Latin American Perspectives

July 2021

Issue Editors: Janet M. Conway and Nathalie Lebon

This thematic double issue focuses on popular feminisms, that is, the diverse forms of gendered agency appearing among Latin America’s poor, working-class and racialized communities, and their relation to the politics of feminism and to the broader left in the region. The collection addresses the question of subaltern subjectivities and the building of collective agency in relation to the broader politics of social transformation. It also examines popular feminism as concept with a particular genealogy in relation to histories of the left and to socialist feminism, and inquires into its contemporary relevance, as well as its persistent elision of race and coloniality. The twelve contributions include contextualized studies of grassroots feminist praxis drawn from Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru, as well as of national and transnational-scale organizing, and address gendered agency in relation to issues ranging from access to water, opposition to extractivism, the politicization of care work, survival in the face of systemic violence, and Indigenous autonomy. The collection includes a substantive theoretical introduction to popular, racialized and decolonial subjectivities in contention in consideration of contemporary popular feminisms.

Sept 2020

Issue Editors: Ronaldo Munck and Kyla Sankey

This second instalment of a social movements in Latin America dedicated issue develops some of the key themes from Issue 1. The progressive governments have faded and right wing regimes prevail but social movements continue. It takes up the complex interplay between the movements and the changing political domain. It examines the rural movements, the Workers’ Party of Brazil, feminism, the piqueteros of Argentina and the 2019 indigenous revolt in Ecuador.

March 2020

Issue Editors: Alfredo Saad-Filho, Juan Grigera, and Ana Paula Colombi

Part II of this issue discusses the nature, strengths, achievements, contradictions, and limitations of the administrations led by the PT in federal government, questioning whether they can be characterized as a variety of neoliberalism. Besides macroeconomic policies and political alliances, this volume directs its attention to specific aspects of the PT policies. This includes foreign policy, Brazil’s external economic constraint, and the government’s regional, distributive, social and labor market policies; this volume also traces the emerging forms of collective action and the new forms of resistance of the working class.

June 2020

Issue Editor: Roberta Villalón

In this episode of the Latin American Perspectives podcast, Alexander Scott, Outreach Coordinator for Latin American Perspectives, Inc., discusses the May 2015, September 2016, and November 2016 issues, “The Resurgence of Collective Memory, Truth, and Justice Mobilizations” Part I, Part II: Artistic and Cultural Resistance, and Part III: Culture, Politics, and Social Mobilizations with Guest Editor Roberta Villalón. The book Memory, Truth and Justice in Contemporary Latin America in the LAP in the Classroom series draws on articles from these issues.

May 2020

Issue Editor: Jean Hostetler-Díaz

Calles de Resistencia: Pathways to Empowerment in Puerto Rico reveals a level of consciousness, experience, and resoluteness that is the result of  an historic and protracted struggle to attain a liberated nation.  This outstanding collection of well-developed economic analyses, policy proposals, political, perspectives and analyses of last summer’s remarkable mobilization, plus photo documentation, provides valuable insights about the historical and contemporary conditions that define the Puerto Rican experience.

March 2020

Issue Editors: Alfredo Saad-Filho, Juan Grigera, and Ana Paula Colombi

Part II of this issue discusses the nature, strengths, achievements, contradictions, and limitations of the administrations led by the PT in federal government, questioning whether they can be characterized as a variety of neoliberalism. Besides macroeconomic policies and political alliances, this volume directs its attention to specific aspects of the PT policies. This includes foreign policy, Brazil’s external economic constraint, and the government’s regional, distributive, social and labor market policies; this volume also traces the emerging forms of collective action and the new forms of resistance of the working class.

Nov. 2019

Issue editor: Steve Ellner

The articles in this issue explore specific negative aspects of the policies and strategies followed by the champions of globalization and neoliberalism as well as proposals and actions associated with their critics. Topics include the proposal to assign matters of internal security to the armed forces in Argentina; the labor policy of four pro-and anti-neoliberal governments; how racial and class discriminatory policies of U.S. immigration officials have mold the attitudes of their Mexican counterparts; the potential of constituent assemblies for far-reaching change; the relationship between mental health and income inequality; and the anti-neoliberalism of the hemispheric labor movement.

Title: Environmental Violence in Mexico

Issue #: 204  | Volume #: 42 | Number #: 5

Interviewer: Tomas Ocampo

Short Description: This issue analyzes the outcomes of the neoliberal restructuring of Mexico in socio-environmental terms. In doing so, the featured articles rely on the critical lenses of political ecology and political economy to show how individual capitals and policy makers use the political, economic and constabulary forces to create asymmetries that will allow for capital accumulation while creating social injustice and environmental degradation. The issue also features the application of natural selection to the issue of sustainability; highlights the consequences of transforming nature into property; criticizes the legitimacy of human rights policies; questions the violence of representing nature; and deals with environmental violence not only as structural but as a direct and brutal kind of violence used for legitimizing neoliberal restructuring while imposing one particular definition of nature and natural resources.

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Title: The Return of the State, New Social Actors, and Post-Neoliberalism in Ecuador

Issue #: 206  | Volume #: 43 | Number #: 1

Interviewer: Tomas Ocampo

Short Description: This issue brings together critical contributions to help appreciate some dimensions of the profound impact of the deep socio-economic and political transformations that the Citizen Revolution led by Rafael Correa has been pushing for since its inception in 2007. The main purpose of the issue is to arrive at a global picture of the evolution and the vicissitudes of the processes of political change in contemporary Ecuador, assess its limits and contradictions from the standpoint of various analytical approaches. It covers such diverse topics as the struggle for power, the reform of state institutions towards a more centralized model, economic and trade policy, change in Ecuador’s approach to international relations, the question of constitutional change, tensions between the government and social movements, socio-environmental conflicts, the new migration agenda, and the question of the post-neoliberalism.

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Deconstructing the Post-Neoliberal State: Intimate Perspectives on Contemporary Brazil

Issue #: 207 | Volume #: 43 | Number #: 2

Interviewer: Tomas Ocampo

Short Description: This issue brings together critical contributions to help appreciate some dimensions of the profound impact of the deep socio-economic and political transformations that the Citizen Revolution led by Rafael Correa has been pushing for since its inception in 2007. The main purpose of the issue is to arrive at a global picture of the evolution and the vicissitudes of the processes of political change in contemporary Ecuador, assess its limits and contradictions from the standpoint of various analytical approaches. It covers such diverse topics as the struggle for power, the reform of state institutions towards a more centralized model, economic and trade policy, change in Ecuador’s approach to international relations, the question of constitutional change, tensions between the government and social movements, socio-environmental conflicts, the new migration agenda, and the question of the post-neoliberalism.

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES