LASA Forum Fall 2013
LASA Forum Fall 2013
in this issue
Elementary, My Dear Watson: Neurons That Fire Together Stay Wired Together
by JAMIL MAHUAD
Debates
More Power to the Executive: The State of Latin American Democracies in the Early Twenty-First Century
by ROBErTO GArgArELLA and GrATZIA VILLArrOEL
President Merilee Grindle Harvard University [email protected] Vice President Debra Castillo Cornell University
Table of Contents
1 From the President | by MErILEE GrINDLE
R EFLECT IONS FROM T H E R EA L WOR LD
Past President Evelyne Huber University of North Carolina Treasurer Timothy J. Power University of Oxford
EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
For term ending May 2014: Graciela Montaldo, Columbia University Maria Clemencia Ramirez, Instituto Colombiano de Antropologa e Historia Catalina Romero, Ponticia Universidad Catlica del Per For term ending May 2015: Claudio A. Fuentes, Universidad Diego Portales Katherine Hite, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie Mary Louise Pratt, New York University Ex Ofcio Florencia Garramuo, Universidad de San Andrs Ral Madrid, University of Texas/Austin Philip Oxhorn, McGill University Milagros Pereyra-Rojas, University of Pittsburgh
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Reflections from the Real World: The State of Latin American Democracies in the Early Twenty-First Century | by ROBErTO GArgArELLA and GrATZIA VILLArrOEL Elementary, My Dear Watson: Neurons That Fire Together Stay Wired Together by JAMIL MAHUAD
DEBAT ES
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More Power to the Executive: The State of Latin American Democracies in the Early Twenty-First Century | by ROBErTO GArgArELLA and GrATZIA VILLArrOEL Democratic Breakdowns via a Thousand Blows in Latin America by OMAr SANCHEZ-SIBONY
10 Venezuela: Democracia participativa, socialismo del siglo XXI y polarizacin|por MArA PILAr GArCA-GUADILLA y ANA MALLEN 14 La dcada kirchnerista: Populismo, clases medias y revolucin pasiva por MArIsTELLA SvAMpA 17 Decaimiento de la calidad de la democracia en Bolivia | por RAL PEArANDA U. 19 Vuelta de tuerca revolucionaria | por MNICA ALMEIDA
ON LASA 2014
LASA STAFF
Special Projects Coordinator Mara Soledad Cabezas, University of Pittsburgh Assistant Director for Institutional Advancement Sandra Klinzing, University of Pittsburgh Communications Specialist Sara Lickey, University of Pittsburgh Executive Director Milagros Pereyra-Rojas, University of Pittsburgh Membership Coordinator Israel R. Perlov, University of Pittsburgh Operations Manager Congress Coordinator Pilar Rodriguez Blanco, University of Pittsburgh
The LASA Forum is published four times a year. It is the ofcial vehicle for conveying news about the Latin American Studies Association to its members. Articles appearing in the On the Profession and Debates sections of the Forum are commissioned by the Editorial Committee and deal with selected themes. The Committee welcomes responses to any material published in the Forum. Opinions expressed herein are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reect the view of the Latin American Studies Association or its ofcers.
23 Interim Report from the Program Chairs: Chicago, 2014 by FLOrENCIA GArrAMUO and RAL MADrID 24 Reservation Form for the LASA2014 Book Exhibit 25 Film Festival Form
LASAS 50T H A N N I V ERSA RY
26 Kalman Silvert and LASAs Fiftieth Anniversary | by MArTIN WEINsTEIN 27 Silvert Reminiscences Project: A 50-Year Dialogue with Kal Silvert by JOHN T. FIsHEL 29 Silvert Reminiscences Project: Kalman Silvert as a Colleague at New York University | by CHrIsTOpHEr MITCHELL
LASA SECT IONS
31 Section Reports
N EWS FROM LASA
ISSN 0890-7218
My colleague June Carolyn Erlick recently asked me, Dont you think its interesting that we who know something about Latin America might have good insights into events that are currently occurring in Egypt and other countries in the Middle East? She went on to speculate about how Latin Americas experiences with military engagement in politics and its citizens long commitment to the construction of democratic governments have contributed to much more general analyses of the causes and consequences of deep political divisions, violence and repression, the dynamics of widespread civic mobilization, and collective efforts to broker and consolidate transitions to more effective and equitable societies. Her comments were arresting, I thought, for suggesting that the most frequently voiced rationale for area studiesthat such a focus leads to deep knowledge of countries, regions, cultures, and societies needs to acknowledge that depth in knowledge goes hand in hand with breadth in understanding. From this expanded perspective, and whether the discipline is literature, language, history, politics, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, economics, or the environment, scholars in Latin American studies work with concepts and frameworks that can be helpful in understanding fundamental human interactions, and these in turn can provide insight into events happening elsewhere. Of course, Egypts experience must be understood on its own terms, and clearly it and other countries of the Middle East have unique histories, cultures, challenges, and opportunities. Nevertheless, the deep knowledge we have of Latin Americas past and present may hold examples and lessons for those struggling to create peaceful and democratic societies elsewhere. Indeed, our studies and experiences regularly require us
to sort through what is unique to time and place and what is more transcendent. Depth and breadth are also present in the multidisciplinarity that characterizes area studies centers and institutes. While most of us come to such organizational settings with training in a specific field, we cant help learning more broadly about cultures, environments, and historical legacies when we meet, discuss, and debate. How are these reflections relevant to LASA? At our Congress in Washington in 2013, over 40 directors of Latin American centers and institutes met to consider how the Association might encourage discussions among them and advance common objectives of research, teaching, and outreach. The discussion was lively and quickly turned to the need to ensure that Latin American studies centers and institutes had an appropriate and relevant explanation for the benefits they bring to educational institutions. In a postCold War and increasingly global context, what do such centers have to offer the worlds of scholarship and practice? The meeting closed with a commitment to organize a workshop to focus on this question at the 2014 Congress in Chicago. As a director of a center for Latin American studies, I am looking forward to the workshop discussion and the opportunity to learn from the experiences of others. I suspect that all of us are confronted by the dilemma of reconciling scarce resources, high expectations from colleagues and students, and skeptical attitudes from university administrations. How different centers have tried to deal with such constraints and demands is certain to be illuminating. Together, we might generate a significant statement about the value and contributions of our organizations, reflecting both depth and breadth. In addition, I hope that this will be another
opportunity to consider how the conference theme of Democracy and Memory is one that encourages us to investigate and discuss both deeply and broadly. In planning for this workshop, and the many panels and other events for Chicago, the new annual schedule of LASA Congresses has, of course, been a challenge to the Secretariat, Program Co-chairs Florencia Garramuo and Ral Madrid, and to those who have taken time and effort to propose papers and panels. This year, 622 sessions have been proposed, an increase of 21 over last year; 1,174 individuals have submitted paper proposals independent of panels, 151 more than last year. Both of these data points indicate strong interest in LASA Congresses and are a challenge to planners who are responsible for reviewing and scheduling a large number of excellent panels across many different disciplines. Indeed, we are still adjusting to the quicker pace needed for planning and responding to deadlines. In particular, deadlines for joining LASA in order to submit proposals and request travel funding have been an on-going concern of members and Secretariat alike. This year, the Secretariat extended deadlines to ensure broad participation and it will continue to make efforts to keep us on track for the annual event. Members and would-be members also need to anticipate the deadlines that appear under Important Dates on the LASA website. With another years experience to reflect upon, we should be on schedule for subsequent meetings.
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I am excited about the program that is being prepared for the Chicago meeting and am deeply grateful to the track and section chairs who are working to ensure that we have a stimulating and inclusive Congress and that we can maintain our goal of being both deep and broad. Florencia and Ral are working overtime to ensure an excellent program, the track and section chairs are on schedule to meet deadlines, numerous committees are engaged in the hard work of reading materials and discussing awards, the Film Festival is taking shape, and the Secretariat is making sure that the Congress flows smoothly and efficiently for all. I think we can all look forward to a great meeting in Chicago in May. I look forward to seeing you there.
In an effort to include different voices and perspectives from key players in Latin American politics, we have invited former Ecuadorian president Jamil Mahuad (19982000) to provide his analysis of the state of Latin American democracies in this second decade of the twenty-first century. He contends that democracies must pass a test of legitimacy to understand their true nature. In essence, they must be examined based on their legitimacy of origin, legitimacy of behavior, and legitimacy of results. President Mahuad is not very optimistic about the results of this legitimacy test and leaves the reader with a warning based on neuroscience theories of perception: beware of those who destroy Democracy by using democracy.
Elementary, My Dear Watson: Neurons That Fire Together Stay Wired Together
by JAMIL MAHUAD
Democracy and Politics If politics is the method to decide who gets what and who pays the price, there are two prices to consider: a prize that some people get and a price which some others pay. The separation between payers and beneficiaries, winners and losers is clearly connected to politics. Societies adopt a system and an accepted set of rules and practices to play this distributive game. Democracy, the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time, according to Winston Churchill, has proven to be the most popular way to exercise politics nowadays. Democratic rules decide the whos (who will participate and how; who will make the final call on contentious issues) and the whats (what are the stakes, the options, the rewards). Democracy appears to many as a solid, clear, precise, and self-evident concept. To others, democracy looks like a porous, fuzzy, too general, ambiguous idea that requires adjectives and qualifications to be properly grasped. What are the essential elements of democracy? What gives democracy its specificity? In Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg Address, the president described a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. His dictum contains the three essential tests of democratic legitimacy: Legitimacy 1: Legitimacy of origin. The government should be of the people. The will of We, the people expressed through an open and fair electoral process decides who has the right to govern.
Legitimacy 2: Legitimacy of procedures. A democratic government should be presided over by authorities representative of the population who enforce the rule of law. Legitimacy 3: Legitimacy of results. By leading economic growth and applying redistributive policies, governments work for the people. Governments should serve first and foremost the interests of the majority of the population while respecting the rights of the minorities. Many governments in developing countries have consistently failed at least one legitimacy test. Freely elected governments in Latin America in the lost decade of the 1980s were not able to promote economic growth and social progress. They failed the third legitimacy test. In the 1970s Cold War atmosphere, authoritarian regimes deposed many democratic governments arguing that to stop communism and eliminate chaos (Legitimacy 3) compensated for the lack of legitimacy of origin and method. They failed legitimacy tests 1 and 2. Some elected governments have blamed the inadequacy of institutions for their incapacity to lead development. They orchestrated autogolpes sacrificing the legitimacy of behavior at the altar of the frequently illusory legitimacy of results. The present is an excellent time for Legitimacy 3 in Latin America. Since 2003 the regions exports have increased in volume and price due especially to the strong growth of the Chinese economy. However, Legitimacy 1 and 2 suffer in the few places where government controls the independent media.
This article reflects on the building up of Legitimacy 1. Neuroscience, by explaining human decision making, contributes to clarify how voters decide which authorities and rules would come of the people. Neuroscience and Decision Making Two famous political expressions attempt to prescribe political practices: Nazi propagandist Goebbels said, Repeat a lie one thousand times and it becomes the truth; Machiavelli wrote, To govern is to make believe. What does neuroscience have to say about these statements? Neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, considered the greatest living Canadian in the 1960s, demonstrated that our brain collects and retrieves memories by bundling together events and their associated feelings, storing them in a physically accessible part of our brain, and constructing a neural pathway to reach them. If a certain stimulus triggers the playback key, we not only remember but involuntarily relive the stored experience with its original intensity. We can discover the impulse that evokes the positive or negative stored memory. In 1964, while working for President Lyndon B. Johnsons presidential campaign, Tony Schwartz applied the same basic understanding of the human brains activity to generate his insightful Resonance Theory of Communication and tested it in practice with the Daisy ad, poised to become the most famous TV ad in political history. Campaigns are not the right moment to educate the audience, to give them new information to process, Schwartz thought. How a voter feels about a candidate determines how she votes. Any communication activates unconscious brain networks; effective communication triggers
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the right one to elicit the expected emotional response. Voting is not a rational decision-making process; it is rather a highly emotional one. When accused of manipulating people, Schwartz argued that the messenger could not do anything without the receivers cooperation. In the worst case, he said, he would be accused of partipulating because he offers the stimulus and the other provides the reaction. Communication is a collaborative effort. Electoral campaigns will never be the same after Schwartzs theory. Marshall McLuhan called him the guru of electronic media. Professor Gary Orren has been teaching the very popular course Persuasion: the Science and Art of Effective Influence for decades at the Harvard Kennedy School. The golden rule of persuasion is to know your audience, he says. Whom are you speaking to? They would be persuaded if they perceive that your message is salient (relevant to their lives), simple (easy to understand and remember), and sound (appealing to their rationality). George Lakoff shocked our political minds by defending the idea that we think inside frames coming from the metaphors we live by. The mind is in the brain, he believes. As we cant rationally control our neural system, most of our reasoning is unconscious, hence emotional. Daniel Kahneman, the first psychologist to win the Nobel Prize in economics (2002), in his best seller Thinking, Fast and Slow explains that humans have two systems of thinking. System 1 is automatic, fast, hyperactive, nonrational, and cannot be deactivated at will; System 2 is slow, lazy, fact-based, and needs to be voluntarily engaged.
We spend most of our time in our emotional self, in System 1 (basically impressions and desires). System 2 follows system 1 (we believe our impressions and act on our desires) contextualizing them with explicit beliefs and deliberate choices. Reflecting on the well-known Invisible Gorilla Experiment, Kahneman highlights how intensely focusing on an imposed task (counting ball passes and ignoring one of the teams) can make people effectively blind. We can be blind to the obviousbe blind to our blindness. No one who watches the video without knowing the task would miss the gorilla in the scene. Airwaves Are to Elections What Airpower Is to War Political consultants know that the act of voting is the corollary of a three-step process. The electoral campaigns purpose is not to change the voters intention (final result) but to influence every instance of the voters decision making by working on the stimulus/associations network. Campaign communication strategies develop three objectives in sequence: Step 1: Get name recognition. A person needs to exist, to get into the political menu, to be in the top of the mind recollection of the voter to become a viable candidate. Getting a recognizable name takes a lot of time and/or money. Competition is fierce. Newspapers, radio, and TV screens are already cluttered with familiar names and faces. Incumbents have the upper hand in Step 1. Step 2: Win the favorability contest. Candidates evoke strong emotional reactions. That is why it is not possible to wrap them up nicely to sell them
like emotionally inert industrial products. The favorable/unfavorable ratio opens the space for increasing vote intention or limits it with a low ceiling cap. Step 3: Harden the favorability ratio. Investigate the reasons for the emotional reaction expressed in Step 2. Unveil the trigger and the emotional/belief bundle associated with it. Discover what aspects of the candidates appearance, positions, or actions make the click. After understanding why voters like or dislike a candidate it is possible to measure the depth of their emotional reaction and figure out how to deactivate that circuit or create and activate an alternative one. Hard voterseither for or againstare very difficult if not impossible to change due to their strong allegiance. They enter into their familiar stimulus/recollection groove and remain there. Soft voters, in contrast, can be influenced by the spreading of informationfalse or trueabout any candidate. Negative campaigns create or reinforce negative associations. They work at Step 3 in order to change Step 2, the favorable/ unfavorable ratio. The decision to vote for or against a candidate is the logical consequence of this process: if I know somebody (Step 1), have a favorable opinion about him/her (Step 2) based on solid reasons (Step 3), I will vote for him/her. This process is public. In a mass society, it needs to be implemented through the mass media, the only mechanism to get to the eyes and ears of all voters. Voters have the right to access different perspectives on reality and evaluate them before making their choices. The legitimacy of origin is based on debate. Political debate clarifies
concepts, exposes risks, analyzes options and compares alternatives. It is democracy at work. We lose this practice when economic or political powers control access to media. The control or monopoly of mass media plus the relentless repetition of a unique selling proposition is a poisonous combination for democracy. It substitutes propaganda in place of information. Later propaganda becomes ideology, the only valid truth that deserves to be disseminated. Unfortunately, a few Latin American governments enthusiastically embrace the Orwellian Ministry of Truth concept. They suppress or capture independent media through blatant abuse of power, manipulation of judges, or economic asphyxia. The government-controlled media exclusively broadcast government propaganda; they saturate air and print spaces with ideology disguised as information. They cancel debates, eliminate discussion, disqualify, threaten, and ostracize opponents. Where is Legitimacy 1 in that atmosphere? If we dont understand the emotional mechanisms of human decision making, we will not realize how a totalitarian-inspired but research-based, strategically planned, artistically designed, massively broadcasted campaign inundates the voters System 1 and practically eliminates consideration of other options. Such a campaign destroys the essence of democracy while playing within apparently democratic rules. If we are not aware of the modern mechanisms of persuasion we can naively support these totalitarian attitudes by, for example, certifying elections as clean and fair based on formal administrative procedures or election-day conduct like
organized lines in front of the voting booths. The democratic spirit is resilient, however. Lawyers and computer programmers frequently remind us that we undo actions in the same way that we do them. To restore a democratic lifestyle we need to eliminate absolute truths and reopen the capacity to doubt, reframe, and disseminate antagonistic perspectives. We need to generate a critical mass, a choir of discordant voices, and guarantee them access to mass media. Redundancy here is not a vice but a virtue. In summary, words, facial expressions, and body language activate neural circuits. The most-used brain circuits (neurons that fire together) become the default thinking (neurons stay wired together). We can easily mix illusion and reality through consistent repetition controlled by mass media that nails as a truth a bundle of carefully intertwined threads of emotional stimuli. Beware of those that apply Goebbelss Repeat a lie one thousand times aiming to achieve Machiavellis To govern is to make believe and cynically claim democratic titles. They are using democracy to destroy Democracy.
References Kahneman, Daniel 2011 Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Lakoff, George 2004 Dont Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate: The Essential Guide for Progressives. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. 2008 The Political Mind: Why You Cant Understand 21st-Century Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. New York: Viking. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson 2003 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schwartz, Tony 1974 The Responsive Chord. New York: Doubleday. 1983 Media, the Second God. New York: Doubleday.
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debates
More Power to the Executive: The State of Latin American Democracies in the Early Twenty-First Century
by ROBErTO GArgArELLA, Associate Editor | CONICET | [email protected] and GrATZIA VILLArrOEL, Associate Editor | St. Norbert College | [email protected]
In this issue, our contributors converge on the notion that twenty-first-century Latin American democracies are deeply flawed and perhaps not at all what people would expect three decades after the democratic transition in the region. They argue that Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are beginning to look more authoritarian and less like the liberal participatory democracy everyone expected to see in 2013. At the same time, Argentine democracy continues to show the deep contradictions that have afflicted it since the advent of kirchnerismo. In all cases, this new wave of democracy has served to increase the power of the executive eroding the emergence of liberal democracies. Omar Sanchez-Sibony, from Texas State University, is perhaps the most adamant critic of the current state of affairs in the region. Arguing that the term democracy is itself problematic in describing the type of governments that have emerged in Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, he prefers to use the term competitive authoritarianism (a hybrid model of authoritarian regime types) to describe the new phenomenon. He further states that what we are really observing in the region is the advent of what Samuel Huntington called political decay; after all, democratic transitions do not always give way to stronger political institutionalization. Mara del Pilar Garca-Guadilla and Ana Mallen, from the Universidad Simn Bolvar in Venezuela, echo this sentiment by describing the ongoing polarization of the Venezuelan people, which has ultimately played into the hands of the executive. The Venezuelan Bolivarian project, or Socialism for the Twenty-First Century, inspired other similar regimes in the region, but according to the authors, these democratic initiatives were never really able to transcend their local character. The inability to formulate a
unifying vision for the country and the ongoing violence associated with this polarization have ultimately played into the hands of the Chvez/Maduro government, creating a powerful executive. In Argentina, according to Maristella Svampa of the Universidad de la Plata, an entire decade of kirchnerismo allows us to see important trends in this political initiative. Plagued with contradictions from the beginning, kirchnerismo is perhaps more deeply rooted in the historical experience of Peronism than the current regime would like to believe. The author states that kirchnerismo clearly diverges from the experiences of other democratic initiatives in the region that tried to bring about more inclusion and popular participation. Instead, it was troubled from the very beginning by conflicts between its historical roots and its political agenda, its ability to connect with powerful multinational corporations, and its loyalty to the progressive middle class. The author believes that those contradictions are more likely to be exposed in the years to come, as Argentinas experience increasingly evokes Gramscis passive revolution, specifically, the ability to bring about transformation and restoration while ultimately creating a hierarchical model of governance. Two highly respected Latin American journalistsRaul Pearanda, political analyst, journalist, and founder of the Bolivian newspaper Pgina Siete, and Mnica Almeida, the Quito editor of the Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo provide us with powerful and detailed grassroots analyses of the daily challenges and contradictions inherent in the democracies of Bolivia and Ecuador. According to these authors, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa have astutely used democratic institutions to destroy the rule
of law. Pearanda and Almeida maintain that government leaders have hijacked the national media and/or passed laws (Ley de Comunicacin in Ecuador) that not only give them more power over the national discourse but at the same time are used to punish opposition voices. In both countries, the obsessive attention to the media has had negative implications for the freedom of the press. In a telling example, Almeida claims that Ecuadorian journalists are not able to discuss Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, even while the Ecuadorian government has offered or granted them asylum. Recent protests by CONAIE and other organizations demonstrate how various sectors of the population, including indigenous people, increasingly resent the current state of affairs in Ecuador. In Bolivia the president and vice president are able to appear as many as ten times a week in various media outlets to advance their political agenda, Pearanda contends. Evo Morales and Rafael Correa have used revisions of their national constitutions to increase the power of the executive branch and ensure their ability to run for office again and again. The combination of legal manipulation and persecution of dissenting voices makes it impossible for any meaningful opposition to emerge. Indeed, government monopoly of most political institutions has allowed the Morales government a free hand in persecuting and imprisoning political opponents, forcing many to seek refuge in Brazil and elsewhere. In both countries, according to Pearanda and Almeida, initial gains in inclusion and greater political participation have given way to massive state control of political institutions. They appear to describe the emergence of what seem to be almost caudillo-style leaders with a modern twist, who use modern technology and the mechanisms of democracy to get their message across. These contributions also
debates
imply that committed journalists are increasingly risking their professions and their safety in an effort to make their governments accountable to the rule of law and to their constituents. Paradoxically, the contributors in this debate are actually in agreement. They claim that democracy in Latin America (especially in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Argentina) is being eroded and weakened by leaders who monopolize the structures of government and use the mechanisms of democracy to increase their power. In this way leaders are effectively able to provide the perception of participatory democracy while at the same time disenfranchising various sectors of the population in the name of preserving democracy. The authors here maintain that as voices are silenced, controlled, or co-opted, and as the rule of law is eroded, government rhetoric is increasingly in conflict with the experience of the majority of the people. The ability of these governments to revise constitutions to stay in power and to more boldly attack their opponents once they are reelected does not bode well for the future of democracy in Latin America, these authors assert.
