Paixão, Marcelo, and Luiz M. Carvano
2008 Relatório annual das desigualdades raciais no Brasil: 2007–2008. Rio de Janeiro: Gara-
mond Universitaria.
Parker, Eugene Philip
1989 “A Neglect Human Resource in Amazonia: The Amazon Caboclo.” Advances in
Economic Botany 7: 249–259.
Penna, Ferreira
1869 A região occidental da provincia do Pará. Belém: Typographia do Diario de
Belém.
Perz, Stephen, Jonathan Warren, and David Kennedy
2008 “Contributions of Racial-Ethnic Re-Classification and Demographic Processes to
Indigenous Population Resurgence: The Case of Brazil.” Latin American Research
Review 43 (2): 7–33.
Pineda, Baron
2001 “Creole Neighborhood or Miskito Community? A Case Study of Identity Politics
in a Mosquito Coast Land Dispute.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 6 (1):
120–155.
Posteros, Nancy
2007 Now We Are Citizens: Indigenous Politics in Multicultural Bolivia. Stanford, CA: Stan-
ford University Press.
Priori, Mary, and Flávio Gomes, eds.
2004 Os Senhores dos Rios: Amazônia, margens e histórias. Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier.
Ramos, Rita Alcida
2003 “The Special (or Specious?) Status of Brazilian Indians.” Citizenship Studies 7 (4):
401–420.
Rappaport, Joanne
2005 Intercultural Utopias: Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Plural-
ism in Colombia. London: Duke University Press.
Ribeiro, Darcy
1996 Os índios e a civilização: A integração das populações indígenas no Brasil moderno. São
Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
Ross, B. Eric
1978 “The Evolution of the Amazon Peasantry.” Journal of Latin American Studies 10 (2):
193–218.
Sampaio, Patricia
2004 “Administração colonial e legislação indigenista na Amazônia portuguesa. In Os
Senhores dos Rios: Amazônia, margens e histórias, edited by M. Del Priori and Flávio
Gomes, 123–140. Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier.
Santos, Ana F., and João Pacheco de Oliveira
2003 Reconhecimento étnico em exame: Dois estudos sobre os Caxixó. Rio de Janeiro: Contra
Capa.
Stewart, Pamela J., and Andrew Strathern
2003 Landscape, Memory, and History: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press.
Strauss, Anselm, and Juliet Corbin
1998 Basic of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded The-
ory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Virginia Oliveros
Columbia University
Milan Vaishnav
Columbia University
Abstract: Over the past few years, a burgeoning literature on Latin American poli-
tics has developed, focusing on explanations for the renewed success of the left in the
region. Building on electoral trends and public opinion analysis, we argue that the
region is experiencing the normalization of democratic politics rather than a back-
lash or a revolution. Furthermore, we believe that electoral support for the left re-
flects the disenchantment of voters with underperforming right-wing governments.
Using a unique data set covering eighteen countries in the region, our statistical
analyses demonstrate that retrospective voting provides a powerful explanation of
the recent electoral success of the left in Latin America. Thus, the central implica-
tion of our argument is that electoral accountability is still the primary mechanism
of controlling the executive in the region’s young democracies.
INTRODUCTION
In the past few years, much ink has spilt on the subject of the rise of
the Latin American left. Reflecting on the changing political winds in the
region, journalists, policy makers, and academics have all warned of a ris-
ing tide of leftist political movements across Central and South America.
From the petroleum-fueled bluster of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to the
Bolivian cocalero Evo Morales and the former guerrilla Daniel Ortega of
Nicaragua, the impression is that a socialist revolution is sweeping the re-
gion. By contrast, in this essay, we provide a less revolutionary explanation
of the region’s changing political fortunes. We argue that the region is ex-
periencing the normalization of democratic politics and that electoral sup-
port for the left reflects the disenchantment of voters with underperform-
ing right-wing governments. Theory and empirical evidence demonstrate
that retrospective voting provides a powerful explanation of the recent
electoral success of the left in Latin America. Thus, the central implication
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
0.8
Presidential left vote share
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008
Year
4. At the time of writing in June 2009, El Salvador had elected Mauricio Funes of the
left-leaning Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) as the country’s
next president, and Ecuadorean voters reelected the incumbent leftist Rafael Correa. In
Panama, however, voters selected the right-wing candidate Ricardo Martinelli of the op-
position Democratic Change.
5. As does the rest of the literature on the Latin American left from which we are deriv-
ing alternative hypotheses, we focus on presidential rather than legislative elections. Policy
accountability in Latin America has been theorized to pivot on presidential elections as a
result of legislative weakness and the combination of national and local demands on legis-
lators (Cox and Morgenstern 2001; Stokes 2001).
the first round with either 40 percent of the vote or 35 percent of the vote
and a five-percentage-point lead over the nearest competitor. This reform
benefited Ortega, who captured the presidency with only 38 percent of the
vote, because the two major right-leaning parties each decided to field a
candidate, thus fracturing the conservative vote among the Partido Liberal
Constitutionalista (PLC, Liberal Constitutionalist Party) and Alianza Lib-
eral Nicaragüense (ALN, Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance) (Lean 2007). While
benefiting immensely from the division of the conservative camp, Ortega
was also in a position to unify the left vote because the former popular
Managua mayor Herty Lewites, who led a Sandinista-splinter party into
national elections, unexpectedly died on the campaign trail.6
An exclusive focus on the electoral winner, however, might just as
easily understate support for the left. Take the well-known example of
Mexico’s 2006 presidential elections in which Felipe Calderón of the con-
servative incumbent Partido Acción Nacional (PAN, National Action
Party) narrowly defeated the left-leaning, former Mexico City mayor An-
drés Manuel López Obrador, of the Partido de la Revolución Democratica
(PRD, Party of the Democratic Revolution) by 0.56 percentage points (a
difference of roughly 230,000 votes of 42 million votes cast). In the end,
López Obrador earned 35.33 percent of the vote, just shy of the 35.89 that
Calderón claimed (Estrada and Poiré 2007; Schedler 2007).
These examples demonstrate why a focus on the eventual winners
does not adequately indicate the electoral following of the left; doing so
does not assess the degree of electoral support for all left-wing candidates
among the population. By contrast, our measurement of left vote share is
more accurate in terms of reflecting voters’ willingness to support left-
wing candidates in the first round; that is, before voters were presented
with only two candidates in the countries of the region that have ballot-
age. There are at least two other alternative measures of our dependent
variable that can be found in the literature. Stokes (2009) emphasizes the
strategic component of presidential elections by focusing on the two can-
didates with the greatest vote share and their relative position.7 Baker and
6. Lean (2007) has reported that preelection polls showed that the left vote was evenly
divided between Ortega and Lewites. After Lewites’s untimely death, Edmundo Jarquín re-
placed him as the presidential candidate for the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista (MRS).
On election day, the Jarquín-led MRS mustered only 6 percent of the vote.
7. We have two main concerns with Stokes’s (2009) measure. First, when the winner and
the first loser receive the same ideological score and the difference between first and second
loser is more than 5 percent, Stokes argues that there is coordination failure. As a remedy,
she treats these cases as missing data. In contrast, our measure allows us to include such
cases in our data set. Second, Stokes’s measure relies heavily on the concept of strategic vot-
ing, yet her measure of presidential vote share relies on the first round of balloting. This is
problematic because many countries in the region use ballotage systems, in which strategic
voting is substantively different. In such systems, it is perfectly possible for one to “waste”
a vote in the first round, knowing that he or she can vote for the less preferred candidate
in a second round.
8. According to our calculations, there were thirty-nine presidential elections between
1990 and 1999. The breakdown of winners is as follows: left (one), center-left (six), center
(eight), center-right (seventeen), and right (seven).
gued that inflation has a negative impact on the prospect for reelection for
labor-based governments. Similarly, Stokes (2001) and Remmer (2002) have
argued that growth affected retrospective voting for incumbents during
the 1990s. Even for those who argue that economic downturns—such as
growth slowdowns or inflationary pressures—rather than resentment to-
ward specific policies have contributed to growing support for the left in
the region (Panizza 2005), it is important to note that Latin American vot-
ers tend to blame their incumbent governments for economic malaise.
Indeed, Latinobarómetro data show that, in most countries of the re-
gion, more than half of the population blames the government’s economic
policy for the economic problems of their countries (Alcaniz and Hellwitt
2009, table 2). Hence, because in the 1990s largely conservative govern-
ments were associated with the region’s poor growth record, we might
expect retrospective voters to punish right-wing incumbents only when
they presided over a growth slowdown or unacceptably high levels of in-
flation. Conversely, if the incumbent president is from a left-wing party,
poor economic performance would not obviously favor a left-wing succes-
sor. In this context, democratic political institutions create the conditions
for responsive government because political competition gives voters the
ability to exert political control over their representatives (Przeworski,
Stokes, and Manin 1999; Schumpeter 1962). Our main hypothesis thus
emphasizes the interaction between retrospective economic voting and
right-wing incumbents:
H1: The failure of prior economic policies reflected in poor economic growth or
high inflation increases the vote share of left presidential candidates only when
voters can blame a right-wing incumbent.
It follows from our argument, then, that the electoral ascendance of the
left in recent years can be perceived as a healthy sign of democratic institu-
tionalization and the result of the broadest and most sustained democratic
experience in the region’s history. The institutionalization of democracy
has initiated a process by which the left reintegrated into political society.
Beginning in the 1960s, leftist movements challenged the authority of the
state and often took up arms against state authorities. In almost all such
cases, armed insurgencies ushered in repressive, right-wing military gov-
ernments that crushed left-wing guerillas. By the 1990s, the revolutionary
left had virtually become a nonentity in the region; left-wing movements
have accepted electoral politics and moderated their discourse (Casta-
ñeda 1993, 2006). Similarly, the conservative right—in exchange for leftist
moderation—lifted its prior objections to democratic governance. As the
potential of communist revolution decreased, conservative elites felt more
secure in accepting inclusive democratic politics (Hagopian 2003). Hence,
left-wing parties have accepted the rules of competitive elections, and for
the most part, other mainstream political actors have accepted them.
H2: As the level of income inequality increases in a society, left candidates receive
a greater percentage of the popular vote share.
H3: At low to medium levels of inequality, left candidates receive an increasing
percentage of the popular vote share. At high levels of inequality, left candidates
receive a decreasing percentage of the vote share.
An alternative explanation for the electoral support for the left stems
from the political economy literature on advanced industrial countries,
which has linked the increase in trade and capital integration with larger
welfare states through the policies of left-wing parties (Garrett 1998, 2000;
Iversen and Wren 1998). Stokes (2009) argues that globalization and the
reduced size of the public sector have improved the left’s electoral for-
tunes. She interprets the growing electoral support for the left in the re-
gion as “the electorate’s search for refuge from [economic] insecurity in
left-leaning governments.” Stokes tests these hypotheses using both trade
openness and capital account liberalization, which have been identified
as the main mechanisms for economic globalization (Simmons 1999).9
Although Stokes’s dependent variable is different from ours, we use her
measures of trade openness and capital-market openness to test for glo-
balization effects on left vote share. Following her argument, we expect
both variables to have a positive effect on the share of the vote for left-
wing candidates.
H4: At high levels of trade openness or capital market openness, left candidates
receive a greater percentage of the popular vote share.
In testing this hypothesis, we control for the size of the public sector,
which in theory should act as a buffer, protecting voters from globaliza-
tion pressures and therefore influencing their likelihood of resorting to
the left in search for safety nets. As with inequality, controlling for per
capita GDP is crucial, as the effects of globalization could vary depending
on the wealth of the country.
The Crisis of Political Representation and the Vote for the Left
Economic conditions aside, other authors emphasize the importance of
party system institutionalization (or lack thereof) in explaining the emer-
gence of left-wing and especially outsider and/or antimarket candidates.10
As Roberts and Wibbels (1999, 575) have noted, the weak institutionaliza-
9. Stokes’s regression results also test for the interactive effect of voters punishing the
right when it presided over open capital markets and when it reduced the public sector
(and punishing the left when it expanded trade openness). In the body of the article, we
present the direct effects, which are more in line with the globalization literature, but note
19 reports our results when running the interactions.
10. For the classic definition and measurement of party system institutionalization in
Latin America, see Mainwaring and Scully (1995).
tion of party systems in Latin America has given rise to “a pervasive sense
that political representation has become de-structured or unhinged, creat-
ing a volatile situation in which political identities and organizational loy-
alties are recomposed from one election to the next.” The vacuum created
by the absence of stable party institutions gives particular incentives to
political leaders espousing a more radical, leftist agenda of socioeconomic
and political change (Roberts 2007). For instance, Mainwaring (2006) has
associated the crisis of representation of political parties in the Andean
region with the emergence of outsiders. However, because political out-
siders in Latin America include right-wing presidents, such as Alberto
Fujimori of Peru in the 1990s and Álvaro Uribe of Colombia in the 2000s,
we tested for the interaction between electoral volatility and right-wing
incumbents.11 That is, we believe that only when a country experiences a
crisis of political representation under a right-wing incumbent will future
electoral benefits accrue to left-wing outsiders. If the incumbent govern-
ment is not right or center-right, outsiders could also emerge on the right
wing of the political spectrum.
H5: In conditions of high electoral volatility (as a proxy for low party institution-
alization), left candidates receive a greater percentage of the popular vote share
when the incumbent is right-wing.
Mainwaring (2006) has argued that the length of the democratic ex-
perience does not prevent a crisis of political party representation, as the
Andean outsiders emerged both in countries with a history of instability,
such as Bolivia or Ecuador, and in countries with long electoral experi-
ence, such as Venezuela and Colombia. However, we control for the dura-
tion of a particular country’s democratic experience because most argu-
ments about institutionalization—including those about political party
systems—emphasize the impact of time (Lipset and Rokkan 1967; Pierson
2004).
This section presents our modeling strategy and the indicators used
to measure the variables for testing our hypotheses. Our data set encom-
passes eighteen Latin American countries over the period 1978–200812—
that is, the most recent democratic period in the region. Each observation
corresponds to one presidential election in year j and country i. We have
11. For a discussion of right-wing political outsiders, see Weyland’s (2003) piece on the
elective affinity between neoliberalism and neopopulism. For a discussion of right-wing
and left-wing populism in Latin America, see Walker (2008).
12. They include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Re-
public, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay,
Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
13. We included only parties that obtained more than 5 percent of the vote. For more
details, see Appendix B.
14. We acknowledge that growth can have a much longer lag time with respect to its
effects on voters than inflation. To account for this, we tried lagging growth one entire
presidential period and reran our regressions. The results did not change, so we kept the
one-year lag for simplicity’s sake.
ficient that measures income inequality (lagged one year) on the right-
hand side of our equation to test the linear hypothesis that high levels of
inequality lead to greater redistribution (H2). But inequality also enters
as a squared term (income inequality2) to test for the inverted U-shaped
effect that Debs and Helmke (2008) stipulated (H3). We controlled for the
wealth of the country using GDP per capita (lagged one year), as it affects
the possibility of demands for redistribution at any level of inequality.
To test for the effect of globalization on left voting, we followed Stokes
(2009) and employed two different measures of a country’s integration
into international markets. For capital markets integration, we used the
measure of capital-market openness (Capital Openness) created by Chinn
and Ito (2008), the KAOPEN index. This index, based on International
Monetary Fund data, measures the extent of openness in capital account
transactions. To measure the integration into the market for goods and
services, we used the sum of exports and imports of goods and services as
a share of gross domestic product. We took the natural log of this variable
(trade) and lagged it one year. We expect both capital openness (lagged
one year) and trade (lagged one year) to have a positive effect on voting
for the left.
We controlled for the size of the public sector on voting left with a
measure of the government’s final consumption expenditure (spending).
This variable includes all government current expenditures for purchases
of goods and services (including compensation of employees). As Stokes
(2009) has pointed out, this measure can be problematic because not all
spending is carried out by the national government. However, spending
data by subnational governments is not available for many of the coun-
tries under study. Following Kaufman and Segura-Ubiergo (2001) and
Stokes (2009), we checked the robustness of our results by excluding the
two most federal countries of the region: Brazil and Argentina. As with
the other variables, we took the natural log of spending and lagged it one
year.
To measure the effect of party system institutionalization (H5), we used
the variable electoral volatility, which calculated the aggregate vote shift
from one presidential election to another in a single country using the
Pedersen Index (Pedersen 1983).15 Because the region had both left-wing
and right-wing political outsiders, we focused on party system crises un-
der right-wing incumbents, which provided a unique opportunity for left-
wing presidential outsiders to emerge. Hence, we included an interaction
term between electoral volatility and right incumbent. We expected Elec-
15. The Pedersen Index takes values from 0 to 1. A value of 0 indicates absolute stability
of the vote—no parties lose or gain more votes than in the previous election. A value of 1
indicates that all votes accrued to new parties. We included only parties with more than
5 percent of the vote in the calculations of the index.
RESULTS
16. Some of our observations have zero votes for the left in a given year, which makes the
distribution of the dependent variable to be nonnormal. To account for this zero inflation of
the data, we tried a modified version of the zero-inflated negative binomial (zinb) but this
model produced equivalent results so we present the OLS alternatives. Also, because there
is some concern with running a regression with clustered errors when the number of clus-
ters is so small (see, e.g., Angrist and Pischke 2009), we reran the regression with normal
standard errors. The errors in both models are similar, which suggests almost no residual
unmodeled variation across countries. To confirm, we explicitly modeled the country-level
variance by running a multilevel (hierarchical) model with country random effects and
again found no variation. Moreover, to test for the possibility that the elections in one coun-
try drove results, we excluded, one at a time, each country from the data set and compared
the results with the ones from the full data set. The direction of all the main coefficients and
their significance remained the same.
17. We also ran the models lagging growth by one presidential period as opposed to one
year. Our results were similar.
line represents the effect of inflation lagged on the vote share of left presi-
dential candidates when there is a right-wing incumbent president (4
or 5 in our scale), whereas the lighter line shows the effect of inflation
lagged when the incumbent president is left, center-left, or centrist (1, 2,
or 3). Darker dots correspond to observations with right incumbents, and
lighter dots correspond to nonright incumbents. As the positive slope of
the darker line in figure 2 shows, there is strong evidence that inflation
when the incumbent is right-wing has a positive effect on future left vote
share. In substantive terms, a 1-percentage-point increase in inflation cor-
responds to a 5.1-percentage-point increase in left presidential vote share
when the incumbent is right-wing (significant at p < .01).18 This is sig-
nificant when considering that the mean margin of victory of elections in
our data set (taken from the first round of voting) is roughly 12 percent.
More than one-quarter of first-round contests had a margin of less than
5 percent.
In contrast, the lighter line in figure 2 shows the negative effect of in-
flation lagged on left vote share when the incumbent is not right-wing.
An increase of 1 percentage point in inflation when a center, center-left,
or left incumbent is in power decreases the vote share for the left by
7.9 percentage points. That is, voters react slightly stronger to left-wing
administrations that govern during periods of high inflation than to right-
wing administrations with similar performance. This finding confirms
Remmer’s (2002) argument about left-wing constituencies’ preference for
low inflation—inflation has a large, negative impact on the poor.
Although the contrasting findings on growth and inflation might seem
counterintuitive on first glance, they are supported by a great deal of
the literature, which has found that inflation—rather than growth—has
a strong and direct impact on voters’ calculus. Lora and Olivera (2005)
found strong evidence that the Latin American electorate is especially
sensitive to inflation (as opposed to other economic outcomes). Like us,
they do not find that the electorate punishes the president for growth de-
clines. This suggests that voters as consumers feel the immediate pinch
of higher prices brought on by inflation, whereas the effects of anemic
growth are less immediate and certainly less direct. The differential ef-
fects of growth and inflation also echo Debs and Helmke’s (2008) finding
that Latin American voters punish right-wing incumbents for high infla-
tion but do not reward them for high growth. Roberts and Wibbels (1999)
also found that short-term inflation rather than economic growth affects
support for incumbent presidents.
We did not find statistical support for either hypothesis on income
inequality. The sign of the coefficient on the income inequality variable
18. We also conducted our analysis replacing the right incumbent (4 or 5 on our scale)
variable with a center-right incumbent variable (3, 4, and 5). The results were similar.
1.0
0.8
Incumbent
Right
Presidential left vote share
0.6
0.4
Incumbent
Center or
Left
0.2
0.0
0 2 4 6 8
was not consistent across models and was not statistically significant.
The coefficient on the income inequality2 variable also was not statisti-
cally significant. We believe that our findings on inequality contribute to
an emerging literature that questions the relationship between inequal-
ity and electoral support for the left (or redistribution, more generally).
Whereas statistical analyses by scholars such as Lora and Olivera (2005)
have found that there is no systematic relationship between changes in
inequality and anti-incumbent vote swings, in a recent review, Kaufman
(2009) has argued more generally that there is no clear relation between
left vote share and inequality. Survey evidence, controlled case compari-
sons and a review of the types of left demonstrate that it is difficult to
19. Following Stokes (2009), we also ran the models including an interaction term be-
tween capital openness and incumbent right as well as trade openness and incumbent
right (results not shown here). The results for capital openness remained positive (but not
significant) and showed stronger effects when the right was in power. The results on trade
openness demonstrated a nonsignificant negative effect when the right was in power. More
important, running the model with these variables did not affect our main result on the
effect of inflation under right-wing government.
20. For Stokes (2009), spending (as a proxy for the size of the public sector) has a direct
impact on its own. She argues that the electorate turns to the left in response to a downsiz-
ing of the state (especially under right-wing governments). Contrary to our fi ndings, she
finds strong support for that argument. As mentioned earlier, the main problem with this
measure is that a good deal of government spending occurs at the subnational level. For
that reason, we reran the models excluding Argentina and Brazil—the two most fiscally de-
centralized countries in the region. The coefficient on spending remained positive but lost
its significance. Our primary results on the interaction between inflation and right-wing
incumbent remained the same.
