Poderes fácticos,problemas drásticos

The article reconstructs systematically a definition analytically dense of the factual powers. By focusing on the implications factual powers in Latin America, the article inquiries into the resistance of these powers to the State of law, evidencing their propensity to promote their own private interests and impose them on society at large. On its turn, the author elaborates a diagnosis of the cultural expansion of factual powers in Mexican society, demonstrating that their influence expresses and reinforces political deficiencies, legal voids and cultural paucity, identifying the ideological preponderance of private television.     

Los poderes fácticos mediáticos y el surgimiento del Estado híbrido en México

The process of institutional overlapping that developed in Mexico between formal traditional constitutional powers and mass electronic technologies, which gradually attained factual positions in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, changed the nature and basic governing functions of the national State. Thus, mass media power gave rise to a novel mixing phenomenon that generated a new type of “hybrid State”. The corresponding new historical Republic with a highly political and media oriented nature modified the structure and scenario of the conventional contemporary nation state. The evolution of this historical reality has not yet come to an end, but instead continues to develop with an enormous amount of dynamism and force towards new stages of transformation of the State, public space, and society as a whole, without knowing its final outcome due to the strengthening of factual media power while the major branches of government are gradually weakening. Consequently, society needs to critically engage in an objective analysis of this strategic phenomenon, its phases of transformation and the viable alternatives for recovering the national development path.     

Hacia un proyecto “democrático-expansivo” de transparencia

This work explores the paradox of normative and institutional improvements vis-à-vis political and practical deficiencies through the analytical lens of an increasing clash among three different and opposing projects of transparency: the “bureaucratic”, the “public-relation,” and the “democratic-expanding” approaches. Mexico’s failure to fulfill the promises of its institutional reforms is due to the preeminence of the first two approaches. Mexico, as well as other countries in a similar situation, needs to transcend such superficial, one-sided approaches to fully embrace a project aimed at deepening and expanding democracy itself.     

Alternatives to the constitution of Cádiz in New Spain: republicanism and the insurgent constitutional decree of Apatzingán (1814)

This article compares the Decreto Constitucional para la libertad de la América Mexicana, published in Apatzingán by the insurgents of New Spain in 1814, with the 1812 Constitution of Cádiz which established a constitutional monarchy in the Spanish Empire. It argues that the Decreto Constitucional cannot be understood as simply a product of Hispanic political thought and a reflection of the Cádiz text. Rather, it contends that the decree published in Apatzingán represents an alternative republican response to the dissolution of the Spanish monarchy. This alternate constitutional settlement drew on the debate of constitutional ideas that had taken place in New Spain since 1808 and was grounded in many of the same ideas as those present in the Pennsylvanian Constitution of 1776 and the first French republican constitutions of 1793 and 1795.     

Organising Everyday Resistance: An Ethnographic Study of Rickshaw Drivers in Bogotá

Workers in the informal transport sector are often exposed to multiple forms of workplace violence, for instance by the police and their colleagues. Through a collection of rich ethnographic stories and using the concept of popular resistance, this article investigates how and under what conditions rickshaw drivers in Bogotá resist violence in their workplace. The results reveal that rickshaw associations have been essential in articulating acts of everyday resistance to the legal ban on this activity, such regulating routes, fees and stops. However, associations have created new forms of oppression, being labelled as mafia-like organisations, showing that resistance can also translate into new forms of domination. Contrary to the argument that everyday resistance is uncoordinated, this article shows that acts of everyday resistance can be organised by actors that switch between different individual and collective strategies. Thus, organisations can provide a framework to resist the law on an everyday basis.     

Diccionario biográfico de los Parlamentarios de Vasconia (1876–1939)

SUMMARY

A few years after the return of the Bourbons to the Neapolitan throne, following the final defeat of Napoleon, profound dissatisfaction grew in a section of southern public opinion, above all the provincial bourgeoisie, at certain plans of the restored government. They faced the continued blocking of their own aspirations to a greater share in the management of the res publica, which was a result of the rigid political and administrative centralization of Napoleonic origin which remained in place in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Because of this deeply rooted discontent, the secret sect of the Carboneria began to spread throughout the kingdom. Its primary political aim was to build the foundations of a constitutional and representative regime. It was the Carboneria which instigated a popular uprising in 1820, forcing Ferdinand I to concede to his subjects what the leaders of the revolt had loudly demanded, the Constitution of Cadiz.

