951.827.1571|LAP@ucr.edu
FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedInBloggerEmailPodCastPodCastInstagramYouTube

Culture

Assessing the Past Half Decade

Political developments in Brazil in February of 2024 have raised hopes that the perpetrators of the attempted coup of January 8th 2022 in Brasilia will finally be brought to justice. It is perhaps serendipitous that publication of our current Latin American Perspectives issue, though delayed by a few months, should come to press at this moment. Contained within its pages readers will find many articles which discuss some of the most important events and topics leading up to the coup attempt as well as its repercussions. In this issue readers will find information about a variety of crucial topics important for understanding the current state of Brazil, as well as gain insights into its future direction. Articles detail the political rise of Bolsonaro and his administration and the American involvement in the “long coup” which targeted the PT and Dilma Roussef which ultimately helped to place Bolsonaro in the presidency. Also discussed is the rise of the “new right”, a hybrid of neoconservative ideologies with neoliberal economic philosophies, as well as the contradictions between Bolsonaro’s populist nationalist rhetoric and the purposeful dismantling of the social welfare infrastructure while submitting to international economic interests, and the market capitalization of healthcare and [...]

Read More

New Dawn or a False Hope for Mexico

This issue, edited by Verónica Silva and Jorge Márquez, offers an assessment of how the “Fourth Transformation” of AMLO has responded to the catastrophes left behind by the utterly failed neoliberal policies of the preceding decades. The authors address significant questions such as: Will it provide an effective bulwark against the return of neoliberalism in whatever form it may reinvent itself or will this latest pivot to the left stumble and succumb to the interests of capital, domestic and global? Indeed, what is the left nowadays, what are the prospects for a broad, successful resurgence, and is AMLO’s brand anything but left? What are the important economic, political, cultural, and ideological fault lines that we should think deeply about?Their contributions, including struggles over water privatization, PEMEX, mining concessions, and earthquake recovery, highlight the danger of confusing incremental improvements in isolated areas of economic and political life with a larger and self-sustaining transformation.  They critically examine the relationship of a weakened state to big capital and criminal organizations and offer varying perspectives ranging from considering Obradorismo as a domesticated, neoliberal populism “looking for the love of big capital” to viewing AMLO’s friendly policies toward some large capitalists as a pragmatic policy [...]

Read More

BRAZIL UNDER BOLSONARO

January 2023 Issue Editors: James N. Green and Tulio Ferreira This issue, edited by James N. Green and Tulio Ferreira, provides a critical examination of the history and recent rise of the Brazilian right, which achieved political power with the election of former military officer and far-right authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro as president in 2018, and analyzes the multi-faceted domestic and international impact of Bolsonaro’s four years in office. It ties Bolsonaro’s nationalist, Christian fundamentalist, antidemocratic, homophobic, misogynist, and racist program to its roots in older Brazilian fascism and military dictatorship and situates it as part of a transnational and global phenomenon. In this consideration of the reasons for and impact of Bolsonaro’s election and policies, it emphasizes the complexity of contemporary Brazilian reality.PODcast TABLE OF CONTENTS | PURCHASE THIS ISSUE

Read More

SOCIAL STRUGGLE IN NEOLIBERAL CENTRAL AMERICA

November 2022 Issue Editors: Paulo Simões This issue explores changes in the strategies of Central American social movements confronting neoliberalism in recent years. Neoliberal structural reforms were initiated in Central America in the 1980s with structural adjustment programs, free-trade zones, and related policies inseparable from U.S.-funded wars, death squads, and other forms of repression. The “peaceful” period of the 1990s saw the heightened implementation of restructuring and neoliberal policies which have prompted massive rural-to-urban and international migration, increased resource extraction, weakened labor and environmental protections, reconfigured hierarchies of gender and sexuality, and increased wealth disparities. The articles in this issue analyze the creative ways in which Central American communities have strategized to improve their living conditions and challenge the root causes of their structural vulnerability that has persuaded numerous Central Americans to make the difficult and deeply painful choice to leave their communities and/or countries.   TABLE OF CONTENTS | PURCHASE THIS ISSUE