Left vote share lagged 0.69 0.73 0.69 0.71 0.71 0.71 0.75 0.73 0.68 0.65 0.69
[8.95]*** [8.13]*** [9.58]*** [8.05]*** [7.73]*** [7.61]*** [7.81]*** [10.99]*** [6.68]*** [8.42]*** [8.52]***
Age of Democracy 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
[0.51] [0.35] [0.46] [0.28] [0.28] [0.29] [0.44] [0.13] [0.66] [0.76] [0.38]
GDP per capita 0.12 0.10 0.12 0.10 0.10 0.12 0.10 0.11 0.09 0.11 0.11
lagged (LN) [3.14]*** [2.26]** [3.43]*** [2.77]** [2.68]** [3.34]*** [3.07]*** [4.71]*** [2.56]** [3.95]*** [3.47]***
Right incumbent –0.19 0.05 –0.29 –0.27 –0.02 –0.39 0.06 –0.29 –0.41
[2.10]* [0.71] [2.92]*** [2.19]** [0.36] [5.43]*** [1.71] [2.46]** [4.22]***
Inflation lagged (LN) –0.06 0.00 –0.07 –0.06 –0.09 0.01 –0.06 –0.08
[2.34]** [0.18] [2.54]** [1.89]* [5.93]*** [0.55] [2.08]* [3.59]***
Growth lagged –0.01 –0.01 –0.02 –0.02 –0.02 0.00 –0.02 –0.02
[1.80]* [0.56] [2.46]** [2.11]* [4.47]*** [0.38] [2.25]** [4.52]***
Inflation lagged (LN) × 0.10 0.11 0.11 0.13 0.11 0.13
Right inc. [3.14]*** [3.45]*** [2.92]*** [4.91]*** [3.00]*** [4.92]***
Growth lagged × 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02
Right inc. [0.37] [1.74] [1.44] [2.63]** [1.88]* [2.49]**
10/15/10 1:53:39 PM
P5331.indb 105
Income Inequality 0.01 0.01 –0.01 –0.03
[1.32] [0.22] [0.22] [0.52]
Income Inequality2 0 0 0
[0.11] [0.29] [0.52]
Volatility –0.46 –0.28 –0.33
[2.40]** [1.46] [1.49]
Volatility × Right inc. 0.47 0.28 0.31
[1.82]* [1.22] [1.29]
Trade lagged (LN) 0.02 0.03 0.04
[0.33] [0.63] [0.96]
Capital openness lagged –0.01 0.00 0.01
[0.29] [0.21] [0.58]
Spending lagged (LN) 0.13 0.11 0.07
[1.76]* [1.82]* [2.26]**
Constant –0.64 –0.75 –0.63 –0.98 -1.14 –0.46 –0.70 –0.50 -1.06 –0.95 –0.10
[1.88]* [1.83]* [1.99]* [2.08]* [0.75] [0.27] [2.35]** [2.62]** [2.05]* [2.48]** [0.06]
Observations 88 88 88 88 88 88 87 87 88 88 87
R-squared 0.61 0.55 0.62 0.54 0.54 0.63 0.58 0.68 0.57 0.64 0.69
10/15/10 1:53:39 PM
106 Latin American Research Review
voter behavior build on the recent public opinion evidence, which does not
find any regionwide move to the left. Even in countries that did witness
a leftward shift, there is no evidence of a dramatic ideological realign-
ment. Instead, Latin American voters seem to be exercising the electoral
options available to them in the new democratic markets of the region.
This Schumpeterian view of democracy, which explains electoral support
for the left as a function of retrospective economic voting, has tremendous
implications in a region of the world where democracy has failed so many
times before. The fact that Latin American citizens can choose alternative
options and continue doing so—regardless of their ideological bent—is a
watershed in the region’s history.
Our findings on retrospective voting echo the earlier findings of Rem-
mer (1991) and Lora and Olivera (2005) about the effect of inflation on
voter’s electoral behavior (and the corresponding lack of effect of eco-
nomic growth). Whereas those authors emphasized inflationary effects
on declines in incumbent vote share, we used retrospective voting to ex-
plain the prospective choice of voters as well. As Fearon (1999) argued,
the free exercise of the vote allows voters both to sanction bad perfor-
mance and to select good governments. Because sanctioning depends on
monitoring, the differential effects of inflation and growth may reflect
the ability of voters to assess real economic effects on prices rather than
on macroeconomic aggregates. Viewed in this light, our results are in
line with the literature on contingent retrospective voting. This literature
emphasizes that the connection between the state of the economy and
electoral outcomes is contingent on voters’ information, cognition, and/
or motivation (Anderson 2007; Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier 2000). In Latin
America, inflation is likely to have an immediate impact on voters’ pocket-
books, whereas information on growth both is more amorphous and may
take time to trickle down to the average voter. Given the deeply skewed
income distribution across the region, it might also be the case that most
citizens do not perceive the effects of a growth slowdown in a uniform
manner.21
Our emphasis on retrospective voting shows that Latin American vot-
ers use the ballot box to make governments accountable and to demand
different policies. The literature on Latin American politics has consis-
tently emphasized that electoral accountability is the primary mechanism
of controlling executives. O’Donnell (1994) famously called attention to
the weakness of horizontal accountability and checks and balances on the
region’s presidents, rendering the vote as the only mechanism to act as
a credible check. Stokes (2001), too, emphasized that, because candidates
21. For example, Benton (2005) has noted that it is doubtful that Latin American voters
feel changes in GDP per capita equally, if at all. She suggests that inflation, unemployment,
and real wages figure more prominently in voters’ minds.
can lie or mislead on the campaign trail about their real policy intentions
once in office, ex post electoral accountability is the only tool available to
Latin American voters to control their governments.
In our view, Latin American voters value the ballot booth both as a
mechanism of accountability to punish bad performance that they can
monitor and as a selection mechanism for choosing alternatives that are
different from the incumbents whom they are sanctioning. Voters’ capac-
ity to replace incumbents who did not perform to expectations with chal-
lengers from the other end of the ideological spectrum suggests that ideol-
ogy is a useful signaling mechanism even in a region where presidential
candidates sometimes switch policy orientation on inauguration.
APPENDIX A
Argentina 6 Guatemala 6
Bolivia 6 Honduras 7
Brazil 6 Mexico 2
Chile 4 Nicaragua 4
Colombia 8 Panama 4
Costa Rica 8 Paraguay 5
Dominican Republic 9 Peru 7
Ecuador 8 Uruguay 5
El Salvador 4 Venezuela 7
Total 106
P5331.indb 108
Left Center-Left Center Center-Right Right
Argentina N. Kirchner 2003 Alfonsin 1983 Menem 1989
C. Kirchner 2007 De la Rua 1999 Menem 1995
Bolivia Morales Zamora 1989 Paz Estensoro 1985 Banzer 1997
2005 Sanchez de Lozada 1993
Sanchez de Lozada 2002
Brazil Lula 2002 Cardoso 1994 Sarney 1985 Collor de Melo 1989
Lula 2006 Cardoso 1998
Chile Lagos 2000 Aylwin 1989
Bachelet 2006 Frei 1993
Colombia Turbay Ayala 1978 Betancur 1982
Barco 1986 Pastrana 1998
Gaviria 1990 Uribe 2002
Samper 1994 Uribe 2006
Costa Rica Monge Alvarez 1982 Carazo Odio 1978
Arias 1986 Calderon 1990
Figueres 1994 Rodriguez 1998
Arias 2006 P. de Espriella 2002
Dominican Guzmán 1978 F. Reyna 1996 Balaguer 1986
Republic Blanco 1982 F. Reyna 2004 Balaguer 1990
M. Domínguez 2000 F. Reyna 2008 Balaguer 1994
Ecuador Correa 2006 R. Aguilera 1979 Mahuad 1998 Febes Cordero 1984
Borja 1988 Gutiérrez 2002 Duran 1992
Bucaram 1996
El Salvador Christiani 1989
Calderon 1994
Flores Pérez 1999
Saca 2004
10/15/10 1:53:40 PM
Guatemala Álvaro Colom 2007 Cerezo Arévalo 1985 Serrano Elías 1990 Portillo 1999
Arzu 1995 Berger 2003
P5331.indb 109
Honduras Suazo Córdoba 1981 Callejas 1989
Azcona Hoyo 1985 Maduro 2001
Reina 1993
Flores 1997
Zelaya 2005
Mexico Fox 2000
Calderón 2006
Nicaragua Ortega 2006 Chamorro 1990 Alemán 1996
Bolaños 2001
Panama Torrijos 2004 P. Balladares 1994 Endara 1989
Moscoso 1999
Paraguay Lugo 2008 Rodrigues 1989
Wasmosy 1993
Cubas Grau 1998
Duarte Frutos 2003
Peru García 1985 Belaunde Terry 1980
Fujimori 1990
Fujimori 1995
Fujimori 2000
Toledo 2001
García 2006
Uruguay Vásquez 2004 Sanguinetti 1984 Lacalle 1989
Sanguinetti 1994
Battle 1999
Venezuela Chávez 1998 Lusinchi 1983 Caldera 1993 Herrera Campins 1978
Chávez 2000 Pérez 1998
Chávez 2006
10/15/10 1:53:40 PM
110 Latin American Research Review
APPENDIX B
Dependent Variable
Left vote share: Total presidential vote share obtained by all candi-
dates from the left (1) and center-left (2) in the first round of elections. We
included only parties that obtained more than 5 percent of the vote. Data
adapted from Murillo (2009), Stokes (2009), Nohlen (2005), and the Political
Database of the Americas (Georgetown University).
Independent Variables
Age of democracy: Number of years since the return to democracy. The
year of the first democratic election was considered year 0. From Freedom
House (2009) and Polity IV Project (Marshall and Jaggers 2008).
REFERENCES
Anderson, Christopher J.
2007 “The End of Economic Voting? Contingency Dilemmas and the Limits of Demo-
cratic Accountability.” Annual Review of Political Science 10: 271–296.
Angrist, Joshua D., and Jorn-Steffen Pischke
2009 Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist’s Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Ardanaz, Martin
2009 “Preferences for Redistribution in the Land of Inequalities.” Unpublished manu-
script, Department of Political Science, Columbia University.
Arnold, Jason Ross, and David J. Samuels
In press “Public Opinion and Latin America’s ‘Left Turn.’” In Latin American Left Turn,
edited by Steven Levitsky and Kenneth Roberts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press.
Baker, Andy, and Kenneth Greene
2009 “The Latin American Left’s Mandate: Free-Market Policies, Economic Perfor-
mance, and Voting Behavior in 18 Countries.” Unpublished manuscript, Depart-
ment of Political Science, University of Colorado at Boulder.
Benton, Allyson Lucinda
2005 “Dissatisfied Democrats or Retrospective Voters? Economic Hardship, Political
Institutions, and Voting Behavior in Latin America.” Comparative Political Studies
38 (4): 417–442.
Castañeda, Jorge
1993 Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War. New York: Vintage
Books.
2006 “Latin America’s Left Turn.” Foreign Affairs 85 (3): 28–43.
Castañeda, Jorge, and Patricio Navia
2007 “New Leaders, New Voices.” Americas Quarterly (Spring): 41–51.
Chinn, Menzie, and Hiro Ito
2008 “A New Measure of Financial Openness.” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis
10 (3): 309–322.
Coppedge, Michael
1997 “A Classification of Latin American Political Parties.” Kellogg Institute Working
Paper No. 244. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame.
Corrales, Javier
2007 “The Backlash against Market Reforms and the Left in Latin America in the
2000s.” Paper prepared at the 2007 Congress of the Latin American Studies As-
sociation, Montreal, Canada, September 5–8.
Cox, Gary W., and Scott Morgenstern
2002 “Latin America’s Reactive Assemblies and Proactive Presidents.”Comparative Poli-
tics 33 (2): 171–189.
Debs, Alexandre, and Gretchen Helmke
2008 “Inequality under Democracy: Explaining ‘The Left Decade’ in Latin America.”
Paper prepared for delivery at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Political
Science Association, Boston, August 28–31.
Estrada, Luis, and Alejandro Poiré
2007 “The Mexican Standoff: Taught to Protest, Learning to Lose.” Journal of Democracy
18 (1): 73–87.
Fearon, James D.
1999 “Electoral Accountability and the Control of Politicians: Selecting Good Types
versus Sanctioning Poor Performance.” In Democracy, Accountability, and Rep-
resentation, edited by Adam Przeworski, Susan C. Stokes, and Bernard Manin,
55–97. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Fiorina, Morris
1981 Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven, CT : Yale Univer-
sity Press.
Fishlow, Albert
2006 “Latin America Jogs Left.” Milken Institute Review: A Journal of Economic Policy
(September): 8–15.
Freedom House
2009 Freedom in the World 2009. Washington, D.C.: Freedom House.
Garrett, Geoffrey
1998 Partisan Politics in the Global Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
2000 “Capital Mobility, Exchange Rates and Fiscal Policy in the Global Economy.” Re-
view of International Political Economy 7 (1): 153–170.
Hagopian, Frances
2003 “Conclusions: Government Performance, Political Representation, and Public
Perceptions of Contemporary Democracy in Latin America.” In The Third Wave of
Democratization in Latin America, edited by Frances Hagopian and Scott Mainwar-
ing, 319–362. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huber, Evelyne, Thomas Mustillo, and John D. Stephens
2008 “Politics and Social Spending in Latin America.” Journal of Politics 70 (2): 420–436.
Iversen, Torben, and Anne Wren
1998 “Equality, Employment, and Budgetary Restraint: The Trilemma of the Service
Economy.” World Politics 50 (4): 507–546.
Kaufman, Robert
In press “The Political Left, the Export Boom, and the Populist Temptation.” In Latin
American Left Turn, edited by Steven Levitsky and Kenneth Roberts. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
2009 “The Political Effects of Inequality in Latin America: Some Inconvenient Facts.”
Comparative Politics 41 (3): 359–379.
Kaufman, Robert, and Alex Segura-Ubiergo
2001 “Globalization, Domestic Politics, and Social Spending in Latin America: A Time-
Series Cross-Section Analysis, 1973–1997.” World Politics 53: 553–587.
Key, V. O.
1966 The Responsible Electorate. New York: Vintage.
Lean, Sharon F.
2007 “The Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in Nicaragua, November 2006.”
Electoral Studies 26: 828–832.
Levitsky, Steven, and Kenneth M. Roberts
In press “Latin America’s ‘Left Turn’: A Conceptual and Theoretical Overview.” In Latin
American Left Turn, edited by Steven Levitsky and Kenneth Roberts. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Mary Stegmaier
2000 “Economic Determinants of Electoral Outcomes.” Annual Review of Political Sci-
ence 3: 183–219.
Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Stein Rokkan
1967 Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives. New York: Free
Press.
Lora, Eduardo, and Mauricio Olivera
2005 “The Electoral Consequences of the Washington Consensus.” Economia (Spring):
1–45.
Mainwaring, Scott
2006 “The Crisis of Representation in the Andes.” Journal of Democracy 17 (3): 13–27.
Mainwaring, Scott, and Timothy R. Scully
1995 “Party Systems in Latin America.” In Building Democratic Institutions: Party Sys-
tems in Latin America, edited by Scott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully, 1–36.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Marshall, Monty G., and Keith Jaggers
2008 Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2008. Severn,
MD: Center for Systemic Peace and George Mason University.
Murillo, María Victoria
2009 Voice and Light: Political Competition, Partisanship, and Policymaking in Latin America.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Murillo, María Victoria, and Cecilia Martínez-Gallardo
2007 “Political Competition and Policy Adoption: Market Reforms in Latin American
Public Utilities.” American Journal of Political Science 51 (1): 120–139.
Daniel Chávez
University of Virginia
Abstract: Recent studies of the history of Mexican cinema continue to speak of the
complex relations between the state and the film industry, and the most frequently
analyzed aspects tend to be the same: the reach and forms of censorship, as well as
the financial dependence on the state. To broaden this perspective, I propose a clas-
sification of cinematic discourses that represent the relations between film charac-
ters and state powers. I discuss four basic modes of representation that, determined
by historical and economic circumstances, reflect and mediate the attitudes and
dispositions of viewers toward the political regime. For each mode, I discuss a se-
quence in a paradigmatic film, analyzing visual and ideological aspects in relation
to the political moment at the time of the film’s release. Finally, I argue that, despite
the resurgence of the Mexican cinema and a more critical tone in its approach to
state institutions, fictional films still rest on indirect and allegorical representations
of recent events. This is due to the uncertainty of the prolonged and still-incomplete
transition to institutional democracy in Mexico.
For decades, one of the most common subjects in the literature on Mexi-
can national cinema has been the tight relationship between the state and
the film industry (Mora 1982, 59, 69; Noble 2005, 13–22; Paranaguá 2003,
221–225; Ramírez Berg 1992, 40, 44; Sánchez 2002). A general assumption
in most of this criticism is that cinematographic expression has frequently
evinced the manipulation or direct control of the government because of
the economic dependence of this sector on the financial backing of the
state. However, from a historical and comparative perspective, it is clear
that this situation is not alien to most metropolitan film industries, includ-
ing those of the United States, Germany, and France, which have been
financially rescued, enticed to collaborate in war efforts, or managed by
state institutions at some point in their history (Cook 2000, 11–14; Elsaesser
1989, 18–27; Williams 1992, 278, 395). Thus, however defining this tight col-
laboration could have been for Mexican cinema, it is not exactly a pro-
ductive gesture to insist on overanalyzing its dependency on the state.
Furthermore, from this traditional perspective, the possibility of reading
and theorizing the relative autonomy achieved in the production of im-
ages in certain key historical moments is less likely to surface or might be
ignored.
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
1. I use the concept of cinematographic/cinematic discourse to designate not only the or-
ganization of the five different codes (image, sound, music, speech, text) in a film or group
of films but also the form in which characters and narration represent the relations of power
of the society in which a film is produced (Stam, Burgoyne, and Flitterman-Lewis 1992).
2. From the many possible options, I use a working definition of state derived from a
contemporary relational perspective. In this article, the state is a social process structuring
human communities with specific forms of domination related to social and capital re-
production. It presupposes individual, noncoercive subordination to a social arrangement
with asymmetric power bonds but that ensures vital activity and material production for
all. In its institutional expression, the state includes provisions for political, material, social,
and economic reproduction of a social formation (see Roux 2005). In the article, the word
state refers to these processes and to the institutions that make possible its existence. I use
the word government when referring to specific regimes, characters, or personalities related
to governmental tasks represented in the films.
3. The official national narrative after 1920 affirms that the deepest roots of the nation
are located in the glorious indigenous past that the Spanish Conquest destroyed. The true
of this era incorporated elements of the 1920s’ and 1930s’ visual rhetoric
that the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José
Clemente Orozco had introduced (Hershfield 1999a, 199b). Films marked
by this telluric nationalism have as their precursors silent historical epics
like Manuel Contreras Torres’s De raza azteca (1921) and Guillermo Calles’s
El indio yaqui (1926) and Raza de bronce (1927) (García Riera 1998, 57–59). The
footage Sergei Eisenstein took in his eighteen-month visit to Mexico in
1930–1932 gave a new impulse to the muralist and cinematic romanticiza-
tion of the past and the present agrarian indigenous cultures and to the
revolutionary struggle for their paternalist redemption (Coffey 2002; De
la Vega Alfaro 1997; De los Reyes 2006; Podalsky 1993). In the sound era,
early examples with Eisensteinian and muralist influence included Carlos
Navarro’s Janitzio (1934), Fred Zinnemann’s Mexican film Redes (1936), and
several of the early Emilio Fernández’s films (García Riera 1998, 93; see
also Coria 2005).
At the time of the decline of the golden age of Mexican cinema, by the
early 1950s and all through the 1960s, many popular films disseminated
what I consider the second discourse of cinematic representations of the
state. Through a series of generic conventions and script formulas, the
picaresque-folklorizing discourse dealt indirectly with the shortcom-
ings and the gradual erosion of the revolutionary legacy (cf. Hernández
Rodríguez 1999). An extensive complacency toward the increasingly au-
thoritarian and paternalist practices of the government and its “modern”
institutions marked the films categorized in this second discursive mode.
Urban melodrama, ranchera comedy, and especially urban comic films
by the three most important figures of the genre—Cantinflas (Si yo fuera
diputado, 1952), Tin Tan (Hay muertos que no hacen ruido, 1946), and Clavil-
lazo (El genial detective Peter Perez, 1952)—shared a common pattern of end-
lessly repeated jokes and tacit references to the corruption of government
officials without ever formulating a direct critique of state institutions
(cf. Monsiváis 1999).
The third mode of visual representation of the state emerged by the
mid-1970s in part as a reaction to the tumultuous political events of 1968,
which along with a crisis at the box office, provoked a change in the mode
of film production and in the tone and reach of state representations. This
third twist in cinematographic discourse coexists with the previous ones
but challenges the outdated melodramatic and comic repertoire with a
style veering toward a form of denunciatory realism. Stories and charac-
Mexican identity emerges from the hybridization of these Spanish and indigenous roots
in the mestizo people, who have created their own history through successive struggles
of liberation and affirmation (e.g., independence, reform). All these elements are linked
and acquired their final expression in the politics and culture that the revolutionary state
(1920–1940) fostered (see Bonfil Batalla 1994).
4. Cinematic representations of the confrontation had little success during the 1920s
(De los Reyes 1993, 230–234). However, during the Cárdenas administration (1934–1940)
governmental institutions encouraged efforts to present and promote a sanitized narrative
of the Mexican Revolution in textbooks and films that recuperated and elevated figures like
Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata (Coffey 2002; Gilbert 2003; Katz 1998, 391)
5. In its classic definition, Bonapartism is the political practice of governing with the
ideology of one class while serving the interests of another in relative autonomy of both
(Bensussan and Labica 1999). In this case, Mexican governments after 1940 have identified
themselves with the causes and ideology of the peasantry and the workers, but for the most
part, they have served the interests of the industrial and financial classes while retaining
increasingly autocratic powers.
and labor movements under the banner of the official party, the Partido de
la Revolución Mexicana (renamed PRI in 1946) (Roux 2005, 213). By 1940,
not without agitation and resistance from conservative sectors, workers
and peasants had received—at least nominally—the first installments of
the promises of the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920. As compensation
for these acts of economic justice, the state-organized corporatist regime
would exact from the people—by coercion or connivance—the authority
and legitimacy to support its increasingly authoritarian and corrupting
practices (Aguirre and De la Peña 2006).