Perus drift toward electoral authoritarianism under Alberto Fujimori entailed a notable aberration in Latin America insofar as it deviated from hemispheric democratizing trends. While such hybrid regimes flourished in Africa and Asia in the 1990s, virtually all regimes in Latin America were, at a minimum, electoral democracies. The 1990s provided substantial empirical evidence that democratic consolidationdefined here as the deepening of democracywould not be a linear process attained by the mere passage of time, as a good number of commentators implicitly assumed. The first decade of the 2000s has provided even stronger evidence underlining the formidable difficulties and obstacles on the road to consolidated democracy and lent credence to critics who contend that the concept of democratic consolidation is plagued with a teleological flavor. Events of recent years serve as a stark reminder, as the late Samuel Huntington noted, that political decay is just as common an outcome as political institutionalization. Nondemocratic hybrid regimes are no longer rare specimens in Latin America. The region has witnessed the emergence of competitive authoritarianism by way of sustained assaults on democracy. As of 2013, at least four countries in the region are incorrectly and regularly referred to as democracies (whether with adjectives or as diminished forms): Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia. In truth, all fit the category of electoral authoritarianism. While a good many presidents in Latin America engage in sporadic executive assaults that undermine some aspect of democratic governance, what distinguishes rulers of competitive authoritarian regimes is that they act systematically to tilt all of the main arenas of political competition elections, legislatures, judiciary, and the
mass mediain their favor, thereby ushering in an incumbency hyperadvantage. That these regimes are all too often mislabeled may indicate that a good many Latin Americanists have yet to heed the call to define democracy more precisely by including the slope of the playing field; second, ideological reasons may work against an impartial assessment of these left-wing regimes on the part of some scholars. Many defenders of these regimes argue that Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia are entering a new phase of participatory democracy and that their leaders have been democratically elected. However, a regime must first be deemed a democracy before it can be called a participatory democracy. (The claim that the Correa regime is participatory is particularly far-fetched given its concerted strategy to disorganize and undermine autonomous civil society organizations, including indigenous ones). The notion that these leaders have been democratically elected is also false as it applies to reelection contests and referendathat is, virtually all electoral events except the very first one that thrust them into power. Electoral contests in Chvezs Venezuela (now Maduros), Ortegas Nicaragua, Moraless Bolivia, or Correas Ecuador have not been free (due to frequent violations of freedom of the press, coercion of state employees to vote for the incumbent, and at times, the de facto or de jure banning of opponents from participating) nor fair (the playing field is not level in the electoral arena because the electoral management body is controlled by the incumbent and because state resources are massively deployed to favor the incumbent as well). In consequence, these regimes simply do not pass the bar of minimalist electoral democracy. The onset of competitive authoritarianism will undermine the prospect that the afflicted countries shall attain democratic
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consolidation in the foreseeable future as well as delay considerably the time frame in which they may achieve it. (One need only look at the deleterious legacies of the Fujimori decade for Perus post-2000 democracy.) The reason is straightforward: democratic institutions have been manipulated and revamped to fit the rulers political interests, perpetuating a cycle of institutional instability by way of undermining the acceptance of such rules and institutions (including tailor-made constitutions) on the part of current opponents and future politicians. The appearance of self-sustaining nondemocratic hybrid regimes and their possible spread to yet more countries raises the obvious question: what causal factors undergird the onset of electoral authoritarianism in Latin America? To be sure, an important factor lies in the elevation to the presidency of populist leaders, as argued by Levitsky and Loxton (2013), particularly if they are outsiders rather than mavericks (insiders who choose to distance themselves from the political class). Populists who become chief executives may be prompted to undermine existing democratic institution by their predispositions (due to a lack of socialization and practice in the ways of democracy), incentive structures (lack of a political stake in the existing rules of the game), and windows of opportunity (prevailing winds of public opinion, weakness of opponents). But populism constitutes a proximate cause, itself the manifestation of more deeply rooted structural causes. A deeper factor underpinning the erosion and eventual breakdown of democracy lies in the collapse of party systems. It is not coincidental that three of the four cases of electoral authoritarianism identified here have emerged in the wake of such collapses,
as did the nondemocratic regime of Alberto Fujimori. The vanishing of traditional parties in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador opened the door for populists to be elected to high office, for it spawned a newfound mass of floating voters disgruntled with the old parties available for political socialization. But crucially, party system collapses also removed key veto players (i.e., political parties) with the wherewithal to restrain or impede elected presidents ambitions to accrue power. In the absence of bona fide parties, institutions of horizontal accountability (legislatures and others) tend to lose much (or all) of their clout and independence. Moreover, the electoral vehicles and proto-parties that come to replace their deceased and more solid partisan cousins are more politically malleable, less organic, and more beset by collective action dilemmas. In consequence, they are much less effective at constraining incumbents. The onset of competitive authoritarianism in the wake of party system collapses (in four out of five cases) evinces the indispensability of parties for the very viability of democracy. Where democracy does survive the weakening of party systems, its quality inexorably erodes. It is not coincidental that lvaro Uribe amassed enormous power and undermined the relative solidity and impartiality of a number of democratic institutions in the wake of the breakdown of the traditional Colombian parties; nor is it coincidental that the Kirchnersaside from the political effects of the resource boomwere able to build a decade-long politically hegemonic rule while politicizing a number of institutions in the wake of the breakdown of the Radical party at the national level. Because party system deinstitutionalization has transpired in a number of countries (Sanchez 2008; Morgan 2011) across the region (affecting even unsuspected candidates such as Costa Rica), Latin America as a whole arguably has weaker
levels of representation, interest aggregation, and state-society mediation than beforethe very functions political parties fulfill, however inadequately. It is worrying that party building has proven elusive in most places, given an inauspicious historical time, populist politicians uninterested in the task, and social landscapes marked by poverty, rampant inequality, and enfeebled civil societies. This nonevent stands as a bad omen for the future health of democratic governance in the region. (To be sure, exceptions exist. Successful party-building cases include the MAS in Bolivia or the Polo Democrtico in Colombia.) A deeper cause for the erosion and breakdown of democracies lies in state weakness. Because this condition is so prevalent in Latin America, it hardly serves as a useful indicator of countries in imminent danger of democratic decay and breakdown. But it does constitute a near-necessary condition: democracies with sturdy state institutions are poor candidates for competitive authoritarianism. The scourge of the drug trade and its damaging effects on democratic institutions and civil rights aside, the gravest threat to Latin American democracy in recent times has come, rather counterintuitively, from democratically elected presidents. As the subfield moved away from analyzing transitions and toward assessing the quality of the young democracies, Latin Americanists largely obviated this creeping gravedigger of democratic governance. The late Guillermo ODonnell presciently pointed out the danger to democratic governance that can come from a thousand blows rather than one big blow (the classic coup dtat), a danger less visible to the eye but fatal in its consequences. This is precisely how democracy has been destroyed in some Latin American nations and eroded in
others in recent years: incumbents systematically chipping away at the rights of political minorities via legal and other means while concurrently augmenting their own power resources. Old-fashioned coups dtat have become rarer, for well-known reasons. Nonetheless, coups have not disappeared from Latin America, as seen in recent years in Honduras and Ecuador. And the region continues to be marred by the abuse of existing legal frameworks even in the realm of high-level politics, as witnessed in the dubious ouster of Fernando Lugo in Paraguay by conservative forces. (While not an illegal act, it was an abuse of constitutional authority on the part of Congress.) The domestic barriers that can avert democratic breakdowns via a thousand blows are essentially two: the strength and vitality of civil society, and the strength of political institutions. Barring theseand such traits are absent in many countries in the regionthe last frontier of democracy protection may be said to rest on regional organizations and the foreign policy stance of the United States and other Western states. The Organization of American States (OAS)the main organization with an explicit mandate to safeguard democracy in the regionhas proven embarrassingly inadequate to the task. As the number of nondemocratic regimes ensconced in the OAS has increased, these regimes have predictably banded together in order to shield each other from potential censure by democratic member states. Nondemocracies have also joined efforts to pull the teeth out of regional bodies whose task is to scrutinize deviations from civil and political rights, while dismissing reputable reports coming out of Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. The OAS can hardly be more than the sum of its parts: if it keeps in its midst nondemocratic regimes, its defense of
democratic governance will predictably falter. Concurrently, democracies with economic ties to nondemocracies have been reluctant to use their clout with a view to increasing the political cost of assaults on democratic governance on the part of Chvez/Maduro, Correa, Ortega, or Morales, following instead a supremely pragmatic (but hardly principled) approach. Sadly, democracy has had few powerful defenders among Latin American nations in recent years. The clear unwillingness of Brazil, Colombia, and other democracies to put pressure on the Venezuelan government to address the credible claims raised by the opposition surrounding the probity of the 2013 presidential election vote count constitutes only the latest example. The waning clout of the United States in hemispheric affairs coupled with the presence of a bloc of hybrid regimes in the Andes means that the international and regional constraints on authoritarian rule have been somewhat relaxed in Latin Americasurely as compared to the 1990s. It may be countered that democracy has become consolidated in countries with relatively long democratic histories such as Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Chile, while it has built deeper roots in Brazil. However, the regression toward nondemocratic rule in no less than four important countries, the undermining of checks and balances in others also beset by overpowering presidents (such as Argentina under the Kirchners, and Panama under Martinelli), coupled with the ravages of the growing drug trade on institutionally feeble Central American countries, paints a rather desolate canvas of the health of democracy in Latin America. A snapshot of the state of democracy in the region as of 2013 would arguably show it to be at its lowest point in the postThird Wave period.
References Levitsky, Steven, and James Loxton 2013 Populism and Competitive Authoritarianism in the Andes. Democratization 20 (1): 107136. Morgan, Jana 2011 Bankrupt Representation and Party System Collapse. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Sanchez, Omar 2008 Transformation and Decay: The De-institutionalisation of Party Systems in South America. Third World Quarterly 29 (2): 315337.
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Introduccin A comienzos de este siglo, la llegada al poder en Amrica Latina de gobiernos con agendas anti-neoliberales abri paso a nuevas constituciones, actores y lgicas de poder que se vienen expresando en los modelos de democracia mejor conocidos como el Socialismo del Siglo XXI. En pases como Venezuela, Ecuador y Bolivia la transicin poltica se legitim mediante procesos constituyentes que tuvieron como resultado la inclusin constitucional de la democracia participativa y la incorporacin de mecanismos de democracia directa los cuales se orientaron hacia la creacin de un nuevo orden que se distanciara del estado neoliberal y empoderara al Pueblo, supuesta encarnacin del Soberano. Definir el potencial democratizador que tiene el modelo de Socialismo del Siglo XXI y su coherencia a la hora de concretarse en polticas pblicas resulta una tarea ardua ya que entre los analistas existen opiniones encontradas. En el caso venezolano, algunas de las interrogantes sobre el modelo se han centrado en los siguientes temas: cul es su potencial para promover procesos de democratizacin e inclusin que son sus objetivos fundamentales?, en qu medida ste promueve el empoderamiento del Pueblo, particularmente de los pobres y otros grupos previamente marginalizados?, es capaz de prescindir de las viejas prcticas del clientelismo, populismo y personalismo?, puede este modelo combinar armnicamente los mecanismos de representacin y de participacin que seala la constitucin de 1999? En Venezuela, la democracia directa a nivel comunal representa un espacio importante para el aprendizaje y ejercicio de los valores asociados con la democracia y con los derechos constitucionales de ciudadana.
No obstante, ste tipo de participacin no ha logrado transcender del nivel comunal e incidir en la elaboracin de las polticas pblicas a nivel local, regional y/o nacional lo cual se considera como un imperativo necesario para institucionalizar la democracia participativa. Las causas que explican esta dificultad no han sido suficientemente estudiadas por lo que en este trabajo se exploran algunos de los obstculos que se interponen en la construccin de un proyecto de sociedad que est basado en la Constitucin Bolivariana de 1999 y que pueda ser compartido por el Sujeto social de la misma con el fin de responder a la pregunta: cul es la posibilidad que tiene el Socialismo del Siglo XXI de construir la Voluntad General del Soberano, alrededor del Proyecto Revolucionario Bolivariano? Se parte de la hiptesis ya expresada en trabajos anteriores (Garca-Guadilla, Mallen y Guilln 2004; Garca-Guadilla 2007; Mallen 2013), que la institucionalizacin de la democracia participativa mediante el uso de mecanismos directos de democracia en contextos altamente polarizados como lo es el venezolano, ha imposibilitado la construccin del Inters o Voluntad General que destaca la Constitucin alrededor del Socialismo del Siglo XXI y ha tendido a exacerbar los conflictos sociopolticos. Por esta razn, el modelo bolivariano o el Socialismo del Siglo XXI ha sido fuertemente rechazado por los adversarios polticos porque los intereses, valores y principios que promueve contrastan fuertemente con los de este grupo. Como consecuencia, la oposicin poltica cuyo peso porcentual ha representado entre el 36 y el 49 por ciento de la poblacin a lo largo del periodo 20002013, ha definido los conflictos surgidos alrededor de la interpretacin y de la praxis de los derechos sancionados en la
Constitucin de 1999, como un conflicto existencial (Schmitt 1996) donde las diferencias polticas se interpretan a travs de la lgica de un juego de suma cero en el cual lo que se pierde es el lebenswelt o mundo de la vida (Habermas 1981). En el caso venezolano, esto ha llevado a los sujetos sociales, en ocasiones, a recurrir a la violencia rechazando al rbitro que en teora debe mediarlos. La institucionalizacin de la democracia participativa y el Proyecto Bolivariano Venezuela ha sido pionera en la institucionalizacin de la democracia participativa a travs de la Constitucin Bolivariana de 1999 y desde sus inicios en el poder, el gobierno de Hugo Chvez (19992013) intent articular su Proyecto Revolucionario Bolivariano con los lineamientos constitucionales. Este proyecto que a partir del 2005 se plasmar en lo que el propio Hugo Chvez denomin como Socialismo del Siglo XXI tiene como trasfondo dcadas de organizacin y movilizacin social lideradas por las organizaciones sociales de la sociedad civil venezolanas que exigan la descentralizacin del Estado y proponan una mayor participacin de la sociedad civil en la conduccin del gobierno (Gmez Calcao y Lpez Maya 1990; GarcaGuadilla y Roa 1996; Garca-Guadilla 2005; Lpez Maya 2005). La Constitucin Bolivariana respondi a estas demandas al incorporar mecanismos de democracia participativa-protagnica tales como la figura del referendo, y otorgar poder a la ciudadana para iniciar procesos legislativos aunque se mantuvieron las estructuras de la democracia representativa. Por primera vez en la historia poltica venezolana, la constitucin nacional consagraba las identidades, derechos y valores de la sociedad civil y movimientos
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populares potencializando su incursin en lo poltico y en la conduccin del Estado hacindoles partcipes activos en la construccin de la Voluntad General; de esta forma, transform al Soberano en un actor con potencial para mediar los conflictos sociales vis a vis el Estado. La institucionalizacin de la democracia participativa no significa que sta haya orientado el diseo de las leyes orgnicas y regulares que supuestamente derivan de la Constitucin ni que el Soberano haya influido en la elaboracin de las polticas pblicas. Independientemente de las fortalezas de la constitucin, una de sus debilidades es el alto poder que otorg al Ejecutivo lo que estimul el presidencialismo (Blanco 2006; Mrquez 2004) y ha afectado el ejercicio constitucional de la democracia representativa y participativa. En los conflictos entre el gobierno y la oposicin poltica alrededor de los derechos constitucionales, la opinin del Ejecutivo ha tendido a prevalecer prescindiendo del debate legislativo o de los mecanismos de participacin estipulados por tal constitucin. Igualmente, la concentracin del poder en la figura del Ejecutivo ha hecho problemtica la implementacin de la democracia participativa debilitando a su vez la democracia representativa. Durante la mayor parte de su mandato, el presidente Chavez recibi del Congreso poderes especiales para gobernar por decreto aprobando las leyes ms relevantes y eliminando el debate propio de una sociedad pluralista (Lpez Maya y Lander 2011) Si bien la Constitucin de 1999 respondi a un proceso poltico largamente visionado por la sociedad civil venezolana independientemente de su afinidad ideolgica o clase social, sta se convirti en la piedra angular del proyecto
revolucionario-hegemnico denominado por el Presidente Hugo Chvez como la V Repblica o el Proyecto Revolucionario Bolivariano el cual representaba al Soberano como encarnado en el Pueblo pero constituido primordialmente por los pobres. El proyecto Bolivariano articul la diferencia entre clases sociales ideolgica y retricamente, privilegiando a los sectores tradicionalmente desfavorecidos que apoyaban al proyecto y excluyendo a las clases medias y altas quienes a partir de 2001, tendieron a identificarse con la oposicin poltica y rechazaron el proyecto del presidente Chvez, en ocasiones, de forma violenta. Alcance y lmites de la democracia directa comunitaria Los estudios ms recientes sobre la democracia en Venezuela muestran que la participacin de los sectores populares en general y especialmente de los adeptos al gobierno, ha sido alta y relativamente exitosa (Garca-Guadilla 2008, 2011, 2013; Goldfrank 2008; Ellner 2008; Hawkins 2010a; Buxton 2011; Smilde 2011). Una de las razones es la identificacin que hizo el gobierno de la democracia participativa con la democracia directa sobre todo a nivel comunal y con la democracia social de derechos (Ellner 2011) que se desprenden de la constitucin bolivariana. Otra de las razones fue el hecho que los sectores populares se identificaran con estas propuestas y se organizaran alrededor de la multiplicidad de organizaciones sociales de carcter comunal (Crculos Bolivarianos, Mesas Tcnicas de Participacin, Comits de Tierra Urbana, Consejos Comunales y Comunas entre otras) las cuales fueron promovidas por el presidente Chvez para apuntalar su Proyecto Revolucionario Bolivariano.
No obstante, algunas de las limitaciones que tienen estas organizaciones comunales para ejercer la democracia participativa, principalmente aquellas que reciben recursos directamente del gobierno para financiar sus actividades, son: su alta vulnerabilidad a la cooptacin sea por parte del gobierno o por los partidos polticos que lo apoyan como es el caso del PSUV, la reproduccin de las prcticas populistas y neo-clientelares del pasado sobre todo en pocas electorales lo que refuerza la exclusin de las organizaciones y/o de los miembros que no comparten el proyecto bolivariano, y la corrupcin y falta de transparencia en el manejo de los recursos financieros debido a los insuficientes mecanismos de monitoreo social (lvarez y Garca-Guadilla 2011). Otros problemas son la sustitucin, en vez de la complementariedad, de la representacin por la participacin de tipo asambleario lo cual podra incidir en la desinstitucionalizacin del municipio u otras figuras constitucionales de representacin. Estas limitaciones se tornan an ms relevante si se toma en cuenta que frecuentemente en las asambleas de ciudadanos, organismo deliberativo de la comunidad donde se adoptan decisiones que son vinculantes para toda la comunidad, stas pueden tomarse por una minora numrica (la ley seala como mnimo para constituirlas el 20 por ciento), vulnerando as los principios tanto de la democracia representativa como de la participativa. Del balance emprico sobre las organizaciones comunales promovidas por el gobierno para ejercer la democracia directa a nivel comunal se puede inferir que la participacin ha tenido un efecto positivo en los procesos de democratizacin aunque su alcance haya sido limitado; se ha utilizado para incluir y empoderar a la poblacin ms desfavorecida dndole
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visibilidad poltica, otorgndole recursos de poder y en ocasiones financieros, y promoviendo y valorizando sus identidades. Sin embargo, la participacin tambin ha servido para excluir a aquellas organizaciones e individuos no alineados ideolgicamente con el gobierno. Esta prctica de exclusin, la cual se vincula con la polarizacin poltico-ideolgica y con la persistencia de prcticas populistas (Roberts 2003; Arenas y Calcao 2006; Hawkins 2010b) y de cooptacin poltica de carcter clientelar, ha sido ms frecuente en pocas electorales y en momentos de crisis poltica en los cuales la oposicin poltica cuestion tanto la legitimidad del Proyecto Revolucionario Bolivariano como el liderazgo del Presidente Chvez. Otra limitacin que enfrenta la democracia directa comunal en Venezuela tiene que ver con su incapacidad para trascender de la participacin centrada en la resolucin de los problemas del hbitat comunal lo cual se ve acentuado en la medida que el gobierno no tiene claros los lmites de la democracia directa en los niveles comunitarios ni la forma en que sta debe articularse y trascender a los niveles superiores. La Voluntad General en la Venezuela polarizada: Dilemas y desafos Dentro del proyecto Bolivariano, la puesta en prctica de la participacin en los niveles locales, regionales y nacionales ha generado fuertes conflictos alrededor de la articulacin de los nuevos intereses colectivos. La presencia de agudas diferencias entre las clases sociales, el auge de la polarizacin y las inequidades sociales dividieron en lo simblico y en la praxis a la sociedad Venezolana en dos grupos de inters con dos visiones de democracia. Las diferencias entre estos dos grupos
tienen que ver primordialmente con el nfasis que se le otorgue a los derechos consagrados en la constitucin de 1999: mientras que los sectores opositores han priorizado los derechos civiles y polticos de la democracia representativa, el gobierno Bolivariano y sus simpatizantes privilegiaron los derechos sociales, econmicos y culturales que derivan de la democracia participativa ya que sta enfatiza la inclusin y la distribucin del poder, elementos que para el oficialismo son esenciales para lograr la erradicacin de la pobreza y la desigualdad social. Estas diferencias llevaron a la definicin de dos proyectos de sociedad antagnicos segn la afinidad poltica y los intereses de clase lo cual redujo la posibilidad de ejercer la democracia participativa y gener prcticas que atentan contra la propia democracia como sucedi durante el golpe de estado del 11 de abril 2001. El caso Venezolano demuestra que la institucionalizacin de la democracia participativa en los niveles que trascienden el espacio comunal est siendo socavada por la polarizacin derivada de un nuevo proyecto hegemnico de Estado que ha generado altos niveles de conflicto y que por ende ha obstaculizado la construccin de la Voluntad General. Bajo un efecto centrfugo, las organizaciones sociales venezolanas se han alineado a favor o en contra del proyecto Bolivariano dificultando la construccin de objetivos colectivos y transformando intereses de clases en intereses polticos. Adicionalmente, esta coyuntura facilit la justificacin de la concentracin del poder en manos del Ejecutivo, quien en casos de conflicto entre los grupos que apoyan y los que rechazan el Proyecto Bolivariano inserto en el Socialismo del Siglo XXI, termin frecuentemente arrogndose la definicin de la Voluntad del Soberano y
dictando leyes y polticas pblicas sumamente controvertidas en vez que tales decisiones se adoptaran mediante los mecanismos de representacin y participacin establecidos en la constitucin. Como consecuencia, se recrudecieron los conflictos antagnicos aumentando la violencia y reducindose la posibilidad de resolverlos va arbitraje, se debilit la democracia representativa venezolana y se desvirtu la promesa de la democracia participativa.
Referencias lvarez, Rosangel, y Mara Pilar Garca-Guadilla 2011 Contralora Social y clientelismo: La praxis de los Consejos Comunales en Venezuela. Politeia (Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas) 34, nm. 46: 175207. Arenas, Nelly, y Luis Gmez Calcao 2006 Populismo autoritario: Venezuela, 19992005. Caracas: CENDES UCV. Blanco, Carlos 2006 Revolucin o Neo Autoritarismo? Stockholm Review of Latin American Studies nm. 1: 6684. Buxton, Julia 2011 Foreword: Venezuelan Bolivarian Democracy. In Smilde y Hellinger, Venezuelas Bolivarian Democracy, ixxxii. Ellner, Steve 2008 Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict and the Chavez Phenomenon. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. 2011 Venezuelas Social-Based Democratic Model: Innovations and Limitations. Journal of Latin American Studies 43 (3): 421449.
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Garca-Guadilla, Mara Pilar 2005 The Democratization of Democracy and Social Organizations of the Opposition: Theoretical Certainties, Myths, and Praxis. Latin American Perspectives 32 (2): 109123. 2007 Social Movements in a Polarized Setting: Myths of Venezuelan Civil Society. En Venezuela: Hugo Chvez and the Decline of an Exceptional Democracy, editado por Steve Ellner y Miguel Tinker Salas, 140154. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield. 2008 La praxis de los Consejos Comunales en Venezuela: Poder popular o instancia clientelar? Revista Venezolana de Economa y Ciencias Sociales 14 (1): 125151. 2011 The Urban Land Committees: Cooptation, Autonomy and Protagonists. En Smilde y Hellinger, Venezuelas Bolivarian Democracy, 80102. 2013 Democracia, inclusin y metodologas participativas: La experiencia de los consejos comunales en Venezuela. En Toms R. Villasante, Manuel Canales, Klaudio Duarte, Fernanda Palacios S. y Antonino Opazo, Construyendo democracias y metodologas participativas desde el Sur, 217241. Santiago: LOM Ediciones. Garca-Guadilla, Mara Pilar, Ana Mallen y Maryluz Guilln 2004 The Multiple Faces of Venezuelan Civil Society: Politicization and Its Impact on Democratization. XXV International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Las Vegas, Nevada, October 79. Garca-Guadilla, Mara Pilar, y Ernesto Roa 1996 Gobernabilidad, cambio poltico y sociedad civil: El proceso constituyente en Venezuela. Revista Venezolana de Economa y Ciencias Sociales 35 (2): 5580. Goldfrank, Benjamin 2008 The Left at Participatory Democracy: Scaling Up or Scaling Back? Paper presented at the conference Latin Americans Left Turn: Causes and Implications, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, April 45.