Read More

Marxism, Critical Thinking, and Andean Futures

July 2022 Issue Editors: Ronaldo Munck, Pascual García-Macías and Karina Ponce This issue examines the legacy and relevance of the thinking and life of José Carlos Mariátegui who died in 1930 and is considered Latin America’s first Marxist. Contributors take up his critical engagement with the peasants, the proletariat, the indigenous people and with women and show his relevance today. The issue also takes up the thinking of a group of other Andean region thinkers/activists in the radical tradition namely Agustín Cueva, René Zavaleta Mercado, and Orlando Fals Borda who in different ways illuminated the particular development path of Latin America in the tradition of Mariategui.   TABLE OF CONTENTS | PURCHASE THIS ISSUE

Read More

Neoliberalism and Higher Education in Latin America

May 2022 Issue Editors: Robert Austin Henry and Bernadete Beserra This issue investigates the neoliberal transformation of higher education in Latin America since the 1980s and the resistance it has generated. It examines how higher education has became one more frontier for the expansion of corporate capital and accumulation of private wealth. Contributors take up the politics, economics, and culture of this process from a range of critical standpoints, analyzing the threat to the university as an essential space for free intellectual inquiry and showing the negative medium- and long-term consequences for social and economic development.   TABLE OF CONTENTS | PURCHASE THIS ISSUE

Read More

Popular Feminism(s): Pasts, Presents, and Futures Part 2

September 2021 Issue Editors: Janet M. Conway and Nathalie Lebon This thematic double issue focuses on popular feminisms, that is, the diverse forms of gendered agency appearing among Latin America’s poor, working-class and racialized communities, and their relation to the politics of feminism and to the broader left in the region. The collection addresses the question of subaltern subjectivities and the building of collective agency in relation to the broader politics of social transformation. It also examines popular feminism as concept with a particular genealogy in relation to histories of the left and to socialist feminism, and inquires into its contemporary relevance, as well as its persistent elision of race and coloniality. The twelve contributions include contextualized studies of grassroots feminist praxis drawn from Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru, as well as of national and transnational-scale organizing, and address gendered agency in relation to issues ranging from access to water, opposition to extractivism, the politicization of care work, survival in the face of systemic violence, and Indigenous autonomy. The collection includes a substantive theoretical introduction to popular, racialized and decolonial subjectivities in contention in consideration of contemporary popular feminisms.   TABLE OF CONTENTS | PURCHASE THIS ISSUE [...]

Read More

Popular Feminism(s): Past, Present, and Futures, Part I

July 2021 Issue Editors: Janet M. Conway and Nathalie Lebon This thematic double issue focuses on popular feminisms, that is, the diverse forms of gendered agency appearing among Latin America’s poor, working-class and racialized communities, and their relation to the politics of feminism and to the broader left in the region. The collection addresses the question of subaltern subjectivities and the building of collective agency in relation to the broader politics of social transformation. It also examines popular feminism as concept with a particular genealogy in relation to histories of the left and to socialist feminism, and inquires into its contemporary relevance, as well as its persistent elision of race and coloniality. The twelve contributions include contextualized studies of grassroots feminist praxis drawn from Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru, as well as of national and transnational-scale organizing, and address gendered agency in relation to issues ranging from access to water, opposition to extractivism, the politicization of care work, survival in the face of systemic violence, and Indigenous autonomy. The collection includes a substantive theoretical introduction to popular, racialized and decolonial subjectivities in contention in consideration of contemporary popular feminisms.   TABLE OF CONTENTS | PURCHASE THIS ISSUE [...]

Read More

Vivir bien/Buen vivir and Post-Neoliberal Development Paths in Latin America: Scope, Strategies, and the Realities of Implementation

May 2021 Issue Editors: Kepa Artaraz, Melania Calestani, and Mei L. Trueba This special issue engages with the concept of buen vivir/vivir bien and how it has become a central driver in policy processes. However, the multiple variants of buen vivir/vivir bien and the struggle for hegemonic control of its meaning may also be the source of conflict between different groups. Contributors in this issue explore the contested meaning from a variety of different perspectives (indigenous, governmental and non-governmental) and the varying ways in which this concept feeds into alternative post-neoliberal ways of living. The essays address the realities of implementation in policy contexts, critically exploring strengths, limitations and barriers.   TABLE OF CONTENTS | PURCHASE THIS ISSUE [/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Read More

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.

TESTIMONIAL

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!”
Go to Top