But the real turning point in the political and economic history of the
postrevolutionary state would come with the office of Miguel Alemán
from 1946 to 1952 (Meyer 2002). By that time, the perceived success of the
import substitution industrialization strategy for development had made
the Mexican political and economic elite believe that the moment of mod-
ernization and full capitalist transformation had finally arrived. From
this point on, state relations were molded around an intricate network
of clientelism, leadership subordination, and under-the-table negotiations
with opposition groups. If those practices failed, the authority recurred
periodically to police or—if need be—army repression (Aguirre and De la
Peña 2006, 405, 439; Maldonado 2005; Roux 2005, 214–218). This complex ar-
rangement was built into the political process and ritually renewed every
six years. Not surprisingly, the cinematographic sector was also invited
to participate in the economic and political transformation of the state. A
support system for the advancement of the film industry was put in place,
most notably a state-sponsored distribution company, and in 1947, the na-
tionalized Banco Cinematográfico which was in charge of funding the
production of films (Fein 1999; García Riera 1998, 151; Sánchez 2002, 90).
The intricate reactionary situation of this era can be read against the
grain in the images of an important film of the Alemán presidential pe-
riod. The 1948 film Río Escondido, directed by Emilio (Indio) Fernández
and photographed by Gabriel Figueroa, melodramatically celebrates the
everyday effects of revolutionary change at the precise moment that state
institutions were about to neutralize or reverse some of the most impor-
tant rights that worker and peasant unions had acquired in the national
reconstruction process (from 1920 to 1940) (cf. Fein 1999).6 In other words,
while the monumental construction of highways, hydroelectric plants,
stadiums, and airports is presented as direct fruit of the revolution, the
6. Although there are numerous earlier films displaying the mystifying-indigenista dis-
course, I have chosen to analyze Río Escondido for the international recognition the film
received and because it belongs to a group of paradigmatic films in this category made
by the well-known production team Emilio Fernández (director), Gabriel Figueroa (photo-
grapher), and Mauricio Magdaleno (screenwriter), and because it is widely available on
VHS and DVD.
7. In her work Gabriel Figueroa: Nuevas perspectivas (2008), Higgins discusses in detail the
artistry and impact of Figueroa’s technique in relation to the cinematography of his time.
8. I use the concept of spectator(s) to designate the subject or subjects who, having previ-
ous and diverse ideological baggage and aesthetic experiences, confront the images of a
film and are in turn interpellated by the cinematic apparatus (Stam et al. 1992; Mayne 1993,
80–86). My comments assume that the social and political circumstances prevalent at the
time of release of the films analyzed here conditioned the Mexican spectators. Accordingly,
I offer one, sometimes two, possible interpretations that some spectators could have made
of the scenes discussed here.
9. During and since the Alemán years, the Presidential Press Office has strictly managed
the president’s image. Furthermore, it became customary for newspapers and illustrated
magazines to run photo essays flattering and praising the president and his political entou-
rage as if they were film stars (see Mraz 2001).
Figure 1 Rural teacher Rosaura (María Félix) with the presidential shadow in Río Es-
condido (Emilio Fernández, 1948).
When Rosaura finally arrives at her remote teaching post, the visual
composition establishes a strong contrast between local and central power.
In the first sequence at the rural village, the local cacique and municipal
president, Don Regino, demands to have a photo like the one “taken of
mi general Pancho Villa when he entered Torreón.” The cronies associated
with this farcical despot are shown in a medium shot aligned to mark
the depth of field and occupying the deserted space of the town’s central
plaza. In this site that was supposed to be devoted to civic assembly, his
three subordinates attentively observe Don Regino savagely handling a
black stallion. In the reaction shots, directly opposing this group but fill-
ing the frame in a similar way, one can also see three women dressed in
black watching the horseman in complete silence.
The next shots in this scene—alternating among the cacique, the thugs,
the women, and Rosaura—underline the other purpose of the improvised
spectacle. The authority not only is posing for a photo but also is regi-
menting the gaze of men and women who are in turn construed as mere
spectators in a theatrical reenactment of power relations. Their passivity
and complicity toward the violent spectacle prefigure how, in this town,
men and women—as the black stallion—are obliged to endure the moral,
corporal, and sexual abuse of Don Regino and his clan. Clearly, the good
people of Río Escondido cannot expect the mediation or intervention of
other powers of the state, such as the judicial or legislative branches, be-
cause they are not even mentioned. It is only the teacher Rosaura and
Felipe (Fernando Fernández), the doctor, the two figures representing
modernization, visually invested with the symbols and authority of the
central government in the previous scenes, who can effectively oppose the
despotic power of Don Regino.
The heavy ideological hand of the script reduces the conflict between
central (modern-civil) and local (irrational-revolutionary) power to a con-
frontation of good versus evil.10 Granted, this reductionist view served
mostly a dramatic purpose in the film. Outside the theaters, everyday
power relations in small towns were not as simple. The negotiation of po-
litical authority and federal intervention was more complex and nuanced
than this, with traditional peasant or oligarchic groups eagerly compet-
ing for—and sometimes against—the legitimizing symbols and material
benefits of the modernizing political and economic forces from the center
(Lomnitz 1992, 143–150; Nugent and Alonso 1994, 232). But in Fernández’s
film, in its eagerness to promote the redemption of the indigenous people
through state intervention (e.g., education, health care), the images are so
biased against the local power that resistance to central authority is quali-
fied as criminal. In one of his bouts of rage, Don Regino dares to challenge
the presidential authority directly: “Here, there is no other president but
me,” he proclaims.
Ironically, in the current political system, the power of Don Regino and
the power of “el señor Presidente” followed the same authoritarian and
patrimonialist principles (Meyer 2005). Under the PRI governments, the
will of the head of state had extensive reach and was considered absolute
in some circles (Krauze 1997, 110). However, the film exalts the actions
of the federal executive power and condemns those of the local authori-
ties, despite that the former was effectively the basis and support of the
whole system. In this way, the cinematographic representation of the state
in Río Escondido ended up veiling the internal mechanisms of Mexican
authoritarianism.
Although under a less Manichaean light, this mystifying-indigenista
mode of representation of the relationship between the people and the
state is at work in many films of the golden age. Productions with some
variations of this visual and ideological construction include other fea-
10. Although Villa’s historical persona never ceased to be popular among certain sec-
tors, and this admiration was expressed in newspapers, novels, comics, and journals, a
full official rehabilitation of his figure proved controversial. It was not until 1966 that the
Mexican Congress fi nally inscribed his name in golden letters at its memorial wall (Katz
1998, 392–395).
11. My translation.
Figure 2 Cantinflas disrupts a trial in Ahí está el detalle (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1938).
of the court are evident through his indiscriminate verbal sparring with
the people’s attorney, his public defender, and by insistently disrupting
the judge’s control of the court room. This situation ends up distancing
everybody from the legal protocol, thus thwarting the semiosis of legal
discourse and the effective application of judicial due process. By the
end of the sequence, the judge, the people’s part, and the defense mimic
and reproduce Cantinflas’s speech acts and effectively participate in
cantinfleo—as this form of discourse is officially termed in Spanish lan-
guage dictionaries (see Stavans 1998). Through these tactics, clearly fol-
lowing the three stages of relajo, the scene humorously subverts a trial,
one of the most important moments for the materialization of the legal
system and the actualization of judiciary practices, both fundamental ele-
ments of the state reproduction process.
But the effect is momentary. As it happens in many comedies, relief ar-
rives soon enough while the injustice of societal rules stays intact, albeit
this seems to hurt less when all are laughing about it. Apparently, it was
not of the jury’s concern that the authority has unjustly accused a man
of murder lacking the necessary evidence or without the police conduct-
ing even an elemental search of facts. It is also remarkable that the jury
was ready to sentence to death an illiterate and destitute man without the
means to cooperate in his legitimate defense. Outside the theater, similar
12. Films defining the fichera genre include two features by Miguel M. Delgado: Bellas de
noche (1975) and Las ficheras (Bellas de noche 2) (1977). Delgado directed most of Cantinflas’s
films after El gendarme desconocido (1941).
13. The social-avenger figure is central to the Lola la trailera border series featuring the
popular actress Rosa Gloria Chagoyán (see Benamou 2009).
discontent freely and fully was emerging and would find partial relief in
the dominant discursive mode of the 1970s.
At first sight, it seems paradoxical that the same political elite that al-
lowed the buildup of military force leading to the Tlatelolco massacre in
1968 and the Jueves de Corpus paramilitary violence of 1971 in the next
presidential period became the foremost promoter of cinematographic
free expression. Paradox or not, the films of this decade were tooled with
a different stance toward authority and threw a veritable critical eye on
some of the grimmest aspects of state institutions. Moreover, most texts
studying the history of Mexican national cinema coincide in recogniz-
ing the period 1970–1976 as a second golden age with an exceptional set
of circumstances allowing for the emergence of a new Mexican cinema
(Maciel 1999; Menne 2007; Mora 1982, 120–121; Noble 2005, 111; Ramírez
Berg 1992, 46–50).
From a comparative point of view, the Mexican cinema of the 1970s was
more in tune with international currents than criticism on the period has
recognized so far. Echoes of a cold look at a stagnant middle class from
the French nouvelle vague can be seen in some Mexican comedies and ur-
ban dramas.14 The ripple effect of the new Latin American cinema with
its denunciatory and anti-imperialist language reached some of these
films, too.15
The decade starts with a renovated impulse to film production due to
three main factors: (1) the renewed and intensified participation of the
state in the film sector, (2) the influence of formal film education, and
(3) the emergence of an experimental and ambitious generation of young
directors (García Riera 1998, 259, 278–279; Mora 1982, 114; Ramírez Berg
1992, 46). Many were the interesting new voices emerging in this period,
but the most influential directors who started or consolidated their career
14. Aside from the different levels of success and experimental quality of both national
cinemas, I think the despondency with which Weekend (1967) and 2 où 3 choses que je sais
d’elle (1967), by Jean-Luc Godard, and François Truffaut’s early installments of the Antoine
Doinel series depicted the French middle class had an equivalent in the ironic treatment of
the Mexican lower and middle classes in films by Luis Alcoriza (Mecánica nacional, 1972),
Jaime Humberto Hermosillo (La pasión según Berenice, 1976), and Jorge Fons (Los albañiles,
1976).
15. In my opinion, few Mexican directors displayed the same ideological pugnacity of
Armando Solanas, Octavio Getino, and Fernando Birri in Argentina or of Leon Hirszman
and Glauber Rocha in Brazil, but the strong criticism of capitalist underdevelopment and
some visual elements of the new Latin American cinema are present in films like Casca-
bel (1976), by Raúl Araiza, and Oficio de tinieblas (1978), by Archibaldo Burns, among many
others.
at this time included Raúl Araiza, Alfonso Arau, Jorge Fons, Felipe Ca-
zals, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, Paul Leduc, Arturo Ripstein, and Mar-
cela Fernández Violante.
If the nationalization of the Banco Cinematográfico in 1947 ensured
certain privileges in the overseeing and control of the production of film
to the Mexican government, nothing would indicate that the creation of
a whole array of industrial structures under the government of Luis Ech-
everría (1970–1976) had a different objective. However, this time under
the direction of Rodolfo Echeverría—actor, producer, and brother of the
president—the Banco Cinematográfico offered extensive financial sup-
port and broader creative freedom to most parties involved in the produc-
tion of cinematic spectacles. The state not only was instrumental in the
organization of the film school Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica
(1975) but also founded three film production companies: Conacine for
high-production-value projects and Conacite I and II for more commercial
and popular spectacles. All three production companies shared control of
the industry with the directors’ guilds and the film workers’ unions. Fur-
thermore, in response to the block-booking practices of exhibitors—who
often neglected or outright refused to screen Mexican films—the govern-
ment increased its participation in the distribution and exhibition side of
the business to the point of eventually becoming the actual owner of a
large chain of exhibition venues (Mora 1982, 114–115; Ramírez Berg 1992,
44; Rossbach and Canel 1988).16
A common denominator to some of the most salient cinematic spec-
tacles of the decade is the frequent representation of what Michel Foucault
(1984) called heterotopias of deviation. These spaces may or may not be
physically isolated from social contact, but they become the formal reposi-
tories of the antisocial, criminal, or mentally disturbed elements of soci-
ety. The obvious models are, of course, prisons and mental institutions.
Accordingly, Cazals’s El apando (1976) and Ripstein’s Cadena perpetua (1979)
are paradigmatic examples of visual investigations on an heterotopia of
deviation, both of which cast a realist glimpse at the dismal conditions in
the infamous Mexican penitentiary system (Quezada 2005, 100, 112, 125).
But many other films take on other social institutions and show them as
metaphors or actual spaces of deviancy. Family, school, and church are
represented as isolating sites of psychological torture and physical vio-
lence. Cazals’s Canoa (1975) and Araiza’s Cascabel (1976) presented remote
16. The López Portillo presidency, from 1976 to 1982, almost completely undid the ambi-
tious film policy of the 1970–1976 regime. Yet some elements of the state-owned production
infrastructure survived for a while. Because of this tenuous continuity, the group of young
and seasoned directors favored under the previous period was able to release ongoing proj-
ects and, in some cases, continue their careers with new projects, albeit with less and less
official support.
Figure 3 Inmate Polonio (Manuel Ojeda) brutally subdued in El apando (Felipe Cazals,
1976).
felt the repressive forces, local and federal, had chosen them as targets
with the intention of isolating and containing them. For the most part,
the mass media, especially radio and television, were willing to mask or
outright ignore the aggressive response of the state to all forms of social
protest (Fernández 2005; Glockner 2007, 291). Thus, in Cazals’s film, the ac-
tual scenes in which six members of the lower classes—represented rather
as lumpen proletariat—were able to “avenge” the humiliations and long-
accumulated offenses might have some cathartic effect among certain ur-
ban audiences that witnessed or endured the increased levels of social
violence. On the other hand, as it was often the case in the films of this
era, there was a redirection of the denunciatory tone toward an ideologi-
cal recuperation favoring the perspective of the authority and ultimately
legitimating the actions of the state.
In the first sequences, Albino and Polonio attract a tense sympathy from
the spectator, given the harsh environment in which they try to survive.
Midway in the film there is also a comic-erotic relief when the camera
follows the compadres in a long reverie, imagining and lusting over their
women in nude scenes. But all these identificatory lures for the audience
ultimately crumble when they intensify the abuse toward their weakened
cellmate El Carajo. The spectator learns that the “friends” are incapable
of compassion; they are in fact construed as bootstraps of institutional
violence passing the aggression from the institution to their cellmate and
everybody around. The tension grows because spectators are agonizing at
the possibility of seeing the dominant characters finally crush El Carajo,
whom his comrades would have beaten to death earlier in the film were it
not for his usefulness in their crude plan to become drug smugglers inside
the prison.
If the clear dominance of melodramas in previous eras made Mexican
spectators hope for a clean moral teleology with punishment for all the
violent and evil doers, and rewards of freedom and love for the suffering,
then Cazals’s film is clearly not providing the elements for such a com-
pensatory scheme.18 As it seems, the guards and warden receive a taste of
their own medicine, but the brutality and gory display of blood in the final
sequence renders the romanticization of the avengers impossible. Polonio
and Albino are not popular urban heroes like those depicted in prison
scenes in Gavaldón’s and Rodríguez’s films of the mystifying-indigenista
mode, nor are they social activists suffering injustice and persecution;
they are urban miscreants ready to strike if left unchecked.
The ideological recuperation of these images by the state apparatus is
not easy to follow but comes cleanly across when observed in context. As
the demagogic slogan of the second regime of the 1970s expressed “la cor-
rupción somos todos” (we all take part in corruption), the overall effect of
the films of this era is an attempt to create a level playing field in the politi-
cal arena.19 True, the apparently daring narratives point out the problems
of the regime and their images critically represent police brutality, but in
the end, if students, activists, or inmates “provoke” the violence, then no-
body is innocent. Following this normative logic, the state has the moral
obligation to preserve governability and restore order. Thus, it is not sur-
prising that after the townspeople and the fanatical priest have killed some
of the students in Cazals’s Canoa, it is none other than the army that saves
the day. It is suspiciously ironic—if not cynical—that the victims are saved
in the nick of time by the same repressive institution that massacred their
peers eight years earlier in Tlatelolco (Mraz 1984; see also Hegarty 2007).
Whatever ideological maneuvers spectators and critics could, in hind-
sight, read in the body of officially supported films of the 1970s, one can-
not lose sight of the tremendous gains in terms of social relevance attained
18. Despite the great success of other genres during the golden age, after its decline, it
was clearly melodrama that captured the broadest public and continued to grow in the
preference of spectators (De la Peza 1998). For a historical and comparative analysis of the
evolution of this genre in international cinema, see Landy (1991).
19. The slogan was part of a public campaign against corruption. The idea behind the
phrase was that the government and citizens had to recognize that corrupt behavior was
present in private and public life and that its eradication required a common effort.
1982 to 1988 was the first one to foster the implementation of neoliberal
economic and political practices (Ávila 2006, 53–86). An acute disinvest-
ment in cultural projects dominated this phase, a situation that eventually
led to the outright privatization of culture (Lomnitz 2008). The production
and exhibition of Mexican film was no exception, and industry output
fell dramatically (Alvaray 2008). Transnational distributors and their as-
sociated exhibitors saturated the market, and Mexican cinema practically
disappeared from the screens.
By the mid-1990s, when the sector regained some stability and the state
again made marginal contributions to film production funds through the
Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (IMCINE) and the Fondo de Inver-
sión y Estímulos al Cine (Fidecine),20 given the diminished governmental
involvement it was likely that Mexican producers and directors expected
a less stringent censorship. As a positive sign, controversial films like Rojo
amanecer (1988) by Jorge Fons and El bulto (1992) by Gabriel Retes, both of
which openly discuss the Tlatelolco and Jueves de Corpus incidents, had
to wait for a cool down process of censorship but were in the end released
for the customary short run on a limited number of screens in Mexico
City (see Aviña 2004, 42; Velazco 2005). These fiction films and other docu-
mentaries on the subject made strides in the critical representation of the
state by showing for the first time direct army and police involvement
in the repression of students and other activists of the previous era (De
la Mora 2006; Velazco 2005). However, Fons’s and Retes’s works did not
diverge significantly enough from the denunciatory mode of the 1970s,
because they do not show the inner workings of the one-party system and
its wide net of complicities, a challenge the emerging demystifying-realist
discourse would take head on.
Perhaps the film best exemplifying the new mode of representation
was Luis Estrada’s La ley de Herodes (1999). The greatest irony of this film
is that while the last PRI regime of the twentieth century, Ernesto Ze-
dillo’s government (1994–2000), publicly touted its renewed commitment
to freedom of expression, the film authorities at IMCINE—still unsure
about the room to maneuver cinematographic representation really had—
unsuccessfully tried to delay its release (Velazco 2005). After all, this was
the first film in years to offer direct political commentary, referring to his-
torical figures and parties by name.
Most critics see in this film a daring effort to reveal the mechanisms of
the Mexican political system:
20. The first neoliberal government created IMCINE and Fidecine after the privatization
of the state film conglomerate in 1983. Although funding of the organizations has been
erratic and meager, their support to the film sector helped the slow and gradual reconstruc-
tion of the industry to its present condition.
In this farcical portrayal of the PRI nation, nobody escapes unscathed. The Con-
stitution ruling the country, emerging from the revolutionary struggle of 1910,
becomes an instrument of control: it is the repository of norms that the powerful
never follow but effectively use to exert impunity. From the municipal power,
the parish, and the brothel, citizens are dispossessed and their resources feed
fortunes. (Velazco 2005, 75)21
Certainly, Estrada’s film represents a remarkable turning point in Mex-
ican cinematography: it was the first time in seventy years that the two
main parties, PRI and Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), are directly ad-
dressed and criticized. However, there was still a dodging act of indirect
cinematic representation. Because the events portrayed in the film cor-
respond to another historical era, the lens of 1999 again renounces a di-
rect confrontation of its historical moment by building an allegoric plane
anchored in the era of President Alemán (1946–1952) (cf. Aviña 2004, 45).
That is to say, Río Escondido and La ley de Herodes share the same historical
referent, although neither assumes full responsibility for directly criticiz-
ing its corresponding political conjuncture (cf. Rangel 2006).
La ley de Herodes narrates the toils and tribulations of Juan Vargas, a
happy-go-lucky petty officer of the PRI. The initial sequences seem to
put him in a similar situation to that of the picaresque figure of previ-
ous decades. With a fundamental difference, now the pícaro embodies
the power of the state. Thus, instead of innuendos and double entendres
with a comic resolution peppering the narrative, as in the folklorizing-
picaresque discourse, it is dark humor, parody, and the grotesque that
make this film a catalog of the sins and crimes of the official party. Also
very important, and an element that distinguishes these images from pre-
vious representations, is a darkening of the comic situations and a charac-
teristic use of film noir lighting and editing. The combination of these ele-
ments ends up placing the spectators in a generic aporia. For a good part
of the film, spectators cannot decide whether they are watching a comedy
or a drama until the violence and the excesses of the character have taken
over his caricaturesque representation.
Vargas starts the film as a figure worthy of commiseration and a source
of spectatorial identification for his simplicity and eagerness to serve. But
little by little, the main character becomes an aberration. The turning
point seems to be the sequence in which the petty officer, enticed by a
party leader, arbitrarily applies the state and federal law in preposterous
schemes of racketeering and extortion. A curious exchange of gifts char-
acterizes the sequence presenting this transformation. Vargas pays a visit
to the capital city and brings a piglet as a present for the party leader, who
ends up reciprocating with a gun and a copy of the constitution, plus the
express instruction to use both “at his convenience” (figure 4). Once the
21. My translation.
Figure 4 Vargas (Damián Alcázar) receives from his boss (Pedro Armendariz Jr.) a copy
of the Constitution to use “at his convenience” in La ley de Herodes (Luis Estrada,
1999).
mundo maravilloso (2006), but none has gone beyond the surprising and
brilliantly sarcastic moment of demystification and refreshing defiance of-
fered by La ley de Herodes.
Nonetheless, as do other critics and observers of the new spectacles, I
still hope cinematic discourse in fiction film will continue its development,
expanding previous or devising new visual modes to address the state,
and that during the present reemergence of Mexican cinema, directors
and producers will finally gather the strength to directly confront recent
history, and claim the freedom, to criticize political reality face to face.
REFERENCES
Katz, Friedrich
1998 Pancho Villa, vol 2. Mexico City: Ediciones Era.
Krauze, Enrique
1997 La presidencia imperial, ascenso y caída del sistema político mexicano (1940–1996). Mex-
ico City: Tusquets.
