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Yearly Archives: 2024

Alcances y limitaciones del sexenio de Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (2018-2024)

Alcances y limitaciones del sexenio de Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (2018-2024) y los retos de Claudia Sheinbaum en México por Emelio BetancesUn balance de la gestión de Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Amlo) tiene necesariamente que empezar con el contexto histórico que hizo posible su victoria en 2018. El neoliberalismo había caído en una crisis de legitimidad y no se pudo levantar. Los partidos dominantes (Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) y Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) ya no tenían nuevas propuestas. En ese contexto Amlo, un político carismático con un proyecto de nación que venía proponiendo desde los años ochenta, se proyectó presidenciable. Este político fuera de serie en el contexto mexicano había formado parte del proyecto político del ingeniero Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, quien había competido en las elecciones de 1988 y que perdió contra Carlos Salinas de Gortari, gracias a un gigantesco fraude electoral.El surgimiento de un liderazgo nacionalEn las primeras décadas del siglo actual Amlo desarrolló su proyecto, <more>

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Agrarian Question as an Ecological Question

Historically, the agrarian question in Latin America was primarily concerned with addressing the unequal distribution of land and rural poverty through redistribution. Different types of agrarian reform policies in the twentieth century, frequently with different goals, tried to dismantle large estates owned by a few wealthy elites and allocate the land among landless peasants, small-scale farmers, or Indigenous communities. Due to neoliberal agriculture’s ecological destruction based on the so-called ‘green revolution’ paradigm, experimentally applied since the 1950s and then massively adopted since the 1970s, the contemporary agrarian question in Latin American has adopted an increasingly environmental emphasis attention. Agricultural commodities’ exchange value was completely merged with the war and chemical industrial complex through agrochemical inputs, expanding the extractive frontier, increasing the predominance of monocrops, and jeopardizing biodiversity The expansion of this extractive frontier and its concomitant problems, like the climate crisis and social dispossession, triggered socio-ecological resistance by indigenous communities, peasants, ecologist movements, against the profit-oriented objectives of governments and large corporations. The main goal of this special issue is to discuss and analyze the Latin American agrarian question as the epicenter of the global ecological crisis, offering interdisciplinary and pluri-methodological inputs within a critical perspective.The issue is divided [...]

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AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM AND THE RURAL WORLD: INSIGHTS FROM LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

November 2024 Volume 51 Number 6Issue Editors: Daniela Andrade and Sergio CoronadoSummary:This issue of Latin American Perspectives examines the rise of authoritarian populism in Latin America and the Caribbean and its relationship to rural politics, social movements, and struggles for emancipation. Through regional analysis and case studies from Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Venezuela, contributors explore how political transitions, agribusiness expansion, and extractivism have shaped rural communities and intensified tensions between governments and grassroots movements. Highlighting strategies of resistance and alternative political practices, the issue considers the role of rural movements in advancing food sovereignty, agrarian justice, and transformative approaches to development beyond state-centered politics.  TABLE OF CONTENTS | PURCHASE THIS ISSUE PodCast

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INDIGENOUS AUTONOMIES CONFRONTING CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM: PART 2

 Issue Editors: Edgars Martínez Navarrete and Richard Stahler-SholkSummary:This issue of Latin American Perspectives, the first of a two-part series, examines Indigenous autonomy movements across Latin America as forms of resistance to neoliberal capitalism, extractivism, and territorial dispossession. Through theoretical analyses and historical case studies, contributors explore diverse approaches to self-determination, communal governance, and the defense of Indigenous territories and identities. Highlighting the experiences of movements such as the Zapatistas, the Purépecha community of Cherán, and the Mapuche, the issue examines the tensions between Indigenous autonomy and state institutions while considering alternative visions of development rooted in collective rights, decolonial perspectives, and social justice.  TABLE OF CONTENTS | PURCHASE THIS ISSUE PodCast

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INDIGENOUS AUTONOMIES CONFRONTING CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM: PART 1

  Issue Editors: Edgars Martínez Navarrete and Richard Stahler-SholkSummary:This issue of Latin American Perspectives, the first of a two-part series, examines Indigenous autonomy movements across Latin America as forms of resistance to neoliberal capitalism, extractivism, and territorial dispossession. Through theoretical analyses and historical case studies, contributors explore diverse approaches to self-determination, communal governance, and the defense of Indigenous territories and identities. Highlighting the experiences of movements such as the Zapatistas, the Purépecha community of Cherán, and the Mapuche, the issue examines the tensions between Indigenous autonomy and state institutions while considering alternative visions of development rooted in collective rights, decolonial perspectives, and social justice.     TABLE OF CONTENTS | PURCHASE THIS ISSUE PodCast

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BLUE ECONOMIES AND OCEAN GRABBING IN LATIN AMERICA

  Issue Editors: Nemer E. Narchi, Gustavo G. M. Moura, and George Leddy Summary:This issue of Latin American Perspectives critically examines the expansion of the blue economy in Latin America, exploring the contradictions between promises of sustainable ocean development and the realities of capitalist accumulation, environmental degradation, and social dispossession. Through case studies from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Cuba, and Uruguay, contributors investigate how policies promoting industrial fishing, aquaculture, tourism, marine conservation, and coastal infrastructure development contribute to ocean grabbing, the privatization of marine resources, and the displacement of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and small-scale fishing communities. The articles highlight the historical and contemporary processes shaping coastal territories, the unequal distribution of environmental and economic burdens, and the strategies of resistance developed by marginalized communities. Emphasizing the principles of blue justice and social oceanography, the issue advocates for alternative approaches to marine governance that recognize traditional knowledge, cultural identities, collective territorial rights, and community participation, challenging dominant development models and envisioning more equitable and ecologically sustainable relationships with the ocean.     TABLE OF CONTENTS | PURCHASE THIS ISSUE PodCast

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COVID-19 Coronavirus

This issue offers a range of pandemic-related insights into Latin America, among them an ongoing weakening of educational infrastructure in spite of pedagogical dedication and activism; the relationship between health crises and deepening gendered violence; the power of women’s collective organizing around livelihood strategies; a collective workers’ sense of abandonment, displacement, and disposability; a variety of perspectives on telework; and new pandemic-inspired economic “shock doctrines” and “disaster extractivism.” By treating COVID-19 as a disruptive social force, the issue’s essays contribute to lessons learned from the pandemic in an expansive and creative way that point toward multidimensional collective strategies for more equitable futures in Latin America.   TABLE OF CONTENTS | PURCHASE THIS ISSUE

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Latin American Perspectives, founded in 1974, is a theoretical and scholarly journal for discussion and debate on the political economy of capitalism, imperialism, and socialism in the Americas. Most issues focus on a single problem, nation, or region, providing an in-depth look from participants and scholars throughout the Americas.

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Alfredo Saad Filho — "SOAS, University of London" “Latin American Perspectives is the most important resource available providing in-depth progressive analyses of developments in Latin America. It is the unmissable Journal!”
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