Gmez Calcao, Luis, y Margarita Lpez Maya 1990 El tejido de Penlope: La reforma del estado en Venezuela, 19841988. Caracas: CENDES-UCV. Habermas, Jurgen 1981 Teora de la accin comunicativa II: Crtica de la razn funcionalista. Mxico, D.F.: Taurus. Hawkins, Kirk A. 2010a Who Mobilizes? Participatory Democracy in Chavezs Bolivarian Revolution. Latin American Politics and Society 52 (3): 3166. 2010b Venezuelas Chavismo and Populism in Comparative Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lpez Maya, Margarita 2005 Del viernes negro al referendo revocatorio. Caracas: Alfadil. Lpez Maya, Margarita, y Luis Lander 2011 Participatory Democracy in Venezuela. En Smilde y Hellinger, Venezuelas Bolivarian Democracy, 5879. Mallen, Ana 2013 Participatory Democracy and Social Polarization in the Times of Hugo Chvez. Ph.D. diss., New School for Social Research, New York, NY. Mrquez, Trino 2004 Presidencialismo, autoritarismo y culto a la personalidad. Revista Venezolana de Anlisis de Coyuntura 10 (2): 5777. Roberts, Kenneth 2003 Social Polarization and the Populist Resurgence in Venezuela. En Venezuelan Politics in the Chavez Era: Class, Polarization, and Conflict, editado por Steve Ellner y Daniel Hellinger, 5572. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Schmitt, Carl 1996 The Concept of the Political. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Smilde, David 2011 Introduction: Participation, Politics, and Culture; Emerging Fragments of Venezuelas Bolivarian Democracy. En Smilde y Hellinger, Venezuelas Bolivarian Democracy, 127. Smilde, David, y Daniel Hellinger 2011 Venezuelas Bolivarian Democracy: Participation, Politics, and Culture under Chvez. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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Este artculo plantea dos tesis: la primera es que el kirchnerismo se ha constituido en una suerte de populismo de las clases medias, en un contexto de polarizacin intraclase, esto es, de confrontacin entre sectores de clase media. La segunda tesis es que el transcurrir de la dcada kirchnerista nos permite realizar una interpretacin ms global del kirchnerismo en trminos de lo que Gramsci denominaba como revolucin pasiva. El kirchnerismo naci en una poca de cambios: en el plano local, entre 2001 y 2002 la Argentina viva el estallido del modelo de convertibilidad, a lo cual sigui una ola de intensas movilizaciones sociales; en el plano regional, al comps del cuestionamiento del Consenso de Washington, de la mano de los movimientos sociales, comenzaban a asomar los primeros gobiernos progresistas; por ltimo, en el plano global, el kirchnerismo no slo se sita en marco de un nuevo ciclo econmico mundial centrado en el boom de los precios de las materias primas, sino que ilustra de modo acabado el pasaje del Consenso de Washington al Consenso de los Commodities.1 Desde el comienzo, entonces, la tensin y combinacin entre continuidades y rupturas, los dobles discursos y las ambivalencias, constituyeron un hilo articulador del kirchnerismo. Por otro lado, el devenir populista del kirchnerismo fue gradual. Ms all de la experiencia desastrosa del gobierno de la Alianza (19992001), que se haba autodenominado progresista, el cambio de poca abri un horizonte inesperado de oportunidades polticas, en clave latinoamericana, que contribuyeron a ampliar y relegitimar el trmino.2 As, en sus inicios, el gobierno kirchnerista busc definirse e identificarse en el emergente progresismo latinoamericano. Los
primeros gestos de Nstor Kirchner parecan confirmar as una nueva era de cambios: entre ellos, los reemplazos en la Corte Suprema de Justicia, la asuncin de una poltica de derechos humanos respecto de lo sucedido en los aos 70, bajo el terrorismo de Estado, la retrica antineoliberal, la opcin por una poltica econmica heterodoxa y el incipiente latinoamericanismo. Sin embargo, la tentativa de innovar en la esfera de la poltica, a travs de la creacin de una nueva fuerza transversal progresista, por fuera del partido Justicialista, tuvo una vida breve. Ya en 2005 el kirchnerismo opt por apoyarse en la vieja estructura del Partido Justicialista, sellando por un lado, una alianza duradera con los sectores ms conservadores y reaccionarios, entre ellos los intendentes del Conurbano Bonaerense y los gobernadores de provincia; por el otro, fuertes acuerdos con un ascendente Hugo Moyano, jefe de los camioneros y lder de una CGT unificada, en quien conviven las apelaciones antineoliberales de la tradicin nacional-popular con un sindicalismo de corte empresarial. Por ltimo, luego de la devaluacin asimtrica, que benefici a sectores concentrados de la economa, le sigui un perodo de reactivacin de la industria, lo que fue forjando alianzas de largo alcance con grupos importantes de la burguesa local, muchos de los cules se vieron tambin beneficiados por una poltica generosa de subsidios. En este esquema de continuidades y rupturas, el kirchnerismo realiz un giro plenamente populista en 2008, con el conflicto entre el gobierno nacional y las diferentes organizaciones patronales agrarias (2008). Este fue sin dudas el parteaguas de la dcada kirchnerista, un conflicto de alto voltaje cuyo carcter recursivo termin por actualizar viejos
esquemas de carcter binario que atraviesan la historia argentina. Entendemos por populismo una determinada matriz poltico-ideolgica que se inserta en la memoria media (las experiencias de los aos 50 y 70), que despliega un lenguaje rupturista (la exacerbacin de los antagonismos) y tiende a sostenerse sobre tres ejes: la afirmacin de la nacin, el estado redistributivo y conciliador, y el vnculo entre lder carismtico y masas organizadas. Pese a que existen diferentes figuras posibles, desde nuestra perspectiva, tal como sostenan Emilio de Ipola y Juan Carlos Portantiero, la tendencia del populismo es a recomponer el principio de dominacin, fetichizando al Estado (popular ahora) e implantando, de acuerdo a los lmites que la sociedad ponga, una concepcin organicista de la hegemona.3 El conflicto por la ley de medios audiovisuales y, finalmente, la muerte inesperada de Nstor Kirchner terminaron de abrir por completo las compuertas al giro populista, montado sobre un discurso polarizador como gran relato, sintetizado en la oposicin entre un bloque supuestamente popular (el kirchnerismo) y sectores de poder concentrados (monopolios, corporaciones, antiperonistas). El giro populista encontr un fuerte apoyo en aquellos sectores medios autoidentificados con el progresismo, pero paradjicamente instal un escenario de fuerte confrontacin con otros sectores medios, que desde las ciudades apoyaban las movilizaciones de las organizaciones rurales, criticando tanto la suba de las retenciones a la soja como, de modo ms general, el autoritarismo gubernamental. El debate por la ley de medios audiovisuales (2008) y luego la muerte inesperada del expresidente Nstor Kirchner (2010), abrieron a una poca de mayores tensiones, exacerbando la retrica
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en clave nacional-popular: desde Carta Abierta, pasando por numerosos artistas y periodistas, hasta los jvenes dela agrupacin La Cmpora, fueron aportando a la construccin de un aparato propagandstico, una estructura mediticacultural, que tendra por objetivo llevar a cabo la llamada batalla cultural, en el marco de la polarizacin. Por otro lado, el conflicto agrario tuvo la virtud de poner en claro cul era el lugar central de la acumulacin del capital en la Argentina de la postconvertibilidad: lejos de ser la industria rediviva, como pregonaban industriales y sectores sindicales, buscando mirarse en el espejo del viejo modelo populista, sta se asentaba en la nueva economa del agronegocios, cuyo complejo perfil y sus diferentes actores iban asomando como protagonistas plenos de la poltica argentina. Por ltimo, con el corrimiento y ampliacin de las fronteras del conflicto, no slo hacia lo sindical y a las diversas formas de la precariedad, sino tambin hacia las dimensiones territoriales y ambientales de la desposesin, las denuncias acerca de la alianza entre gobierno y los grandes agentes econmicos, entre ellos las corporaciones transnacionales (desde Monsanto hasta la Barrick Gold) comenzaran a hacerse ms ostensibles. El avance de la megaminera, la expansin de la fronteras del agronegocios y la tendencia al acaparamiento de las tierras, ponan cada vez ms de manifiesto esta dimensin central del modelo de acumulacin. Continuidades y rupturas. Uno podra preguntase cmo se configuraban las tensiones en este espacio de geometra variable. En ese sentido, creemos que durante largo tiempo sucedi que, mientras la dinmica de desposesin se manifestaba en progresin aritmtica, el gobierno continuaba desplegando una serie de
polticas progresistas en sucesin geomtrica, mostrando con ello una gran productividad, capaz de revertir escenarios polticos que le eran desfavorables. Esto sucedi, por ejemplo, luego de perder las elecciones parlamentarias de 2009, cuando el kirchnerismo demostr una gran capacidad para superar la adversidad, gracias a una combinacin de crecimiento econmico con polticas pblicas de gran alcance, como la asignacin universal por hijo, la ley de matrimonio igualitario, la estatizacin de las AFJP y una poltica de subsidios orientada a ciertos sectores de la produccin y el consumo. Esto, a lo cual hay que sumar el impacto social que produjo la muerte de Nstor Kirchner, permitieron que la presidenta Cristina Fernndez comenzara su segundo mandato con un gran capital poltico y simblico, despus de arrasar con el 54 por ciento de los votos en diciembre de 2011, lo cual daba cuenta tambin de una reconciliacin con gran parte de los sectores medios que se haban movilizado en 2008 y haban emitido un voto castigo en 2009. Al interior de las clases medias, este aquietamiento de las divisiones intraclase fue, empero, muy breve. En nuestra opinin, tres elementos mayores contribuyeron a la erosin de la imagen del kirchnerismo triunfante, en su versin unificadora: el primero la tentacin hegemonista y el proceso vertiginoso de fetichizacin del Estado, asentado sobre el avasallante 54 por ciento de los votos y visible en la creencia gubernamental de que slo el peronismo puede articular los intereses populares; el segundo, el deterioro de la situacin econmica (inflacin, precarizacin, poltica impositiva regresiva, cepo cambiario, entre otros); el tercero, la profundizacin incontestable de la alianzas con las grandes corporaciones econmicas: desde el agronegocios, pasando por la megaminera, los
hidrocarburos y transportes. Preso de un discurso pico, sobreactuado hasta el hartazgo y con la mxima obsecuencia hacia la figura presidencial, el kirchnerismo no pudo ocultar ms sus contradicciones, frente a la cruda realidad de los ndices econmicos y la manifiesta alianza con las corporaciones, que aparecen abiertamente como los grandes jugadores/actores de la sociedad argentina actual. Nuevamente, como en 2008, entre septiembre de 2012 y agosto de 2013, las masivas movilizaciones protagonizadas por sectores de las clases medias, pusieron de manifiesto que uno de los frentes principales de conflicto del gobierno es la puja ideolgica intraclase: si desde el oficialismo unos se arrogan el monopolio del progresismo y la representacin de las clases subalternas, en nombre de un modelo de inclusin social, desde la oposicin, otros sectores medios movilizados denuncian la corrupcin y critican el creciente autoritarismo del rgimen, articulando un incipiente discurso en clave republicana. Este escenario se vio empeorado con la ruptura de la alianza que el oficialismo tena con Hugo Moyano, con lo cual el gobierno abandon la va del populismo clsico (la pata sindical como columna vertebral), para concentrarse sobre sus aliados provenientes de las clases medias. As, la base sindical del kirchnerismo quedara reducida a un sector de la CTA, vinculado a sectores medios (maestros y empleados estatales), a lo cual se sumara una CGT depurada de voces disidentes y tradicionalmente peronista. Por ltimo, fiel al legado personalista de la poltica latinoamericana, el fuerte encapsulamiento del poder ejecutivo fue configurando un modelo extremo de presidencialismo, poco afecto al debate democrtico. En este contexto, que muestra el copamiento del
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aparato del Estado por parte de los jvenes de La Cmpora y un estrechamiento de las alianzas sociales, el kirchnerismo termin por convertirse en un populismo de clases medias que pretende monopolizar el lenguaje del progresismo en nombre de las clases populares, va por la cual tambin busca descalificar a otros sectores de clases medias movilizados. Como consecuencia, la Argentina volvi a embarcarse en un proceso de polarizacin poltica, aunque diferente al de otros pases latinoamericanos. Uno, porque ms all del progresismo, el modelo kirchnerista es profundamente peronista, capaz de combinar audacia poltica y un legado organizacional tradicional, que revela una concepcin pragmtica del cambio social y de la construccin de hegemona, basada en el modelo clsico de la participacin social controlada, bajo la tutela estatal y la figura del lder. Dos, porque el kirchnerismo nunca tuvo el afn de impulsar dinmicas de democratizacin, como si sucedi con los gobiernos en Bolivia, Venezuela y Ecuador, que encararon procesos constituyentes de carcter participativo, lo cual conllev al menos bajo los primeros mandatos la ampliacin de las fronteras de derechos. Tercero, a diferencia de los gobiernos de Venezuela y Bolivia, que pueden ser considerados como populismos de clases populares pues, ms all de sus limitaciones, apuntaron a la redistribucin del poder social y al empoderamiento de los sectores subalternos, en Argentina, lo ms destacable es la vocacin estelar de las clases medias, su empoderamiento poltico, en un marco de consolidacin generalizada de los grandes actores econmicos. Esto no significa sin embargo que las clases populares estn ausentes: asistencializadas, precarizadas, sin relegar sus tradiciones sindicales, abriendo nuevos frentes de conflicto y de lucha, las clases subalternas son cada vez ms los convidados de piedra
de un modelo cuya clave de bveda son las clases medias autodenominadas progresistas. Por otro lado, a diferencia de las primeras fases, los conflictos propios del segundo mandato de Cristina Fernndez colocaron al desnudo las alianzas econmicas del gobierno que, lejos de ser un costado dbil o asignaturas pendientes, constituyen un ncleo duro del modelo kirchnerista, en el marco del Consenso de los Commodities: all donde se expresa la dinmica de desposesin acelerada ligada al extractivismo (agronegocios, megaminera, hidrocarburos y fracking, megaemprendimientos tursticos y residenciales), cuya contracara es la desposesin tambin acelerada de tierras, bienes, territorios y derechos. Para dar un ejemplo, slo en los ltimos 5 aos hubo doce asesinatos y muertes dudosas de indgenas y campesinos, varias de ellas catalogadas como accidentes por las autoridades. Esas emanaciones de la muerte difusa, como escribe Mirta Antonelli, sistemticamente denegadas desde el poder, nos interroga sobre el horizonte mismo de los derechos humanos.4 Uno de los casos ms emblemticos es el de los pueblos Quom, de la comunidad Primavera, cuyo dirigente, Flix Daz, ignorado por el poder poltico nacional, hostigado hasta el ensaamiento por el gobierno de la provincia de Formosa. Hemos ingresado a un nuevo ciclo de violacin de derechos humanos individuales y colectivos. Las formas de la violencia poltica han ido mutando: incentivados y promovidos por polticas pblicas nacionales, los modelos de (mal) desarrollo van segando el camino y los territorios de nuevos cuerpos sacrificables. Desde la lgica de esos modelos excluyentes, ya no son los desocupados la poblacin sobrante, como en los aos 90 para ellos el poder poltico prev planes
sociales masivos sino otros cuerpos y comunidades, indgenas y campesinos, vctimas del racismo endmico, que hoy devienen un obstculo, una piedra en el camino frente a la imperiosa expansin del capital. En suma, el kirchnerismo expresa un caso de Revolucin Pasiva,5 categora que sirve para leer la tensin entre transformacin y restauracin en pocas de transicin, que desemboca finalmente en la reconstitucin de las relaciones sociales en un orden de dominacin jerrquico. Cambio y, a la vez, conservacin; Progresismo Modelo realizado en clave nacional-popular y con aspiraciones latinoamericanistas y, a la vez, Modelo de expoliacin, asentado en las ventajas comparativas que ofrece el Consenso de los Commodities. A diez aos de kirchnerismo no ha sido fcil salir de la trampa de la restauracinrevolucin que ste propone, pues fueron las clases medias progresistas, con un discurso de ruptura, en su alianza no siempre reconocida con grandes grupos de poder, las encargadas de recomponer desde arriba el orden dominante, neutralizando y cooptando las demandas desde abajo. Sin embargo, todo parece indicar que ingresamos a una nueva fase en la cual la dialctica entre cambio y restauracin y su nivel de visibilidad se invirtieron notoriamente, pues si antes las polticas de cuo progresista avanzaban en forma geomtrica y las fronteras del despojo y la precariedad lo hacan en progresin aritmtica, hoy la relacin es inversa, poniendo al desnudo los lmites de esta estrategia restauradora, sus orientaciones centrales y sus consecuencias, frente al resto de la sociedad.
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1
Para el tema vase Maristella Svampa, Consenso de los Commodities y lenguajes de valoracin en Amrica Latina, Nueva Sociedad, no. 244, marzoabril de 2013, http://www.nuso.org/upload/articulos/3926_1 .pdf. En sus orgenes, el trmino progresista remita a la Revolucin Francesa, e inclua aquellas corrientes ideolgicas que abogaban por las libertades individuales y el cambio social (el progreso). En la actualidad, bajo la denominacin genrica de progresismo convergen corrientes ideolgicas diversas, desde la socialdemocracia al populismo, que proponen una visin reformista y/o posibilista del cambio social. Juan Carlos Portantiero y Emilio de Ipola, Lo nacional-popular y los nacionalismos realmente existentes, en Carlos Mara Vilas (comp.), La democratizacin fundamental: El populismo en Amrica Latina (Mxico: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994). Vase M. Svampa, La violencia poltica estatal y sus umbrales, Perfil.com, 7 de julio de 2013, http://www.perfil.com/elobservador/ La-violencia-politica-estatal-y-susumbrales-20130707-0052.html. Retomadas, entre otros, por Nstor Kohan, Massimo Modonesi y Adam Morton.
Est claro que la calidad de la democracia ha decado en los ltimos aos. Un sistema poltico vibrante, diverso y libre est dando paso a uno que tiende a la homogenizacin, a la autocensura y al temor. Existe un Estado de derecho en Bolivia bajo la presidencia de Evo Morales? La respuesta parece ser ms un no que un s. Las Naciones Unidas tienen esta definicin: (el Estado de derecho) se refiere a un principio de gobierno segn el cual todas las personas, instituciones y entidades, pblicas y privadas, incluido el propio Estado, estn sometidas a unas leyes que se promulgan pblicamente, se hacen cumplir por igual y se aplican con independencia, adems de ser compatibles con las normas y los principios internacionales de derechos humanos. Asimismo, exige que se adopten medidas para garantizar el respeto de los principios de primaca de la ley () separacin de poderes, participacin en la adopcin de decisiones, legalidad, no arbitrariedad, y transparencia procesal y legal.1 Con las actuales circunstancias que vive el pas, la sociedad boliviana no vive genuinamente bajo un Estado de derecho, con plena independencia de poderes y la capacidad de las instituciones de colocar bajo la ley a todas las personas, independientemente de cul sea su cargo, filiacin poltica o poder econmico o de otro tipo. A fines de 2013, los ms importantes lderes opositores enfrentan juicios, muchos de ellos motivados polticamente; varios centenares (los involucrados dicen que son ms de 700) de bolivianos viven en Brasil y otros pases bajo las figuras de refugiados o asilados polticos, un escenario completamente nuevo para la democracia
boliviana; los medios de comunicacin independientes son acosados por el Estado; fallos judiciales a favor de dirigentes opositores son bloqueados por el Ejecutivo; dirigentes indgenas contrarios al gobierno estn refugiados en sus remotas comunidades por temor a ser apresados; y lderes opositores estn detenidos, sin juicios, en crceles pblicas, por mucho mayor tiempo que el que permite la ley. Este abuso del Estado y el irrespeto a la Constitucin y las leyes por parte de autoridades de grupos corporativos, sin embargo, no es nuevo. Hay muchas demostraciones de ello en los ltimos 31 aos de democracia. Los ms importantes son quizs los ejemplos sucesivos y permanentes de abuso de la ley por parte de algunos sectores de la sociedad, la incapacidad de combatir la corrupcin, la colusin de quienes detentan el poder con el sistema judicial, etc. En los 24 aos de democracia anteriores a la llegada de Evo Morales al poder, un presidente de la Corte Suprema fue ilegalmente exonerado del cargo por el Legislativo, con evidentes muestras de injerencia externa, adems; algunos de los miembros de un grupo armado que secuestr al empresario Jorge Londsdale en 1990 fueron ejecutados tras haber sido detenidos vivos; diversos acusados de pertenecer a otras organizaciones subversivas fueron torturados y perseguidos con mtodos que prohiba la ley; las protestas sociales, especialmente a mediados de la dcada del 90 y a principios de la de 2000, fueron criminalizadas; las muertes por accin de las Fuerzas Armadas y Polica durante manifestaciones sociales llegaron a ser de entre 10 y 15 por ao, segn estimaciones, un nmero muy elevado.
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Hasta antes del ao 2006, cuando Morales lleg al poder, trayendo consigo una serie de reformas polticas, sociales y culturales de alta significacin, la democracia boliviana era vibrante, pero tena tambin deficiencias. La llegada al poder de Morales implic un cambio trascendental porque cortaba casi dos siglos de vida republicana en los que la participacin de los sectores indgenas en el poder haba sido reducida e inestable. Por lo menos, no se haba tenido un ejemplo en el que el propio Jefe de Estado hubiera sido (o se hubiera declarado l mismo) indgena. El poder simblico de ello ha sido enorme y, de facto, enriqueci la democracia boliviana. Junto con eso, se dio un positivo y alentado recambio de lites, cosa que ayud a la movilidad social y a la inclusin en la toma de decisiones de sectores que en el pasado por lo general haban sido mantenidos fuera de ella. Pero el rgimen de Morales trajo otros problemas, ocasionados por la concentracin de poder. El oficialismo controla el Ejecutivo, dos tercios del Legislativo, gran parte del rgano Judicial, la totalidad de las antes llamadas superintendencias sectoriales, la Contralora General del Estado, el Banco Central de Bolivia, la mayora de los sindicatos, casi el 80 por ciento de los municipios y siete de las nueve gobernaciones. Adems, a travs de la cooptacin y la compra directa, controla tambin a los ms importantes medios de comunicacin del pas, sean peridicos, radios o canales de TV. El disenso es cada vez menor y una oposicin debilitada no puede, en las circunstancias actuales, hacer escuchar su voz de una manera que pueda considerarse equitativa. Y la concentracin de poder lleva consigno, casi siempre, la prolongacin en ste. Pese
a que la Constitucin aprobada en 2009 prohbe expresamente un tercer mandato de Morales, el Tribunal Constitucional autoriz, en un polmico fallo de principios de 2013, que el presidente puede postular a la re-reeleccin. Adems de innumerables testimonios, uno de ellos del propio presidente, que seal en 2009 que haba cedido su tercera eleccin, la propia OEA, que fue observadora de las negociaciones que permitieron la aprobacin del texto constitucional, expres con claridad en un comunicado pblico que el espritu del artculo referido a la reeleccin prohiba un tercer mandato. Esta concentracin de poder no tiene visos de reducirse: en el segundo semestre de 2013 Morales lidera diversas encuestas independientes de opinin y se cree que ser reelegido con cierta facilidad. Tampoco est descartado que vuelva a controlar dos tercios de las dos cmaras, lo cual puede alentar un nuevo intento de reeleccin, esta vez en 2020. Los partidos opositores, arrinconados por el aparto judicial, poltico y meditico gubernamental, estn en inferioridad de condiciones para enfrentar una eleccin. El partido de gobierno controla ingentes recursos estatales y el presidente y vicepresidente aparecen, segn un somero estudio realizado por mi persona, un promedio de diez veces por semana en transmisiones en vivo de cadena estatal de radio y televisin en eventos de campaa poltica, como inauguracin de obras. Diez veces por semana! Si se compara Bolivia con la situacin de hace una dcada (segundo semestre de 2003) se ve con claridad que los disensos son hoy ms difciles de expresar, que la agresividad verbal de las autoridades inhibe parte de la crtica, que diversos dirigentes opositores estn atemorizados, que los medios tienden a la uniformizacin y que
los jueces son an menos independientes que antes. Otro factor importante es el accionar de las ONG (organizaciones no gubernamentales) y fundaciones, casi todas ellas de financiamiento internacional. En el pasado, stas apoyaron diversas posiciones y acciones de la sociedad boliviana, ayudando a su democratizacin. El rgimen de Morales, mediante acciones de facto, ha logrado controlar el trabajo de muchas ellas, echar del pas a otras y paralizar a unas ms. Es un factor menos en el juego democrtico. Paradjicamente, algunas de las ONG perseguidas hoy fueron las que ayudaron a fortalecer el movimiento sindical campesino que lideraba el entonces dirigente cocalero Evo Morales. No todo es negativo, evidentemente, y tampoco se puede afirmar que Bolivia vive en dictadura. No. El Tribunal Electoral mantiene parte de su independencia, las leyes hacen difcil el fraude, la libertad de expresin, aunque atemorizada y autocensurada, se expresa mediante algunos medios independientes, y los dirigentes polticos, aunque acosados, realizan sus campaas con miras a los comicios de 2014. Las redes sociales, por su parte, expresan el sentir de miles de bolivianos que tienen acceso a Internet. En el plano netamente electoral, los bolivianos registran uno de los ms elevados porcentajes de registro en las Amricas con respecto a la poblacin con edad de votar, que se estima en 87,8 por ciento. Ello se deduce porque en 2009, al finalizar el empadronamiento biomtrico, se haban registrado 5,13 millones de bolivianos en territorio nacional (sin contar los inscritos en el exterior) y para ese ao, el Instituto Nacional de Estadstica tena una estimacin de 5,85 millones de
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personas en edad de votar (mayores a 18 aos). En el proceso electoral de ese ao votaron 4,8 millones de personas, es decir 94,4 por ciento de los registrados y 82,9 por ciento de la poblacin en edad de votar. Un porcentaje muy alto, superior al promedio regional. Con todo, con defectos y virtudes, la democracia permite que una mayoritaria parte de la sociedad viva sin temor a retaliaciones polticas, ejerza su voto, tenga diversas fuentes de informacin y cumpla sus derechos de libre asociacin y expresin. Pero lo que s est claro que la calidad de la democracia ha decado en los ltimos aos. Un sistema poltico vibrante, diverso y libre est dando paso a uno que tiende a la homogenizacin, a la autocensura y al temor.
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Luego de seis aos de Revolucin Ciudadana y con el nuevo mandato del presidente Rafael Correa, que comenz el 24 de mayo pasado, Ecuador experimenta una acelerada vuelta de tuerca legal, con miras a perfeccionar un proceso que cada vez ms depende de la voluntad nica de su lder y del grado de lealtad que se le demuestre. Imbatible en las urnas gracias a una gran inversin en el rea social y de infraestructura, as como en propaganda (con fondos que provienen de los ingresos petroleros y de una reforma tributaria de carcter progresivo), Correa obtuvo el 57,17 por ciento de la votacin en febrero del 2013, en tanto que controla 77 por ciento de la Asamblea Nacional, que tiene un total de 137 miembros. Es as que el gobierno, sin mucho esfuerzo, logr a pocas semanas de iniciado el perodo, la aprobacin de dos leyes clave. La primera fue la Ley Minera que permitir la extraccin a gran escala sin consulta previa a las comunidades afectadas (Asamblea Nacional 2013). Es decir mayores ingresos al Estado por la explotacin de las concesiones mineras, lo que se enmarca dentro del modelo extractivista del gobierno (al igual que la perforacin de los bloques 31 y 43 dentro del Parque Nacional Yasun). Actualmente la nica mina de este tipo est en el sur del pas a cargo de Ecuacorriente, empresa canadiense ahora en manos chinas. Y la segunda, la Ley de Comunicacin, que convierte a la comunicacin en un servicio pblico regulado por el Estado a travs de un Consejo de Regulacin (con mayora del Ejecutivo) y de una Superintendencia (cuyo titular ser designado de una terna enviada por el Ejecutivo) (Organizacin de los Estados Americanos 2013; Human Rights Watch 2013a; Committee to Protect
Journalists 2013; Asamblea Nacional 2013). Y en ese orden, los periodistas, a quienes ahora se nos exige un ttulo universitario en Comunicacin Social para poder trabajar en un medio, adquirimos la categora de administrados para acatar y promover la obediencia a la Constitucin, a las leyes y a las decisiones legtimas de las autoridades pblicas. Adicionalmente, con esta ley, Ecuador cre la figura legal del linchamiento meditico para castigar a los medios que decidan publicar conjuntamente o durante varios das informacin que menoscabe el honor o prestigio de una persona. Todo ello insistiendo siempre en que no se permitir nunca la censura previa. Esta ley revela tambin la gran contradiccin entre el discurso y la propaganda hacia el exterior del pas con lo que sucede casa adentro, como si los valores democrticos fueran una vara que cambia de medida dependiendo de dnde se aplique. Bajo los parmetros de la nueva ley, en Ecuador no se podran publicar las revelaciones de Wikileaks y peor an las revelaciones de Edward Snowden, pues el secretismo est reservado slo para el Estado. Ello pese a que Julian Assange ya cumpli un ao asilado en la embajada ecuatoriana en Londres y Ecuador, inicialmente, le ofreci asilo al ex contratista de la NSA (Agencia Nacional de Seguridad), extendindole el salvoconducto con el que ste lleg a Mosc desde Hong Kong (El Comercio 2013; Pallares 2013; Zibell 2013; Guardian 2013). El ajuste de tuerca legal tambin vino del Ejecutivo con la firma del Decreto Ejecutivo N 16 que regula a las organizaciones de la sociedad civil y que con sus 67 artculos y transitorias ms bien es una nueva ley para las ONG (Human Rights Watch 2013b). Ms all de un control estatal de inscripcin y verificacin
La ONU y el estado de derecho (informe del secretario general al consejo de seguridad), agosto de 2004, Nueva York. http://www.un .org/es/ruleoflaw/.