Landy, Marcia
1991 Imitations of Life. Detroit: Wayne State University.
Lomnitz, Claudio
1992 Exits from the Labyrinth. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2008 “Narrating the Neoliberal Moment: History, Journalism, Historicity.” Public Cul-
ture 20 (1): 39–56.
Maciel, David
1999 “Cinema and the State in Contemporary Mexico, 1970–1999.” In Mexico’s Cinema,
a Century of Film and Filmmakers, edited by Joanne Hershfield and David Maciel,
197–233. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Press.
Maldonado, Edelmiro
2005 “El moviemiento obrero durante los gobiernos de Ávila Camacho y Alemán.”
In Cien años de lucha de clases en México, 1876–1976, edited by Ismael Colmenares,
2:231–241. Mexico City: Ediciones Quinto Sol.
Mayne, Judith
1993 Cinema and Spectatorship. New York: Routledge.
Menne, Jeff
2007 “A Mexican Nouvelle Vague: The Logics of New Waves under Globalization.” Cin-
ema Journal 47 (1): 70–92.
Meyer, Lorenzo
2002 “De la estabilidad al cambio.” In Historia General de México, edited by Centro de
Estudios Históricos, 883–943. Mexico City: Colegio de México.
2005 “El estado mexicano y los regímenes posrevolucionarios.” In Cien años de lucha de
clases en México, 1876–1976, edited by Ismael Colmenares et al., 2: 209–214. Mexico
City: Ediciones Quinto Sol.
Miller, Nicola
1999 In the Shadow of the State. London: Verso.
Monsiváis, Carlos
1999 “Cantinflas and Tin Tan: Mexico’s Greatest Comedians.” In Mexico’s Cinema, a
Century of Film and Filmmakers, edited by Joanne Hershfield and David Maciel,
49–79. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Press.
Mora, Carl
1982 Mexican Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mraz, John
1984 “Mexican Cinema of Churros and Charros.” Jump Cut 24: 23–24.
1997 “How Real Is the Reel? Fernando de Fuentes’ Revolutionary Trilogy.” In Framing
Latin American Cinema, edited by Ann Marie Stock, 92–119. Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press.
2001 “Today, Tomorrow, and Always: The Golden Age of Illustrated Magazines in
México, 1937–1960.” In Fragments of a Golden Age, the Politics of Culture in México
since 1940, edited by Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov, 116–157.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Noble, Andrea
2005 Mexican National Cinema. New York: Routledge.
Nugent, Daniel, and Ana María Alonso
1994 “Multiple Selective Traditions in Agrarian Reform and Agrarian Struggle: Popu-
lar Culture and State Formation in the Ejido of Namiquipa, Chihuahua.” In Every-
day Forms of State Formation, Revolution and Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico,
edited by Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent, 209–246. Durham, NC: Duke Uni-
versity Press.
Orozco, Guillermo
2002 Historias de la televisión en América Latina. Barcelona: Editorial Gedisa.
Abstract: Today women in Guatemala are killed at nearly the same rate as they were
in the early 1980s when the civil war became genocidal. Yet the current femicide
epidemic is less an aberration than a reflection of the way violence against women
has become normalized in Guatemala. Used to re-inscribe patriarchy and sustain
both dictatorships and democracies, gender-based violence morphed into femicide
when peacetime governments became too weak to control extralegal and paramili-
tary powers. The naturalization of gender-based violence over the course of the
twentieth century maintained and promoted the systemic impunity that undergirds
femicide today. By accounting for the gendered and historical dimensions of the
cultural practices of violence and impunity, we offer a re-conceptualization of the
social relations that perpetuate femicide as an expression of post-war violence.
INTRODUCTION
Since 2000, more than five thousand women and girls have been bru-
tally murdered in Guatemala (Prensa Libre June 4, 2010). Their bodies lit-
ter city streets, urban ravines, and the imagination of the media. Images
of murdered women and girls are so commonplace that each new death
risks becoming a footnote to illustrate a rising death toll. These femicides
take place in a country that has become infamous for having one of the
region’s top homicide rates (Godoy 2006; Handy 2004; Sanford 2008). In
2007, for example, Guatemalans were killed at a rate of 41.8 people per
100,000, compared to U.S. figures of 5.6 people per 100,000 in the same
year (Ibarra 2008; U.S. Department of Justice 2007). Even though men are
The authors wish to thank Patricia Harms for organizing the panel at the 2007 Latin Ameri-
can Studies Association International Conference where we first presented the research
that culminated in this collaboration. Comments from the audience at that session encour-
aged us to broaden our scope. Previous drafts of this article benefited from the constructive
criticism of Cecilia Menjivar and the three anonymous LARR reviewers. The authors also
thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which funded part
of the research on which this article is based.
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
ten times more likely to be killed than women in Guatemala, the number
of femicides has been growing—from 213 in 2000 and 383 in 2003 to 665
in 2005 and 722 in 2008. The astonishing number of unsolved murders of
both men and women demonstrates both perpetrators’ impunity and the
state’s tolerance of gender-based violence (Costantino 2006). A historical
analysis of the processes through which gender-based violence became
normalized is crucial to understanding femicide today. As with violence
against women during the late 1970s and 1980s, the femicide epidemic
(and the more generalized violence in Guatemalan society) is partly a
function of a historical gendered violence that the state and society con-
doned as early as the 1900s.
Femicide, a term brought into currency by feminist sociologist Diana
Russell in the late 1970s, was reconceptualized by Russell in the late 1980s
to denote the gendered terror practices that culminate in socially toler-
ated murder (Caputi and Russell 1992). According to Russell (2001b, 3),
femicide, which she defines as “the killing of females by males because
they are female,” exists only because it is sustained by culturally accepted
practices that promote gendered violence, including the socially tolerated
forms of sexual abuse, physical and emotional battery, and sexual harass-
ment. As Russell (2001a, 177) argues, femicide bolsters male dominance
and renders “all women chronically and profoundly unsafe.” Guatemala’s
historical record reveals a long history of acceptance of gendered violence
and the military government’s and the judiciary’s role in normalizing
misogyny. As a political term, femicide holds the state responsible for
violence against women because it fails to ensure their safety and toler-
ates perpetrators’ violent acts (Sanford 2007). As Marcela Lagarde y de los
Ríos (2006, 1) asserts in her study of femicide in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico,
“Feminicide occurs when the authorities fail to efficiently carry out their
duties to prevent and punish [the killing of women] and thus create an
environment of impunity.”1 We argue that femicide in Guatemala has
its roots in authorities’ failure to prevent and punish all violence against
women (not just homicide) as early as the turn of the century. Our goal is
1. Latin American feminists, led by Marcela Lagarde y de los Ríos (2006), suggest that
femicidio in Spanish simply denotes female homicide and that feminicidio is more suggestive
of Russell’s concept. But the feminicidio that Lagarde de los Ríos suggests is not quite equiva-
lent to Russell’s concept of femicide; the former promotes the notion that it is possible to
understand women’s murders as a type of genocide because they work to destroy women
as a social group in society. Although feminicidio shares Russell’s claim that cultural and
social practices sustain the murder of women, Russell does not conceptualize this type of
gender terror to be fully equivalent in its effects to genocide (Russell and Van de Ven 1976).
Because our goal is to understand the historical processes by which the state and society
helped create the conditions for the broader phenomenon of violence against women, we
use the term femicidio or femicide to denote the killing of women instead of the term femini-
cidio or feminicide, which assumes that these processes are in place.
disregard for their civil rights that dates back at least to the dictatorships
of the early twentieth century. When, for example, the “Macheteador de
Mujeres” struck in 1931, the police described his nineteen-year-old vic-
tim as “a woman of indigenous race, with various grave injuries on the
right side of her face and neck, similar to the way the forearms and hands
were horribly knifed. It was clear that all of the injuries had been caused
by a machete” (La Gaceta: Revista de Policía y Variedades [hereafter La Ga-
ceta] May 24, 1931). In another chilling historical precedent, more than one
hundred years before a seven-year-old girl was kidnapped, raped, and
beheaded on her way to a local store in 2007 (Guatemala Human Rights
Commission 2007), two men in Chimaltenango grabbed a six-year-old girl,
pulled her up on a horse, and rode off with her as she screamed.2 These
historically distant but contextually close incidents are but a few examples
that speak to the persistence and increasing acceptance of violence against
women and the ability to violate others without repercussion.
2. Archivo General de Centro América (AGCA), índice 116, Chimaltenango 1902, legajo
(leg.) 3, expediente (ex.) 23.
3. AGCA índice 116, Chimaltenango; AGCA Jefatura Política de Chimaltenango; Archivo
Municipal de Patzicía [AMP]; La Gaceta.
equality and justice, sexual violence “went largely unpunished under the
new political order” (Forster 1999, 72). In her study of sexual crimes in
San Marcos, Guatemala, during these democratic administrations, For-
ster (1999, 72) found that “a pervasive acceptability of hateful acts toward
women seeped into work, politics, and economic change.” As the afore-
mentioned cases indicate, our own research bears this out too.
Although gender-based violence struck both Maya and Ladino, if La
Gaceta and criminal records from Chimaltenango are any indication,
there was a class component to reporting such crimes. Though not im-
mune to domestic violence, early twentieth-century elites seldom allowed
such transgressions to be dragged into public arenas. At the same time,
by compelling poor and working-class women to work outside the home,
poverty threatened their security for the same reason it afforded them
more mobility and freedom than elite women. In turn, when men had to
migrate for work, women were vulnerable in their own homes. Such was
the case in 1910, when “poverty obligated” Felipe Colaj “to work in Guate-
mala City.” Aware that Colaj was away, Juan Mux Chali broke into Colaj’s
home around midnight on July 15 while Colaj’s pregnant wife Andrea
Cana was asleep. After he threw her to the floor, Mux Chali held Cana at
gunpoint, put a handkerchief in her mouth, and raped her in the presence
of her five-year-old son. Even though she miscarried the next day, Cana
did not report the crime (her husband later did) because Mux Chali had
threatened to kill her if she did.9 In an indication of the extent to which
domestic violence had become normalized, the only witness who heard
Andrea Cana scream did not bother to investigate her well-being—nor
did he notice whether Mux Chali was the assailant. As such, Mux Chali
denied the accusation and was freed. By not responding to Cana’s screams
or even reporting the incident, the witness effectively drew a veil over the
crime. As Forster (1999) found, when government officials and local men
and women upheld the vulnerability and subjugation of females in family
and intracommunity relations, they sustained gender-based violence.
Women who had the courage to bring their gender-based violence in-
cidents to court left behind a record that illuminates how social construc-
tions of women contributed to their vulnerability. When explaining their
plight, most plaintiffs began by emphasizing that they had done nothing
to provoke male violence. Although rapists most often denied the charges,
defendants accused of domestic violence often pointed out their victims’
failings. Among the most commonly cited justifications for hitting their
spouses was a failure to keep the house and children in order. When ex-
plaining to the court why he had beaten his wife while she was sick in
bed, the thirty-year-old day laborer Benito Ajsivinac said, “It is true that I
hit my woman yesterday, because she does not manage the care of her son,
and much less of her house.”10 As was often the case for these women, even
when the judge ruled in their favor, the legal system offered little protec-
tion. Sentenced to ten days in prison, Ajsivinac posted bail after one night
in jail. Indicating the extent to which the state abdicated its responsibility
to ensure the safety of women, at least half of those convicted of domestic
violence could afford to pay their fines and thus avoided incarceration.
In communities where men lashed out if they felt insulted, rejected, or
jealous, or simply considered their wives gossips, women’s diminished
social status contributed to their vulnerability. Underscoring perpetra-
tors’ insolence, many defendants made no attempt to justify their actions,
as was the case when the nineteen-year-old Isabel Méndez brought her
husband to court for beating her; he simply confessed.11 Although most
gender-based violence during this period happened among kin, the vic-
tim and perpetrator were not always related, such as the time José Estrada
whipped Leocadia Esquit with his tumpline.12 As perhaps the most ob-
vious (and alarming) consequence of the normalization of gender-based
violence, many men who beat their wives, such as the forty-three-year-old
Ladino farmer Esteban Ordóñez, said they got along fine with them insist-
ing there was “no unpleasantness” between them.13
The legal system perpetuated domestic notions of women. When judges
based their rulings on those assumptions, female plaintiffs were at a dis-
advantage. Even though the fifty-year-old Mayan farmer Felipe Lacan hit
his wife Petrona Perón while drunk, the judge sentenced both parties.
Because punishing victims of domestic violence was rare, the judge must
have found Lacan’s confession compelling: “The reason [I hit my spouse]
is that she was drunk, failing her domestic obligations and she had ad-
dressed me with some insults and dirty words and I ask that you punish
at the same time my wife for these transgressions.”14 Although the judge
did not explain his reasoning, the message was clear: behavior unbecom-
ing in a woman—inebriation, domestic failings, insulting her husband—
warranted punishment. Disciplining women’s transgressions had strong
social supports (Carey 2008). Instead of trying to extirpate gender-based
violence, authorities often reinforced it. By accepting men’s justifications
for domestic violence as plausible legal and social exceptions and met-
ing out inconsequential sentences, judges effectively granted perpetrators
impunity.
Although authorities’ reluctance to intervene in domestic affairs partly
stemmed from their recognition of potestad marital, or a man’s right over
the person and property of his wife, the judicial structure essentially
condoned domestic violence. Never as powerful as Estrada Cabrera and
Ubico conveyed, the early twentieth-century state used gender-based vio-
lence to uphold its rule. Even though Ladino judges’ authority emanated
from the state, they still had to appease their Mayan charges to a certain
extent, because ultimately they granted judges local legitimacy. If com-
munities deemed judges’ decisions unjust or punitive, unrest or revolts
could ensue. Read this way, victims of domestic violence were the sacri-
ficial lambs who kept quotidian tensions at an acceptable level (Aguirre
and Salvatore 2001). Forster (1999, 59) extends this analysis to the national
level, arguing that by diverting “the anger of men into ‘nonpolitical’ chan-
nels . . . Ubico was served admirably by male violence against women.”
The same pattern during Estrada Cabrera’s rule reminds us that “sexual
coercion was an eminently political phenomenon” (Forster 1999, 70). For
women, judges’ refusal to deter gender-based violence was an exercise of
the state’s power.
In a legal system that elite men established and presided over, domestic
violence was not afforded the same attention and seriousness as offenses
that challenged state authority. Underscoring judges’ priorities and the
denigration of women during Estrada Cabrera’s reign, the thirty-two-
year-old day laborer José Coc was sentenced to fifteen days for “disre-
specting the authority” in court and only five days for hitting his wife!15 If
as Michel Foucault (1995) posits, punishment reveals the state’s perception
of the seriousness of crime, then the Guatemalan state considered domes-
tic violence little more than a nuisance.
For communities in which Maya constituted the overwhelming ma-
jority of the population, a surprising number of Ladinos appear in the
criminal record as victims and perpetrators of sexual violence. Although
gender relations differed in Ladino and Mayan households, domestic vio-
lence knew no ethnic boundaries. Even though the larger absolute number
of cases involving Maya is reflective of their demographics, the broader
court record also reveals that Ladinas were less likely than Mayan women
to avail themselves of the courts in the first half of the twentieth century.
As such, Ladino sexual violence was less likely to be reported than Mayan
sexual violence.
Judging from the court record of women who repeatedly returned to
the authorities to denounce their husbands for domestic violence and evi-
dence of women’s use of such extrajudicial protection as flight and self-
defense, some women lived in “a chronic state of emergency,” where vio-
lence was the rule, not the exception (Taussig 1992, 11; see also Benjamin
1969). That some men did not perceive a need to justify and that others
failed to see any “unpleasantness” in their violent relations with their
female kin further speaks to the extent to which aggression became em-
bedded in everyday gender relations. Even as early as the turn of the cen-
tury, it is possible to see the process by which violence became normalized
and commonplace—mundane, if not banal—and thus ignored. Ironically,
this process of normalization can be attributed partly to a judicial system
that facilitated violence by excusing men’s transgressions against women.
These gendered practices reinforced violence as a preferred mechanism of
social governance. Femicide’s pervasiveness today rests partly on the his-
torical process of giving perpetrators the de facto power to violate others.
been proven—in addition to their mental deficit, find themselves with numerous
natural afflictions. . . . These circumstances have impeded the woman from par-
ticipating in society with a sound, disposing mind. (La Revista de la Guardia Civil
August 15, 1946)
suggested a need to tame and control women who would not be tradi-
tionally considered participants in politics or insurgency. Once defined
as threats through their gender, they became dispensable. In the midst
of La Violencia, the military separated citizens into those who mattered
and those who did not, an act that normalized violence and provided the
moral justification for the impunity that undergirds today’s femicides and
murders of thousands of men.
Most advertisements mirror Lidia Amparo Santos Chacón’s story,
which showed respected professionals who, according to the anonymous
authors of the ads, became involved in the destruction of themselves and
their country because of confused idealism and/or some foreign pressure.
All individuals are described as threats to the country and its way of life
because of their purported involvement in terrorism and crime. Women
are portrayed as both individuals in need of rescuing and threats:
In this account, Chacón is beyond salvation. The authors link her youth
and gender to her wayward path. Chacón is not an agent but a “ves-
sel” used by foreign interests to entice young women by taking advan-
tage of her role as a teacher. Such transgressions depict women as falling
from a position of privilege to the role of a criminal/terrorist, and they
are a common motif in ads that aimed to demonstrate the dangers of
social activism to “well-intentioned” young men and women. But they
also were intended for the general public, as warnings about the criminal
next door.
The internalization of these warnings is evidenced in ads that families
affected by counterinsurgency violence took out in newspapers to differ-
entiate their disappeared loved ones from the antinational militant that
Chacón’s story represented. Thelma del Socorro Valdivia’s husband, for
example, sought the return of his wife on the grounds that she was sim-
ply “a homemaker who dedicated herself exclusively to her home” (Prensa
Libre April 4, 1981, 8). Her kidnapping by hooded men armed with ma-
chine guns and traveling in a van with tinted windows was, according to
Socorro Valdivia’s husband, an error given that she complied with what
was expected of her gender and was not engaged in any activities outside
her home.
This account has an implicit request for recognition, and in the capital,
the combination of her skin color and gold crowns suggest the victim’s
elite status. Such details were more common in accounts describing female
victims. With the body of a woman, this seemingly typical description
signals a form of torture often reserved or emphasized for female victims:
rape. In Guatemala, rape was typically associated with two types of viola-
tions: massacres and capture by state or parastate authorities. Parastate
authorities working as hidden powers then and today are believed to be
responsible for femicides. Most cadaver reports of female bodies during
La Violencia detail rape as part of the necrographic maps or torture signs
found on bodies (Torres 2005). Focusing on rape is a technique that draws
us into the current practice of re-viewing victims of violence instead of the
social supports or agents of violence.
During La Violencia, the focus of rape on the victims rather than on the
perpetrators reinforced the feelings of vulnerability that politically moti-
vated violence hoped to instill. Because of its power to shame and violate
women’s characters as well as their bodies, rape became a tool for torture.
Parastate forces not only raped women but also defaced their bodies to
ensure the viewer’s attention focused on the acts of torture. This type of
rape, which Sylvanna Falcon (2001, 41) defines as “national security rape,”
is a result of the hypermasculinization of a militarized environment in
which rape becomes a tool to shame women and men. Making rapes
public was part of the process of national security rape, where the act
of viewing was intended to draw an audience into one final act of viola-
tion. Re-viewing victims became an act of social complicity that allowed
for the construction of Guatemalan newspaper readers into a “bystander
community” (Huggins, Haritos-Fatouros, and Zimbardo 2002, 137). The
establishment of Ladino readers as a bystander community worked to
sustain the atrocities of La Violencia through a type of participant inac-
tion: readers re-viewed the atrocity but remained unwilling or unable
to oppose it.
In the subsequent account of rape, the assassins attempted to obscure
the victim’s identity but ensured that the act of violation and its effect on
her body would become public by placing the cadaver near the University
of San Carlos during the morning rush hour:
The cadaver of a lady approximately 23 years of age was found yesterday on 31st
Street and 10th Avenue, Zone 12, El Bosque Residences, at 6 am. Its face and cra-
nium were completely destroyed, making a full identification impossible. . . . [She
was] nude and showed clear signs of having been raped, said the volunteer fire-
men. (Prensa Libre April 11, 1983, 19)
Her body was placed for commuters to see in a middle-class resi-
dential area as they traveled to and from the university. In the forego-
ing newspaper account, the body is re-presented—both textually and
photographically—for a national audience. The publication of the account
completes the exercise of power that was begun on the victim’s body and
makes the body, not the perpetrators of the crime, the focus of attention.
two young women were beheaded in zone 8 yesterday: Cadavers of two be-
headed young women were found yesterday morning in Zone 8. So far the mo-
tives or perpetrators of the crime are unknown. The neighbors of Zone 8 were sur-
prised at the finding of the cadavers and at the way that they were assassinated,
and they called the municipal firemen to take away the unfortunate women from
the eyes of the curious, especially the children. One of the cadavers . . . showed
that not all of its skin had been severed from the body. It is estimated that the
victimizers used a forceful instrument that was too sharp and you could also see
particular bruising in the arms and legs where blows were received. (Prensa Libre
January 8, 1981, 8)
In both cadaver reports, the women’s faces are obscured, either through
the removal of the head or through beatings that rendered them beyond
recognition. The account noted the youth of the victims while subtly indi-
cating that the assassinations were unusual and repulsive: the additional
qualifications given to the female cadavers suggest that finding defiled
female bodies was less tolerable than the usual parade of male cadavers.
Although most reports discuss the injury, the reports presented here char-
acterize the weapons used as “crushing” or “forceful,” alluding to the use
of excessive force.
Reflecting on the documents discussed here, one Guatemalan journalist
interviewed in 2001 stated that such accounts evoked the idea of counter-
insurgency fear: a fear of unspeakable or unknowable torture and a fear of
the public shame that identification and display could bring. Women were
common victims for the purposes of creating such fears. At the same time,
the constant presence of tortured and violated bodies during La Violencia
began to anesthetize readers. Instead of being exceptional, violations of
women became common and ultimately normal.
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
Falcon, Sylvanna
2001 “Rape as a Weapon of War: Advancing Human Rights for Women at the U.S.-
Mexico Border.” Social Justice 28 (2): 31–51.
Few, Martha
2002 Women Who Live Evil Lives. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Fisher, William
2007 “House Tackles ‘Femicide’ in Latin America.” Truthout (accessed June 21, 2010 at
http://cgrs.uchastings.edu/documents/media/truthout_7–4-07_femicides.pdf).
Forster, Cindy
1999 “Violent and Violated Women: Justice and Gender in Rural Guatemala,
1936–1956.” Journal of Women’s History 11 (3): 55–77.
Foucault, Michel
1995 Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage Books.
Godoy, Angelina Snodgrass
2006 Popular Injustice: Violence, Community, and Law in Latin America. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Guatemala Human Rights Commission
2007 “Guatemala Human Rights Review.” January-September 2007 (accessed June 21,
2010, at http://www.ghrc-usa.org/Publications/GHRCHumanRightsReviewJan-
Sept2007.pdf).
Handy, Jim
2004 “Chicken Thieves, Witches, and Judges: Vigilante Justice and Customary Law in
Guatemala.” Journal of Latin American Studies 36 (3): 533–562.
Hay, Douglas
1992 “Time, Inequality, and Law’s Violence.” In Law’s Violence, edited by Austin Sarat
and Thomas R. Kearns, 141–173. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Huggins, Martha K., Mika Haritos-Fatouros, and Philip G. Zimbardo
2002 Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ibarra, Carmen Aida
2008 Consideraciones sobre la impunidad en Guatemala. Guatemala City: Fundación
Myrna Mack.
Kalny, Eva
2003 La ley que llevamos en el corazón. Guatemala City: Asociación para el Avance de
Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala.
Lagarde y de los Ríos, Marcela
2006 “Feminicidio.” Ciudad de Mujeres, May 12 (accessed January 21, 2008, at http://www
.ciudaddemujeres.com/articulos/article.php3?id_article=77&var_recherche
=marcela+lagarde).
McClintock, Anne
1993 “Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism, and the Family.” Feminist Review, 44: 61–80.
McKinley, James
2007 “In Guatemala, Officers’ Killings Echo Dirty War.” New York Times, March 5, A1.
Menjivar, Cecilia
2008 “Violence and Women’s Lives in Eastern Guatemala: A Conceptual Framework.”
Latin American Research Review 43 (3): 109–136.
Morales, Mario Roberto, ed.
2001 Stoll-Menchú: La invención de la memoria. Guatemala City: Consucultura.
Nelson, Diane
1999 Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala
2008 “Guatemalan Congress Passes Femicide Law.” April 18 (accessed June 21, 2010, at
http://www.nisgua.org/themes_campaigns/index.asp?id=3114).
Poole, Deborah
1994 “Introduction: Anthropological Perspectives on Violence and Culture—A View
from the Peruvian High Provinces.” In Unruly Order: Violence, Power, and Cultural
Identity in the High Provinces of Southern Peru, edited by Deborah Poole, 1–30. Boul-
der, CO: Westview Press.
Radford, J., and D. E. H. Russell, eds.
1992 Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. New York: Twayne Publishers.
Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (Proyecto Interdiocesano)
1998 Impactos de la violencia. Guatemala: Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica.
La Revista de la Guardia Civil
Russell, Diana E. H.
2001a “Femicide: Some Men’s ‘Final Solution’ for Women.” In Femicide in Global Perspec-
tive, edited by Diana Russell and Roberta Harmes, 176–188. New York: Teachers
College, Columbia University Press.
2001b “Introduction: The Politics of Femicide.” In Femicide in Global Perspective, edited
by Diana Russell and Roberta Harmes, 3–11. New York: Teachers College, Colum-
bia University Press.
Russell, Diana E. H., and Nicole Van de Ven, eds.
1976 Crimes against Women: Proceedings of the International Tribunal. Millbrae, CA: Les
Femmes Publishing.
Sanford, Victoria
2008 “From Genocide to Feminicide: Impunity and Human Rights in Twenty-First
Century Guatemala.” Journal of Human Rights 7: 104–122.
2007 “Women in Danger: Feminicide and Impunity.” Report of Guatemala, Fall 2007,
vol. 28, no. 3 (accessed January 21, 2008, at http://www.nisgua.org/themes
_campaigns/index.asp?id=3056).
Socolow, Susan Migden
1980 “Women and Crime: Buenos Aires, 1757–97.” Journal of Latin American Studies
12 (1): 57.
Taussig, Michael
1992 The Nervous System. New York: Routledge.
Torres, M. Gabriela
1999 “The Unexpected Consequences of Violence: Rethinking Gender Roles and Eth-
nicity.” In Journeys of Fear, edited by Liisa North and Alan Simmons, 155–175.
Montreal: McGill/Queen’s University Press.
2005 “Bloody Deeds/Hechos sangrientos—Reading Guatemala’s Record of Political Vio-
lence in Cadaver Reports.” In When States Kill, edited by Cecilia Menjivar and
Nestor Rodriguez, 143–169. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Treacy, Mary Jane (Simmons College)
2001 “Killing the Queen: The Display and Disappearance of Rogelia Cruz Martinez.”
Unpublished Manuscript.
Tuckman, Jo
2007 “They Keep on Killing and Killing.” Guardian, April 20, 16.
U.S. Department of Justice
2007 “Crime in the United States 2007” (accessed January 23, 2008, at http://www.fbi
.gov/ucr/07cius/data/table_01.html).
William F. Vásquez
Fairfield University
Alok K. Bohara
University of New Mexico
Abstract: Using data from the National Survey of Standards of Living conducted
in Guatemala in 2000, this article tests the hypothesis that Guatemalan households
use child labor and reduce child schooling to cope with household shocks. First, the
authors use factor analysis to estimate the latent household propensity to natural
disasters and socioeconomic shocks. Then, they estimate bivariate probit models to
identify the determinants of child labor and schooling, including household propen-
sity to natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks. Results suggest that households
use child labor to cope with natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks. In contrast,
the authors found no evidence that suggests that households reduce child schooling
to cope with shocks. Findings also indicate that poor households are more likely to
use child labor and schooling reduction as strategies to cope with socioeconomic
shocks.
INTRODUCTION
Child labor affects the current and future welfare of children. In the
short run, child labor exposes children to unsafe working environments
and prevents normal child development. Child labor also reduces the time
available for school and the quality of schooling (Binder and Scrogin 1999;
Psacharopoulus 1997). Given that schooling is associated with poverty
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 2. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
1. An alternative view of child labor argues that children may benefit from work expe-
rience appropriate to their age. Benefits include human capital formation through work
experience, as well as in-kind and money earnings. For a detailed discussion on the benefits
of child labor, see Bourdillon (2006).
Table 1 Child Labor and Nonenrollment Ratios, by Region, Gender, and Area
Child Labor Nonenrollment
Boys Girls Boys Girls
Region Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban
Metropolitan 31.5 13.0 17.7 9.2 37.0 7.3 29.1 10.6
North 40.2 15.4 18.2 9.6 35.9 18.6 46.1 23.6
Northeast 25.8 14.7 6.9 9.6 29.9 10.8 31.2 16.1
Northwest 32.6 18.6 14.8 11.9 32.9 17.7 44.5 23.0
Central 34.6 21.8 17.9 22.7 28.9 14.8 31.8 17.9
Southeast 31.8 16.3 8.1 11.9 24.6 10.1 29.3 14.7
Southwest 30.1 23.7 18.3 12.0 22.5 16.7 33.7 20.1
Peten 33.0 23.6 8.6 13.0 31.7 18.7 35.3 15.9
Country 32.9 18.0 14.8 12.4 29.4 14.0 36.7 17.5
Note: We calculated these rates using the 2000 Encuesta Nacional de Condiciones de Vida
(ENCOVI). The rates are expressed in percentages of children between five and sixteen
years of age.
BACKGROUND
2. Guatemala is divided into eight political regions for sampling purposes: Metropoli-
tan, Central, North, Southeast, Southwest, Northeast, Northwest, and Petén.
10/15/10 1:53:54 PM
170 Latin American Research Review
in Central America, for a total of 24,139 people, or 2.2 fatalities per thou-
sand habitants (based on the population in 1995). Estimated losses were
more than US$3.062.5 billion or 17.3 percent of the gross domestic prod-
uct (GDP) in 1995.3 As a response to its propensity for natural disasters,
Guatemala created the National Coordinator for Reduction of Disasters
(Coordinadora Nacional para la Reducción de Desastres, or CONRED),
which aims to reduce household vulnerability to natural disasters and
coordinates national efforts during and after a disaster.4
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
where CH, FAM, and COM are child, family, and community’s charac-
teristics, respectively. Y* is equal to Y – PX0, the disposable income for
child consumption. W* and S* are the optimal choices on child labor and
schooling, respectively.
The effects of child, family, and community characteristics on W* and
S* depend on the type of such characteristics. Child ethnicity may have a
negative impact on schooling, particularly if languages differ across eth-
nic groups and education is not provided in such languages. There is also
evidence that suggests that mothers have stronger preferences for child
schooling than fathers (Ridao-Cano 2001) and that households may treat
boys and girls differently (Binder 1998; Emerson and Portela Souza 2007).
Size imposes larger costs on the household and therefore may reduce
schooling and increase child labor (Patrinos and Psacharopoulos 1997).
Households in more developed communities have more access to public
schools, which would increase schooling rates. The development of labor
⭸S *
ⱕ 0,
⭸W *
and
⭸W *
ⱕ 0.
⭸S *
⭸S * ⭸S * ⭸W * ⭸W *
ⱕ 0, ⱕ 0, ⱖ 0 , and ⱖ 0.
⭸ ⭸ Ps ⭸ ⭸ Ps
and
⭸W *
ⱕ 0.
⭸Y *
H2: Natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks decrease the time allocated to
child schooling.
H3: The impact of natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks is more signifi-
cant among poor households.
business closing and massive layoffs (0.23), and loss of employment of any
member and lowered income of any member (0.3).
Table 4 presents the definition and descriptive statistics of the variables
used in this study. The variables include indicators for extreme poverty
(EXTPOOR) and general poverty (POOR). The National Institute of Sta-
tistics calculated the poverty indicators using the per capita consumption
approach. The extreme poverty line (1,911 quetzals per year) consisted of
expenditures needed to cover the minimum amount of calories needed to
survive. The general poverty line (4,318 quetzals per year) covered non-
nutritious expenditures as well.5 Other variables used in the study include
child characteristics (AGE, MALE, and INDIGENOUS), family character-
istics including mother’s and father’s education, gender of the household
head, and household size (MOEDUC, FAEDUC, HEADMALE, and HH-
SIZE, respectively), and location variables (URBAN, NORTH, NORTHEAST,
SOUTHEAST, CENTRAL, SOUTHWEST, NORTHWEST, and PETEN).
ECONOMETRIC METHODOLOGY
5. Using an exchange rate of 7.50 quetzals per U.S. dollar, the poverty and extreme pov-
erty lines are equivalent to $575.73 and $254.80, respectively.
6. We thank an anonymous reviewer for addressing this limitation of counting house-
hold shocks.
where NDi is an indicator that takes the value of one if the household ex-
perienced natural disaster i (e.g., earthquakes, droughts, floods) and zero
otherwise. Similarly, the indicator SEj takes the value of one if the house-
hold was hit by socioeconomic shock j (e.g., loss of employment of any
member, lowered income of any member, bankruptcy of family business)
and zero otherwise. The factors NATDIS and SOCECON are unobserved
common factors that influence the incidence of natural disasters and so-
cioeconomic shocks, respectively. Coefficients λi and λj represent the fac-
tor loadings relating indicators NDi and SEj to latent factors NATDIS and
SOCECON, respectively. The terms ei and ej represent the variance that is
unique to indicators NDi and SEj, respectively, and are independent of the
corresponding factors and all other el.
Factor analysis provides a stronger analytical framework to estimate
shock indices than do traditional methods such as binary variables repre-
senting shock incidence and the total amount of reported shocks. First, fac-
tors can be used as proxies for latent variables, which are unobservable and
inestimable using traditional methods. Therefore, NATDIS and SOCECON
can be interpreted as the latent household propensity to natural disasters
and socioeconomic shocks, respectively. Second, NATDIS and SOCECON
do not restrict different household shocks to equally affect child labor and
schooling, given that factor loadings are allowed to vary across shock in-
dicators. Finally, factor analysis provides estimates that are adjusted for
measurement error, which traditional methods ignore (Brown 2006).
To investigate the impact of natural disasters and socioeconomic
shocks on child labor and schooling, we modeled the optimal choice of
child schooling and labor under the assumption that Equations 2a and 2b
follow a linear form:
S* = X βs + us (4a)
W* = X βw+ uw (4b)
EMPIRICAL RESULTS
Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working
10/15/10 1:53:57 PM
P5331.indb 180
Table 6 (continued)
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6
Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working
RURAL −0.103 0.081 −0.103 0.080 −0.099 0.088 −0.099 0.088 −0.103 0.083 −0.103 0.082
(0.011)*** (0.011)*** (0.010)*** (0.011)*** (0.011)*** (0.011)*** (0.010)*** (0.011)*** (0.011)*** (0.011)*** (0.011)*** (0.011)***
NORTH −0.063 0.013 −0.060 0.011 −0.063 0.018 −0.061 0.016 −0.064 0.017 −0.057 0.012
(0.030)** (0.026) (0.030)** (0.026) (0.030)** (0.026) (0.030)** (0.026) (0.030)** (0.026) (0.030)* (0.026)
NORTHEAST −0.028 0.003 −0.022 −0.000 −0.027 0.010 −0.026 0.009 −0.029 0.007 −0.021 0.001
(0.031) (0.030) (0.031) (0.030) (0.031) (0.030) (0.031) (0.030) (0.031) (0.030) (0.031) (0.030)
SOUTHEAST −0.001 0.025 0.003 0.023 0.001 0.034 0.001 0.035 −0.003 0.029 0.002 0.027
(0.026) (0.027) (0.026) (0.027) (0.026) (0.028) (0.026) (0.028) (0.027) (0.027) (0.026) (0.027)
CENTRAL −0.020 0.087 −0.017 0.086 −0.019 0.086 −0.017 0.084 −0.019 0.086 −0.013 0.081
(0.026) (0.028)*** (0.026) (0.028)*** (0.026) (0.028)*** (0.026) (0.028)*** (0.026) (0.028)*** (0.026) (0.028)***
SOUTHWEST −0.008 0.013 −0.005 0.010 −0.007 0.019 −0.007 0.019 −0.009 0.016 −0.005 0.013
(0.026) (0.025) (0.026) (0.025) (0.025) (0.025) (0.026) (0.025) (0.026) (0.025) (0.026) (0.025)
NORTHWEST −0.064 −0.015 −0.060 −0.017 −0.064 −0.008 −0.063 −0.009 −0.066 −0.011 −0.060 −0.014
(0.028)** (0.024) (0.028)** (0.024) (0.028)** (0.024) (0.028)** (0.024) (0.028)** (0.024) (0.028)** (0.024)
PETEN −0.054 0.036 −0.052 0.033 −0.049 0.046 −0.049 0.047 −0.056 0.039 −0.052 0.037
(0.031)* (0.029) (0.030)* (0.029) (0.030) (0.030) (0.030) (0.030) (0.031)* (0.029) (0.031)* (0.029)
ρ −0.2696 −0.2702 −0.2660 −0.2652 −0.2695 −0.2690
(0.0235)*** (0.0235)*** (0.0235)*** (0.235)*** (0.0234)*** (0.0235)***
Observations 7332 7332 7332 7332 7332 7332
Log Pseudo- −6634.48 −6627.02 −6641.81 −6635.00 −6632.74 −6616.48
Likelihood
Akaike 13,346.95 13,340.04 13,361.62 13,356.00 13,347.49 13,330.96
Information
Criterion
Prob. > χ2 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01
10/15/10 1:53:58 PM
HOUSEHOLD SHOCKS, CHILD LABOR, AND CHILD SCHOOLING 181
increases with natural disasters. Both child labor and schooling may be
expected to increase with natural disasters if domestic production is af-
fected and if the time available for working and schooling consequently
increases.
Results also indicate that poor households (but not extremely poor
households) are more likely to use child labor and schooling reduction
as strategies to cope with socioeconomic shocks. As a response to such
shocks, poor households may have to send children to labor markets.
They may use child earnings to pay for survival expenditures, especially
when adult income decreases as a result of socioeconomic shocks (Beegle
et al. 2006). In addition, households may reallocate resources to survival
expenditures by not enrolling children in school. In contrast, we found no
evidence that poor and extremely poor households are more likely to use
child labor to cope with natural disasters than are nonpoor households. In
contrast, findings indicate that extremely poor households are less likely
to use this strategy than are nonpoor households. Natural disaster may
further restrict access to labor markets for extremely poor households,
which would prevent them from using child labor to cope with natural
disasters and socioeconomic shocks.
Child labor and schooling reduction may increase the amount of re-
sources aimed at mitigating the negative effects of socioeconomic shocks
(Jacoby and Skoufias 1997). However, such coping strategies may have a
negative impact on the current and future welfare of children. The current
welfare of children may be put at risk because of unsafe working envi-
ronments. The reduction in the amount and quality of schooling—given
that more schooling is associated with poverty alleviation, disease reduc-
tion, and fertility choices—also jeopardizes the future welfare of children
(Glewwe 2002; World Bank 2005).
Public policies aimed to prevent and mitigate socioeconomic shocks
may improve the welfare of children. For example, coping assistance
programs could be implemented to provide households with access to
credit, insurance, and assets to cope with socioeconomic shocks (Beegle
et al. 2006; Guarcello et al. 2003). Mitigation policies could be attached
to schooling; thus, households would send their children to school to
improve the future welfare of children and to be eligible for coping as-
sistance. Implementing coping assistance programs may be a challenge
in developing countries. Guatemala may face this challenge using offi-
cial institutions such as the Secretariat of Food Security, the Presidential
Planning Secretariat, and the Ministry of Agriculture, which have already
implemented poverty alleviation and food security programs. Child labor
and schooling reduction would not be used as coping strategies if similar
programs are implemented to assist households recovering from negative
shocks.
APPENDIX A.
• En los últimos 12 meses ¿el hogar se ha visto afectado por alguno de los
siguiente problemas de tipo general?
1. Terremoto
2. Sequía
3. Inundación
4. Tormentas
5. Huracán
6. Plagas
7. Deslizamiento de tierras
8. Incendios forestales
9. Cierre de empresas
10. Despidos masivos
11. Aumento general de precios
12. Protestas públicas
13. Otro, ¿cuál?
• En los últimos 12 meses, ¿este hogar se vio afectado por alguno o algunos
de los siguiente problemas?
1. Pérdida del empleo de algún miembro
2. Baja de ingresos de algún miembro del hogar
3. Quiebra del negocio familiar
4. Enfermedad o accidente grave de algún trabajador miembro del
hogar
5. Muerte de un trabajador miembro del hogar
6. Muerte de otro miembro del hogar
7. Abandono del jefe de hogar
8. Incendio de la vivienda/negocio/propiedad
9. Hecho delictivo
10. Disputa de tierras
11. Disputas familiares
12. Pérdida de ayudas en dinero o especie
13. Caída de los precios de los productos del negocio del hogar
14. Pérdida de la cosecha
15. Otros, ¿cuáles?
REFERENCES
Fabiano Santos
Graduate Institute of Research of Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ)
Cristiane Batista
Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO)
Resumen: El objetivo del trabajo es analizar los determinantes de las políticas pú-
blicas de naturaleza social en los estados brasileños. Más específicamente, se trata
de examinar el gasto público en las áreas de salud y educación y explorar las posi-
bles causas de la variación eventualmente observada. La motivación teórica de esta
propuesta adviene de una línea de investigación en la literatura que afirma que a
nivel estatal el ejecutivo es una fuerza sin contraposición dentro del sistema polí-
tico y que, además, la lógica de producción de políticas públicas estaría, sobre todo,
vinculada a los objetivos individuales del gobernador. Entretanto, según nuestros
resultados fueron descartadas las hipótesis nulas de la inexistencia de un efecto
positivo de la ideología del gobernador sobre el nivel del gasto social y de la ausencia
de impacto negativo del número de comisiones, aún en gobiernos controlados por la
izquierda, en este mismo nivel de gasto.
INTRODUCCIÓN
This article was originally prepared for delivery at the 2007 Congress of the Latin American
Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, September 5–8, 2007.
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
4. Una posible versión del argumento subyacente a la tesis del UE sería la de que, en
realidad, esta reivindicaría únicamente que el gobernador, sea cual fuere su inclinación
ideológica, lograría la aprobación sin contraste de sus políticas en el ámbito estatal. Así, en
esencia, no habría contraposición de la tesis UE con nuestra primera hipótesis de trabajo.
Sin embargo, desde nuestro punto de vista, esa versión de la tesis extendería el argumento
hasta el punto de peder su validez original. En varios momentos de su texto, Abrucio es
explícito al afirmar que el control de las instituciones políticas en el ámbito estatal no ocurre
para que el gobernador haga prevalecer sus preferencias en términos de policy (lo que, por
cierto, no es problemático según varias teorías sobre el buen funcionamiento de un sistema
democrático), sino para que sea posible mantener la maquinaria política bajo su control, o
sea, para que el gobernador personalmente pueda perpetuarse en el poder en este ámbito
de gobierno.
7. La literatura es bastante extensa sobre ese punto. Citamos aquí los textos pioneros de
Alesina (1987); Hibbs (1977) y Tufte (1978).
8. Una interesante observación de uno de los dictaminadores anónimos que comentaron
nuestro trabajo nos lleva a la afirmación de que no estamos discutiendo la validez de las
teorías de los ciclos para contextos democráticos funcionales o disfuncionales. Las únicas
condiciones que deben estar presentes en el experimento hecho a continuación es la de que
el gobierno resulta de elecciones competitivas y la de que éste posee medios para beneficiar
13. El estudio de Pereira (2004) es una demostración de lo difícil que es colectar datos
para emprender un análisis sobre la distribución de secretarías por los partidos en el ám-
bito estatal. De los veintisiete estados, trece presentaron la seria completa de secretarios con
sus respectivos partidos.