Therefore, for the first time in the history of the kingdom, all male citizens aged 21 (except those in domestic service) were entitled to elect the national Parliament endowed with legislative powers. Apart from the property-owning and professional middle classes, it was soldiers and clergy, both groups active in the ranks of the carbonari, who were conspicuously represented in the new assembly. It was therefore composed in large part of individuals whose careers displayed a prominent involvement in the most dangerous phase of the political and institutional crisis which had confronted the kingdom during the previous years. About 70 per cent of those elected had joined in support of the Napoleonic Republic in 1799, had taken part variously in the institutional order established by Napoleon's adherents in the ten years of French rule from 1806, and had in many cases then been affiliated to the Carboneria. Because of their advanced democratic ideals, these people were severely persecuted by the Bourbon authority after the end of the brief constitutional regime.     

Poderes fácticos,comunicación y gobernabilidad: un acercamiento conceptual

The category of factual powers has become a fashionable term. Beyond observable differences in the journalistic, academic or political interests of the scholarly approaches to the topic, the author considers that it is possible to affirm that this question is inextricably related to the issue of democracy, and specifically its viability and governability. This article is framed within this analytic and contextual perspective -factual powers, democracy and governability. Given that the category has not a univocal meaning, after drawing basic differences among the various interest groups, pressure groups and factual powers, it characterizes those emerging social actors capable to dispute the power of formal institutions and analyzes the particular composition of the mass media.     

Las diásporas transnacionales: ¿una nueva era o un nuevo mito?

The numberless unprecedented situations attached today to the concept of transnational diaspora arise the debate of whether or not this phenomenon signals a new era. Our own contention is that it does represent a factor of new kinds of heterogenization of both the societal reality and of the diasporas themselves, as worldwide entities. It is in this dialectic perspective that we describe transnational diasporas as causes of discontinuity in our world and point out to the qualitative change in the social fabrics that they represent. Among other aspects, dual or threefold homeness that is bound to the transnational condition signifies for diasporans a slipping away from the totalistic character of the commitment and view of the nation that the nation-state requires of its citizens. When viewed in its multiplicity, the cohabitation under the same societal roof of a priori alien socio-cultural entities yields a configuration that is not uniform in every setting, but which still responds in its essentials to the new reality experienced by many a contemporary society. To illustrate this approach, this paper compares four well-known contemporary transnational diasporas namely, the Muslim, African, Hispanic and Chinese.     

¿Quién le teme a las diásporas y por qué?

Theoretical and analytical systematic and comprehensive consideration of diasporism and diasporas is relatively recent. The first systematic analyses appeared during the 1980s so there are still significant loopholes in their research and examination, as well as in the development of an overall outlook on diasporism and diasporas. As a result, there are also obstacles to a thorough understanding of the phenomenon. After reviewing the existing literature on diasporism and diasporas it is clear that an understanding of diasporas in general and particularly of both their recent involvement in politics, terrorism, and criminal activities in the receiving country, and their cultural, social, and political contributions of the countries of origin and destination is still far from being exhaustive. With the aim of presenting a detailed account of the peculiarities of this phenomenon, this paper describes and analyses the diasporic process in its entirety, going beyond the conventional views that have significantly hindered and limited the scope of the debate on the ethno-national-religious diasporic process in general, and on the contributions or threats generated by diasporas in the receiving countries.     

Calidad democrática en América Latina: ¿proyecto o utopía?

While recognizing the heuristic limits of the concept “democratic quality” this article argues that measuring democracy over time is the most adequate way to identify, discuss and analyze its presence in every country. “Democratic quality” sheds new light on both concept elaboration and empirical studies because it synthetizes two political processes that have developed in the region in the last twenty five years: democratic transition and democratic consolidation. This category allows us to define the current state of Latin American countries in terms of their institutional and societal development of democratic life. We can thus, at least in theory, observe and propose an integrated improvement of existing political regimes in a context in which modern representative democracies are reorganized in terms of their new attributes and rights. Based on these premises, this article proposes two interrelated paths of analysis: a) considering the model of “democratic quality” to analyze Latin American democracies and characterize their present problems; and b) examining the relevance of this model’s heuristic power. The main thesis holds that not even the most visible long or short-term transformations undergone by our democratic political legal codes, since its inception, are sufficient in and of themselves to bring us closer to the democratic quality model, or in other words, to the basis of a democratic State of law.     