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del cumplimiento de las leyes, el Ejecutivo se reserva el derecho de poder disolver una organizacin si se aleja del objetivo para el que fue creada o si afecta la paz pblica, y les prohbe cualquier tipo de actividad poltica partidista. Incluso les impone que no pueden rechazar a aquellos que pudieran tener un inters legtimo en ser sus miembros. Smbolo de la sociedad civil es la Confederacin de Nacionalidades Indgenas del Ecuador (Conaie); acaso ser disuelta en vista de que el movimiento poltico Pachakutik naci bajo su regazo y esos lazos se mantienen? Un decreto que ya de por s es paradoja en un pas que se precia de tener un Quinto Poder del Estado, santificado en la nueva Constitucin aprobada en el 2008, alrededor del Consejo de Participacin Ciudadana y Control Social; no fueron acaso las organizaciones de la sociedad civil las que contribuyeron a la creacin de este Consejo? Actividad que ahora podra conllevar a su disolucin por ser de carcter poltica. Y an falta otro gran ajuste: el Cdigo de Procedimiento Penal. Un texto de unos mil artculos, en el que predomina una lgica punitiva. En el ltimo borrador que analiza la Asamblea ya no se incluye el delito de desacato, lo cual es un gran avance, persiste, en cambio, el de la calumnia. Sin embargo, como ya es costumbre en los ltimos aos, todo depender del veto presidencial, pues el Ejecutivo podra incluir hasta artculos que nunca se aprobaron. Por el momento las vueltas de tuerca parecen haber logrado su efecto. Mucho se debe al enorme carisma de Correa, que mantiene un show personal de tres horas todos los sbados; al millonario aparataje
de propaganda interna y externa (lobistas estadounidenses tambin forman parte de la estrategia), al control de por lo menos tres canales nacionales de televisin de un total de siete, y a la eficiencia de sus ministros en administrar el segundo Boom Petrolero que vive el pas (el primero fue administrado por la dictadura militar de los aos setenta). No es un misterio que en los ltimos aos Ecuador ha entrado en una fase acelerada de modernizacin caracterizada por el mejoramiento de indicadores sociales (y tambin del consumismo). Otro tanto se debe a sanciones ejemplificadoras contra algunos opositores al gobierno, por parte de la justicia, que contina su renovacin luego de que un triunvirato judicial cercano al gobierno iniciara su reforma a mediados del 2011. En el informe de la veedura internacional sobre este proceso, Baltazar Garzn y su equipo dejaron constancia, entre otras cosas, que a algunos postulantes de la Corte Nacional (Corte Suprema) se les cambiaron puntajes para favorecerlos (Hoy.com.ec 2012). Precisamente una de las primeras sentencias de esta Corte fue condenar en febrero del 2012 a tres aos de prisin a Emilio Palacio y a los propietarios de diario El Universo, as como a pagarle 40 millones de dlares al presidente Correa por haber ofendido su honor al haber publicado un artculo de opinin firmado por Palacio (http:// rafaelcorreacontraeluniverso.eluniverso. com/). Das despus el presidente anunci Perdn sin olvido por este caso y por el que segua contra los periodistas Christian Zurita y Juan Carlos Caldern por su libro El Gran Hermano, en el que denunciaban la adjudicacin de millones de dlares en contratos pblicos a favor de empresas
relacionadas con Fabricio Correa, hermano del primer mandatario (Erazo 2012). Otros dos casos, an en primera instancia, van directo contra actores polticos, ambos juzgados por terrorismo y sabotaje: Pepe Acacho, lder shuar elegido asamblesta en febrero pasado por Pachakutik, est condenado a doce aos de prisin y Mery Zamora, dirigente del gremio de los profesores y del partido Movimiento Popular Democrtico (MPD, comunistas) a ocho aos (Hoy.com.ec 2013). En esta lgica represiva los jvenes tampoco se escapan. Un grupo de chicos universitarios conocidos como Los Diez de Luluncoto, por el barrio donde vivan en el Sur de Quito, cumplieron una pena de un ao de prisin por tentativa de sabotaje y terrorismo (Amador 2013). A ellos se les encontraron panfletos contra el gobierno cuando se preparaban para manifestar en una de las marchas contra la Ley de Aguas, convocada por la Conaie, el MPD y otras organizaciones sociales. Apenas han pasado tres meses del nuevo mandato de Correa, que est en el poder desde enero del 2007, y ya se habla de la posibilidad de reformar por segunda vez la Constitucin del 2008 (la primera reforma fue la metida de mano a la justicia con la consulta popular del 2011) para permitirle al refundador de la Patria la reeleccin indefinida. La sociedad ha visto impvida todas estas vueltas de tuerca que van borrando de a poco el tinte democrtico de un gobierno supuestamente de izquierda. Un primer anuncio de poltica pblica que hace que todos estos ajustes cobren sentido, debido a la furibunda reaccin ante cualquier accin de oposicin, es el anuncio presidencial del 15 de agosto pasado de abandonar la iniciativa de no explotar el petrleo del Parque Nacional Yasun, en vista de que no
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se lograron recoger los fondos necesarios para dejar ese crudo bajo tierra. (Vase http://www.elcomercio.com/tag/yasuni-itt .html, http://www.eluniverso.com/tema/ yasuni-itt-0.) Es indudable que el modelo econmico de Correa, sustentado en la inversin pblica como motor as como en el aumento del tamao del Estado, necesita ms fondos. El dinero fresco del Yasun ingresar solo a partir de los prximos aos, a un ritmo de unos de 1.600 millones de dlares anuales, pero esa perspectiva ya permite aumentar la capacidad de crdito. Coincidencia o no, el 12 de agosto se acredit un nuevo prstamo garantizado con petrleo por 1.200 millones de dlares provenientes de China, pas que tambin invertir en la construccin de una nueva refinera en el Pacfico. A pesar de que en la consulta popular del 2011 se vot incluso para permitir o no las corridas de toros y las peleas de gallos en las que se mataran a estos animales, esta vez el Ejecutivo no quiere arriesgar la respuesta a si los ecuatorianos queremos o no preservar esa extensa zona declarada reserva de bisfera del planeta y en la que seguramente viven tribus amaznicas que no han entrado en contacto con la llamada civilizacin. Tanto no quiere arriesgar una consulta que cuando se le plante esa posibilidad, enseguida asegur que tambin incluira una pregunta sobre si se pueden o no imprimir peridicos, en vista de que se talaban muchos rboles para el papel que utiliza la prensa. Los colectivos sociales ya presentaron un pedido ante la Corte Constitucional para que se realice una consulta popular sobre la explotacin petrolera, pero no existe un plazo definido para que la Corte d una respuesta y es conocido en casos como estos imperar la lentitud. A su vez, en la
Asamblea el trmite para crear el marco legal que permita la explotacin del Yasun avanza viento en popa. Con los medios con autocensura a media llave pues an no se firma el reglamento de la Ley de Comunicacin, definitivamente an hay algo que no se controla en Ecuador: las redes sociales. Y es ah donde se est moviendo la reaccin a la decisin del Yasun. Solamente que para el gobierno, al parecer, los tuits de los ciudadanos no tienen la misma importancia que los de las autoridades, por lo que no deberan reproducirse en la prensa. Y ya el secretario jurdico de la Presidencia de la Repblica, Alexis Mera, pidi a la Asamblea que se penalice en el nuevo Cdigo Penal lo que se pueda decir en las redes sociales pues una injuria de una persona que tiene unos 10.000 seguidores puede ser ms rpida y hacer ms dao. Es decir, otra vuelta de tuerca a fin de controlar la Internet. Una marcha de la Conaie y varios colectivos en la que participaron muchos jvenes, la tarde del 27 de agosto pasado, fue reprimida fuertemente por la Polica. El gobierno sigue enredado en una explicacin sobre el uso de balas de Paintball contra los manifestantes pero los consabidos spots de radio y televisin obligatorios intentan explicar que todo es una conspiracin de los mismos de siempre. Por si quisieran salir otra vez a la calle, Correa ya amenaz a los jvenes con quitarles el cupo que tienen en los colegios pblicos. Y si a algn periodista se le ocurriera visitar el Parque, ahora tiene que entregar al Ministerio del Ambiente una copia de todo el material periodstico antes de su publicacin as como una garanta de 500 dlares. Vctima de su propia propaganda que cre el sueo del Yasun, el anuncio presidencial
caus demasiado desencanto. Con la explotacin petrolera dentro del Parque nacional desaparece una de las ltimas utopas del gobierno. Y mientras la quimera se esfuma toma forma un rostro irascible que solo busca la obediencia y el silencio.
Referencias Amador, Jorge 2013 El delito de terrorismo se juzga con un artculo de la dictadura militar. El Comercio, 27 de enero de 2013. www.elcomercio.com. Asamblea Nacional 2013 Asamblea Nacional: Leyes aprobadas y publicadas en el Registro Oficial. http://www .asambleanacional.gob.ec/leyes-asambleanacional.html. El Comercio 2013 Las filtraciones se sancionan en la ley de medios, El Comercio, 18 de junio de 2013. www.elcomercio.com. Committee to Protect Journalists 2013 CPJ Dismayed by Approval of Media Law in Ecuador. Committee to Protect Journalists, 14 de junio de 2013. www.cpj.org. Erazo, Katerine 2012 Juan Carlos Caldern y Christian Zurita: Hicimos el trabajo que tenan que hacer los organismos de control. El Universo, 11 de febrero de 2012, www.eluniverso.com. Guardian 2013 Ecuadors Correa Says Biden Asked Him to Deny Edward Snowden Asylum. Guardian, 29 de junio de 2013. www.theguardian.com. Hoy.com.ec 2012 Baltasar Garzn cuestiona el nombramiento de 4 jueces. Hoy.com.ec, 19 de diciembre de 2012. www.hoy.com.ec.
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2013 La sentencia contra Pepe Acacho. Hoy.com.ec, 14 de agosto, www.hoy.com.ec. Human Rights Watch 2013a Ecuador: End Assault on Free Speech. Human Rights Watch, 17 de junio de 2013. www.hrw.org. 2013b Ecuador: Clampdown on Civil Society. Human Rights Watch, 12 de agosto de 2013. www.hrw.org. Organizacin de los Estados Americanos 2013 La relatora especial para la libertad de expresin de la CIDH manifiesta su preocupacin por la aprobacin de la Ley Orgnica de Comunicacin en Ecuador. Comunicado de Presa R47-13, 28 de junio de 2013, www.oas.org. Pallares, Martn 2013 El caso Snowden hace que la prensa extranjera hable de la ley de medios. El Comercio, 27 de junio de 2013. www.elcomercio.com. Zibell, Matas 2013 Snowden, la cereza de la ley de medios de Ecuador. BBC Mundo, 25 de junio de 2013. www.bbc.co.uk.
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on lasa2014
As we write this piece, the 32nd International Congress of LASA is approaching with a wonderful array of interesting panels on varied topics. Forty years after the September 11 coup that toppled Allende in Chile, we have chosen Democracy and Memory as the theme for the Congress. This theme has inspired a series of interdisciplinary panels that examine the way new democracies deal with a violent past, and discuss both the legacies of authoritarian regimes and the challenges that new democracies have faced with regard to a wide spectrum of political, theoretical, historical, and cultural concerns. Different and often conflicting ways of conceiving memory have stimulated panels that raise questions about how to conserve, display, teach, and artistically deal with those legacies, in addition to addressing issues of restitution and redemption. We are delighted to report that the call for papers has generated enthusiasm among Latin Americanist scholars at large, and the proposals cover a remarkably broad range of academic disciplines and fields of study beyond the theme of the Congress. The active involvement of the track chairs and their networks in the planning of the conference has led to the creation of a series of thought-provoking panels on a wide variety of topics. These panels will deal with new objects of study as well as old topics that have inspired renewed interest, and they will reflect new configurations of studies and disciplines that have led to innovative research and teaching. Among the topics that will be discussed in Chicago are sovereignty and political as well as aesthetic communities; new mass movements and civil protests that are ongoing or have happened in the very recent past; new media and original initiatives to report those events; reconfigurations of Latino Studies; the
renovated contours of Latin American art in a global world; and the persisting precariousness of labor. These are only a tiny fraction of the variegated topics and problems that we will have the opportunity to debate at the conference. Here is a preliminary list of invited panels and roundtables: Democracy after Transition Democracia, instituciones y agencia: El legado de Guillermo ODonnell Diasporas and Home Country Politics: False Promise or Opportunity? Globalization on the Ground: Space, Place, and Media among Mobile Populations Knowing the Field: Studying Labor for What and for Whom? Latin American in the Arts? A Roundtable Latin American Urban Studies and Planning: Present and Future Research Directions Latina/o Studies: A State-of-the-Field Discussion Liberalism in Latin American History and Historiography Literature and Globalization Memorias del futuro (los Film Studies en Amrica Latina frente a las mutaciones audiovisuales) New Approaches to Understanding the Privatization of Violence in Latin America Polticas/estticas de lo comn: Polticas del afecto Polticas/estticas de lo comn: Umbrales de multitud Posthegemony
Postneoliberalism and Embodiment Taking It to the Streets: Perspectives on Recent Mass Mobilizations in Latin American Democracies Teaching Memory? Schooling, Cultural Transmission, and Democracy U.S.Latin American Relations: Policy Relevance, Academic Relevance, and the Future Whats Left in Bolivia? Honoring the Life and Work of Benjamin Kohl A World Where Many Worlds Fit? Cosmopolitics and Indigenous Movements in Abya Yala We want to thank the track chairs and co-chairs for all of their hard work. They are now in the process of reviewing and ranking around 1,174 individual proposals and 622 panel proposals. We are looking forward to working with them as we put together the final program. We will also continue to work closely with President Merilee Grindle and LASAs professional staff in the coming months. We hope that this effort will translate into another wonderful Congress. The city of Chicago, with its impressive architectural, musical, artistic, and historical legacies, promises to be a more than appropriate setting for this intellectual conversation. We look forward to seeing everyone in Chicago next May!
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The 50th anniversary of LASA is an appropriate time to recall Kalman Silverts extraordinary life and contributions to Latin American studies. Silvert served as LASAs first president; was the program advisor for the social sciences in Latin America at the Ford Foundation from 1967 until his untimely death in 1976; and was teacher, mentor, and institution builder at universities in the United States and Latin America. During the darkest days in Latin America in the late 1960s and early 1970s, accompanied by the tumult and
constitutional crisis in the United States, he turned his energy, intellect, and his institutional position to saving lives and institutions in Latin America, and defending democracy and strengthening democratic theory and practice throughout the Americas. Abe Lowenthal and I have been coordinating a project on Kals many roles and contributions. We invite you to read the following essays by Christopher Mitchell (New York University) and John
T. Fishel (University of Oklahoma) concerning Kalman Silvert and the influence he had on them both personally and professionally. If the spirit moves you, send some thoughts or reminiscences of your own to the e-mail above. All of the material will be published on the LASA website in the 50th year.
WARRIORS
(TEJIENDO SABIDURA)
a film by Nicole Karsin
WE WOMEN
three brave women use non-violent resistance to In defend their peoples survival. Colombias war-torn indigenous villages, three brave women use non-violent resistance to defend their peoples survival.
Educational Licenses Available For Purchase Online Now Educational Licenses Available For Purchase Online Now In Colombias war-torn indigenous villages,
ATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES INDIGENOUS WOMENS&SN TUDIES AMERICAN LATIN INDIGENOUS &S NTUDIES ATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES HUMAN RIGHTS LAW INTERNATIONAL LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES STUDIES & C RESOLUTION PEACE INTERNATIONAL HONFLICT UMAN RIGHTS LAW STUDIES INTERNATIONAL PEACE STUDIES & CONFLICT RESOLUTION ANTHROPOLOGY INTERNATIONAL STUDIES LANGUAGE SPANISH ANTHROPOLOGY STUDIES FILM SPANISH LANGUAGE FILM STUDIES
A 2013 Imagen Award Nominee ABest 2013 Imagen Award Nominee for Documentary, the lm for Best Documentary, explores issues pertinent the to: lm explores issues pertinent to: WOMEN S STUDIES
Highly recommendedfor for classroom useuse or for anyone Highly recommended classroom or for anyone who wants to get beyond the headlines on Colombia. who wants to get beyond the headlines on Colombia.
-- Chomsky, Aviva Chomsky, History, Salem State University -- Aviva History, Salem State University
www.wewomenwarriors.com www.wewomenwarriors.com
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It was spring term 1962 at Dartmouth College, and I was sitting in the office of Professor Dick Sterling, who headed the International Relations (IR) program. I had finally been allowed to declare IR as my major (Dartmouth did not let students declare a major before the end of their sophomore year) and Sterling was advising me on my program for the next year. I had decided to spend the summer in a rural community development program in Mexico under the auspices of the American Friends Service Committee, thereby initiating and indicating my interest in Latin America. Professor Sterling suggested that I take Government 49, Latin American Politics, with a new professor who was a noted expert on the region, Kalman Silvert. I resisted, thinking that perhaps it would be better to wait a year, but Sterling pointed out that there was no guarantee how long Silvert would be at Dartmouth. Strike while the iron was hot. So, I decided to take the course. I did not have the slightest clue as to the impression Kalman Silvert would make nor that I would begin an argument (discussion) with him that still engages me. Fall 1962: We were seated in one of the larger lecture halls in the college, probably around a hundred young men. The hall was tiered like a theater. Below and in the front was a podium with a blackboard behind. The man who took his place at the podium was somewhat rotund, with a large head, balding; he was not much to look at. Professor Silvert had walked in with a couple of books, that was all. He started speaking and we were spellbound. We remained so for the next ten weeks as he interwove stories about Latin America with concepts about politics and U.S.Latin American relations. This was the fall of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Kal, who had been an informal
advisor to the Kennedy administration on Latin America, gave us his analysis of the event a week or so after it was over. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, he argued that although the risk of nuclear war had, indeed, arisen, it had not increased nearly as much as the conventional view thought it had. This was because, in Kals analysis, the Soviets had knowingly crossed a line with regard to spheres of influence and were not likely to go to war over their own violation of a tacit international understanding. Was Kal right? I am not sure, but his perspective certainly adds depth to the traditional analysis and corresponds to what the USSR, as a rational actor, should have done. Although his view of the Missile Crisis was classic realism, Kal was not a purist. The point he continually drummed into us in Government 49 was that politics was the result of the relationship between values, institutions, and power. In this, he was making what in IR would have been called an idealist argument (of the liberal variety), but Kal was essentially a comparativist and here his theoretical approach was somewhat unorthodox. The conventional comparative theory at the time was structural functionalism, which continues to be the dominant paradigm today. Nevertheless, Kals approach challenged it and, while it was harder to use, showed far more promise in terms of being both explanatory and predictive. The problem was just how to operationalize it something I have been wrestling with for 50 years and have never quite succeeded in doing. Despite this difficulty, the relationship between values, institutions, and power informs the way I see the world, even when I cant articulate it explicitly. Kal applied this formulation of the overarching nature of politics to a number
of quite specific concepts. Democracy was one. His definition of democracy, while well within the mainstream of political science, is both clearer and more specific than most. It has three components: 1) Leaders are chosen in free, fair, competitive, and periodic elections in which the electorate consists of a majority of the adult population; 2) There must be sufficient freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly (organization) to organize and advocate for policies, parties, candidates, and ideologies to contest elections and influence policy decisions; 3) There must be an independent and impartial mechanism for the settlement of secular disputes; usually this is a court system. Fifty years later, I still use this definition and apply it in all my courses, both undergraduate and graduate. I have made one change and that is to remove the word secular from the final criterion, something I suspect that Kal would argue with me about. One beauty of his definition of democracy is that it is clearly operational. A government is either democratic or it is not. But, as Kal would argue, if it was not democratic, then what it was became a really interesting question. Although he recognized significant variety among democracies, this variation was extraordinarily limited compared to the differences among nondemocratic states. I took only one other course with Kal. Unlike the Latin American course, it was a seminar on development. The course met about the same time as Kals superb edited volume, Expectant Peoples: Nationalism and Development (1963), was published. Kal brought in a number of his chapter authors, colleagues from the American Universities Field Staff, who offered differing but congruent perspectives on the subject. Among those Kal invited to speak
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to us was Albert Ravenholt, who had written the chapter on the Philippines. In the discussion, someone made the comment that there are always opportunities to influence what is happening in the environment in which one finds oneself. It was something that Kal had always done and advice that I took to heart and applied during my field work in Peru as well as during duty as a staff officer in the U.S. Southern Command in Bolivia, Peru, El Salvador, Honduras, and Panama. In Kals class, as in Expectant Peoples, Kal introduced us to the philosophical underpinnings of his view of nationalism, which he traced from Machiavelli through Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, and Marx, with a nod or two to Coke and the American Constitution. This approach so intrigued me that as a graduate student at Indiana University in political science, I retraced his steps in a major paper. It took me many years, but I finally made the link between Kals concept of democracy and his concept of nationalism. The fact is that they are intimately related in his usual optimistic point of view. As I worked in an urban community development project in Mexico shortly after graduation from Dartmouth; or in Peruvian highland villages while researching my dissertation; or in trying to assist Salvadorans, Hondurans, and Panamanians in establishing and developing democratic institutions in the face of insurgencies and the aftermath of dictatorships, Kals wisdom guided the things I attempted to accomplish. What I always looked for was something within the host culture that could be built on in ways that would advance what Kal called the social value of nationalism within the context of democracy as he had defined it. After I graduated from Dartmouth and went off to Indiana, I saw Kal once at his home in Norwich, VT. He fixed us hot
dogs and graciously gave me permission to use in my own research the questionnaire he had developed for use in his studies of nationalism and developmental politics in Latin America. It was simply another example of his generosity in sharing all he had with colleagues and studentsbecause I never ceased to be his student. The last time I saw Kal was at LASA in San Francisco in 1974. I was giving a paper based on my research using his survey instrument in Peru, an aspect that had not made it into my dissertation. I was also in the queue to become the president of the North Central Council of Latin Americanists. One duty en route was to be program chair and to line up the principal speaker for the meetings. The 1976 meeting was to be held at the University of WisconsinLa Crosse, where I was teaching, and I was sure Kal would be the perfect speaker. I discussed it with him and secured his tentative agreement. As the meeting approached, I wrote to Kal to coordinate his visit to Wisconsin. By that time it was too late. I received a beautiful letter from Frieda, his wife, telling me that Kal had passed away. Yet, as far as I was concerned, he was still very much alive. I had not yet, and still have not, fully assimilated his thoughts. He remains after 50 years my intellectual mentor and sparring partner.