RJ 27
SP 20
GO 16
PR 15
CE, MG 14
MA 13
AM, BA, MT, PA, RO 12
PE 11
MS, RS, SC, SE 9
AC, TO 8
AL, ES, PB 7
PI 6
RN 5
DF, RR 4
Media 10,8
donde
Para la variable dependiente gasto social (GS) será utilizada como in-
dicador la suma del porcentaje del gasto en educación (y cultura) y salud
(y saneamiento) dividido por el PIB estatal. Las variables de control de
naturaleza económicas son PIB per cápita (PIB) y Desempleo (Des). Las
variables de control de naturaleza demográfica son población mayor a se-
senta y cinco años (Pob65) y población urbana (PobUrb).14 Se agregan al
análisis los indicadores de naturaleza demográfica por considerarse que
existe una relación directa entre tales indicadores y los gastos sociales. De
acuerdo con Huber y otros (2004), la población en edad escolar y la pobla-
ción mayor o igual a sesenta y cinco años son indicadores que influencian
positivamente el gasto en educación/salud y seguridad/bienestar social,
respectivamente. En el caso del presente trabajo, por su parte, la variable
referente a la población en edad escolar no será incluida por poseer una
correlación con la variable referente a la población mayor o igual a sesenta
y cinco años. El signo negativo esperado de la variable pertinente a la po-
blación anciana se justifica por el hecho de que en Huber y otros (2004), la
población de sesenta y cinco años o más incide positivamente en el gasto
de seguridad/bienestar social, en mayor medida que en el gasto de educa-
ción y salud, foco de este análisis. Entonces, resulta razonable suponer que
cuanto mayor la proporción de población anciana en un estado, mayor la
suma de recursos públicos destinados al área de seguridad social y me-
nor, a las áreas de educación y salud.
La variable referente a la ideología del gobierno estatal fue construida a
través de un survey, realizado en 2001 por Cristiane Batista y Ximena Simp-
son, por entonces maestrandas del Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do
Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ), a partir de informaciones recogidas mediante el
desarrollo de un cuestionario enviado a politólogos, sociólogos, juristas
y periodistas vinculados al área política en todos los estados del país.15
En este cuestionario, los entrevistados clasificaron ideológicamente16 los
14. Los datos correspondientes a las variables demográficas fueron extraídos de las
PNADs en los respectivos años para los cuales existió levantamiento del IBGE.
15. Dentro de los entrevistados constan Alan Lacerda (RN), Marcelo Baquero (RS), Bruno
Reis (ES, MG, RL e SP), Carlos Roberto Pio (DF, GO, MT e MS), Celina Souza (BA, CE, MA,
PE e SE), Antônio Octávio Cintra (MG, RJ e SP), Cleber de Deus (BA, CE, MA, PB, PE, PI, RN
e SE), Denise Paiva (GO, DF, MT e MS), Francisco Ferraz (PR, SC e RS), Helio Mairata (PA),
José Filomeno (CE), Jussara Reis (PR, SC e RS), Marcelino (AC, AP, PA, RO, RR e TO), Maria
Isabel Carvalho (DF, GO, MT e MS), André Marenco (PR, SC e RS), Francisco Meira (ES,
MG, RJ e SP), Pedro Roberto Neiva (DF, GO, MT e MS), Roberto Corrêa (AP, AM, PA e RR) e
Walder Góes (DF, GO, MT e MS).
16. Basados en la clasificación de Coppedge (1997).
17. Decidimos utilizar año electoral y no una variable que midiera la proximidad de las
elecciones en el tiempo por dos motivos: en primer lugar, año electoral es una variable que
ha sido utilizada con frecuencia en la literatura sobre política latinoamericana con muy
buenos resultados (ver Ames 1987; Amorim Neto y Borsani 2004; Borsani 2003; Mejía Acosta
y Coppedge 2001); en segundo lugar, los ciclos de gasto a lo largo de un año se concentran
fuertemente en los meses finales de ese mismo año, después de la definición más precisa
del monto de la recaudación, hecho que ciertamente crearía una perturbación en la lectura
que debe hacerse sobre los coeficientes. Tendríamos, en este caso, una especie de pequeños
ciclos más amplios.
Izq +
Comptlega –
IzqxCompleg –
PIB +
Desb +
Pob65 –
PobUrb +
Añoelect +
a
Nuestra suposición sobre el efecto aislado de la variable complejidad legislativa es que
ésta tendrá un impacto negativo sobre el gasto social de un estado. Esto se explica porque,
en general, las Asambleas Legislativas han sido dominadas por partidos a la derecha
del espectro ideológico. Así, siendo la inclinación de la asamblea más para la derecha,
teniendo ésta más autonomía decisoria, dada por la complejidad interna, entonces, sus
prioridades de gasto serán más probablemente expresados en decisiones de gobierno
más que en Asambleas Legislativas menos complejas. Es importante resaltar que aquí se
trata apenas de una suposición, siendo nuestra intención primordial verificar el efecto
combinado de gobierno a la izquierda y Asambleas Legislativas complejas sobre el nivel
de gasto social.
b
El signo esperado de esta variable presenta alguna ambigüedad. Así como es razonable
esperar que el aumento del desempleo lleve al gobierno a gastar más como forma de
estimular la economía, lo que nos lleva a suponer que el signo de la variable sea positivo,
por otro lado, en lo que toca a la incidencia del gasto, es posible imaginar que se intente
desplazar gastos hacia actividades que tengan impacto directo sobre el nivel de actividad,
como construcción civil y obras de infraestructura. De todas formas, en nuestro modelo
su coeficiente demostró valor significativamente diferente de 0 y por tratarse de una varia-
ble de control, entendemos que el resultado no produjo impacto relevante sobre nuestras
conclusiones. La misma observación vale para la variable población mayor de sesenta y
cinco años. Agradecemos a uno de nuestros dictaminadores anónimos de la LARR por las
ponderaciones sobre el signo esperado de estas dos variables.
DISCUSIÓN Y CONCLUSIÓN
REFERENCIAS
Abrucio, Fernando
1998 Os barões da federação. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Abrucio, Fernando, y David Samuels
1997 “A ‘nova’ política dos governadores: Política subnacional e transição democrática
no Brasil”. Lua Nova, n. 40–41. São Paulo: Cedec.
Achen, Christopher
2000 “Why Lagged Dependent Variable Can Suppress the Explanatory Power of the
Independent Variable”. Trabajo presentado en el Encuentro Anual de Metodolo-
gía Política de la Asociación Americana de Ciencias Políticas, University of Cali-
fornia, Los Angeles.
Alesina, Alberto
1987 “Macroeconomic Policy in a Two-Party System as a Repeated Game”. Quarterly
Journal of Economics 102: 651–678.
Alesina, Alberto, y Howard Rosental
1995 Partisan Politics, Divided Government, and the Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Alt, J., y R. Lowry
1994 “Divided Government, Fiscal Institutions, and Budget Deficits: Evidence from
the States”. American Political Science Review 88: 811–828.
Ames, Barry
1987 Political Survival: Politicians and Public Policy in Latin America. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Amorim Neto, O., y H. Borsani
2004 “Presidents and Cabinets: The Political Determinants of Fiscal Behavior in Latin
America”. Studies in Comparative International Development 39: 3–27.
Andrade, R., organizador
1998 Processo de governo no município e no estado. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de
São Paulo.
Avelino, George, David S. Brown y Wendy Hunter
2005 “The Effect of Capital Mobility, Trade Openness, and Democracy on Social
Spending.” American Journal of Political Science 49: 625–641.
Batista, Cristiane C.
2008 “Partidos políticos, ideologia e política social na América Latina: 1980–1999”. Da-
dos 51: 647–686.
Beck, Nathaniel, y Jonathan N. Katz
1995 “What to Do (and Not to Do) with Time-Series: Cross-Section Data”. American
Political Science Review 89: 634–647.
Blanco, Fernando
2001 O comportamento fiscal dos estados brasileiros e seus determinantes políticos. Rio de
Janeiro: Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada.
Boix, Carles
1997 “Political Parties and Supply Side of the Economy: The Provision of Physical and
Human Capital in Advanced Economies”. American Journal of Political Science,
41(3): 814–845.
Borsani, Hugo
2003 Eleições e economia. Instituições políticas e resultados macroeconômicos na América
Latina (1979–1998), 1a. ed. Belo Horizonte: Editora da Universidade Federal de
Minas Gerais.
Coppedge, Michael
1997 “A Classification of Latin American Political Parties”. Kellogg Institute Working
Paper No. 244. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame.
Fiorina, Morris
1996 Divided Government. New York: Macmillan.
Garrett, Geoffrey
1998 Partisan Politics in the Global Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haggard, M., y M. McCubbins, eds.
2001 Presidents, Parliaments, and Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hibbs, Douglas
1977 “Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy”. American Political Science Review 71:
1467–1487.
Huber, Evelyne, Thomas Mustillo y John D. Stephens
2004 “Determinants of Social Spending in Latin América”. Trabajo preparado para
las reuniones de Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, Washington,
D.C., 8–11 de julio, 2004.
Krehbiel, Keith
1990 Information and Legislative Organization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press.
Laakso, M., y R. Taagepera
1979 “Effective Number of Parties: A Measure with Application to West Europe”. Com-
parative Political Studies 12: 3–27.
Lima, Olavo Brasil, Jr., organizador
1997 O sistema partidário brasileiro, diversidade e tendências, 1982–94. Rio de Janeiro: Edi-
tora Fundação Getúlio Vargas.
Mainwaring, Scott
1999 Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Mejía Acosta, André, y Michael Coppedge
2001 “Political Determinants of Fiscal Discipline in Latin América, 1979–1998”. Trabajo
presentado en el XXIIIº Congreso Internacional del Latin American Studies As-
sociation, Washington, D.C., 5–8 de septiembre.
Nicolau, Jairo
1996 Multipartidarismo e democracia no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Fundação Getúlio
Vargas.
Nordhaus, William
1975 “The Political Business Cycle”. Review of Economic Studies 174: 169–190.
Pereira, André Ricardo V. V.
2004 “Por Baixo dos Panos: Governadores e assembléias no Brasil contemporâneo”.
Tesis de doctorado. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de
Janeiro.
Samuels, D.
2003 Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Samuels, D., y S. Mainwaring
2004 “Strong Federalism, Constraints on the Central Government, and Economic Re-
form in Brazil”, en Federalism and Democracy in Latin America, editado por Edgard L.
Gibson, 85–130. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Santos, F.
2001 O poder legislativo nos estados: Diversidade e convergência. Rio de Janeiro: Editora
Fundação Getúlio Vargas.
Soares, M. M.
2007 “Democracia, representação política e federalismo no Brasil”. Tesis de doctorado.
Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro
Strom, Kaare
1998 “Parliamentary Committees in European Democracies”, en The New Roles of Par-
liamentary Committees, editado por Lawrence D. Longley y Roger H. Davidson,
21–59. Londres: Frank Cass.
Tsbelis, George
1995 “Decision Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism, Parlia-
mentarism, Multicameralism and Multipartism”. British Journal of Political Science
25: 289–325.
Tufte, E.
1978 Political Control of the Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wawro, Gregory
2002 “Estimating Dynamic Panel Data Models in Political Science”. Political Analysis
10 (1): 25–48.
M O B I L I Z I N G A N D N E G O T I AT I N G
MEANINGS
Studies in the Dynamics of Colonial-Imperial
Transformations in Art, Science, Law, Historiography, and
Identities in the Ibero-American World, 1500–1800
Sara Castro-Klarén
Johns Hopkins University
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
such ties are taken for granted, assumed as a feature of empire. The con-
tributions of Restall and Michael J. Schreffler to Invasion and Transforma-
tion, however, are excellent examples of how a critical revamping of such
assumptions can lead to a fuller and more accurate understanding of par-
ticular paintings, boticarios, voyages of discovery, and other cultural phe-
nomena in the fabric of empire.
SCIENCE
In some sense, this endless extracting and collecting led more to the
problematics of the cabinet of curiosities than to the laboratory. In the
former, the challenge the New World posed to European learning and
epistemologies dissolved into a catchall assemblage of the rare, the sin-
gular, and the extraordinary. Because such activity was carried out at the
limits of an unsuitable epistemology that included reasoning by analogy,
as Pimentel shows in regard to Nieremberg, its association with Newto-
nian science remains doubtful, if not confusing, as Pimentel and Paula
de Vos both point out. The difference between doing modern science and
organizing a cabinet of curiosities needs to be clarified. From Pimentel’s
comments, as well as from Goodman’s article and María Portuondo’s dis-
cussion of the polemics of science in the introduction to her Secret Sci-
ence: Spanish Cosmography and the New World, the reader is left to wonder
whether the attempt to include medieval cosmography and technologies
has not extended the term science beyond its historical and epistemologi-
cal limits. Pimentel observes that “the fate of the Hispanic monarchy in
the development of modern science seems trapped within the same para-
dox as is baroque culture,” for both “imperial science and the baroque arts
[are seen] as foreign bodies in the making of modernity” (93). Pimentel
notes that, unlike Newton, Nieremberg “did not deduce any fundamental
laws of nature” and “[h]is works on natural philosophy and natural his-
tory, seen retrospectively, do not contain a single idea that has turned out
to be decisive in the development of our knowledge” (97). This is not to say
that debate on the practice of science in early modern Iberia is no longer
needed. However, a clear difference emerges from this volume between
the activity of Spanish cartographers, laboring at their desks in palaces
and libraries, and Portuguese maritime science and cartography. Only the
latter, based on exploration and empirical research, produced a series of
findings marked by true, physical, and practical links to the natural world
to provide a foundation for its understanding.
Portuondo’s Secret Science constructs a powerful narrative on the re-
lationships among three cosmographers—Alonso de Santa Cruz, López
de Velasco, and Juan Bautista Gesio—and the apparatus of censorship in
imperial Spain. This book begins with a necessary first chapter on the
adaptation, in Renaissance thought, of Ptolemy’s cosmography to the
epistemological challenge the New World’s difference posed. A number
of influential studies over the past decades have addressed from different
perspectives the profound discomfort and displacement experienced in
European intellectual and artistic circles in the face of America’s mate-
rial and cultural realities. These include Michel de Certeau’s L’écriture de
l’histoire (1975); Antonello Gerbi’s La natura delle Indie nove (1975); Anthony
Grafton, April Shelford, and Nancy Siraisi’s New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The
Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (1992); and Walter Mignolo’s
The Darker Side of the Renaissance (1995), to name just a few.
2. Anthony Grafton, with April Shelford and Nanci Siraisi, New Worlds, Ancient Texts:
The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1992), 5.
3. Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Coloni-
zation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), xi.
end, the Crown turned to the Casa de Contratación in Seville, where cos-
mographers such as López de Velasco were entrusted with the production
of knowledge and, most particularly, the secrecy of that enterprise. Se-
cret Science tells the intriguing story of three sites of knowledge—casa (de
contratación), consejo (de Indias), and corte (real)—to show the enabling and
paradoxical constraints of the material and intellectual conditions under
which cosmographers such as López de Velasco, Santa Cruz, and Gesio at-
tempted to carry out their twofold task: on the one hand, to describe, clas-
sify, and understand the New World on the basis of Old World paradigms
and, on the other hand, to make their findings of difference intelligible to
uninformed yet influential others—as well as to keep all the data secret
and pass the censors.
Relying on an abundance of fresh archival sources, such as the cor-
respondence of López de Velasco, Portuondo deftly intertwines her fig-
ures’ biographies with ample discussion of how they developed methods
of inquiry to retrieve and assemble the data deemed necessary for their
cosmographies. In the end, these well-educated consummate bureaucrats
appear overwhelmed by the power games they were obliged to play in
the absence of tenure and to carry out a task that was already beyond the
reach of cosmography. Because the work of these bureau cosmographers
was never published, and because of Portuondo’s original research into
these figures’ attempt to find a secondary mode to represent what they
(mistakenly) took to be raw empirical data, Secret Science opens a window
onto a long-neglected area in Spain’s intellectual history: the production
and administration of knowledge for a few policy makers, many of whom,
like the king, lacked any expertise in cartography.
In contrast, Measuring the New World treats the public performance of
science and other knowledge in the France of Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie,
ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751). La Con-
damine’s voyage to Quito in 1735 and return via the Amazon River speaks
of movement, displacement, dispersion, and planned and unexpected en-
counters with other subjects of knowledge. Safier writes a complex social
and intellectual history of La Condamine’s entanglements with Spanish
American Creoles such as the distinguished cartographer Pedro Vicente
Maldonado, Amerindian informants in Quito, and his vexed journey down
the Amazon. It seems that, in the eyes of La Condamine, there was no im-
portant difference between the information obtained from questioning
Amerindians about their geographic knowledge and that borrowed from
local Creole cartographers. Once back in Paris, he erased the provenance
of his scientific information and presented it as his own. In his story of the
tangle of disputations that make up La Condamine’s voyage and the sub-
sequent wrestling for public acclaim and scientific credit in cosmopolitan
Paris, Safier also provides an informative explanation of Jorge Juan and
Antonio de Ulloa’s expedition, and the controversy that surrounded it.
4. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New
York: Random House, 1971), xv. Foucault cites Borges’s essay “El idioma analítico de John
Wilkins” (1942), as republished in Otras inquisiciones (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1952).
5. Foucault, Order of Things, xv.
of literature and visual arts, for he unfolds a keen set of concepts to facili-
tate the understanding of forms and modes of cognition that transcend
disciplines.
so far away and greedy peninsulares and Creoles were a daily reality in the
struggle for land (repartimientos).
From the thousands of legal cases that Owensby studied, it is not hard
to see that litigation did, in the end, despite the narrow and punishing
space colonial practices afforded, contribute to the emergence of Mexico’s
Indians as subjects of the law and as contenders for agency in the minds
of contemporary peninsulares, Creoles, and mestizos. The discourse of
amparo and culpa taught them where and how to find protections and how
to win small concessions and redresses. As Owensby explains, it therefore
“makes no sense to think of New Spain’s indigenous people as having
‘virtually no agenda of their own’” (302). However, it also follows that ac-
commodation, negotiation, and negative political participation cannot re-
place equal rights and full citizenship in the affairs of the commonwealth;
for, as both Owensby and Yannakakis show, things eventually unravel
in huge and costly rebellions. On such occasions, Indians paid yet again,
with more lives and punishments, even when they made paper gains,
as occurred in the Tehuantepec rebellion of 1661 and forty years later in
northern Oaxaca.
In September 1700, after one hundred years of pacification (not peace)
and evangelization in the region of Oaxaca, Mexico, the Zapotec residents
of San Francisco Cajonos rose in violent rebellion in response to a new
campaign to extirpate idolatry. Not unlike earlier campaigns in Peru, this
campaign affected not only questions of religious belief but also the entire
living structure of the Zapotec. The first chapters of Yannakakis’s remark-
able book examine how “loyal vassals” morphed into “seditious subjects,”
“idolaters,” and rebels,” and how, in the anxious vocabulary of empire,
these subjects were reclassified as “good and faithful Indians” between
1660 and 1700. This deft analysis is made possible not by considering the
rebellion of Cajonos under the fixed terms of a racio-hierarchical classifi-
cation but by deploying a critical interrogation of the very taxonomy and
power relations in play.
With the lens of performance theory, Yannakakis maintains that Span-
ish rule, not content with the use of grisly punishments or every other
tool in the arsenal of spiritual conquest, including confession, thoroughly
reorganized the Mexican church and state, leaving prior intermediaries in
limbo but serving the rulers’ interest more efficiently. Part of this recon-
struction involved what Yannakakis ably terms a “symbolic warfare” that
pitted “good and faithful Indians” against “idolaters” (94). The latter ac-
cusation was so feared that it drove many cultural practices underground,
menacing the Zapotecs’ cultural survival, as subsequent chapters on new
strategies for negotiating local rule between 1700 and 1770 show. In this
period, wealthy and poor caciques were once again called to play the du-
bious role of intermediaries. The wealthy were able to use their economic
status and litigation skills to renegotiate their relationship to the town
council, or cabildo. For Yannakakis, the case of the cacique Miguel Fernán-
dez de Chaves, which she studies in detail, shows that pre-Hispanic “he-
reditary nobility may have disappeared in its old form, but that those ca-
ciques with the requisite cultural skills persisted as a new kind of elite by
adapting to a political order in which their sources of power were cultur-
ally hybrid, rather than ‘indigenous’ or ‘Iberian’” (155).
Yannakakis’s cultural and political history of Indian colonial subjects
ends by exploring how native intermediaries shaped the impact of the
Bourbon reforms, which, beginning in 1763, intended a centralization that
threatened their gains in autonomy. Bourbon hostility toward native lan-
guages and local customs amounted to yet another wave of symbolic war-
fare by the state. The Indian allies rewarded with exemptions from tribute
for their fidelity had the most to lose. Indian intermediaries—sacristans,
cabildo officers, legal agents—saw their social and political spaces con-
strained by the Bourbon reforms, whose new racio-hierarchical categories
did not distinguish between historically and performatively constituted
differences. This leveling of Indians with the elimination of their purchase
on power, Yannakakis contends, helped loosen their relationships to the
Crown and speeded the processes that led to the wars of independence.
Yannakakis remarks that, as her book was going to press, the people of
Oaxaca are “suffering through another period of intense turmoil” (227),
thereby stretching the import of her study into the present. Her story of
two colonial rebellions in Oaxaca acquires particular relevance for the on-
going Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas and the politics of Indian agency in
various Latin American nation-states.
I close this review by considering Invasion and Transformation, an inter-
disciplinary collection that nevertheless achieves an unusual level of co-
herence, perhaps because all of its essays deal with paintings, maps, and
other artifacts selected for the 2003 exhibit “Visions of Empire,” which
featured seventeenth-century paintings of the conquest of Mexico from
the Jay I. Kislak collection. The anthropologists, art historians, and liter-
ary critics in this volume insightfully engage the relationship between
painterly narrative and state sponsorship, examining glorifications of
Hernán Cortés and the portrayal of Moctezuma as pusillanimous (“of a
small soul,” in Latin), how indigenous subjects negotiated the story of
Moctezuma and omens about the imminent demise of Aztec rule, and
other aspects of the trauma of conquest and evangelization depicted in
mestizo art.