Lost in Santa Martha. Limitaciones para una etnografía en una cárcel de mujeres

En este artículo propongo un examen de algunos de los obstáculos establecidos por las autoridades penitenciarias para llevar a cabo un proyecto etnográfico en una cárcel de mujeres de la Ciudad de México. Mi intención es plantear la importancia de formas de investigación-acción en contextos que, como el mexicano, se ven afectados por una profunda crisis de los aparatos del Estado –en particular presto atención a los sistemas educativo, penal y de justicia- que impacta con mayor severidad a grupos vulnerables como es el caso de las mujeres en reclusión que están en el centro de este estudio de caso.     

La nueva dinámica política de América Latina: temas para una agenda de investigación

Social transformations in Latin American have generated new phenomena which dominant political discourse, but also some studies of the political dynamics, are unable to express and even seek to conceal. To illustrate these developments the article analyses: 1) the emergence of new veto powers on the democratic system, quite different from the traditional one; 2) the celebration of the rise of “new middle classes”, a statistical conglomerate that refers to important social transformations but does not constitute a social category nor has a clear political expression; 3) the current debate on the regulation of the media, in which we argue that it expresses relevant socio-technological and political changes but is being held in a way that conceals undemocratic interests, both from governments and companies; 4) political parties and their difficulty to represent emerging social groups and generational differences; 5) civil society, which became fragmented and tanned by local political culture and should not be treated as an homogeneous and virtuous universe. We conclude that the consolidation of democracy requires from researchers and political actors to overcome the analytical and ideological paradigms that were, and still are, dominant in the region.     

Medios electrónicos de comunicación,poderes fácticos y su impacto en la democracia en México

The concept of factual powers has been increasingly incorporated into the sphere of Latin American politics to refer to actors that exert large influence in diverse sectors of social life. In Mexico, this term is used to refer to Televisa and its allies as part of the debate regarding the so-called “media legislation” that took place between November of 2005 and March of 2006. Moreover, the academic and theoretical discussion has not achieved a conceptual maturity. This article aims to review the antecedents and development of factual powers and their differentiation from other actors or groups that also exercise influence. It discusses as well the power they currently wield in the electronic media, the State and democracy.     

“El pájaro de cuatro notas”: the reception of Argentine women writers and artists’ work in avant-garde magazines (1920–1930)

This article assesses the reception of Argentine women writers and artists’ work within vanguard magazines. Taking as case studies the work of Norah Lange and Norah Borges, I identify four key tropes that emerge in reviews of their creative output published between 1920 and 1930. This article brings to light original archival material in order to expose how women’s peripheral position in the artistic sphere of early twentieth-century Latin America was enacted at a discursive level. In so doing, I propose that the gendered dynamics evident within avant-garde magazines represent a microcosm of women’s experiences within the vanguard more broadly. This article aims to contribute to a thorough investigation into how marginalisation is enacted and enforced, exposing the extra-literary processes which construct an artistic sphere that is inhospitable to women practitioners.     

Presupuesto público sin participación ciudadana. La necesidad de un cambio institucional en México para la consolidación democrática

Over the last thirty years, Mexico has undergone an important consolidation of its institutional framework, focused primarily on the electoral and political system. This process of political change was accompanied by a significant transformation and liberalization of the financial and economic system. Mexico’s current situation proves that both processes do not yield satisfactory results when social problems are left unattended. In fact, the transition from a noncompetitive political system to a more democratic one, has not guaranteed better living conditions for most of the population, in part because there is practically no participation in public life on behalf of most of the citizenry. This article reflects on the fundamental importance of citizens’ participation in democracy. Particular attention is paid to public participative budgets as factors which may contribute to democracy’s consolidation and quality, but which have had negligible impacts thus far as is illustrated by public participative budgets initiatives that have been held in Mexico City.