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I was Kalman Silverts colleague in the New York University Politics Department for five years, from my arrival at the university in the fall of 1971 until Kals death in the summer of 1976. I was a junior assistant professor, and Kal was an academic star with 20 years experience: full professor, author or editor of a half-dozen books, founding president of the Latin American Studies Association, and a leader in international social science. He directed NYUs federally funded Ibero-American Language and Area Center (IALAC), which granted an interdisciplinary masters degree in Latin American studies. For the first two years that we shared at NYU, I taught at NYUs University Heights campus in the Bronx. Nonetheless, I saw Kal quite often at the universitys main Washington Square campusat department and committee meetings, at events sponsored by IALAC, at graduate oral exams, and on social occasions. From 1973 until 1976, we both worked at Washington Square. In the Politics Department and at the Latin American center, Kal was a formidable presence: attracting, teaching, and mentoring graduate students, organizing speakers series and conferences on Latin America, debating university policies with colleagues, and linking the university with his international network of individual scholars, associations, journals, and foundations. I had known Kal only through his work before I came to NYU, but he welcomed me cordially and drew me quickly into the interdisciplinary work and the outreach activities of IALAC. I rapidly grasped the elements of his profile: gregarious, learned, opinionated, energetic, focused on broad social trends and consequences, and far more alert to moral and ethical concerns than most scholars (then or now). Kal never put on airs based on his rank or professional prominence. Instead, he focused on what colleagues at
any rank were planning and learning, and he was always ready to use his prestige as leverage to assist a junior colleagues grant application or fellowship request. In New York, Kal Silvert had multiple professional responsibilities. At NYU, he was both professor of politics and director of IALAC, which received so-called Title VI government grant funds, based on peerreviewed competitions. Simultaneously, Kal served as social science adviser at the Ford Foundation. In the years I knew him, Kal taught exclusively graduate students. To simplify his teaching schedule, he arranged for his two courses per semester to be scheduled back-to-back on a single evening each week. Kals work at Ford required considerable travel, in addition to meetings and extensive paperwork at East 43rd Street. Beyond all this, Silvert maintained an active research agenda that led to several new books in the mid-1970s. Most scholars and teachers would be fortunate to perform effectively in two or three of these roles; Kal excelled in four or five of them at a time. In addition, he tried to protect his time with his family, amid calls to attend research conferences and to make foundation-related site visits abroad. I recall how, in one of the first years that I knew him, he remarked that he had turned down an invitation to a symposium abroad that was slated to take place over Thanksgiving. There just have to be limits, he observed. As an adjunct to his diverse roles, Kal and Frieda Silvert and their sons maintained, in effect, a social and intellectual salon, combining the social and the intellectual with a strong focus on the Western Hemisphere. In what may have been an index of the universitys interest in attracting Kal to Washington Square, he and his family enjoyed a double-sized
apartment in Silver Towers, an I. M. Peidesigned high-rise building on the NYU campus. Two (large) standard units had been connected to make a single apartment, providing panoramic views facing both east and west across lower Manhattan. On an evening, one was likely to meet visiting scholars or political leaders from Chile, Argentina, Europe, or Mexico. The varied elements in Kals network thus strengthened and drew sustenance from one another. He also maintained a group of warm friendships within the Politics Department, including specialists in fields that were distant from his own. Kal Silverts relationship with students was especially in the foreground in New York in the early 1970s. He had attracted a dedicated circle of aspiring Latin Americanists, and his graduate teaching centered on sharpening their awareness of social theory and on preparing them for field research. When, occasionally, his travel schedule made him miss a teaching week in New York, Kal would often arrange for a major figure in political science or sociology as a guest leader in his seminars; I remember one week when Gabriel Almond was called on to fill that role. Kal also had a special gift for turning oral examinations into tutorials: the traditional semi-adversarial interface between candidate and committee was almost entirely replaced by a cordial, thoughtful, shared intellectual search, in which students came close to being treated as full colleagues. The federal Title VI program began operations in 1966, two years before Kal came to NYU. During his years at the head of IALAC, he was helping to invent the role of international studies center director. In doing so, he created an academic and collegial legacy for his successors in IALAC (which was renamed the Center for Latin
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American and Caribbean Studies, CLACS, in the mid-1970s). Within IALAC, as elsewhere, Kal espoused interdisciplinary and international scholarship and teaching, maintaining strong ties with the humanists at Washington Square as well as with researchers from diverse Western Hemisphere nations. This approach recruited allies for the center in varied academic units at NYU and in numerous U.S. universities, foundations, and research centers abroad. Though I never heard him articulate this view formally, Kal clearly understood that area studies centers are a structurally endangered species in the U.S. academy, since they usually lack tenure lines and large budgets. By forming strong links to a diverse transnational network, Title VI programs can both fulfill their missions and gain needed resources and prestige that assist them in competing for campus resources. In later years, many of us at CLACS found ourselves asking, What would Kal have done in todays circumstances? and usually finding very constructive answers. The center today is a vibrant contributor both to NYU and to Latin American and Caribbean studies internationally. Kals responsibilities as a colleague at New York University were particularly tested during the universitys financial crisis in 1972. NYU in the early 1970s was pressured by societal circumstances and by its own internal dynamics. Huge and sprawling, with more than 40,000 full- and part-time students, twelve schools, and five campuses in two city boroughs, the university was both tuition-driven and ambition-driven. A traditional ladder for social mobility that relied heavily on part-time students, even in PhD programs, the institution was also a member of the research-oriented Association of American Universities (AAU) and set its academic sights high. It borrowed to expand and
modernize its facilities, especially to build a flagship library covering a small city block in Greenwich Village. Beginning in 1968, economic recession and reductions in draft deferments spurred a drop in NYU student enrollments, while inflation added to the universitys costs. These pressures, which brought on chronic deficits that lasted until 1974, painfully revealed the contradictions in NYUs improvement-on-a-shoestring strategy. The institutions countermeasures stressed budget cutbacks, posing dilemmas for many faculty members, including Kalman Silvert. Academic year 19711972 was exceptionally stressful for Kal. IALACs federal funding was not renewed (this was reversed in later decades), and he determined to step down as center director. Early in the spring semester, the NYU administration announced plans to sell the University Heights campus in the Bronx to New York State in order to cut deficits and replenish the endowment; departments were soon asked to recommend deep cuts among junior faculty as well. Kal was a member of the Politics Departments powerful Personnel and Planning (P&P) Committee, which spent many hours going over the rsums of instructors and assistant professors in political science. This was a tense and taxing period for faculty members at all ranks: the dean of arts and sciences at University Heights, for example, wept openly at the meeting where the campuss sale was revealed. Sometime in April or May, Kal circulated a letter to department members in which he resigned from P&P in protest against its assignment to single out many junior colleagues to lose their jobs. In a department meeting held soon after his letter was released, he decried the damage that would be done to
emerging careers, and referred to the university in notably harsh terms. At an almost surreal meeting in July 1972, the P&P Committee recommended that five (unnamed) junior department members be terminated, as part of measures to achieve a staggering 24 percent reduction in the units budget. Along with a minority of colleagues in Politics, Kal protested. His passion for effective civic participation was aroused, applied in this instance to the academic community. Kal stated that he would no longer vote in department meetings, since policy was being dictated by the administration in an atmosphere where faculty participation was lacking. The slate of firings (whose content was widely known informally) was reluctantly accepted by the departments majority; ultimately a sixth colleague was also discharged when two early retirements could not be negotiated. Possibly Kals severity was warranted at that juncture. His defiant refusal to conform did not prevent fully two-thirds of the Politics junior staff from losing their positions. However, the spirit of his bold stance may have helped to bolster a determinationwhich has been effective until now, in decades when NYU has both developed and prosperedthat such an event must never happen again. Though the financial emergency perhaps contributed to Kals decision to leave New York four years later, his critical attitude did not undercut his standing with departmental colleagues. His strong sense of departmental patriotism and his keen ambition for the university were amply on view a few years later, when the New York State Department of Education reviewed all New York doctoral programs in political science. The Education Department has the power to terminate any university degree
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program in New York, and the NYU administration was apprehensive about how the Politics Department would fare in the state evaluation. Kal would have none of it: We must go in with our dukes up, he argued, helping to energize a department that, as matters proved, scored very well in the official assessment. Kal also helped to launch an effort at NYU that brought together his commitments to intellectual freedom, Latin American democracy, and human rights. Following Pinochets coup in Chile, Silvert assisted in setting up a network to obtain academic positions in the United States for Southern Cone scholars who had been forced into exile. New York was an ideal central location for such an undertaking. IALAC, under director Juan Corradi, provided office space and some staff, and Bryce Wood stepped in to administer the project. Kalman Silvert, in summary, was an accomplished, memorable, and creative colleague at New York University. Avoiding any factional allegiance within departmental politics, he was modest, unselfish, energetic, and steadfast enough to censure the institution when he believed it was in the wrong. For colleagues at all ranks, but especially for younger ones, he provided an example to be emulated. Pressures that tend to erode collegiality have never been lacking, and revisiting Kals standard of academic conduct reminds us of what colleagues can and should achieve together.
Asia and the Americas Adrian H. Hearn, Chair On May 30, 2013, at 7 p.m., the Section for Asia and the Americas held its business meeting. This was the second meeting since the Section changed its name from Latin America and the Pacific Rim at the 2010 LASA Congress and the first since Adrian Hearn (University of Sydney) was elected Section Chair in 2012. During the meeting, Kathleen Lpez (Rutgers University) and Adrian Hearn were elected to serve as Co-chairs for the period 20132014, and the following Executive Committee was elected: Vladimir Rouvinksi, Treasurer (Universidad Icesi), Sean Burgess (Australian National University), Monica Dehart (University of Puget Sound), Enrique Dussel Peters (UNAM), R. Evan Ellis (National Defense University), Junyoung Vernica Kim (University of Iowa), and Zelideth Rivas (Marshall University). The chair informed the meetings attendees about the Sections activities over the preceding 12 months: On May 29 the Section hosted a preCongress workshop in partnership with the Inter-American Dialogue, entitled China, Latin America, and the Changing Architecture of Transpacific Engagement. The Section website has been frequently updated with announcements of events related to Asia-Americas connections and information about members activities and publications. The Section has grown to 82 members, a satisfying outcome considering that many other sections have contracted in size. In preparation for LASA2013, panel proposals were coordinated via e-mail for those interested in presenting on the topic of Asia and the Americas. Shortly before the Congress, e-mails were sent to the
member list with details of all such panels. The Section will continue to offer its members these services ahead of LASA2014. Bolivia Guillermo Delgado P., Chair Este XXXI Congreso Internacional de LASA ha sido en general muy fructfero en cuanto a los paneles organizados por la seccin. Se presentaron, a lo largo del congreso, ms de cincuenta ponencias con temas bolivianos. La seccin fue acreedora de seis becas de viaje lo que hizo posible la presentacin de dos paneles, ambos apoyados por miembros de la Seccin. LASA colabor en diseminar la informacin correcta de la seccin en el programa, as como efectivizar la presencia de los ponentes y becarios invitados. Otro panel organizado por Nria Vilanova, en la que uno de los becarios de la Seccin contribuy como panelista (Mauricio Souza) fue muy concurrido. La Seccin acord organizar un panel pre-congreso, realizado en la sede de la Universidad de California (UC-DC) cuya Directora la Prof. Melanie DuPuis (colega de Guillermo Delgado), nos ofreci un espacio para que muchos miembros de la seccin pudieran conocerse, conocer a los panelistas, e intercambiar intereses comunes. LASA colabor anunciando este evento en el programa general. La sesin pre-congreso se utiliz como un espacio para presentar a los becarios de la Seccin quienes ofrecieron versiones cortas de sus ponencias al pblico en general. Tambin se aprovech ese momento para socializar e intercambiar saludos entre congresistas, y para ofrecer publicaciones que los panelistas trajeron a la reunin. Este evento fue til ya que hubiera sido imposible que todos los congresistas asistieran a todos los paneles
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simultneamente. Las sesiones organizadas por la Seccin estuvieron relativamente concurridas. Una, muy temprano (8:30 a.m.) no tuvo tanto pblico, pero las dems estuvieron mucho mejor. Un tercer evento, post-congreso, organizado por la Seccin para la comunidad de residentes bolivianos en Washington, ofreci una sesin con los panelistas-becarios. Este evento de servicio a la comunidad es alentada por LASA como organizacin, para crear una cercana entre quienes estudiamos y analizamos temas bolivianos y el pblico en general. Despus de este evento, coordinado por Chris Krueger y moderado por Isabel Scarborough, los panelistas invitados y otros miembros de la Seccin que se unieron al evento, concluyeron el cnclave con la comunidad invitados por residentes y amigos de Bolivia que colaboraron en la organizacin del evento (hacer posters, distribuirlos en la comunidad, refrigerios, transporte, etc.). Varios factores contribuyeron a llevar a cabo un interesante congreso. La familiaridad de Chris Krueger con la ciudad, y los varios contactos de Guillermo Delgado con colegas (como la Sede de la U de California en Washington) que trabajan y viven all fueron muy importantes. La Seccin gui, con el apoyo de varios amigos en D.C. (especialmente Chris Krueger), la estada de los panelistas becarios asegurando que no les faltara nada. Sin este particular hecho, no se hubiera podido organizar las varias instancias del congreso que forj una comunidad de acadmicos que, esperamos, no pierdan el contacto. La respectiva reunin de Seccin slo atrajo a una audiencia de veinticuatro personas y fue informada y produjo un dilogo animado entre los asistentes. Se aprovech para informar de las tareas realizadas por la Seccin, y compartiendo
los planes nos enfocamos en invitar a Virginia Ailln a presentar un informe preliminar, elaborado por el esfuerzo (pro-bono) de Chris Krueger y Virginia Ailln en Bolivia. Este documento es base de una futura propuesta para animar la consolidacin de proyectos de intercomunicacin e intercambio entre acadmicos y publicaciones tanto de norte como de sur. Siendo el documento de caractersticas exploratorias, la idea es expandirlo y utilizarlo como base para concretizar una propuesta que la seccin lo puede adoptar como meta futura. Tambin se habl de colaborar en la repatriacin de estudios sobre Bolivia que, muy frecuentemente, no llegan, no se traducen, ni se depositan en las bibliotecas bolivianas. Los estudios publicados en Bolivia (en espaol), no se citan tan frecuentemente como aquellos en ingls y la percepcin, de norte dominando el sur, en vez de un dilogo entre iguales, suele terminar reforzando una visin de arriba a abajo. Isabel Scarborough ha establecido contacto con la Seccin del Ecuador con el propsito de coordinar algn panel bilateral. Continuamos tambin nuestro comunicacin con la AEB (Bolivian Research Review) que tiene su congreso en Sucre (Julio 2931, 2013), lo mismo que con Elizabeth Monasterios de Pittsburgh (Bolivian Studies Journal). El documento elaborado por Virginia Ailln y Chris Krueger puede servir de base para implementar un proyecto de intercomunicacin, intercambio de estudios sobre Bolivia, y consolidar una red de varias instituciones slidas que ya tienen recursos y/o programas acadmicos establecidos (el caso del PIEB, CESU, CIDES, varias universidades en Bolivia, Taller de Historia Oral Andina, IEB, Plural Editores, Archivo Nacional, etc.). Se
sugiere tambin crear un grupo virtual para materializar la base de estos proyectos. Entre las falencias de la seccin, durante la sesin de business, tenemos que reconocer que no logramos elegir una nueva mesa directiva. Habiendo convocado a renovar la mesa, fracasamos en recibir nombres de candidatos para dirigir la seccin con miras al Congreso de LASA Chicago 2014. Al cerrar este informe solicitamos, en consecuencia, voluntarios que se ofrezcan para liderar la seccin. Mientras tanto, Chris Krueger, Isabel Scarborough (en colaboracin con Guillermo) continan informando a la seccin hasta que logremos sustituir a Guillermo, Hernn Pruden, Miguel Buitrago y Victor Unda que terminaron su gestin. Brazil Desmond Arias, Co-chair The Brazil Section held its business meeting on May 31, 2013, at the LASA Congress. Approximately 20 individuals attended. The meeting began with a report on the budget and the prizes awarded for best dissertation, best article, and best book. Best Dissertation was awarded to Felipe Amin Filomeno, The Social Basis of Intellectual Property Regimes: Biotechnology in South American Soybean Agriculture (PhD dissertation, John Hopkins University, 2012); Honorable Mention went to Rochele Fellini Fachinetto, Quando eles as matam e quando elas os matam: Uma anlise dos julgamentos de homicdio pelo Tribunal do Jri (PhD dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 2012). The prize for Best Article went to Yuko Miki, Fleeing into Slavery: The Insurgent Geographies of Brazilian Quilombolas (Maroons), 18801881, The Americas 66, no. 4 (2012); Honorable Mention was awarded to Bryan Pitts, The Audacity to
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Strong-Arm the Generals: Paulo Maluf and the 1978 So Paulo Gubernatorial Contest, Hispanic American Historical Review 92, no. 3 (2012). The Best Book Prize was awarded to Andr Cicalo, Urban Encounters: Affirmative Action and Black Identities in Brazil (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). The winners were chosen through the following process. An open call went out to the Section for nominations. The Executive Committee then formed the three subcommittees that deliberated on each of the prizes. At its meeting, the Section held elections for co-chairs and for two members of the Executive Committee. The current Co-chairs, Desmond Arias (City University of New York, John Jay College) and Pedro Erber (Cornell University), were elected to new one-year terms. Joseph Marques (Kings College, London) and Angela Paiva (Pontifcia Universidade Catlica do Rio de Janeiro) were also reelected to two-year terms as members of the Executive Committee. Treasurer Amy Chazkel (City University of New York, Queens College) continued in her current position. Executive Committee members John French (Duke University) and Ivani Vassoler-Froelich (State University of New York, Fredonia) also continued in their current positions. All three positions, which have a term of two years, are up for election in 2014. After the election the attendees had an extended conversation about the role of the Section and how it could better achieve its goals. There were discussions regarding collaboration between groups of Brazilianists and methods for choosing panels for the upcoming conference.
Central America Ellen Moodie, Co-chair The Central America Section (CAS) held its business meeting on Thursday, May 30, during the LASA Congress. Twenty-nine Section members attended the meeting. Membership this year is 190, down from 225 in 2012. The matter of yearly meetings has likely caused the decline. Next year CAS can support three sessions. This years sessions were The Art of the Central American Diasporas: A Roundtable Discussion and Race, Sex, and Spectacles of Power in Caribbean Central America. Two people applied for the $750 travel fellowship. Co-chairs Jos Juan Coln and Ellen Moodie chose Allen Cordero Ulate, profesor-investigador (Universidad de Costa Rica, FLACSO) after evaluating the applications according to a list of priorities: recipients should be from Central America, live in Central America, be students, and should explain their financial need in a short statement. For next year, all members present voted to have two $750 travel fellowships. We considered four more items: 1) prizes for student papers about Central America (this conversation will continue online); 2) inviting a Central American author or intellectual to speak at the meeting next year, a suggestion greeted enthusiastically and approved by all present (CAS officers will ask for nominations online); 3) whether to have a Facebook page (Yolany Martnez will set it up); and 4) new officers. Four advisory board members, selfnominated online, took office: William Clary (University of the Ozarks), Sonja Wolf (Instituto para la Seguridad y la Democracia, Mexico), Yansi Prez (Carleton College), and Erin Finzer (University of Arkansas, Little Rock); Hctor Cruz Feliciano, in the end the only
candidate, has been declared Co-chair for a two-year term. Colombia Constanza Lpez, Co-chair The Colombia Section held its business meeting at LASA2013 with 33 members present. During the meeting it was proposed to change year-and-a-half terms for elected officers, and members voted unanimously to change terms to two years. Therefore for the period of 20132015 the following people were elected: Constanza Lpez (University of North Florida), Chair; Alejandro Quin (University of Utah), Vice-Chair; Leah Carroll (University of California, Berkeley), Secretary-Treasurer; Joseph Avski (Texas A&M University), Communications Manager; and Ben Johnson (Columbia University) and Catalina Arango (New York University), Student Representatives. The Sections advisors are Ginny Bouvier (United States Institute of Peace), Mauricio Romero (Universidad Javeriana), Mercedes Jaramillo (Fitchburg State University), and Juana Surez (New York University). It was decided that the Section will run one award competition each year, alternating years. In 2014 the Premio Montserrat Ordez will be given, and in 2015 the Premio Michael Jimnez will be awarded. Elvira Snchez Blake (Michigan State University) was elected as the coordinator for the Premio Montserrat Ordez, and Anne Farnsworth Alvear (University of Pennsylvania) will be the coordinator for the Premio Michael Jimnez. The Section will sponsor three panels for LASA2014. The Section celebrated its reception at Rumba Caf on May 31. The Section currently has 144 members and is publishing a monthly bulletin.
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Colonial Clayton McCarl, Chair The new Colonial Section held its first elections electronically in April 2013. Clayton McCarl (University of North Florida) was elected Chair for the coming year, and the council members are Mnica Daz (Georgia State University), Pablo Garca Loaeza (West Virginia University), Ann De Len (University of Alberta), and Ral Marrero-Fente (University of Minnesota). Patricia Tovar Rojas (CUNY, John Jay College) is Secretary-Treasurer. The Section held its first business meeting at LASA2013 with nineteen members present. Members discussed a proposal to award a prize for a dissertation in 2014, the organization of the sections two sponsored panels for LASA2014, and a succession plan for the groups leadership. The Section celebrated its inaugural reception at the Cosmos Club near Dupont Circle on May 31. The Colonial Section currently has approximately 90 members and is publishing a quarterly newsletter, titled Colonia/Colnia. Cuba Sheryl Lutjens, Co-chair The Cuba Section was created in 1997. As LASA Congresses have become annual events, and with ongoing issues of visa denials, the Sections efforts in 20122013 focused squarely on the Washington, DC, International Congress. In all, 136 scholars from Cuba were accepted for the LASA program and 88 applied for visas. Of these, 11 applications were denied. The Section organized four very diverse panels and workshops for the Washington Congress. One was cancelled, unfortunately, but the others had excellent attendance.
The Cuba Section business meeting had a full agenda and 125 in attendance. Items discussed included the Sections and LASAs executive efforts to prevent visa denials, coordinated by Jorge Domnguez; strategies to bring younger scholars and scholars from the provinces into the Section; and conducting a survey, including suggestions for panels and activities for LASA2014. The Sections Premio a la Excelencia Acadmica en los Estudios sobre Cuba was awarded to Lars Schoultz (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). The selection committee was composed of Carlos Alzugaray (Chair and representative of the Section Executive) and four previous recipients of the Section Award. The hard work of the Section Election CommitteeLana Wylie (Chair), Elena Napoles, and Elaine Scheyeis much appreciated! Election results are Nancy Morejn (Casa de las Amricas) and Lillian Manzor (University of Miami), Co-chairs; Omar Everleny Prez Villanueva (Universidad de La Habana), Lana Wylie (McMaster University), Jorge Domnguez (Harvard University), and Milagros Martnez (Universidad de La Habana), members of the Executive Board. Section Treasurer is John Kirk (Dalhousie University). Section activities for the coming year will include streamlining the membership application process for scholars from Cuba and reaching out to younger academics and artists, especially those residing in the provinces. Sincere thanks go to Mario Bronfman (Ford Foundation), Sarah Doty (Social Science Research Council), and Andrea Panaritis (Christopher Reynolds Foundation) for their contributions to the reception and to the participation of scholars from Cuba in LASA2013.
Culture, Power, and Politics Jon Beasley-Murray, Co-chair In line with decisions taken at the 2012 San Francisco Congress (for which see last years report), the agenda for the Culture, Power, and Politics Section in 20122013 was to organize the Section sessions for LASA2013 in Washington DC, to update the Sections website, and to update the e-mail list. These last two items were completed early in the year, as the Section built up its presence on the website provided by LASA and transferred to new e-mail list software. As before, we used the list to circulate information among members (for instance about events and research grants), encourage communication and the sharing of research, and enable productive synergies. At the Washington Congress, the section organized three well-attended sessions on the diverse topics of food security, cultural politics, and inequality. The business meeting confirmed the continuing terms of the Sections Secretary-Treasurer, Justin Read, and council members Antonio Torres-Ruiz, Ana Wortman, and Silvia Kurlat Ares, as well as electing new Co-chairs Jon Beasley-Murray (University of British Columbia) and Juan Poblete (University of California, Santa Cruz), and new council member Maya Aguiluz-Ibargen (Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico). It was resolved that for the coming year, the Sections priorities would be 1) rewriting the Sections definition and charter, especially in the light of the existence of other, newer LASA sections whose areas now overlap with that of Culture, Power, and Politics, and 2) using the Sections accrued capital to invite one or more major figures to LASA2014, perhaps as part of a preCongress workshop or conference.