Knowledge of indigenous languages always makes for stunning contri-
butions to colonial studies. A case in point is the puzzling Spanish depic-
tion of Moctezuma as a timid and cowardly man, only too anxious to con-
vey his empire to the king of Spain, despite the fact that his name means
“angry lord” in Nahuatl (3). We have to wonder how this elemental fact
escaped so many until Susan D. Gillespie brought it to light in her careful
study of the sources (by Bernardino de Sahagún and others) that con-
structed it. Gillespie addresses the force that Cortés’s version of events has
had, observing that, “despite the evidentiary shortcomings, every popu-
lar and almost every scholarly account of the Conquest accepts that these
narratives have a degree of historical veracity” (31). This is because of,
Gillespie argues, the persistence of a positivist, literal-minded “approach
in Western history, despite the fact that this mind-set has been under at-
tack within the discipline since the 1930s. The positivist school assumes
that historical events exist pre-formed within documents and merely have
to be extracted through historians’ methods of critical analysis” (32).
As does Gillespie’s essay, Invasion and Transformation in general empha-
sizes the problem of representation, the failings of cross-cultural commu-
nication, and the transformative dynamics of conquest and coloniality. A
case in point is Restall’s “The Spanish Creation of the Conquest of Mexico,”
which shows how baroque painting coincided with imperial Spain’s liking
for battle scenes that displayed the horse as an invincible war machine. The
Spanish hero on horseback was at his best in depictions of Cortés tram-
pling frightened Indians. Restall discusses how, by 1600, there appeared
a consistent narrative, or “mythistory” (a term Dennis Tedlock coined8),
a “vision of the historical past heavily infused with misconceptions and
partisan interpretations so deeply rooted as to constitute legend or myth”
(94). Histories sponsored and published by the Crown perpetuated this
vision of the conquest of Mexico, Restall adds. As each history drew on
the preceding, a consolidated and unassailable narrative emerged. In 1661,
Antonio de Solís became royal chronicler and subsequently published his
Historia de la conquista de México (1684). This officially authorized book dis-
tilled more than one hundred years’ worth of repetitions of Cortés’s apo-
theosis, becoming a textual matrix for the mythistory of eight paintings
about Spain’s victory at Tenochtitlán. Schreffler also inquires into the vari-
ous ways that paintings and their iconographic systems reflect imperial
historiography and an ideological debt to Solís.
Other scholars in this volume ask why there was official interest in
sponsoring depictions of Mexico’s conquest at the end of the seventeenth
century. In closing this review, it is important to point out that this ques-
tion is relevant to nearly all of the texts, maps, exhibits, and voyages of
exploration analyzed in the books under review. The answer seems to
lie in the political fears and anxieties of imperial crowns engaged in con-
quering and governing other peoples. By 1680, Spain was in the midst of
a profound political and economic crisis underscored and indeed epito-
mized by the physical and mental weakness of Carlos II. A similar anxi-
ety gripped France as it sought to harness the world’s wealth a century
8. Popul Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of
Gods and Kings, trans. and ed. Dennis Tedlock (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 64.
later, as Safier discusses. The same was true of the Creoles who used the
Amerindian past to ground their new nations. In each case, there was an
exacerbation of the feelings that permeate and color the relationships of
Europeans and Amerindians in the space of coloniality. The books under
review offer systematic and detailed accounts of important episodes in
the dynamics of the rise and fall of European empires and thus in the
making of modernity. In this sense, they are relevant to many ongoing
discussions on empire and its colonial underside.
Archibald R. M. Ritter
Carleton University
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
1. Full disclosure: I evaluated this edited collection before publication for the University
of Notre Dame Press.
respect to Cuba are fascinating. If I have any quibbles with the book, it
is with the title, which seems overamplified, as there has not been a war
between the two countries. The “Next Revolution” referred to in the title
is not impossible, but I would think that a difficult but orderly evolution
toward Western-style participatory democracy and a more centrist form
of economic organization are more probable.2
In Cuba in the Shadows, Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb explores and ana-
lyzes the lives, behavior, and views of “ordinary Cubans.”3 These Cubans
are familiar to those who have come to know Cuba during the Special
Period. They probably constitute a large majority of the population. These
“unsatisfied citizen-consumers,” as Weinreb calls them (2, 168), strive to
survive with some access to basic “modern” goods, above and beyond
what the ration book provides in an amount insufficient for life main-
tenance since 1990. These modern goods perhaps include some luxuries
but also many basics such as toilet paper and women’s hygiene products,
which are available only in “dollar stores” or tiendas de recaudación de divi-
sas (stores for the collection of foreign exchange). This silent majority has
remained underanalyzed and largely ignored by scholars, perhaps—as
Weinreb suggests—because they do not seem to merit special attention
relative to indigenous peoples, the poor, or labor unions, or perhaps be-
cause they do not fit the orientations of new social movement and struc-
turalist Marxist approaches.
Weinreb’s ethnographic participant observation succeeds in producing
an analysis from about as deep within Cuban realities as it is possible for
an outsider to get. Her success can be attributed in part to her research
assistants and neighborhood ambassadors, namely her three young chil-
dren, Maya, Max, and Boaz, who helped to establish rapport, friendship,
and shared parenting bonds with Cubans who empathized and wanted
to help a young mother. This family fieldwork provides a unique window
into Cuban society and the lives of Cubans.
Weinreb’s focus is a shadow public, somewhat analogous to the shadow
economy, as the following explains:
[U]nsatisfied citizen-consumers . . . share interests, characteristics, a social imag-
ery and practice, but their political silence, underground economic activity, and
secret identity as prospective migrants casts a shadow over them. They are there-
fore a shadow public, an un-coalesced but powerful group that engages in resis-
tance to state domination but without a public sphere, and only in ways that will
allow them to remain invisible while maintaining or improving their families’
economic welfare. (168)
2. One minor detail: Fidel Castro’s hometown was not Bayamo but Birán, not far from
Cueto and Mayarí, both immortalized in the song “Chan Chan” by the Buena Vista Social
Club.
3. I served as reader for the University Press of Florida for the original manuscript of this
volume. I was as impressed with it then as I am now.
The roots of the shadow economy of course predate the Revolution, in-
deed going back to the colonial period and its unofficial economy of smug-
gling and contraband, as reflected in the expression obedezco pero no cumplo
(I obey but do not comply). However, the character of central planning itself
generated the expansion and pervasiveness of today’s shadow economy,
as did the circumstances of the Special Period, as analyzed in chapter 1.
Chapters 2 and 3 examine how citizens strive to maintain private space
and personal control in the context of the state’s domination of personal
life and economic activity. Chapters 4–6 explore a range of survival strate-
gies. Chapter 4 focuses on the concepts and practices encapsulated by the
terms resolver, luchar, conseguir, and inventar, each with unique connotations
in the context of the Special Period. Chapter 5 investigates the significance
of material things—and the lack thereof. Chapter 6 treats the importance
of access to foreign exchange, or convertible pesos. Weinreb here presents
a Cuban class system that puts the “red bourgeoisie” at the top, followed
by artists with privileged access to travel and foreign exchange earnings;
“dollar dogs” or cuenta propistas (own-account workers) with access to
tourist expenditures or remittances from friends or relatives abroad; “un-
satisfied citizen consumers”; and finally, at the bottom, the “peso poor”
who lack access to foreign exchange and additional earnings (all quotes
on 105). The final chapters examine the broad-based phenomenon of feel-
ing trapped and the dream of escape via emigration. Chapter 8 explores
off-stage expressions of dissatisfaction, criticism, and resistance, which
remain purposely hidden, unorganized, and outside of public space. This
state of affairs may be changing, however, with the Damas en Blanco and
bloggers courageously breaking into the public arena, spearheaded by
Yoani Sánchez. Finally, chapter 9 draws together the strands of Weinreb’s
analysis and explores the relevance of the concepts of shadow public and
unsatisfied citizen-consumer in the broader context of Latin America.
Weinreb succeeds admirably in describing and analyzing Cuba’s silent
majority, those “ordinary outlaws” who are decent, hardworking, entre-
preneurial, and ethical, yet must defend themselves and their survival
through myriad economic illegalities in the framework of a dysfunctional
economic system. These people live within the doble moral, effectively
cowed into acquiescence by a political system whose main escape valve
is criticism, innocuous at first, but then increasingly bitter, followed by
emigration. The shadow public perhaps constitutes a potential shadow
opposition but the governments of the Castro brothers seem to easily
contain and control it. One might conclude from Weinreb’s work that
this population—currently disengaged and thinking incessantly about
emigration—is ripe for public reengagement and that in time there may
occur a surprisingly rapid mobilization for change.
Weinreb’s analysis raises some additional questions. Under what cir-
cumstances might a shadow opposition become organized, finding a
4. The return visits of Cuban Americans, who turned out not to be gusanos (worms)—the
dehumanizing label given to them by the Cuban government—but instead mariposas (but-
terflies), as they were relabeled with typical Cuban humor, in part sparked the emigrations
of 1979–1989.
tory over the past half century. He brings together research into the lives
of both Korda and Guevara, a command of the history of Revolutionary
Cuba, knowledge of countries where the Guevara mythology is impor-
tant, an understanding of copyright law, and original investigative inter-
viewing and reporting.
Casey begins with the instant when the photo was taken on March
5, 1960. He sketches Che’s role in the new government—notably as chief
of La Cabaña prison and overseer of the swift executions of prisoners—
his secretive and disastrous Congo operation, and his guerrilla campaign
in Bolivia, putting the launch of Che as icon and the heroic Revolution-
ary brand at the October 18, 1967, memorial ceremony at the Plaza de la
Revolución. Casey also presents an account of Korda’s activities in Ha-
vana, the first publications of his photograph, and the cultural ferment of
the early years of the Revolution, followed by the disillusionment of many
in the mid-1960s. He traces the peregrinations of Korda’s Che through Ar-
gentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Miami, as well as in the student ferment
of 1968 from Paris to Berkeley. His later chapters focus on the use of Che’s
image as a brand by the government of Cuba; here, it no longer signi-
fies a heroic guerrilla promoting revolution but has instead become an
advertisement, selling Cuba in the international tourist marketplace. The
essence of the image is now “the idea of revolutionary nostalgia” (306).
After some thirty-seven years during which the photograph was freely
available for use by anyone, copyright ownership now applies and control
is enforced through legal means when necessary.
Casey takes us on a fascinating journey through the life and afterlife
of Che and through a half century of international social and political
history, using Che’s image as a prism. His book should find a wide reader-
ship, of all political stripes, who have an interest in Cuba or in major politi-
cal and social movements. Those with interests in marketing, branding,
and copyright law will also find this volume illuminating.
I must confess that, when I agreed to include Cuban Currency: The Dol-
lar and Special Period Fiction in this review, I thought it was an analysis of
Cuba’s monetary system, not having read the title carefully. To my initial
trepidation, Esther Whitfield focuses instead on literature but in the con-
text of Cuba’s dual-currency pathology. Her survey of recent fiction has
turned out to be a delight, even for an economist with little direct knowl-
edge of Cuban literature.
Whitfield’s central argument is that the Special Period generated a boom
in cultural exports, including literature, because of the opening of Cuba’s
economy and society, the subsequent expansion of international tourism
and popularity of all things Cuban, the decriminalization of the use of the
dollar, its adoption as a legal currency, and its quick ascent to supremacy
over the old peso. Special Period literature then became market driven—
like many other activities in Cuba—with authors’ incomes dependent on
that when Cuba escapes the Special Period and becomes a “normal” coun-
try with a normal monetary system, the special interest in its literary por-
trayal may diminish. However, the difficulties of economic and political
reform are likely to continue for some time and are likely to take vari-
ous twists and turns that will hold interest for some time to come. I hope
that Cuba’s fiction writers are there to illuminate the process for a world
readership.
Harold A. Trinkunas
Naval Postgraduate School
For all the talk of revolution in Venezuela today, it is the twentieth cen-
tury that witnessed the most profound transformation in the country’s
state and society. Prior to the advent to power of Juan Vicente Gómez in
1908, Venezuela mirrored many of its neighbors in the Latin Caribbean: it
had an agricultural economy with few substantial exports, a profoundly
divided society in which regional and local attachments (la patria chica) had
pride of place, and a political arena in which violence frequently settled
disputes. By the time Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999, Venezuela had
transformed into a modern country with all its strengths and weaknesses: a
rentier state, a democratic polity, and a modern and cosmopolitan society.
Particularly during the past decade, scholarship on Venezuelan poli-
tics has flourished. The phenomena of Chavismo and President Chávez
in power have spawned numerous academic studies and a veritable in-
dustry of books aimed at a general audience.1 The polarization evident in
Venezuelan politics today has, on occasion, spilled over into scholarship.
The rentier economy, the hypercentralized but highly inefficient state, the
1. Although Richard Gott’s In the Shadow of the Liberator (London: Verso, 2000) marked the
beginning of this genre, books for a general audience on Hugo Chávez have continued to
appear at a rather steady clip throughout the past decade.
The contents of this article are solely the responsibility of the author, and they do not rep-
resent the views of the Naval Postgraduate School or the U.S. Navy. I would like to thank
Elisabeth Friedman and Francisco Monaldi for commenting on earlier drafts of this review.
Any remaining errors are entirely attributable to the author.
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
why such a legend came about, given the ruthlessness of the regime. As
Ellner notes in his very thorough review, it was politically useful for the
democratizers that followed to construct this black legend so as to then dif-
ferentiate themselves. By casting aspersions on Gómez, the democratizers
justified some of their own excesses while highlighting their successes.
McBeth digs deep into the sources of the political turmoil that charac-
terized Gómez’s rule, using extensive archival sources and interviews to
build an astonishingly detailed picture of the period.
McBeth brings into sharp relief the fragility of Venezuela as a nation
when Gómez assumed power. Several major European powers had block-
aded the country, and it was highly indebted to foreigners, fragmented
by regional and political rivalries, and prone to civil war and economic
crises. The government lived from hand to mouth, wholly dependent on
customs revenues and frequently in default on its debts under Castro. Af-
ter becoming president, Gómez was constantly under assault by rebel-
lions and coup plots, to such an extent that it would be all too easy for a
nonspecialist to lose track of these problems because of the sheer number
of conspiratorial movements that McBeth has documented. In addition,
foreign powers often considered removing General Gómez from power
during his first decade in office.
By the time of his death in 1935, Gómez had changed all this. Venezuela
had no foreign debt, had successfully negotiated and developed one of
the largest oil industries in the Western Hemisphere, and had expanded
agricultural and educational opportunities. In addition, Gómez had de-
militarized the population by defeating regional caudillos, had formed a
modern national army, and had established the kernel of a modern state
bureaucracy. Although not always emphasized, the campaign of depoliti-
cization by repression also wiped out the traditional Liberal and Conser-
vative parties, opening the way for a new system influenced by European
ideologies such as socialism and Christian democracy.3
The foundation Gómez established had its flaws. A nearly inescap-
able consequence of oil dominance was the rentier state.4 This, in turn,
following: Germán Carrera Damas, Jornadas de historia crítica: La evasora personalidad de Juan
Vicente Gómez y otros temas (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, Ediciones de la
Biblioteca, 1983); Yolanda Segnini, La consolidación del régimen de Juan Vicente Gómez (Cara-
cas: Academia Nacional de Historia, 1982); Tomás Polanco Alcantara, Juan Vicente Gómez:
Aproximación a una biografía (Caracas: Academia Nacional de Historia, 1990); Francisco Car-
reño Delgado, El benemérito: Un bellaco admirable (Caracas: Editorial Texto, 1987); Manuel
Caballero, Gómez, El tirano liberal (Caracas: Monte Ávila, 1994).
3. For a fine overview of state formation in Venezuela, see Doug Yarrington, “Cattle,
Corruption and Venezuelan State Formation during the Regime of Juan Vicente Gómez,
1908–1935,” Latin American Research Review 38, no. 2 (2003): 9–33.
4. See Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petrostates (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1997).
5. See Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petrostates (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1997).
6. Ibid.
between themselves and the largely American and British expatriates who
still populated the upper levels of management in the 1950s and 1960s. He
suggests that these values carried forward into the industry after nation-
alization, influencing the formation of a state within the state.
Foreign oil companies also carefully tracked local politics beyond the
boundaries of their industry, sometimes intervening to fend off what they
perceived as extreme movements but more frequently reaching arrange-
ments with whatever regime held power. This came to mean a persistent
campaign to influence public opinion through the media and propaganda.
Some efforts were quite inventive, but it is not clear from Tinker Salas’s
study how much effect they actually had on the broader population. Nev-
ertheless, they persistently pushed the message that oil companies (and
their objectives) were good for Venezuela. As Tinker Salas documents,
many employees of the oil industry came to believe this as well.
These arguments start to fall flat when Tinker Salas stretches his find-
ings to claim that foreign oil companies also shaped the values of a broad
range of Venezuelans, particularly in the middle class. This claim should
be treated carefully because, even at its peak in 1948, the industry em-
ployed only 4.5 percent of the labor force. Other sources claim a somewhat
lower 3.5 percent of the economically active population was involved in
the industry, and both figures declined quite rapidly in the following
decade.7 The rapid urbanization of Venezuela made possible by oil rents
surely had a greater role in the formation of a middle class, yet any effects
foreign oil companies might have had on this process were quite indirect.
In addition, the contrasts in wealth and social status that oil camps pro-
duced were generally experienced only in the states of Zulia and Falcón
(and later Monagas) during this period. The contrast between popular
barrios and middle-class urbanizations in major cities (where the oil in-
dustry employed very few on either side of the divide) was much more
likely to affect politics on a broad national scale than exposure to the ways
of foreign oil companies.
In addition, although Tinker Salas makes a strong argument for the ef-
fect of foreign oil companies on their employees, the gamut of influences
bearing at the same time on the broader middle class is remarkable. In
addition to the values that newly urbanized Venezuelans brought from
their home districts to cities, large-scale immigration, including hundreds
of thousands of skilled workers, also contributed to the development of
the middle class. The new residents from abroad included Republican
refugees from the Spanish Civil War; other Europeans escaping war, re-
pression, and economic hardship during and after the Second World War;
immigrants from the Levant attracted by economic opportunities and the
7. See Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petrostates (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1997).
8. See Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petrostates (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1997).
was never very far away, as the 1989 urban revolt known as the Caracazo
reminded Venezuela and its observers.
Ellner documents President Chávez’s evolution in power, from his first
electoral victory to his proclamation of twenty-first century socialism.
Chávez promised to address the socioeconomic divide and, unlike politi-
cians of the previous four decades, he definitely picked a side. This return
to a more populist and partisan approach has worked to keep Chávez
in power, allowing him to win most elections and survive a coup, a gen-
eral strike, and a recall referendum. After a decade in power, it is only
fair to review the political and ideological underpinnings of the Chavista
movement, especially because it advertises itself in explicitly ideological
terms such as bolivarianismo and twenty-first century socialism. Ellner has a
fine ear for the dialogue of the broad array of groups, parties, movements,
and cliques that make up Chavismo. He notes the tensions between ef-
forts to improve democratic participation by independents and grassroots
supporters of Chavismo, and the compulsion to “follow the leader” and
defend vertical lines of authority by the Chavista leadership. Some schol-
ars suggest that it may oversimplify the internal debate within Chavismo
during the past decade to identify the grass roots with a softer line and the
movement’s elites with a political hard line. However, the general point
that there has been an effort to improve participation through bottom-up
social mobilization and inclusion, particularly among the traditionally
disenfranchised in Venezuela, is well taken. Although Ellner emphasizes
this less, there is also a clear authoritarian bent in key sectors of Chavismo,
and those sectors are willing to defend some very undemocratic practices
(even in the area of elections) in their effort to retain power.9
Despite his focus on socioeconomic factors, Ellner does less well in in-
corporating recent debates about the impact of oil rents on government
performance and the alleviation of poverty. Chávez has been fortunate
in that, since 2003, Venezuela has experienced one of its great oil booms.
This has allowed the state to paper over most problems with money. It
is still under debate whether the various social programs created by
President Chávez have worked, and it is very much in doubt whether they
are sustainable in the absence of oil-fueled state largesse.10 However, it
is clear that Venezuela’s success in alleviating poverty and reducing in-
equality has mostly occurred during oil booms, regardless of the orienta-
tion of the government in power.11 Conversely, that the drying up of oil
rents fuels political crises is well supported by evidence, but this does not
play a very significant role in Ellner’s analyses of such crises outside of
his discussion of Carlos Andrés Pérez’s second government, which began
in 1989.
9. See Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petrostates (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1997).
CONCLUSION
Jeffery R. Webber
University of Regina
In his magnum opus, Europe and the People without History (1982), Eric R.
Wolf drew on Marxian categories to explain how the acceleration of capi-
talist development in eighteenth-century England amplified pressures
against the ruling class and the state that did its bidding, as new laboring
classes came into being and struggled for their rights.1 In this context,
Wolf asserts: “The specter of disorder and revolution raised the question
of how social order could be restored and maintained, indeed, how social
1. Throughout this essay, the term social movement refers to “those sequences of conten-
tious politics that are based on underlying social networks and resonant collective action
frames, and which develop the capacity to maintain sustained challenges against powerful
opponents.” See Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
order was possible at all.”2 In another classic text of a rather different ideo-
logical persuasion, Samuel Huntington fetishized the problem of political
order in the modernizing third-world societies of the 1960s, stressing the
dangers of excessive political participation in so-called praetorian states.
“In a praetorian system,” Huntington suggests, “social forces confront
each other nakedly; no political institutions, no corps of professional po-
litical leaders are recognized or accepted as the legitimate intermediaries
to moderate group conflict. . . . The wealthy bribe; students riot; workers
strike; mobs demonstrate; and the military coup.”3
It is hardly surprising that in the context of effervescing social
movements—or “mass praetorianism,” in Huntingtonian language—the
central concerns of mainstream sociologists and political scientists writ-
ing about Bolivia during the past number of years has been the specter of
revolution and the concomitant need to contain the rebels from below and
reestablish order from above. A five-year period of left-indigenous revolt
began in 2000 with the Cochabamba Water War against privatization in
that city. This was followed by the 2003 and 2005 Gas Wars, whose pro-
tagonists called for, among other things, nationalization of the hydrocar-
bons industry. The insurgents successfully overthrew President Gonzalo
Sánchez de Lozada, and later Carlos Mesa, when their demands were not
met. These protests set the stage, of course, for the electoral victory of Evo
Morales, leader of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS; Movement toward
Socialism), in the December 2005 general elections.
For those radical scholars who saw neoliberal rule in Bolivia during the
1980s and 1990s as fundamentally premised on racialized class injustice,
these rebellions raised different concerns from those of the mainstream,
leading these scholars to ask how such discontent might be channeled into
a full-fledged transformation of Bolivia’s social and political structures to
meet the interests of the indigenous, proletarian, and peasant majority.4
The books under consideration here reflect how intellectual debate
on the Bolivian scene has polarized in step with political realities on the
ground. These texts can usefully be situated on an order-to-insurrection
continuum, beginning with what I would term the guardians of order, fol-
lowed by masista loyalists, and finally the critical left. These are blurry rather
than discrete categories, of course, with authors at times bridging the
divides.
2. Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1997), 8.
3. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1968), 196.
4. See Jeffery R. Webber, Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia (Leiden:
Brill Academic Publishers, 2010).
5. José Luis Roca, Fisonomía del regionalismo boliviano (La Paz: Editorial Los Magos del
Libro, 1980).
6. See, among other sources, Mark Weisbrot and Luis Sandoval, The Distribution of Bo-
livia’s Most Important Natural Resources and the Autonomy Conflicts (Washington, D.C.: Center
for Economic and Policy Research, 2008).
and the rule of law, among other dimensions of the state-society balance”
(109). He cites a UNDP survey published in 2007 that found that “Bolivians
feel that laws are not enforced, because most feel that ‘laws are unjust’ and
that ‘unjust laws may be broken.’” As well, “Bolivian public opinion has
identified the worst transgressors as ‘the rich’ and ‘politicians’” and “most
Bolivians continue to advocate ‘universal’ enforcement of laws while at the
same time reserving the right to transgress, protest, overturn law” (120).
For Gray Molina and other liberals, these are worrying trends and the
priority of the day should be to construct a modus vivendi, or institutional
apparatus, of state-society relations able to dampen the rising tide of radi-
cal discontent and to make cosmetic changes to the status quo without al-
tering its socioeconomic foundations. To this end, the best bet for liberals
might be to hazard some “institutional pluralism,” allowing “state holes”
or “places where bureaucratic or legal state presence is tenuous . . . where
authority, legitimacy, and sovereignty are continuously contested” (113)
by unions, indigenous communities, and social movements, so long as the
latter are ultimately contained and liberal capitalist rule is not threatened
at its core. By and large, Gray Molina concludes, state-society relations
under Morales reflect this objective in many ways and, indeed, present
continuities with the neoliberal model.
MASISTA SCHOLARS
7. The most important of these works are Pablo Stefanoni and Hervé Do Alto, Evo Morales:
De la coca al palacio: Una oportunidad para la izquierda indígena (La Paz: Malatesta, 2006); Shir-
ley Orozco Ramírez, “Historia del Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS): Trayectoria política e
ideológica,” Barataria 1, no. 2 (2004): 16–22; Pablo Stefanoni, “MAS-IPSP: La emergencia del
nacionalismo plebeya,” Observatorio Social de América Latina 4, no. 12 (2003): 57–68.
8. María Teresa Zegada, Yuri F. Tórrez, and Gloria Cámara, Movimientos sociales en tiem-
pos de poder: Articulaciones y campos de conflicto en el gobierno del MAS (La Paz: Plural Editores,
2008).
9. See Jeffery R. Webber, “From Naked Barbarism to Barbarism with Benefits: Neolib-
eral Capitalism, Natural Gas Policy and the Evo Morales Government in Bolivia,” in Post-
Neoliberalism in the Americas, ed. Laura MacDonald and Arne Ruckert (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009), 105–119.
10. Pablo Stefanoni and Hervé Do Alto, Evo Morales de la coca al Palacio: Una oportunidad
para la izquierda indígena (La Paz: Malatesta, 2006).
11. Admirable exceptions include Denise Y. Arnold and Alison Spedding, Mujeres en los
movimientos sociales en Bolivia 2000–2003 (La Paz: Centro de Información y Desarrollo de la
Mujer and Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara, 2005); Forrest Hylton, Lucila Choque,
and Lina Britto, La guerra del gas: Contada desde las mujeres (El Alto: Centro de Promoción de
la Mujer Gregoria Apaza, 2005).
that this can come about through mere electoral occupation of existing
state apparatuses, makes Gutiérrez a much more penetrating analyst of
the Morales government than the legions of masista loyalists who spend
the bulk of their time apologizing for the government’s limitations. At
the same time, her theoretical framework tends to dismiss all too eas-
ily the complex history of anti-Stalinist, Marxist debates on state power
and revolutionary parties. Her advocacy of the self-activity and self-
organization of the exploited and oppressed is to be emulated, and her
sophisticated, nonsectarian critique of masista reformism is exemplary.
However, Gutiérrez has less to offer in regard to revolutionary strat-
egies for power. Whatever qualms I have with its specific political for-
mulations, Los ritmos del Pachakuti is the most important philosophical-
political commentary on recent Bolivian developments from a revolution-
ary perspective.
Robert A. Pastor
American University
Tom Long
American University
More than two decades have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall
and the transfer of the Cold War file from a daily preoccupation of policy
makers to a more detached assessment by historians. Scholars of U.S.–
Latin American relations are beginning to take advantage both of the dis-
tance in time and of newly opened archives to reflect on the four decades
that, from the 1940s to the 1980s, divided the Americas, as they did much
of the world. Others are seeking to understand U.S. policy and inter-
American relations in the post–Cold War era, a period that not only lacks
a clear definition but also still has no name. Still others have turned their
gaze forward to offer policies in regard to the region for the new Obama
administration.
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
In reviewing the history of the Cold War in the Americas, Latin Amer-
ica’s Cold War, by Hal Brands, and In from the Cold, edited by Gilbert Jo-
seph and Daniela Spenser, consciously seek to include Latin American
perspectives and, in the case of the latter volume, to examine the Cold
War from a grassroots and a cultural angle. These are certainly welcome
additions, but one needs to ask why the Latin American perspective has
largely been omitted from literature on the subject. There are two reasons,
empirical and theoretical.
First, almost all Latin American archives were closed to scholars; there
were no freedom-of-information instruments that allowed access to gov-
ernment documents, and few scholars tried to interview Latin American
policy makers, as they commonly did in the United States. As a result,
scholars spent time looking under the lamppost of U.S. foreign policy to
locate problems in inter-American relations.
Even more important than the lack of data was the predominance of
a theoretical model in which the United States was the actor and Latin
America, the dependent, defenseless object. With this premise, Peter H.
Smith concluded that the study of inter-American relations required only
a “mediation on the character and conduct of the United States” and how
it exercised “its perennial predominance.”2 The title of his book, Talons of
the Eagle, evokes a rapacious and unforgiving United States preying on
the innocent victim of Latin America. Lars Schoultz similarly extracted
almost every morsel of duplicity, arrogance, and interventionism that he
could locate in U.S. diplomatic history to cook a broth that would give
heartburn to any U.S. president or idealistic citizen. In Schoultz’s view, the
United States was convinced not only of its superiority but also of Latin
America’s inferiority, and racism and the desire to dominate motivated
its actions.3 Crandall has dubbed this lens “anti-imperialist”; one of us
has described it as “radical.”4 Scholars who use this lens contend that U.S.
policy makers used the Cold War to maintain control of the region, sup-
press progressive movements, and defend an unjust order. United States
policy was the only subject worth studying. Latin America’s foreign poli-
cies were neither important nor influential.
In a prescient essay, Max Paul Friedman noted the prevalence of this
approach and suggested that it could not be sustained if historians were to
incorporate Latin American sources, archives, and perspectives. The use
of U.S. archives alone, he wrote, “may help explain why the only actor in . . .
inter-American history is the northern colossus.”5 Latin America’s Cold War
and In from the Cold follow Friedman’s call, drawing on Latin American
and Soviet archives, as well as Truth Commission reports. At their best,
these works recall the work of Friedrich Katz, who delved deeply into the
archives of nine countries to discover that Mexican revolutionaries invited
and manipulated the “imperialists” more effectively than these foreign-
ers manipulated them.6 A few authors in these collections, as well as oth-
ers whom Friedman cites, dive sufficiently deeply into Cold War sources
to test whether Katz’s conclusion applies to other cases as well, and thus
whether the radical view is confirmed or impugned by the evidence.
2. Peter H. Smith, Talons of the Eagle: Dynamics of U.S.-Latin American Relations, 2nd ed.
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4.
3. Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy toward Latin America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
4. Robert A. Pastor, “Explaining U.S. Policy toward the Caribbean Basin: Fixed and
Emerging Images,” World Politics 28, no. 3 (1986): 483–515.
5. Max Paul Friedman, “Retiring the Puppets, Bringing Latin America Back In: Recent
Scholarship on United States–Latin American Relations,” Diplomatic History 27, no. 5 (2003):
626.
6. Friedrich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revo-
lution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
7. Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–
1954 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).
8. See Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 77–83; Kyle Longley, The Sparrow
and the Hawk: Costa Rica and the United States during the Rise of José Figueres (Tuscaloosa: Uni-
versity of Alabama Press, 1997).
9. Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1983).
10. Robert A. Pastor, Not Condemned to Repetition: The United States and Nicaragua (Boul-
der, CO: Westview Press, 2002), chap. 1.
Within a few years of the Soviet implosion, the wars in Central Amer-
ica came to an end, some with elections and others with negotiated agree-
ments. Those who claimed that the wars were wholly indigenous and
those who claimed that they were simply a creature of Soviet or U.S. impe-
rialism were both partially wrong. But there is little question that the Cold
War’s demise extracted the poison from these conflicts and made possible
a sharp change in the inter-American agenda from ideological struggles
to democratic contests. The United States remained engaged in the post–
Cold War period but at a much-reduced level of attention and resources.
Russell Crandall, a professor at Davidson College with government
experience, surveys U.S. policy toward the region since the end of the
Cold War. Using mostly newspaper accounts and occasionally interviews,
he provides a balanced account of events and issues. At the same time,
he interprets policy debates and literature through a simple but helpful
frame comprising two groups, whom he calls the establishment and anti-
imperialists. Crandall further divides the establishment between liberal/
Democrat and conservative/Republican forces, whose different approaches
can be equated more broadly with those of scholars and policy makers. Re-
publicans view threats more intensely, act alone more often, are more de-
voted to private enterprise and free trade, tend to militarize the “wars” on
drugs and terror, and are most strongly opposed to undocumented migra-
tion, whereas Democrats adopt a more relaxed and multilateral approach,
defend human rights and democracy more intensely, are more skeptical
about free trade, and are more committed to development assistance. De-
bate between the two philosophies has influenced the U.S. government’s
policies toward Latin America. There is much less debate among academ-
ics. As Friedman noted, the anti-imperialist or radical perspective has in-
formed most scholarship on U.S. policies toward Latin America.
Although the anti-imperialist label is useful, Crandall employs it with-
out exploring what scholars such as Greg Grandin mean when they refer
to a U.S. “empire” in Latin America.11 The concepts of empire and hege-
mony are too frequently used, and too inadequately defined, in inter-
national relations, and the anti-imperialist school uses them as though lit-
tle had changed since the nineteenth century. Although the United States
has been the most powerful state in the hemisphere in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, it has not been a colonial empire, and the successful
half century of defiance by Fidel Castro calls into question the meaning
of U.S. hegemony.
11. Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the
New Imperialism (New York: Henry Holt, 2006).
Crandall’s thesis is that much has changed after the Cold War because
security is less important. The United States is less constrained and Latin
Americans are more able to diversify their relationships. Democratization
has made governments more accountable to constituents, and globaliza-
tion has reduced dependence on the United States and connected the re-
gion’s economies to the world. Crandall recognizes that some events do
not fit comfortably into this framework. How strange, he suggests, that
Senator Christopher Dodd, a leading dove during the Cold War, became
an energetic hawk, promoting the sale of helicopters to Colombia during
the war on drugs. Constituency interests, in fact, easily explain this behav-
ior: helicopters are built in Dodd’s state, and the drug war is a domestic
concern. The hard question, which Crandall does not address, is whether
Dodd would have promoted the sale of Connecticut-built helicopters to
repressive military governments during the Cold War. Probably not.
Certain policies and interpretations have not changed as much as we
might think. Crandall notes, for example, that criticism of Evo Morales by
the U.S. ambassador during Bolivia’s presidential campaign in 2002 had
the counterproductive effect of lifting Morales’s recognition and support.
This is not a new phenomenon. The U.S. ambassador Spruille Braden made
a similar mistake toward Juan Perón in the 1946 election in Argentina.
FUTURE POLICY
12. Bayless Manning coined the term intermestic, in “The Congress, the Executive, and
Intermestic Affairs: Three Proposals,” Foreign Affairs 55 (1977): 306–324.
and they have demonstrated a capacity and desire for regional leadership
entirely apart from the United States.
Lowenthal and his coauthors offer pragmatic and progressive pol-
icy recommendations along the lines that Crandall would call liberal/
Democratic. They propose that the United States avoid militarizing its
Latin America policy, increase development aid, and strengthen multilat-
eral organizations including the OAS. On drug trafficking, they suggest
that the Obama administration accept U.S. responsibility for the demand
for drugs and firearms. In early visits to Mexico, the president and secre-
tary of state both spoke of “shared responsibility.” Laurence Whitehead
closes the volume by calling for the Project for the Americas, which would
promote “the consolidation of peaceful, law-abiding, rights-respecting,
and environmentally friendly democracies with respect for local diversity
and autonomy, and multilateral game rules” (221). That about covers the
landscape, without penetrating it.
Which Way Latin America? offers a comprehensive survey of the region’s
transformation and fragmentation after the Cold War. Shifter notes the
optimism of the first Summit of the Americas in 1994 and the discord of
the 2005 summit in Argentina, and attributes this difference to the retreat
from free trade by both the United States and Venezuela, albeit for dif-
ferent reasons, and the increasing authoritarianism of Andean countries.
Castañeda and Morales offer empirical backing to Castañeda’s distinction
between new leftist regimes like that of Lula da Silva in Brazil and the
less democratic model of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Cooper explains the
consequences of the Bush administration’s obsession with Chávez and its
disdain for multilateral organizations. Some of the book’s best chapters
describe the very different impacts of the rise of Asia on fragile Caribbean
economies and of the region’s new power, Brazil.
In their introduction, the editors write that globalization means an ex-
pansion of choice in Latin America, not an erosion of the state. Neverthe-
less, other chapters show that globalization means very different things
to different countries. To Mexico and other nations with a heavy reliance
on the U.S. market, globalization means displacement by China and its
cheaper manufactured goods, even while those countries remain very
much a part of the North American market. To the agriculture-, oil-, and
mineral-producing countries of South America, globalization has meant
higher prices for resource exports. In brief, globalization paradoxically
contributes to fragmentation and subregionalization in the hemisphere.
Which Way Latin America? raises important questions and offers some
new answers on apparently leftward trends, the uneven progress of de-
mocracy, and the struggle to find a place in the global economy. However,
the book does not respond fully or consistently to the challenge of its title
to survey the boundary between hemispheric politics and globalization.
16. Robert A. Pastor, Exiting the Whirlpool: U.S. Foreign Policy toward Latin America and the
Caribbean (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001). On the interactive thesis, also see Pastor,
“Explaining U.S. Policy.”
17. John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).
There is a certain irony in the congruence of views between radicals, who are embarrassed
by the pursuit of U.S. power, and realists, who expect it as a rule of international relations.
expansive U.S. efforts in the post–Cold War era; the whirlpool thesis pre-
dicts a decline in attention and involvement. The consensus of the policy-
oriented books examined here is that U.S. attention has lapsed. “It is
unlikely,” Lowenthal and his coeditors write, “that the new U.S. adminis-
tration will find much time to think about the countries of Latin America
and the Caribbean” (xi). The United States is at the edge of the whirlpool
again.
Works on the Cold War also offer an opportunity to test a second
hypothesis—this one on American exceptionalism. Anti-imperialist
scholars accuse the United States of failing to live up to its claims that it
is different and better than other great powers. They seek to strip away
the rhetoric and expose U.S. policy as motivated by a hunger for power,
base economic interests, or racial prejudice, leaving the United States no
different from other imperialist nations. Again, this perspective is con-
sistent with the realist view that all major powers behave alike. Nonethe-
less, the idea of American exceptionalism also, ironically, captures anti-
imperialists. Their harsh critique of U.S. policy is actually rooted not in
how other powers behave but in how the United States professes to be-
have, that is, idealistically.
The history of U.S. policy toward Latin America is replete with real-
ism and cynicism on the one hand and idealism on the other hand. Real-
ists and radicals would have predicted that, after Mexico’s surrender in
1848, the U.S. Army would have marched as far down through Central
and South America as it could, whereas it stopped and agreed to the Río
Grande as a border.18 They would have expected the United States to re-
spond positively to requests by El Salvador and the Dominican Republic
to be annexed, whereas those requests were rejected. They would have ex-
pected the United States to annex Cuba after the Spanish-American War,
but President McKinley adhered to the Teller amendment. They would
not have predicted the good neighbor policy of Franklin Roosevelt or the
human rights policy of Jimmy Carter. Compared with the behavior of past
great powers, U.S. exceptionalism has been imperfect but undeniable.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, democracy and free trade
seemed to have consolidated, and it looked as though the United States
had found an exit from the whirlpool. But as the first decade of this cen-
tury concludes, that prediction seems premature. Democracy is again en-
dangered, free trade has stalled and threatens to go into reverse, and the
exit from the whirlpool is not as clearly marked. As the crisis in Honduras
has made clear, instability still threatens. The hemisphere has not escaped
18. It is true that one reason that the United States rejected the idea of annexing all of
Mexico was racism and sectional differences. However, realists argue that state expansion
responds to the balance of power and not to internal causes.
the rules of the international system; its countries still compete with one
another, and some of its leaders still seek ways to remain in power.
These books offer a reinterpretation of the Cold War in Latin America.
However, when we turn to the past two decades, it is clear that we have yet
to synthesize the concepts necessary to understand today’s inter-American
system. The job of historians and political scientists is not over.
Cristiane Batista received her Ph.D. in political science from Rio de Ja-
neiro’s Graduate Institute of Research (IUPERJ) in 2006. She is visiting re-
searcher at the Public Health National School (FIOCRUZ-RJ). She is the
author of “Partidos políticos, ideologia e política social na América Latina:
1980–1990” (Dados, 2008).
Alok K. Bohara is professor of economics and the founding director of the
Nepal Study Center at the University of New Mexico. He has a master’s
degree in statistics and taught at Tribhuvan University, Nepal. He received
his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado (Boulder) in economics in 1986.
He is a senior research fellow at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico. His research
work has been extensively published in various national and international
journals on topics such as inflation uncertainty, nonmarket valuation of
public goods, ethnic and gender discrimination, the pollution-growth
link, and good governance.
Omaira Bolaños is the program coordinator for Latin America at Rights
and Resources Group. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology and her
master’s degree in Latin American studies, with a concentration in tropi-
cal conservation and development, from the University of Florida. She has
worked extensively in development and community-based conservation
and watershed management with indigenous and peasant communities
in Colombia and other Latin American countries. She had conducted re-
search in Bolivia on community forestry in indigenous territories and in
Brazil on indigenous identity claims and territorial rights.
David Carey Jr. is associate professor of history and women’s studies at the
University of Southern Maine. His publications include Our Elders Teach
Us: Maya-Kaqchikel Historical Perspectives. Xkib’ij kan qate’ qatata’ (University
of Alabama Press, 2001), Ojer taq tzijob’äl kichin ri Kaqchikela’ Winaqi’ (A His-
tory of the Kaqchikel People) (Q’anilsa Ediciones, 2004), and Engendering
Mayan History: Mayan Women as Agents and Conduits of the Past, 1875–1970
(Routledge, 2006). He currently is working on a manuscript about gender,
ethnicity, crime, and state power in Guatemala from 1898 to 1944.
Sara Castro-Klaren is professor of Latin American culture and lit-
erature at Johns Hopkins University. She has been director of the Latin
American Studies Program there on two occasions. She has published
extensively on the Latin American novel; postcolonial theory; and topics
on Andean colonial and contemporary historiography, with special ref-
erence to subaltern studies and imperial discourses. Her first book was
El mundo mágico de José María Arguedas (Lima, 1973, recently reissued in
France by Indigo Press, 2004). Her second book, a collection of essays on
Julio Cortázar, Guamán Poma, and Diamela Eltit appeared in Mexico in
1989 under the title Escritura y transgresión en la literatura Latino Americana.
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
9ffbK_i\\f]k_\Ki`cf^p1
The Empire’s Old Clothes K_\D\dfip9fof]G`efZ_\k¾j:_`c\
What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other
Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds
Who Can Stop the Drums?
ARIEL DORFMAN
Urban Social Movements in Chávez’s Venezuela
224 pages, paper, $21.95
SUJATHA FERNANDES
N`k_XE\nGi\]XZ\Ypk_\8lk_fi 336 pages, 34 illustrations, paper, $23.95
Transatlantic Fascism
Searching for Africa in Brazil Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred
Power and Tradition in Candomblé in Argentina and Italy, 1919-1945
STEFANIA C APONE FEDERICO FINCHEL STEIN
336 pages, 36 b&w photographs, paper, $23.95 344 pages, paper, $24.95
QUIXOTE’S SOLDIERS
A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966–1981
By David Montejano
David Montejano, one of the foremost scholars in
Chicana/o studies, offers a well-written, authoritative
history of the Chicano movement in San Antonio—a
movement that provided models for organizing that
broke barriers to political participation and power for
Latinos across the United States.
Jack and Doris Smothers Series in Texas History, Life, and Culture
$24.95 paperback, $60.00 hardcover
ARCHITECTURE AS REVOLUTION
Episodes in the History of Modern Mexico
By Luis E. Carranza
Foreword by Jorge Francisco Liernur
The period following the Mexican Revolution was
characterized by unprecedented artistic experimentation.
Richly illustrated, Architecture as Revolution is one of the
first books in English to present a social and cultural
history of early twentieth-century Mexican architecture.
Roger Fullington Series in Architecture
129 b& w photos, $60.00 hardcover
PERFORMING MEXICANIDAD
Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage
By Laura G. Gutiérrez
Performing Mexicanidad is an examination of the
intersection of public discourses on sexualities with
recent political, economic, and social shifts in the
national context of Mexico and the Mexican diaspora
in the United States.
Chicana Matters Series
Deena J. González and Antonia Castañeda, Editors
21 color and b&w photos, $24.95 paperback, $50.00 hardcover
1-800-927-8733
TO LEARN MORE , VISIT US AT
WWW. INDEPENDENT . ORG
100 Swan Way · Oakland, CA 94621-1428