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Decentralization and Subnational Governance Laura Flamand, Co-chair The Decentralization and Subnational Governance Section of LASA had a successful Congress in Washington, DC, in 2013, sponsoring one panel and organizing another. Attendance was very good in both cases. In both panels, the commentators did a superb job, and participation from the public was excellent. At the business meeting, with an attendance of 18 members, the Section elected Lorena Moscovich (Universidad de Buenos Aires, CONICET) as the new Section Chair. Lorena will be assisted by Laura Flamand (El Colegio de Mxico). Also at the meeting, it was announced that the Section would select the best paper award for a student who is a Section member and had presented a paper at LASA2013 or will at LASA2014. The final item in the agenda was the announcement that the Section would organize and propose panels for other international conferences (International Political Science Association, American Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association) on the subjects of decentralization and subnational governance. Our current Section membership is at 66 members, which means the Section is entitled to a single panel at LASA2014. Several current members, including those listed above, will be working to encourage new and former members to register. The Decentralization and Subnational Governance Section sponsored the following panel at LASA2013: Decentralization and Subnational Governance: Reconceptualizing and Measuring Decentralization. Increasing numbers of scholars are becoming concerned with the conceptual framing and
measurement of decentralization. Divergent fields use diverse definitions and measures to answer questions related to the concept. These conflicting methods are thus creating assorted outcomes. This panel revisited the fundamental definitions of what we mean by decentralization and presented a review of how scholars are interpreting and measuring the concept. In addition to this official section-sponsored panel, the Decentralization and Subnational Governance Section organized a second panel through LASAs regular channels on the related topic of electoral strategies and coalitions in federal countries. Defense, Public Security, and Democracy Marcos Robledo and Harold Trinkunas, Co-chairs The business meeting for the Defense, Public Security, and Democracy Section was conducted on May 30, 2013. Approximately 25 members of the Section were present. The meeting was chaired by Co-chairs Marcos Robledo and Harold Trinkunas. The meeting discussed the evolution of the Section during the 20122013 term. We noted that the Section has increased in membership and it was now eligible for two section-sponsored panels at LASA2014. The Section ended the term with a slight increase in available funds, even after a travel grant was made. We appealed to members to contribute information on recent research and publications to the Section website. The Section unanimously elected Deborah Norden (Whittier College) and Jos Manuel Ugarte (Universidad de Buenos Aires) as the new Co-chairs of the Section. Rafael Martnez (Universidad de Barcelona) and Jaime Baeza (Universidad
de Chile) were unanimously elected to the Executive Committee. Jos Manuel Ugarte, David Pion-Berlin , Marcos Robledo, and Harold Trinkunas were thanked for their service to the Section during the 2013 term. For the LASA2013 Congress, a travel grant in the amount of $300 was made to Magdalena Defort (University of Miami). The selection was made by the Executive Committee of the Section, comprised of David Pion-Berlin, Deborah Norden, Maiah Jaskoski (Naval Postgraduate School), and Liza Ziga (Red de Seguridad y Defense de Amrica Latina). The selection was made from among submissions by Section members who were presenting papers at LASA2013. The Section agreed to sponsor two travel grants for LASA2014. Economics and Politics Mahrukh Doctor, Chair The Economics and Politics Section aims to promote policy relevant dialogue as well as pure scholarship at the intersection of economics and politics. For the LASA Congress in Washington, DC, the Section had organized three panels to discuss 1) international financial institutions and their changing relations with Latin America (with senior officials from the InterAmerican Development Bank, World Bank, and United Nations Development Programme present); 2) issues related to the financial inclusion of the poor in Brazil; and 3) the domestic and external challenges to Brazils new development path. The Section awarded an open prize and an early career prize for articles published in peer-reviewed journals in 2012. Our first winners were Barbara Hogenboom and Steven Samford, respectively. Many thanks go to our prize panel members: Kathryn
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Hochstetler, Patrice Franko, Derrick Hodge, Matthew Taylor, Margaret Commins, and Ken Shadlen. Section elections were organized to select new officers and a four-member council. The business meeting was attended by ten members, including the newly elected Section officers and committee, who will hold office for the next two years. Members discussed the activities of the previous year, award panel process, issues related to the Sections website, a proposal to award travel grants to Section members, and ideas for other initiatives going forward. The new officers are Gabriel Ondetti (Missouri State University), Chair; Tony Spanakos (Montclair State University), Treasurer; and Kathryn Hochstetler (University of Waterloo), Steven Samford (University of Notre Dame), Flavio Gaitn (IESP-UERJ), and Mahrukh Doctor, members of the Section Advisory Council. Ecuadorian Studies Rut Romn, Chair On Thursday May 30, 2013, the Ecuadorian Studies Section business meeting took place with 26 members attending. During the meeting we discussed the following points: term report, elections and the renewal of the directorate, and questions and requests. The chair reported that the Executive CommitteeRut Romn (Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manab), Julie Williams (Universidad San Francisco de Quito), Norman Gonzlez (University of Maryland), Kathleen Fine (Fort Lewis College); Jennifer Collins (University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point); and Nick Rattray (University of Arizona)has carried out the following tasks. Biannual
Ecuador meeting: During the last business meeting it was decided that our conference should be taken out of Quito and into the provinces to extend our visibility and encourage new membership. In view of the upcoming VI Encuentro de Ecuatorianistas, the Executive Committee secured sponsors in addition to the hosting city and institution, Universidad de Cuenca. We obtained financial support for the new design and upgrade of our Section website from the Universidad Andina Simn Bolvar. The Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales agreed to finance promotional printouts for the VI Encuentro de Ecuatorianistas (Cuenca, June 2729, 2013). Dr. Enrique Ayala-Mora (Chancellor of the Universidad Andina) will be the guest speaker during the VI Encuentro de Ecuatorianistas. We have accepted 140 papers from Ecuadorian and international scholars that will be organized in 46 panels. During the VI Encuentro we will have the assistance and support of professors and students of the Universidad de Cuenca. The municipality of Cuenca will be offering a special event and dinner party, Noche cuencana, in an old hacienda house in the outskirts of Cuenca. The Fulbright Commission will offer the closing luncheon. In response to the request made during our last business meeting in San Francisco, the Executive Committee called for the first LASA-Ecuador Book Prize. The prize of $1,000 was financed by the Universidad de Cuenca. The reviewing committee was formed by Carmen Fernndez Salvador (Universidad San Francisco de Quito), Pablo Ospina (Universidad Andina Simn Bolvar), and Juan del Pozo (PUCE). The prize was awarded to Ketty Wong (University of Kansas) for her book Whose National Music? Identity, Mestizaje, and Migration in Ecuador (Temple University Press, 2012).
The Ecuador Studies Section has 99 active members. During LASA2013 our Section sponsored the panel entitled Native Populations and Forced Labor in the Ecuadorian Amazon, 18902010. We organized an event for our members at Lillies Restaurant and Bar in Washington, DC. The chair suggested we should offer travel funds for Ecuadorian students to attend the VI Encuentro in Cuenca; the attendees agreed with the proposal. All members are invited to post articles and papers in the different areas noted on our website, so as to broaden opportunities for collaboration and contact. The chair made a special mention of the continuous support and hard work of our webmaster, Carlos Reyes Ignatov, during the development of our website. As per LASA regulations we proceeded to call for Executive Committee elections, with the following results: Rut Romn (Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manab), Chair; Julie Williams (Universidad San Francisco de Quito), Vice Chair; Francisco Snchez (Universidad de Valencia), Secretary-Treasurer; and Jennifer Collins ( University of Wisconsin), Kathleen Fine (Fort Lewis University), and Carolina Bown (Salisbury University), members of the Executive Committee. Rut Romn highlighted the collaboration of the past Executive Committee, especially Norman Gonzlez (University of Maryland). John Walker proposed making a renewed effort to include sponsored panels in areas such as art and the humanities; after a few minutes of discussion this was accepted by the membership. A suggestion was made to expand our book award with a special award for best published article. The assembly approved the petition, and the leaders will investigate how to include this new section in the biannual prize.
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Educacin y Polticas Educativas Javier Hermo, Executive Council Member En el horario de las 19 hh previsto para la reunin de la seccin, se dieron cita 20 miembros de la misma, variando el nmero a lo largo de las dos horas que insumi el encuentro, sin que nunca estuviera por debajo de los 10 miembros requeridos para el qurum, de acuerdo al Manual de Secciones de LASA. La sesin fue presidida por Cecilia Pittelli, co-chair de la seccin, quien comenz realizando un repaso de lo actuado durante el perodo, la situacin actual con 76 miembros activos del rea y que ello supone que se pueden presentar dos paneles especficos de la seccin para LASA2014, lo que requiere comenzar a trabajar para definir los temas y panelistas. En tal sentido, se acord en debatir a travs de la lista de correo de la seccin ambas cuestiones antes de la fecha tope para envo de propuestas. El debate gir en torno de la necesidad de estimular un crecimiento de las membresas de la seccin, as como la posibilidad de redefinir el nombre y alcance de la misma. Se mencion, en particular, la posibilidad de unificarse o bien trabajar en conjunto con la track de Niez y Juventud, para lo que se decidi que el Consejo revise las posibilidades estatutarias y se realicen consultas al secretariado de LASA. Tambin se propuso volver a insistir en la idea de realizar publicaciones de la seccin. En tal sentido, Felipe Prez propuso comenzar por reunir trabajos presentados en este Congreso y convocar a otros posibles interesados para editar una o varias publicaciones colectivas y ofreci compilar una con posibilidades de ser publicada en Cuba para 2015 o 2016. Norberto Fernndez Lamarra propuso, tambin, realizar una convocatoria abierta a los miembros de la seccin, de LASA y otros posibles interesados para enviar artculos con miras a una publicacin
colectiva cuyo tema central est ligado al del Congreso 2014 Democracia y Memoria. Se ofreci, tambin, para organizar un Comit Acadmico de Evaluacin para tal publicacin. Javier Hermo se ofreci para compilar una publicacin colectiva sobre educacin superior y explorar la posibilidad de publicarlo con alguna editorial. Asimismo, se propuso para coordinar la tarea de publicaciones a emprender, con el objetivo de centralizar las iniciativas de publicaciones a elaborar y, en conjunto con los chair de la seccin, hacer las presentaciones correspondientes a LASA para su aprobacin. Por su parte, con respecto a los esfuerzos por integrar nuevos miembros, Cristian Cabalin se ofreci a difundir las actividades y tareas entre la Red de Investigadores Chilenos en Educacin y otros foros similares. En idntico sentido, Fernanda Saforcada, se comprometi a hacer lo propio en el espacio de CLACSO y, especialmente, el Grupo de Trabajo sobre Educacin. Lo mismo plantearon Fernanda Astiz y Mauricio Horn con respecto a redes de ex-alumnos de posgrado de universidades norteamericanas interesados en la educacin latinoamericana. Tambin, Beatriz Calvo y Gladys Barreyro se comprometieron a lo mismo entre las comunidades acadmicas mexicana y brasilea, respectivamente. Todo ello con el fin de contribuir a generar espacios de sinergia con otras redes existentes que trabajen sobre temas ligados a la educacin en Amrica Latina. Con respecto a los fondos de la seccin, se debati el explorar la posibilidad de contar con fondos de sponsoring de editoriales acadmicas, una vez que se logre establecer una poltica continuada de publicaciones. Respecto de la renovacin de autoridades, habida cuenta de que no se haban cumplimentado debidamente los
procedimientos establecidos en el Manual de Secciones se resuelve elegir un nuevo Consejo completo. Se procede a ratificar a Cecilia Pittelli (Universidad de Buenos Aires) y Daniel Schugurensky (Arizona State University) como Co-chairs de la seccin, nombrar a Mauricio Horn (Universidad de Buenos Aires) como Secretario-Tesorero, como vocales a Felipe Prez (Unin Nacional de Historiadores de Cuba), Mara Fernanda Astiz (Canisius College) y Gladys Barreyro (Universidade de So Paulo), as como incorporar la figura de Editor en la persona de Javier Hermo (Universidad de Buenos Aires). Environment Jennifer Horan, Co-chair The members of the Environment Section of LASA held their business meeting on May 30, 2013. At the meeting plans for LASA2014 were developed. These include the selection of the theme for the first of the Sections two sponsored panels: Citizen Participation in Environmental Conflict. In addition the membership decided to continue to hold a workshop session. The Section also created a Best Paper Award. This award is open to all LASA2013 participants who have presented papers on environmental topics and are also members of the Environment Section. The Best Paper Award ($250) will be given at the Section business meeting during LASA2014 in Chicago, Illinois. Ethnicity, Race, and Indigenous Peoples (ERIP) Emiko Saldvar, Chair Elections were held via e-mail prior to the annual meeting. Emiko Saldivar Tanaka (University of California, Santa Barbara) was reelected Chair, and Monica Moreno
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Figueroa (Newcastle University, UK) was elected Secretary-Treasurer. New Executive Council members include Cristhian Tefilo da Silva (Universidade de Braslia) and Lorena Ojeda (Universidad Michoacana). Continuing members are Tracy Devine Guzmn (University of Miami) and Juliet Hooker (University of Texas at Austin). Outgoing members are Luis CarcamoHuechante (University of Texas at Austin), Margo Tamez (University of British Columbia, Okanagan), and Emilio del Valle Escalante (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). The Section business meeting was held during the LASA Congress in Washington, DC. It was attended by 30 people. The agenda included a report on election results and new officers; a report on membership; a budget report; discussion of the upcoming ERIP conference in Oaxaca, October 2013, including that the Virginia Commonwealth University is interested in hosting the next ERIP Conference in fall 2015; discussion of the problem that the amount of travel grants for indigenous people is not enough to cover expenses; discussion of the Section e-mail list, website, and social media maintenance; discussion of the importance of creating a system that allows for continuity and institutional memory for the Section. Also, Marc Becker presented the two volumes of the proceedings of the second ERIP conference in San Diego. It was reported that the Section now has 230 members, sufficient to allow us to invite four panels for next years LASA Congress in Chicago. Decisions were made that a letter should be sent to LASA to address the issue of travel funds for indigenous people; and that if Virginia Commonwealth University was interested in hosting the next ERIP conference it would be accepted.
Activities during the 20122013 term included the call to host the third ERIP conference, the proposal presented by the Department of Anthropology, Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa, and the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales de la Universidad Autnoma de Oaxaca Benito Jurez, and the organization of the upcoming conference. Europe and Latin America Erica Resende, Co-chair At this years Europe and Latin America Section business meeting, held on May 30, 2013, 27 members gathered to 1) receive a review of the activities conducted by the Section in the last year by the co-chairs (current membership, panels organized and sponsored, financial report, etc.; 2) elect new officials to the period of 20132014 (two co-chairs and four council members); and 3) propose ideas and themes for next years Section panel. Newly elected Section officials for the 20132014 term are Anna Ayuso (Fundacin CIDOB, Universidad Autnoma de Barcelona), Co-chair; Erica Resende (Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro), Co-chair; Miriam Saraiva (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro), Christian Ghymers (Institut Catholique des Hautes tudes Commerciales), Lorena Ruano (Centro de Investigacin y Docencia Econmicas), and Sebastin Santander (Universite of Lige), Executive Council members. This years travel award recipients were Miriam Saraiva, Joaquin Roy, Bert Hofman, Roberto Domnguez, and Sebastian Santander. They all presented papers in this years Section panel.
Film Studies Catherine Benamou, Chair The LASA Film Studies Section is devoted to promoting scholarship, exhibitions, and critical public dialogue (through social media) concerning the production, distribution, and circulation of audiovisual texts by and about Latin Americans in various genres and media, from the analog to the digital and electronic. With an aim to addressing the current state of the field, as well as fostering scholarly exchange on issues that affect spheres of media practice as well as media studies, the Section hosted four sessions at this years LASA Congress. A guest keynote address was by Robert P. Stam (NYU): Towards a Lexicon of Radical Aesthetics in Latin America. Response was by Gilberto Blasini (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee). An informal breakfast reception followed, cosponsored by the Brazil Section. A panel entitled The Role of the State and Media: Community Engagement and Audiovisual Representations of a New Social Contract was also organized, with Chair Clara Garavelli (Universidad Autnoma de Madrid) and panelists Toms Crowder-Taraborrelli (Soka University), lvaro Baquero-Piero (University of Alabama), and Kristi M. Wilson (Soka University). A workshop entitled The Role of Film Festivals in Funding, Producing, and Distributing Latin American Film was organized with Chair Tamara Falicov (University of Kansas) and participants Carlos Gutirrez (Cinetropical, New York City), Claudia Ferman (Director, LASA Film Festival, University of Virginia), Beatriz Urraca (Widner University), and Julia Solomonoff (filmmaker, New York City). A second workshop entitled
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Latinoamerican Media Archives and the Social Contract was also offered, chaired by Catherine L. Benamou (University of California, Irvine) and with participants Dona Kercher (Assumption College) and Rielle Navitski (University of California, Berkeley). Food, Agriculture, and Rural Studies Kerry Preibisch, Chair Food, Agriculture, and Rural Studies implemented many activities in 2013. Preceding the Congress, the Section organized a research trip to the United States Department of Agriculture that included discussions with various civil servants, including the Departments chief economist. Twenty-two individuals participated. The Section thanks Steven Zahniser for planning this itinerary. Fifteen members participated in the business meeting. New officers were elected: Clifford Welch (Universidade Federal de So Paulo), Chair; Nashieli Rangel Loera (Universidade Estadual Paulista), Chair-elect; Fina CarpenaMndez (Oregon State University), Secretary-Treasurer; and Diego Pieiro (Universidad de la Repblica de Uruguay), Executive Council member. Diego joins council members Bernardo Manano Fernandes, Eric Rendn Schneir, and Hannah Wittman. The Section sponsored two sessions at the Congress: Territrios do cotidiano: Lutas camponesas e indgenas, polticas pblicas e desenvolvimento and Toward a New Social Contract in Bolivia and Brazil? as well as a reception. Section membership stands at 89. The Section discussed the fund created by generous member contributions to facilitate
the travel of a panelist who later was unable to attend. The fund will be used to subsidize the travel to Chicago of a new scholar in food, agriculture, and rural studies. The organization of our 2014 panels will reflect the Sections new focus, possibly in the areas of global value chains, agrifood systems, or food justice/food deserts. We decided not to hold a reception in 2014 due to the prohibitive pricing of hotel catering. While receptions allow for socializing and enhancing membership, our field trip also fulfills these goals. In Chicago, field trip plans include touring Illinoiss packing houses or the citys Mercantile Exchange. All Congress attendees are welcome to attend. Gender and Feminist Studies Vernica Schild and Constanza Tabbush, Co-chairs The business meeting of the Gender and Feminist Studies Section took place on Thursday, May 30, and was attended by about 40 members. It was coordinated by Constanza Tabbush and Vernica Schild, Co-chairs, and by Elisabeth Friedman, Secretary-Treasurer. We informed the members that we will once again be able to organize four Section panels for LASA2014. We also informed them about the four successful panels we organized for the LASA2013 meeting. The selection process for these panels was open, and as in previous years it was conducted through consultation with the entire membership. We received a healthy number of proposals, though smaller than in previous years, something we attributed to the change in the schedule of LASA Congresses. The members of the board, co-chairs, and treasurer participated in the final selection process using the Sections established criteria. The following panels were selected: Understanding and Combating
Gender Violence: Recent Advances in Latin America (Carmen Diana Deere, organizer); Transnational Parenting across the Americas (Kerry Preibisch, organizer); Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes: Widening the Dialogue (Florence Babb, organizer); and Explorando estrategias de investigacin en torno a la autonoma reproductiva y de ciudadana sexual (Graciela Di Marco, organizer). We also announced this years winners of the Elsa Chaney Essay Award. Following our established practice, we again directed our competition to junior scholars with PhDs completed since 2007 and to students completing their dissertations. The selection committee was comprised of Gabriela Arguedas, Pascha-Bueno Hansen, and Sara Poggio. The winners were First Place, Susan Ellison, for her essay The Conflictual Life of an Industrial Sewing Machine; and Honorary Mention, Abigail Andrews, for her essay For the Love of My Pueblo: Re-thinking Womens Political Engagement in Indigenous Migrant Communities. Sara Poggio and Mara Amelia Viteri reported to the membership on the collection they are preparing with the remainder of funds donated by UNIFEM a few years ago. This collection will contain the works of earlier winners of the Elsa Chaney Award and is scheduled to be published in early 2014. The Section conducted elections to renew the board and the two co-chairs. The results are as follows: Linda Stevenson (West Chester University) and Marta Zambrano (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), Co-chairs (elected for a one-year term); and Pascha Bueno-Hansen (University of Delaware), Gabriela Arguedas (Universidad de Costa Rica), Christina Wolff (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina), Lucia Saldaa (Universidad de Concepcin), Executive
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Council members. Cecilia Santos (University of San Francisco) was elected Treasurer. The option offered by LASA to help with electronic elections was discussed and will be pursued by the incoming co-chairs. Finally, we reported on the successful daylong pre-LASA conference, organized with the Sexualities Section and sponsored by the Washington College of Law Impact Litigation Project and the American University Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, on legal activism as a tool for advancing gender and sexuality rights in the Americas. A region usually known for its Catholic religiosity and patriarchal institutions has expanded gender and sexual rights in an unprecedented manner, as we have seen the enactment of antiviolence and antidiscrimination legislation, gay marriage, and the worlds most progressive gender identity law. The daylong conference Gender, Sexuality and Struggles for Justice in Latin America: Legal, Political and Social Dimensions held at American Universitys Washington College of Law on May 29, 2013, just prior to the 2013 LASA Congress, brought together 82 legal practitioners, scholars, and activists from the Americas, Europe, and the Washington area to discuss and assess the advances made through legal activism. This third collaboration between the Gender and Feminist Studies and the Sexualities Sections was a resounding success. Haiti / Dominican Republic Kiran Jayaram and April Mayes, Co-chairs At the Haiti / Dominican Republic Section business meeting there were eight people present. Due to satisfaction with the performance of Co-chairs April Mayes and
Kiran Jayaram, they will continue as co-chairs for 20132014. In the past year, the Section was made more visible through an e-mail list and Facebook page, and by establishing and awarding the award for best Congress paper as well as an honorable mention. In the coming term, the co-chairs hope to fuse the activities of the Section with the Transnational Hispaniola Collectives activities. Kiran Jayaram received a 2013 LASA travel award. April Yoder received the first annual paper award and Mariana Past received honorable mention for her paper. April Mayes, Kiran Jayaram, and Maja Horn read and evaluated the papers according to preset criteria. The prize was announced at the joint reception with the Latino Studies and Sexualities Studies Sections. Health, Science, and Society By Alexandra Puerto The Health, Science, and Society Section business meeting took place on Thursday, May 30, with six paid members in attendance. Council election nominations confirmed at the business meeting included Pablo Gmez (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Co-chair elect; Oscar Prez (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Treasurer; and board members, Kate Centellas (University of Mississippi), Macarena Ibarra (Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile), and Ral Necochea (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). Since we did not have a quorum at the business meeting, the election will be conducted online. The continuing officers are Rebecca Hester (University of Texas, Medical Branch), Co-chair; and Jos Amador (Miami University), board member. Outgoing officers include
Alexandra Puerto (Occidental College), Co-chair; Pablo Gmez (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Treasurer; and Nielan Barnes (California State University, Long Beach), Marcos Cueto (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos), and Tnia Salgado Pimenta (Fundao Oswaldo Cruz), board members. Beyond the election, discussion centered on membership recruitment, 2014 special session planning, and prioritizing action items for 20142015. This year Health, Science, and Society sponsored a special session panel titled Public Health, Hygiene and Modernization in Latin American Cities. Organized by Macarena Ibarra, the interdisciplinary panel offered historical, architectural, and economic perspectives on urban development in the Southern Cone and Brazil from the 1890s to 1960s. Thirty-two people attended the special session, which included excellent presentations and lively discussion on sanitary and hygienic administration as well as medicine, engineering, and street paving in Santiago; health and eviction programs in the shantytowns of Buenos Aires; and the economics of public health in So Paulo. Ultimately, the session underscored the intersection of public health, the built environment, and sociopolitical power. As per the discussion at the business meeting, three key initiatives will guide the work of Section officers over the next year. In the coming term, the Section will revive the Section Prize Competition for Best Article and Best Book. The general board members will review nominees. Second, the co-chairs will begin compiling an online bibliography of scholarship by Section members. Finally, all council officers will develop a plan for member recruitment to continue growing the Section and raising
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the profile of science studies and the medical humanities at LASA2014. Historia Reciente y Memoria / Recent History and Memory Hillary Hiner, Secretary-Treasurer The recent change to the LASA Congress schedule has meant that Section activities are now programmed on an annual basis, including the preparation and presentation of a Section panel. For this reason, the principal activity of the Recent History and Memory Section in the last year has been the organization of the panel for the 2013 Congress, titled Rethinking Testimonio and Memory in Latin America. The panel includes six Section members from Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico and continues the tradition of presenting innovative, high-quality work at the LASA Congresses. During the 20132014 period, we will undertake two activities: 1) the selection of the Section panel for the 2014 LASA Congress; and 2) the Best Book Contest, last awarded in 2012. We hope that many of our Section members will participate in this contest, either as members of the judging panel or by submitting nominations. To participate, one must have published a book within the last three years (2011, 2012, or 2013) and the subject matter of the book must be relevant to recent history and memory in Latin America. As the Section has accumulated a certain amount of funds since its inception we also propose that the winner of 2014 Best Book Award be allotted a modest cash prize. During the Section business meeting in Washington, DC, several topics were discussed. First, we discussed an area that continues to be of concern, which is our Section membership. Since changing over to the yearly Congress model, we have
noticed that membership revolves around participation in the Congress. There was a noted consensus among members questioning this yearly model, particularly on the part of our Latin American members who must obtain funding to attend LASA Congresses. For this reason, we decided that we would bring this matter up at the meeting of section chairs. Second, we also considered different possibilities to stimulate interest in the section and shore up membership. The Section will propose a workshop for the next LASA Congress in 2014 and will also apply for funding for this workshop. We also discussed the possibility of undertaking virtual activities periodically during the year, such as live-streaming conferences or talks by section members. Third, and finally, we began preparing the 2014 Best Book Contest, considering a few possible deadlines and jury members. From this meeting, three Section members presented themselves for the Best Book Contest jury: Cynthia Milton, Hillary Hiner, and Juan Hernndez. We encourage our members to consider volunteering for this jury. The Executive Council and directorate will make the final decision concerning jury members. In closing, at the Section business meeting it was also necessary to choose new members of the council and directorate. These new authorities were approved via e-mail by the Section in the two weeks following the Congress. The new Section officers are Alejandro Cerda (Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana, Xochimilco, Mexico) and Aldo Marchesi (Universidad de la Repblica, Uruguay), Co-chairs; Samantha Quadrat (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil), Secretary; and Claudio Barrientos (Universidad Diego Portales, Chile), Emilio Crenzel (CONICET, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Desarrollo Econmico y Social), Vania
Markarian (Universidad de la Repblica, Uruguay), Cynthia Milton (Universit de Montral), and Rodrigo S Motta (Brazil), Executive Council members. International Migrations Sara Poggio and Mara Amelia Viteri, Co-chairs Members present at the business meeting included Sara Poggio, Alice Coln Warren, Mara Amelia Viteri, Michaela Reich, Beatriz Padilla, Liliana Surez-Navaz, Alicia Girn, Gail Amient, Jennifer Burrell, Cristian Dona-Reveco , and Norma Chinchilla. The Executive Committee includes Sara Poggio (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) and Mara Amelia Viteri (FLACSO Ecuador), Cochairs; Alice Coln Warren (University of Puerto Rico), Secretary-Treasurer; and Michaela Reich (Organization of American States), Alicia Girn (Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico), Liliana SurezNavaz (Stanford, Universidad Autnoma Madrid), and Beatriz Padilla (Universidade do Minho), Executive Committee members. According to the bylaws, we selected four members to complete the Executive Committee and had an extensive discussion on the mission of the Section, including the ideas of geographic mobility and citizenship. The participants in the meeting also decided that the Section would undertake at least the following activities in its work plan for 20132014: organization of a preconference in Chicago; a newsletter published three times a year; organization of the two panels that the Section is allowed, given its membership; and discussion online with the total membership; the organization of an award to be granted by the Section. The
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discussion would address the criteria for the award, such as considering the best immigration paper in any panel presented to the LASA2014 Congress in Chicago in 2014. The Section decided to organize a daylong or half-day preconference jointly or in collaboration with some universities or organizations in Chicago. The main preference was to combine academic issues and activism on international migration in the presentations and discussions. We discussed the idea of collaborating with any other LASA section that could enrich our work and theirs. Possible topics for the preconference include immigration and education, vulnerable populations that are affected by immigration in countries of origin and destination, employment policies in countries of origin and destination, politics and immigration policies in countries of origin and destination, effects of these policies in specific vulnerable populations, immigrants health rights, struggles to have access to diverse health policies in countries of both origin and destination, and geographic mobility and citizenship. The Section will publish a newsletter three times a year. The newsletter will be coordinated by Michaela Reich but will be the product of all members of the Section. We expect members to be involved in sending news about international migrations across countries (origin and destination) and news about jobs, conferences, books, and events related to international migrations as well as notes of interest. More details will follow. It was decided to discuss with the members the possibility of at least one award to members of the Section. Among the possible awards would be one granted to the best paper on the topic of immigration
sent to LASA2014. More information will follow after discussion (online) with the members. We informed the membership about the two panels sponsored by the Section. (Sponsored panels are assigned according to number of section members.) More information will follow. We decided that of the two sponsored panels, one should be a workshop or a roundtable in order to offer more possibilities for presenters and attendants to fully engage in active discussions. Labor Studies Maggie Gray, Secretary-Treasurer The Labor Studies Section announced the election of Co-chairs Cecilia Senn Gonzlez (CONICET, Universidad de Buenos Aires) and Roxanda Maurizio (Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, CONICET, Universidad de Buenos Aires); and Secretary-Treasurer Maggie Gray (Adelphi University). Our returning Executive Council member is Mariela Quiones Montoro (Universidad de la Repblica, Uruguay, Agencia Nacional de Investigacin, and Comisin Nacional de Investigacin Cientificam Udelar), and our newly elected council members are Marcos Lopez (Bowdoin College), Rodolfo Elbert (Universidad de Buenos Aires, University of Wisconsin), and Brian Finnegan (AFL-CIO). Our Graduate Student Council Co-chair Katherine Maich (University of California, Berkeley) has a new Co-chair, Pablo Prez-Ahumada (University of California, San Diego) and one new member, Joe Balzer (Cornell University), as well as returning member Ricardo Nbrega (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro).
The business meeting was animated, with 25 members attending. Brian Finnegan from the AFL-CIO was our guest to discuss the AFL-CIO International Sections work. He discussed possible collaborations and also described and distributed the recent report Responsibility Outsourced published by the AFL-CIO. We have continued to build our Graduate Student Advisory Board and one of our Section panels featured graduate student paper presenters. The Labor Section gave out one $500 travel grant through a competitive process in which the co-chairs and secretary-treasurer choose a winner. The grant recipient was Pablo Prez-Ahumada, a Chilean student doing his PhD in sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His research interests are class inequality and political change in Latin America, with a particular emphasis on Chile. Latino Studies Deb Vargas and Mark OvermyerVelzquez, Co-chairs; Carmen Lamas, Secretary; and Isabel Porras, Graduate Student Representative The Latino/a Studies Section of LASA continues to provide an important forum for scholars and activists. The Section sponsored three panels at the 2013 DC Congress and presented a total of three awards for best book, best article, and best dissertation. The Section concluded the year with 158 members, qualifying it for three sponsored sessions at LASA2014. We welcomed four new council members for the 20132014 academic year: Carlos Decena (Rutgers) and Kirstie Dorr (University of California, San Diego) are Co-chairs elect; Virginia Arreola (Indiana University), Secretary-elect; Alexandra Gonzenbach (University of Miami) is Graduate Student Representative-elect.
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We had an impressive turnout with more than 90 scholars attending the Section reception arranged in collaboration with the Haiti / Dominican Republic and Sexualities Studies Sections. The recipient of the Book Award was Ramn H. Rivera-Servera for Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics (University of Michigan Press, 2012). An Honorable Mention went to Mrida M. Ra for A Grounded Identidad: Making New Lives in Chicagos Puerto Rican Neighborhoods (Oxford University Press, 2012). Another Honorable Mention went to Deborah R. Vargas for Dissonant Divas in Chicana Music: The Limits of La Onda (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). The Book Award Committee consisted of Carlos Decena (Chair), Gina Prez, and Laura Gutirrez. The winner for Best Article was Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants, by Cecilia Menjvar and Leisy Abrego, published in American Journal of Sociology (2012). An Honorable Mention went to Blacks May Be Second Class, but They Cant Make Them Leave: Mexican Racial Formation and Immigrant Status in Winston-Salem by Jennifer A. Jones, published in Latino Studies (2012). The Article Award Committee consisted of Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof (Chair), Emir Estrada, and Israel Reyes. The Dissertation Award winner was Johana Londoo (New York University) for Aesthetic Belonging: The Latinization of Cities, Urban Design and the Limits of the Barrio. An Honorable Mention went to Lorena Alvarado (University of California, Riverside) for Corporealities of Feeling: Mexican Sentimiento and Gender Politics. The Dissertation Award Committee
included Carmen Lamas (Chair), Laura Lomas, and Yolanda Padilla. The Section panels included Theorizing Latina/o Studies: Object, Method, and Field, organized by Carmen E. Lamas and chaired by Deb Vargas; and Divergences/ Traces/Convergences: Movements across Indigenous Studies and Latino Studies, chaired by Alicia Ivonne Estrada. There was also a roundtable entitled Latina/o Coalitions with Carmen Lamas as Chair. Mass Media and Popular Culture Silvia Kurlat Ares, Chair The main activity of the Mass Media and Popular Culture Section this year was to organize the Section and to establish a council and a membership. In Washington the Section held its first business meeting and elections. The lineup of the current board is as follows: Silvia Kurlat Ares (independent researcher), Chair; Matthew Bush (Lehigh University), Treasurer; Pedro Pablo Porbn (Bowling Green State University), Google Group Communication Officer; Giancarlo Stagnaro (Tulane University), Facebook Communication Officer; and Pablo Alabarces (Universidad de Buenos Aires) and Hernn Garca (Wayne State University), members of the Executive Council. At the first meeting it was agreed that for next year the Sections goals will be to generate a Google group and a Facebook page (under construction). Over the summer the section will send a call for papers in order to organize its activities for LASA2014. The Section is planning to organize at least one roundtable on current theoretical issues on popular culture and is exploring the possibility of organizing a one-day preconference.
Mexico Nohemy Solrzano-Thompson and Mara Eugenia Valds Vega, Co-chairs Mexico Section officers present at the business meeting included Co-chairs Nohemy Solrzano-Thompson (Whitman College) and Mara Eugenia Valds Vega (Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa), and Executive Council members Wil Pansters (Utrecht University) and Ignacio M. Snchez Prado (Washington University in Saint Louis). Section members in attendance numbered 25 so a quorum was not achieved. Each Mexico Section Prize recipient was awarded US$250 (in the case of the coauthored essay each author will receive $125). The Best PhD Dissertation recipient was Steven Samford, High-Road Development in Low-Tech Industry: Policymakers, Producer Networks, and the Co-production of Innovation in the Mexican Ceramics Sector (University of New Mexico, 2012). The Prize Committee consisted of Kevin Middlebrook (University College London), Chair, Armando Garca (University of Pittsburgh), and Luca Melgar (Instituto Tecnolgico Autnomo de Mxico). The Best Humanities Essay awardee was Carolina Castellanos Gonella, El discurso potico en Noticias del imperio: El sujeto lrico y la historia, published in Literatura Mexicana (2012). The Prize Committee included Nohemy Solrzano-Thompson (Whitman College), Chair, Hctor Jaimes (North Carolina State University), Elvira Snchez-Blake (Michigan State University), and Mara Socorro Tabuenca Crdoba (University of Texas, El Paso). The Best Social Science Essay awardees were Sarah Bowen and Marie Sarita Gaytn, The Paradox of Protection: National Identity, Global Commodity Chains, and the Tequila Industry, published in Social Problems
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(2012). The Prize Committee consisted of Ted Beatty (University of Notre Dame), Chair, Sandra Kuntz Ficker (El Colegio de Mxico), Jaime Pensado (University of Notre Dame), and Mara Eugenia Valds Vega (Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa). The Best Humanities Book recipient was Steven Bunker, Creating Mexican Consumer Culture in the Age of Porfirio Daz (University of New Mexico Press, 2012). The Prize Committee included Ignacio M. Snchez Prado (Washington University in Saint Louis), Chair, Beth E. Jorgensen (University of Rochester), Andrew Paxman (Millsaps College), and Oswaldo Zavala (City University of New York). The Best Social Science Book author was Molly Doane, Stealing Shining Rivers: Agrarian Conflict, Market Logic, and Conservation in a Mexican Forest (University of Arizona Press, 2012). The Prize Committee included Nohemy Solrzano-Thompson (Whitman College), Chair, Robert W. Blake (Michigan State University), Leonardo FigueroaHelland (Westminster College), and Mara Teresa Vzquez Castillo (Universidad Autnoma de Ciudad Jurez). In June 2012, the membership of the Mexico Section, with approval of over two-thirds of the membership, resolved to endorse the following statement denouncing the continued violence and intimidation of journalists and public intellectuals. The letter was sent to several governmental entities, universities and other educational institutions, and members of the press. The letter was also posted on the Mexico Section website. The full text appears below. 5 de junio 2012 Carta abierta a los Gobiernos Estatales, al Gobierno Federal, y a los medios de comunicacin
Los miembros de la Seccin Mxico de la Asociacin de Estudios Latinoamericanos (LASA) apoyan el siguiente mensaje denunciando la violencia contra los periodistas e intelectuales pblicos: En Mxico, la actividad de periodistas y de intelectuales pblicos est en riesgo en varios estados del pas. Los derechos de expresin y de informacin estn siendo violentados sistemticamente, sea por la presin de las autoridades locales, sea por el crimen organizado. El alarmante nmero de periodistas asesinados y desaparecidos en la ltima dcada, sin contar a los desplazados por amenazas, habla de una crisis sin precedentes en el acceso y uso de los medios de comunicacin y de la violacin sistemtica de los derechos humanos de los comunicadores. Destacan por el alto riesgo para la seguridad de los periodistas los estados de Tamaulipas,Veracruz, Sinaloa y Chihuahua, a cuyas autoridades exigimos que garanticen la vida y el trabajo de los comunicadores y que se detengan las agresiones y amenazas que periodistas e intelectuales pblicos estn sufriendo en el ejercicio de su indispensable labor crtica. No puede haber una verdadera democracia sin respeto a los derechos fundamentales y sin garantas a la crtica y al debate pblico. The Mexico Section sponsored four panels for the 2013 Congress: 1) Mxico en el Siglo XXI: Aproximaciones interdisciplinarias, tericas, y pedaggicas en la investigacin y enseanza superior de los estudios mexicanos, workshop organized and chaired by Nohemy Solrzano-Thompson; 2) Modernidad prista: Culture and Citizenship in MidCentury Mexico, panel organized and
chaired by Ignacio M. Snchez Prado; 3) Mexican Indigenous Migrants: Experiences of Empowerment and Civic Engagement, panel organized and chaired by Alexandra Delano; and 4) The Intersections of Gender Violence in Mexico, panel organized by Lynn M. Stephen and chaired by Shannon Speed. At the Section business meeting a proposed section travel grant was discussed. At the 2012 business meeting, the membership of the Section suggested the creation of a travel grant for graduate students currently enrolled in a Mexican university that would assist them financially to present at LASA. A proposal was developed by the co-chairs and presented to the membership at the 2013 business meeting for discussion; it will be voted by the membership online after the Congress. After the initial discussion of the proposal, the membership present amended the proposal to be for two travel grants (each US$450) instead of the original three grants of US$300 each. The Section members will be voting on the institution of this travel award electronically after the Congress as we did not have a quorum present at the business meeting. Open council positions include the two chairs and six council members. We received only one slate for the co-chair positions, so this was approved by the membership present at the business meeting. As we also received six candidates for the three council memberships, we have asked LASA to help us set up the election. An update will be sent after the election is finished notifying the Section of its results. Currently the two Mexico Section e-mail listsone for official communication and another one for discussion and posting of relevant information (members can opt out
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of being part of the discussion list)are hosted at Whitman College, but as Nohemy Solrzano-Thompson has accepted a position at Westminster College effective July 1, the lists will relocate to another server. The membership at the business meeting discussed this issue and decided that the official Section list will be hosted via Gmail lists (in order to also allow for future transferability of the list to new council officers) and that a discussion list would also be set up (either via Facebook or via another platform, to be chosen by membership vote after the Congress); joining this discussion list would be optional for Section members. The members present discussed our impressions of the new LASA yearly cycle. The majority of those present expressed the desire to return to the original 18-month cycle for a variety of reasons, or to at least consider the possibility of hosting the conference in the fall so as to not conflict with fieldwork commitments and to avoid being scheduled at the end of the fiscal year for many U.S.-based institutions (which means that travel and conference funds are often exhausted by then). The membership also wished for more clarity from LASA about the organizations long-term planning, and if part of the reason for the change was to deliberately limit the size of the Congress. The 20132014 incoming Section co-chairs will report to LASA the memberships questions and comments at the section chairs meeting on Saturday afternoon. We also discussed the drop in Section membership since last year (the current membership is 337; it was 519 in 2012 and 481 in 2011). We will continue our efforts to increase our membership, especially to recruit more members currently in Mexico. We also discussed the experiences of several Section members based in Mexico whose
visa process was delayed by the U.S. Embassy because of the need (according to the embassy) for further investigationsa tactic that effectively barred members from coming to the Congress. We are particularly concerned as the next three LASA Congresses are to be held in the United States and we foresee the continuation of these practices that are targeting scholars, public intellectuals, and activists. Peru Elena lvarez, Chair The business meeting was called to order with 49 members in attendance. The first item in the agenda was to award the Life Achievement Award to prominent anthropologist Jose Matos Mar via Skype. Richard Webb read the speech prepared by Enrique Mayer in which many of Matoss professional achievements were highlighted, and Peter Klaren also read a statement about Matoss academic successes. The main activities were selecting panels for the Washington Congress, choosing the Life Achievement awardee, managing the Book and Article Awards that were (chaired by Rosemary Thorp), developing a quarterly bulletin, creating content for the new website, activating a Friends of Peru Section Facebook account (Fabiola Bazo), and providing travel grants to three young professionals. In the 2012 Congress, there was a discussion to organize a LASA Peru Section conference in Peru. Elena lvarez met with several organizations in Lima, including Catholic University, San Martin de Porres University, and Instituto de Estudios Peruanos to discuss the alternatives available for this event. Unfortunately, due
to personal reasons lvarez was unable to follow up with this process. The Section had 188 members and was able to collect $2017.42 from member donations to the Peru Travel Fund. The Section account was used to purchase an Internet portable device (Verizon 4GLTE mobile hotspot) and a one-month Internet account. This device made possible the Skype communications for several sessions at the Congress. The Section received three applications for travel grants. The Selection Committee made up of Elena lvarez, Enrique Mayer, and Elena Sabogal selected three grantees based on merit and the criteria agreed upon during the Peru Section business meeting at LASA2010. Each candidate was required to present a budget and each received a partial grant to cover travel and other expenses. Grantees included Mara del Rosario Rodrguez Jaime, Gabriel Ramn Joffr, and Erika Busse. Richard Webb donated 15 copies of his recent book Conexin y despegue rural (2013), and the sale yielded $300, which was allocated as $150 to the travel fund and the rest for office materials, mailing, and photocopying. The Flora Tristan Book Award was shared by Carlos Contreras, La economa pblica en el Per despus del guano y del salitre (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2012); and Rachel OToole, Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). The Jos Mara Arguedas Essay Award went to Chuck Walker, When Fear Rather Than Reason Dominates: Priests Behind the Lines in the Tupac Amaru Rebellion (178083), in Facing Fear: The History of
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an Emotion in Global Perspective, edited by Michael Laffan and Max Weiss (Princeton University Press, 2012). Highly Commended went to Anne Lambright, Dead Body Politics: Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani at Perus Truth Commission, in Imagining Human Rights in TwentyFirst Century Theater: Global Perspectives, edited by Florian N. Becker, Paola S. Hernndez, and Brenda Werth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). The Peru Section organized three panels for LASA2013: Ollanta Humalas Peru, Parts I and II, organized by Elena lvarez, and CVR+10: Truth, Justice and Memory in Post-conflict Peru, organized by Jo Marie Burt. There was a heated discussion about the replacement of the current officers. Jo Marie Burt was selected as one of the candidates to replace Elena lvarez, and Tracy Devine Guzmn suggested that we contact all members to have more candidates available to replace all Section members and to ensure a democratic process. Elena lvarez (Business and Professional Women, Inc.) will chair for an additional term; Co-chair Iliana M. Carrasco-Daz (CIES, Consorcio de Investigacin Econmica y Social) was supposed to be replaced by Aldo Panfichi, who unfortunately was not a Peru Section member. Iliana will continue as Co-chair until a new person is elected through an online election to be performed during the fall of this year. Angelina Cotler (University of Illinois), Secretary, and Enrique Mayer (Yale University), Treasurer, will also continue until they are replaced by new officers in the upcoming online election. The only officer replaced at the business meeting was Laura Balbuena Gonzlez (Butler University), replaced by Amrico Mendoza Mori (University of Miami), who will continue to serve as a
technical advisor for the Section. Elena Sabogal (William Paterson University) and Tracy Devine Guzmn (University of Miami) are continuing. Once new elections are held, and to ensure continuity for the Section, they will work with lvarez until the Chicago 2014 Congress. David Scott Palmer (Boston University) and Isabelle Lausent-Herrera (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/CNRS, Centre de Documentation sur les Amriques/CREDA), a French historian affiliated with CNRSCREDA, will chair the Book and Article Awards of the Section and may revise the current guidelines. Political Institutions Tulia G. Falleti, Chair The Political Institutions Section is closing the academic year with 126 members (a slight decrease over a year ago, when the Section had 132 members in July 2012). The 2013 Donna Lee Van Cott Award for the best book on political institutions published in the year 2012 was earned by Edward L. Gibson of Northwestern University for his book Boundary Control: Subnational Authoritarianism in Federal Democracies (Cambridge University Press, 2012). The members of the book award committee were Benn R. Schneider (Chair), Jana Morgan, and Jennifer McCoy. The members of the committee wrote about the selected book: In Boundary Control, Gibson conducts meticulous comparative analysis examining how a countrys territorial regime shapes the formation, maintenance, and collapse of subnational authoritarianism. In a surprising but fruitful analytical move, he explores these processes not only in late
twentieth-century Argentina and Mexico but also in the postCivil War United States. The analysis is based on careful case studies of two separate periods in the U.S. Solid South in the late nineteenth century as well as several Argentine and Mexican states during these countries eras of democratization. Through these comparisons, Gibson demonstrates the ways in which the structure of the territorial regime either empowers boundary closers in the provincial hegemonic party who seek to maintain the autonomy of their authoritarian enclaves, or emboldens boundary openers like opposition parties and national actors who wish to dismantle provincial authoritarianism. Using a wide variety of sources including author interviews, news reports, and secondary sources, Gibson builds a strong argument that subnational authoritarianism is possible when provincial hegemons successfully insulate themselves from democratizing pressures that might emanate from the central government, electoral competitors, or civic entities. Gibsons empirical insights into the persistence of authoritarian enclaves shine a light on the places that frequently remain in the shadows, both within Latin America and in one of the worlds oldest democracies. The LAPIS Best Paper Award for a paper presented at the 2012 Congress was earned by Brian Wampler and Mike Touchton, from Boise State University, for their paper: Improving Social Well-Being through New Democratic Institutions. The members of the Best Paper Award Committee were Jorge Gordin (Chair), Moira MacKinnon, and Noam Lupu. They wrote about the selected paper: The quality of all nominated papers was very high and selecting a winner was not an easy choice.
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We opted for this paper based on the authors attempt to wrestle with an important normative question through innovative institutional and empirical analysis. The Political Institutions Section awarded two travel grants to partially fund travel to participate in the 2013 LASA Congress. The travel grantees were Laura Suaznabar Terrazas (Observatorio del Racismo de Bolivia, Fundacin de la Cordillera, La Paz, Bolivia) and Carlos Mascareo Quintana (Centro de Estudios del Desarrollo, Universidad Central de Venezuela). Tulia Falleti and Miguel Centellas formed the committee that evaluated the Sections travel grant applications. During the LASA2013 Section business meeting, former council member Felipe Botero (Universidad de los Andes, Bogot, Colombia) was elected as the new Section Chair of the Section. Former chair Tulia Falleti (University of Pennsylvania) will become the Secretary-Treasurer. Four members were elected to the Executive Council: Kirk Hawkins (Brigham Young University), Moira Mackinnon (Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina), Ral Sanchz Urribarri (La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia), and Julieta Surez-Cao (Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile). The new officers assume their positions as of June 1, 2013. Scholarly Research and Resources Sarah A. Buck Kachaluba, Chair Seven people attended the business meeting on Thursday, May 30, 7:00 p.m.8:45 p.m. Sarah Buck Kachaluba (Secretary-Treasurer, convening in the absence of Gayle Williams, Chair) shared that there were currently 34 members (less than the 50 required to constitute a section, putting the
Scholarly Research and Resources Section on probation) and also shared the status of the treasury, which those present decided to reserve for future initiatives to recruit more members and reinstate our presence in LASA. Those present discussed several ways to assert our presence in LASA, including organizing panels for 2014 on open access in North American and Latin American contexts (an idea generated by Dominique Babini from CLACSO and Philip Oxhorn, Editor of LARR, during the 2013 Preconference Meeting on Journals and Monographs), digital humanities, and democracy and memory archives, and the possibility of organizing a THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) for LASA2015. Section elections are currently going on, to be completed by the end of September. Since the business meeting, Section members have been involved in submitting proposals for panels on open access and digital humanities projects in Latin American studies. The Section is currently strategizing about ways to recruit more members. The Section did not award any prizes or travel awards. Sexualities Studies Yolanda Martnez-San Miguel and Ben Sifuentes-Juregui, Co-chairs, and Guillermo de los Reyes, Secretary-Treasurer This year the Sexualities Studies Section cosponsored with the Gender and Feminist Studies Section a daylong preconference entitled Gender, Sexuality and Struggles for Justice in Latin America: Legal, Political and Social Dimensions at the American
University Washington College of Law on May 29. Convened by both sections and sponsored by the American University Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and the Impact Litigation Project at American University Washington College of Law, this third co-organized preconference brought together scholars, activists, and legal practitioners from across the hemisphere to discuss questions raised by Latin Americas transformations of gender and sexuality rights. Particular attention was given to the possibilities and limitations of legal activism for the pursuit of social justice and equity issues. Attendance at the conference fluctuated between 45 and 60 persons throughout the day, and the conference concluded with a two-hour open session that allowed for discussions and conversations among participants and the audience. The Sexualities Studies Section had two panels at the conference in Washington, DC: Trans Studies: Interrogating Heteroand Homonormativity, and Queer Generations: A Critical Dialogue. Both panels were very well attended and excellent discussions took place. Aside from the Section-organized sessions, ten additional panels were devoted to Sexualities Studies. Attendance and discussions in all of these sessions were very engaging. At the business meeting 20 members were present. They evaluated the preconference and decided that the Section would like to continue the tradition of organizing a preconference for next year. Given that LASA2014 will be held in Chicago, members thought that it would be quite productive to team up with other sections interested in questions of migration. Although at present we have 86 members (and have been guaranteed two Section panels for LASA2014), during the business
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meeting members discussed the fact that the Section needs to recruit more members in order to have more panels. The Sexualities Studies Section has been very successful using its Facebook page to keep its 335 followers informed of activities. We will use our Facebook page to make regular calls to our followers to join LASA and become members of our Section. Members elected the new Board of Directors for the next cycle: Guillermo de los Reyes (University of Houston) and Joseph Pierce (SUNY Stony Brook) were elected as Co-chairs. The position of secretary-treasurer remains vacant. In addition, members discussed the Sections two awards which recognize outstanding scholarship on gender, queer, and LGBT: the Sylvia Molloy Award for the Best Academic Essay in the Humanities and the Carlos Monsivis Award for the Best Academic Essay in the Social Sciences. The award will be given out again next year in Chicago. Horacio Sivori and Ben Sifuentes-Juregui will serve as the Awards Committee chairs. Additionally, at the business meeting Section members discussed the problem of being members of multiple sections (Gender and Feminist Studies, Latino Studies, and many others), and asked if there was a way of having two separate time slots for business meetings, so that they may contribute more easily to the work of other sections and promote their interdisciplinary work. Finally, the Sexualities Studies Section and Latino Studies Section cosponsored a cash bar. The Haiti / Dominican Republic Studies Section was invited. The Sexualities Studies Section got funding from GLQ and Duke University Press to pay for their share of expenses up to $500. The cash bar was
a huge success, bringing together over 150 LASA participants. Southern Cone Studies Luis E. Crcamo-Huechante, Chair, and Leila Gmez, Treasurer At the 2013 LASA Congress in Washington, DC, the Southern Cone Studies Section held several panels which contributed to its growing visibility. The panel Nuevos desafos para los estudios indgenas en el Wallmapu/Cono Sur brought together Mapuche researchers from Chile and colleagues from Chile and the United States. Three Mapuche panelists, members of the Comunidad de Historia Mapuche, participated: Susana Huenul Colicoy, Herson Huinca Piutrin, and Maribel Mora Curriao, along with Chilean scholar Magda Seplveda (Universidad Catlica de Chile). A second part of the discussion then took place with the participation of scholars Charles Hale (University of Texas at Austin), Patricia Richards (University of Georgia), and Andrs Prieto (University of Colorado at Boulder). As a member of the Comunidad de Historia Mapuche, Luis CrcamoHuechante (University of Texas at Austin) joined this roundtable and also was in charge of moderating and coordinating both panels. In the first panel, around 35 people were in the audience, and approximately 45 people attended the afternoon session of discussion on the status of indigenous studies in the Southern Cone of Latin America. The Section also sponsored a second successful event, a workshop on El siglo XIX: Nuevas aproximaciones desde el Cono Sur. This panel featured presentations by Juan Poblete (University of California, Santa Cruz), William Acree (Washington University), Abril Trigo (Ohio
State University), Claudia Torre (Universidad de San Andrs), and Alejandra Laera (Universidad de Buenos Aires and CONICET). Leila Gmez (University of Colorado at Boulder) organized and conducted this workshop, which 30 people attended. At the Sections business meeting, with 40 members in attendance, Chair Luis Crcamo-Huechante and Treasurer Leila Gmez presented an account of the multiple initiatives that the Section has set in motion in 2012 and in the spring of 2013, such as the continuous enrollment of new members, the institutionalization of the website, and the establishment of the Southern Cone Studies Section Book Prize in both the Humanities and Social Sciences. As an important part of the business meeting, the chair and the treasurer conducted the award ceremony for the Southern Cone Studies Book Prizes. In the Humanities, the Book Prize was given to William Acree (Washington University) for Everyday Reading: Print Culture and Collective Identity in the Ro de la Plata, 17801910 (Vanderbilt University Press, 2011), with a Special Recognition to Marta Sierra (Kenyon College) for Gendered Spaces in Argentine Womens Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). In the Social Sciences, the Book Prize was awarded to Eduardo Elena for Dignifying Argentina: Peronism, Citizenship, and Mass Consumption (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011). The members of the Humanities jury were Graciela Montaldo, Gabriel Giorgi, and Mnica Szurmuk; the members of the Social Sciences jury were Silvio Waisbord, Alex Borucki, and Vania Markarian. In spring 2013, the Section held the election of its new directors; this was organized by colleagues Angel Tuninetti (West Virginia University) and Marta Sierra. In this
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context, as a transition into the second part of the business meeting in Washington, DC, the outgoing chair of the Section invited Leila Gmez to lead the final part of the meeting as the new chair. The new treasurer was also announced: Gloria Medina-Sancho (California State University, Fresno). For the upcoming period, Katherine Karr-Cornejo (Whitworth University) will continue serving as the webmaster of the Section. The new chair and the attendees discussed the main goals and plans for the upcoming period: the creation of a revista for the Section; the establishment of a Facebook page; and a much more effective incorporation of graduate students, among many other new plans. The major goal is to continue expanding the dialogues and initiatives begun in this thriving period of the Section. Venezuelan Studies Alejandro Velasco, Secretary-Treasurer, and Margarita Lpez Maya, Chair The Section business meeting was held on Thursday, May 30, 2013. Thirty-seven members attended. Section Chair Margarita Lpez Maya presided. The meeting began with a reminder that in lieu of a reception, Section member Dr. Angelo Rivero Santos, charg daffaires at the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Washington, would host a formal function in honor of the Venezuelan Studies Section at the embassy grounds on Friday evening. All were invited. (Nearly 50 people attended the embassy reception on Friday, including some members not present at the business meeting. Venezuelan hors doeuvres and drinks were served in a friendly atmosphere.)
Chair Lpez Maya proceeded with the formal agenda, first by announcing the three panels that won Section sponsorship: Robert Samet and Naomi Schiller, Revisiting the Magical State with the Future in Question: In Memory of Fernando Coronil; Paula Vsquez Lezama, Construcciones de Venezuela: Inteligibilidad acadmica y discursos de la modernidad; and Daniel Hellinger, The Venezuelan 20122013 Elections: Context, Campaign, Conduct and Consequences. A committee comprised of Elizabeth Nichols, Toms Straka, and Daniel Hellinger selected the three panels from nine proposals. The chair thanked the committee for their work. Lpez Maya informed the meeting that as of May 20 the Section had 159 members, 13 fewer than the previous year but still a good amount given financial difficulties facing Venezuela-based scholars and LASAs new annual model. The figure means that the Section will again be able to sponsor three panels for LASA2014. Members were encouraged to submit their panel proposals as soon as possible both to be considered for section sponsorship and to generate a larger, more diverse pool from which to select. A question was raised about why there were so few Venezuela-focused humanities panels at the conference, to which the chair replied that more proposals were needed and urged humanities scholars to submit more panel ideas. The chair announced that the special fund created the previous year with monies from Open Society Foundations, and designed specifically to help Venezuela-based scholars defray the costs of attending LASA, would not continue. Six of ten of those who were awarded grants did not actually travel to LASA San Francisco, creating logistical problems for both LASA and Open Society that meant, eventually,
forfeiting those resources. Going forward, LASA will return to the normal procedure of awarding travel grants from the general fund, without formal preferences for Venezuela-based scholars. However, LASA agreed to offer some priority to Venezuelans, although whether that happened for LASA Washington is unknown. The chair will follow up with former chair David Smilde, who arranged the funds through Open Society, and will take up the issue again with LASA should financial pressures for Venezuela-based scholars grow more acute. A question was raised about soliciting funds from Venezuelan government sources to help with the LASA Venezuela meeting; the chair expressed concern about what this would mean for editorial content. Another question was raised about joining other sections in calling for LASA to reconsider the move to an annual meeting schedule. Some argued that it was too soon to make a judgment. Others suggested that holding the meeting yearly, and mainly in the United States, negatively affected members based in Latin America. The chair agreed to ask about the issue at the section chairs meeting and to follow up with the Venezuelan Studies Section. Next, the chair asked Alejandro Velasco to announce the results of a yearlong project to create a Section Book Award. At LASA San Francisco Section members had agreed to name this award after Fernando Coronil. However, criteria, scope, and logistics remained pending. A committee consisting of Velasco, Daniel Hellinger, and Elizabeth Nichols designed the award description, and after distributing copies to members of the Section, the Fernando Coronil Book Award was approved as a biannual Section award given to the most outstanding book on Venezuela, in English or Spanish, in the humanities or social sciences, published in
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the previous two years. The first Coronil Award will be announced at LASA2014. The chair asked about eligibility criteria for the book award, and why edited collections were ineligible. How to disburse the monetary award (LASA membership) between editors and contributors, as well as double-dipping by chapter authors vying in both the book category and the article category, make edited collections difficult to consider for a book award. However, it was stressed that the Section could revisit criteria and eligibility in the future, but for now the award should proceed as drafted. Along with approving the Fernando Coronil Book Award, the Section also agreed to alternate between a book award and article awards every other year, both to increase the pool of nominated works by drawing on two years rather than one year of materials, and to make the eventual competition more selective. The chair then called on representatives from the two award committees to honor the recipients of the Section awards for best article. Luis Duno-Gottberg presented the award for Best Article in the Humanities to Natalie Bouzaglo for her paper Immaterial Discomforts: Antonieta Sosa, from the Body to the Void. Alejandro Velasco, speaking on behalf of the Committee for Best Article in the Social Sciences, presented awards to two papers: to Mara Pilar Garca-Guadilla for Poder popular y organizaciones comunitarias en Venezuela: Alcances y lmites de la democracia directa en el ciclo comunal; and Jos Manuel Puente for Renta y revolucin: La economa poltica de Venezuela durante el gobierno de Hugo Chvez. All three authors were present and received applause from the audience. Toms Straka reported on the status of LASA Venezuela, now in its third session.
LASA members in Venezuela unable to attend the main LASA meeting, or scholars who presented papers on Venezuela at LASA Washington, are welcome to attend an encore conference in Caracas and present their work locally. This years event will be hosted at the Universidad Catlica Andrs Bello. Straka reported that 43 papers, widely representative, are scheduled to be presented over two days in nonconcurrent panels, with the program already announced. Straka is leading a team of 12 people in organizing the conference logistics, including offering limited housing to panelists from the interior. Members stressed that the event is more than a conference and serves to bring to Venezuela knowledge about the country generated outside Venezuela, which often stays outside Venezuela. It is also an opportunity for students to meet in person Venezuelanists whose work they have read. The chair encouraged all members to attend and to help spread word of the event. The chair announced the results of Section elections hosted by LASA. Thirty-six members voted, with the results listed below. For their dedicated service, the chair heartily thanked outgoing council members Daniel Hellinger, Elizabeth Nichols, Kim Morse, Jun Ishibashi, Angel lvarez, and Sujatha Fernandes, and offered a special note of thanks to the Section founders present for passing the torch to a council entirely comprised of Venezuelans for the first time. Open floor: Mara Pilar Garca-Guadilla voiced an ongoing grievance that Venezuela-themed panels not be scheduled concurrently in LASA meetings so as to avoid competition and promote greater attendance. She asked when would be a good time to review the program and solicit changes. The chair and secretary
noted they would follow up on this with LASA. Several members voiced a desire to make the Sections online presence more robust, for instance by using social media tools. Iaki Sagarzazu and Jos Manuel Puente volunteered to form part of an ad hoc committee to examine the issue and generate proposals to the Executive Council. The meeting ended with new members providing brief introductions of themselves and their work. The meeting then adjourned. Nominations were solicited via the Section e-mail list. Elections were conducted online and hosted by LASA. Margarita Lpez Maya was chosen as Chair for 20132014 and Alejandro Velasco as SecretaryTreasurer for 20132015. Newly elected members of council, through 2015, are Mara Pilar Garca-Guadilla, Iaki Sagarzazu, Yorelis Acosta, Javier Guerrero, and Vicente Lecuna. Continuing members through 2014 are Toms Straka, Iraida Casique, Ral Snchez Urribarri, and Tim Gill. Visual Culture Ernesto Capello, Chair The Section Governing Council for 20132014 consists of Ernesto Capello, Chair; Kevin Coleman, Secretary-Treasurer; and members Lisa Blackmore (Birkbeck College, UK), Andrea Cerda (Leiden University), Jordana Dym (Skidmore College), Alison Fraunhar (Saint Xavier University), Miriam Haddu (University of London), Jessica Stites Mor (University of British Columbia, Okanagan), and Scott Weintraub (University of New Hampshire). The Visual Culture Section held its inaugural meeting on May 30, 2013, in Washington, DC. Twenty members of the Section were present. Ernesto Capello
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Voluntary Support
by Sandy Klinzing
announced the results of online council elections that month. Capello also reported that the Section had signed up 86 members during its first year of existence and would therefore be allotted two panels at the LASA2014 Congress in Chicago. A discussion followed concerning how to apportion these. The Acting Council submitted a recommendation that one should be a roundtable concerning the state of the field, perhaps answering the question, What Is Latin American Visual Culture? and one should be a panel proposed by the general membership. After discussion, it was agreed that in our inaugural year it would be preferable to have two roundtables devoted to theoretical concerns, with the council soliciting suggestions for speakers from the membership. We also resolved to set up a Planning Committee for the Chicago conference in order to help identify sites, exhibits, and galleries of interest to members and perhaps hold a preconference event. Finally, the Section established goals for continued outreach and a web presence in the coming year, and the long-term goals of establishing prizes for Latin American Visual Cultures Studies and partnering with local institutions to create curatorial possibilities at future conferences, perhaps beginning with Puerto Rico in 2015.
Since our last report to you in the Fall 2012 LASA Forum, nearly 800 individual gifts have been received in support of the various LASA funds. The Association is extremely grateful for the generous support of the members, foundations, and friends who make it possible for LASA to continue to advance its mission. Support for any of the LASA funds helps to ensure that more scholars will be able to participate in the annual Congress, regardless of financial constraints. For the most recent Congress, LASA2013, 275 travel grantees benefitted from grants ranging from $600 to $1000. A total of $269,822 was available, derived from LASA Endowment proceeds ($139,007) plus $10,000 from Operations, support contributed by several foundations ($106,221), and direct contributions to the LASA Travel Fund ($7284), the Student Fund ($4,326), and the Indigenous and Afro-descendant Fund ($3,984.) Thanks to a multiyear grant from the Fundacin Avina, the 2013 recipient of the Kalman Silvert Award, Peter H. Smith, received a LASA Life Membership. The third grant to a Mexican graduate student in the final phase of his doctoral research in Mexican history was presented thanks to the donors to the Charles A. Hale Fund for Mexican History, an endowed fund. This Congress also saw the second presentation of the recently established Luciano Tomassini Award in International Relations, funded by an endowment created by the Ford Foundation. The Martin Diskin Lectureship is supported by both LASA and Oxfam America, the latter also instrumental in establishing an endowed fund for the Diskin Dissertation Fellowship Award. LASA Life Memberships not only serve as tangible evidence of the value placed on membership in the Association, they
provide direct support for the LASA Endowment, helping to assure Congress travel grant support for generations of Latin Americanists to come. There are currently 94 Life Members; 81 of these made this major commitment to LASA, and 13 received Honorary Life Memberships as recipients of the Kalman Silvert Award. The two most recent are Peter H. Smith (2013 Kalman Silvert Award) and Elaine Carey (St. Johns University). Our most sincere thanks to all Life Members for their generosity. With grateful thanks we acknowledge the following donors for their contributions to any of the LASA funds since our last report. Note that in the interest of conserving space donor names are printed only once, regardless of the number of contributions or gifts to multiple funds. Many donors frequently designate more than one fund for their support and add a gift with each membership renewal or Congress registration. Thank you! Would you like to discuss your own contribution, a LASA Life Membership, or perhaps the creation of a named fund? Please contact Sandy Klinzing at [email protected] or 412-648-1907 for more information. Diego Abente Brun Emily Achtenberg Sergio Adorno de Abreu Eugenia Allier Montao Jesus Alonso-Regalado Sonia Alvarez Ana Paula Alves Ribeiro George Reid Andrews Karina Ansolabehere Kirsten Appendini Rubiela Arboleda Gmez Moises Arce Arturo Arias Cynthia Arnson
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Kiran Asher Deborah Augsburger Luis Fernando Ayerbe Adam Baird Beth Baker Cristales Paulo Vinicius Baptista da Silva Fredy Barrero Sarah Barrow Fabiola Bazo Peter Beattie Catherine Benamou Mary Berg Silvia Bermdez Ana Maria Bidegain Judit Ester Bokser Liwerant Fabian Bosoer Carolina Bown Patricia Braga Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira R. McKenna Brown Jo-Marie Burt Veronica Cabezas Kia Lilly Caldwell Manuel Camacho Higareda Cristina Campos Tania Carrasquillo Hernndez Miguel Carter Biancca Scarpeline de Castro Roberto Cespedes Ruffinelli Amalia Chaverri Marc Chernick George Ciccariello-Maher Jorge Contesse Lorena Cordova Hernandez Javier Corrales Claudia de Lima Costa Angelina Cotler Toms Crowder-Taraborrelli Alexandre Da Costa Maria Celina DAraujo Michele Dvila-Gonalves Graciela De Garay-Arellano Jose Jared De La Cruz Fragoso Luis de la Vega Carlos Decena Monica Dehart Jorge Enrique Delgado Troncoso
Tracy Devine Guzmn Rut Diamint John Dinges Michael Doudoroff Alice Driver Enrique Dussel Peters Erika Denise Edwards Laura Enriquez Paul Fallon Linda Farthing Luis Antonio Ferla Roco Ferreira Ricardo Ffrench-Davis Kathleen Fine-Dare Laura Flamand Jan Flora Herlinda Flores Badillo Jonathan Fox Caio Frana Karin Friederic Mariana Cristina Galvani Juana Gamero de Coca Iigo Garcia Bryce Javier Garca Liendo Lina Garca Sierra Chantenia Gay Alfonso Gonzales Cornelia Grbner Chanzo Greenidge Matthew Gutmann Charles Hale E. Brooke Harlowe Matthew Hayes Valerie Hecht Nathan Henne Cristian Henriquez Jose Antonio Hernandez Company Jorge Hernndez Diaz Lisa Hilbink Barbara Hogenboom Sallie Hughes Scott Ickes Guillermo Irizarry Diaz Beatriz Jaguaribe de Mattos Elizabeth Jimnez-Zamora Susanne Jonas Gilbert Joseph
Karen Kampwirth Nicole Karsin Cristbal Kay John Kelly Lucille Kerr Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz Sayuri Kuwabara Gloria La Riva Marta Lamas Jorge Lanzaro Brooke Larson Sharon Lean David Lehmann Maria Josefina Len Len Alejandro Liberman Valeria Llobet Ryan Long Miguel Armando Lpez Leyva Ana Bertha Luna Miranda Livia Magalhaes Lillian Manzor Margarita Marn-Dale Rita de Cassia Marques Enrique Martnez Curiel Enrique Daniel Martinez Larrechea Yolanda Martnez-San Miguel Francine Masiello Katherine McCaffrey Shelley McConnell Kathryn McKnight Claudia Mendez Evelyne Mesclier Oliver Meza Canales Yuko Miki Rory Miller Michel Misse William Mitchell Ellen Moodie Alvaro Hernan Moreno Duran Nancy Morris Catherine Murphy David Myhre Maria Paula Nascimento Araujo Stephen Neufeld Melanie Nicholson Guyma Noel Karl Offen
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Vanessa Oliveira Mara Rosa Olivera-Williams Gerardo Otero Lorena Oyarzn Serrano Anthony Pahnke Miriam Pan Alexandra Panzarelli Carlos Patinovilla Ricardo Pedroarias Corinne Pernet Adriana Piatti-Crocker Sonja Pieck Juan Poblete Nancy Postero Marie Price Francisco Eduardo Pucci Garmendia Joseph Quick Paulina Ramirez Peter Ranis Patricia Ravelo Blancas Jos Carlos Requena Israel Reyes Lindsey Richardson Rodolfo Rincones Delgado Bryan Roberts Fernando Rodrigues Diana Rodriguez Franco Andrea Rojas Coll Gonzalo Emilio Julio Romero Sommer Daniel Rood Adrienne Rosen Rosa Luisa Marisa Ruiz Churruca Hctor Saint-Pierre Maria Josefina Saldaa-Portillo Emiko Saldvar Tanaka Sergio Snchez Diaz Victoria Sanford Miriam Gomes Saraiva Patience Schell Naomi Schiller Ana Schlindwein Julia Schmied Chris Schulenburg Marcy Schwartz Gabriela Seghezzo Vctor Seplveda Rachel Sieder
Adriana Silva Mojana Silva Patricia Silver Stacey Alba Skar Natalia Sobrevilla Perea Mary Speck Peter Spink Lynn Stephen John Stolle-McAllister Angela Stuesse Maria Socorro Tabuenca Crdoba Maria Luisa Tarrs Barraza Winifred Tate Clark Taylor William Taylor Benjamn Temkin Yedwab Millicent Thayer Niamh Thornton Gabriel Thoumi Antonio Torres-Ruiz Patricia Tovar Rojas Oscar Ugarteche Gabriela Valdivia Darcie Vandegrift Ivani Vassoler-Froelich Marcos Virgilio da Silva Jean Weisman Jurgen Weller Alan David West-Durn Michelle Wibbelsman Robert Wilcox Eliza Willis Peter Winn Justin Wolfe Veronica Xhardez Lucia Zambrano Varn Katherine Zien
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notices
Election Passport Election Passport (www.electionpassport .com) is a new online resource providing free access to a rich data set of constituency election results from over 80 countries around the world, including nearly all of Latin America and the Caribbean. Election Passport enables high-level analysis of elections on countries for which data are not easily available. It provides unusually complete data sets with votes won by very small parties and independents and, frequently, candidate names that are difficult to locate. This project was developed by American University Professor of Government David Lublin with support from AUs Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Latin American Visuals Online Repository The Latin American Visuals Online Repository (http://aulav.wrlc.org/) provides online access to thousands of images of Latin America. All of the images uploaded into this searchable platform are under a Creative Commons license, allowing them to be used freely by educators for illustrations in their publications and to augment student engagement with the region through their incorporation in classroom presentations and instructional materials. The Repository allows third parties to upload images in a standardized fashion and we encourage Latin Americanist scholars to expand this resource by uploading their own images. This project has been carried out by American Universitys Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and Bender Library in memory of AU Professor Jack Child. We invite you to use these free and easily accessible resources and to share them with your colleagues.
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Peddling Paradise:
The Politics of Tourism in Latin America
K IRK S. B OWMAN
Peddling Paradise breaks all new ground with its beautifully crafted explanation of national variations in the success of international tourism promotion.James Mahoney,
Northwestern University hc $55
A powerful book, written with authority and full of fresh insights.Timothy Steigenga, Florida Atlantic University hc $65
An important contribution. illuminates the key dilemmas facing both the left and Mexicos new democracy.
Kevin J. Middlebrook, University College London hc $75 A FirstForumPress Book
Serious, profound, and realistic, despite being controversial.... It is indispensable reading.Omar Everleny Perez Villanueva,
University of Havana hc $65
PABLO M ORALES ,
A NDREW S ELEE ,
EDITORS
Offers insight into nagging questions of why Haiti appears to be persistently stuck in a quagmire of dysfunction and why recovery is so unbearably slow.Tequila Minsky, Caribbean Life
hc $75 pb $24.95 A Kumarian Press Book
The historically grounded perspectives in this book can serve as important correctives to ephemeral news reports and commentary, pointing to the factors that will truly shape outcomes in Mexico and its relations with the United States.
Shannon K. ONeil, Foreign Affairs hc $55 pb $22
D ARCY T ETREAULT,
EDITORS
If your interest lies in resolving or simply researching poverty in Latin America, or anywhere else for that matter, you need this book.Milford Bateman, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula
hc $75 pb $29.95 A Kumarian Press Book
A LFREDO J OIGNANT,
EDITORS
This exceptionally interesting book clearly establishes that the politics of memory is an important, unresolved, and changing issue in Chile.Alan Angell, St Antony's College, Oxford
hc $69.95 A FirstForumPress Book
F ORTHCOMING 3 RD
EDITION !
Provides far more information concerning Latin American Jewish life than ever before available between two covers.
Choice hc $65 pb $26.50
P ETER M. S IAVELIS ,
EDITORS
A timely contribution to the literature on deepening democracies.Mary Rose Kubal, St. Bonaventure University hc $69.95
C e l e b r at i n g 3 0 Y e a r s o f I n d e p e n d e n t P u b l i s h i n g
1 8 0 0 3 0 T H S T R E E T, S U I T E 3 1 4 B O U L D E R , C O 8 0 3 0 1 T E L : 3 0 3 - 4 4 4 - 6 6 8 4
w w w. r i e n n e r. c o m
VISIONS OF FREEDOM
Piero Gleijeses
Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991
A remarkable achievement. This book will force a fundamental rethinking of how we conceive of the struggle for freedom from colonial and neocolonial rule in southern Africa, and Cubas role in helping to win it. Greg Grandin, New York University
680 pages $40.00
PROSTITUTION, MODERNITY, AND THE MAKING OF THE CUBAN REPUBLIC, 1840-1920 Tiffany A. Sippial
An extremely well-researched, insightful, and enormously interesting book . . . an excellent examination of the various competing voices articulating the evolving concept of the Cuban nation. Franklin W. Knight, The Johns Hopkins University
256 pages $69.95 cloth / $29.95 paper
Sherwin K. Bryant
A major contribution to an important area of Latin American scholarship. Though the slave population was relatively small in Ecuador, Bryant illustrates slaverys pervasive impact on the colonial society that grew up there. Kathryn Burns, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
256 pages $35.00
new in paperback
BRACEROS
Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico
Deborah Cohen
360 pages $27.95 paper
With scholarly rigor, a historically-grounded Africanist perspective, extensive research, and methodological sophistication, Paress pathbreaking book is cultural history at its best. Joo Jos Reis, author of Slave Rebellion in Brazil
464 pages $85.00 cloth / $37.50 paper
DOMINGOS LVARES, AFRICAN HEALING, AND THE INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF THE ATLANTIC WORLD
James H. Sweet 320 pages $27.95 paper
Visit us at www.uncpress.unc.edu for information about text adoption and to sign up for e-alerts.
UNC Press books are now available through Books @ JSTOR and Project Muse.
The Latin American Studies Association (LASA) is the largest professional association in the world for individuals and institutions engaged in the study of Latin America. With over 7,500 members, 35 percent of whom reside outside the United States, LASA is the one association that brings together experts on Latin America from all disciplines and diverse occupational endeavors, across the globe. LASAs mission is to foster intellectual discussion, research, and teaching on Latin America, the Caribbean, and its people throughout the Americas, promote the interests of its diverse membership, and encourage civic engagement through network building and public debate.
lasa.international.pitt.edu