Electoral Gender Quotas: Lessons from Argentina and Chile

This comparative case study examines the role of electoral quotas for increasing women's representation in Argentina and Chile. The Central hypothesis is that gender quotas in favourable electoral systems increase women's representation, and a corollary hypothesis is that more women in politics should also promote gender issues in public policy. Since the transitions to democratic regimes, many Argentine and Chilean women still promote gender issues, such as gender quotas, but the different transitions shaped the opportunity space for gender issues in politics. Thus, gender quotas can be effective, but the types of electoral and quota systems are important defining conditions and improvements in gender issues are not guaranteed.     

Introduction: Nationalism,the Left and Hegemony in Latin America

This article contributes to debates about fascist influences among Argentina’s guerrilla groups of the 1970s. From the overall perspective of developments in Argentine nationalism, it traces back the history of the far‐right Alianza Libertadora Nacionalista and Tacuara and assesses their significance as the nuclei from which later guerrillas came. Based on police reports and periodical publications from the period in question (c.1937–c.1973), it makes some generalisations about the collective biographies of militants. While not contradicting the widely held view that originally fascist groupings played a role in the emergence of Argentine guerrillas, the article introduces some nuances into this argument. Particular emphasis is given to the role of Peronism and the Cuban Revolution as facilitators of changes in Argentine nationalism.     

COVID-19 and the Limitations of Official Responses to Gender-Based Violence in Latin America: Evidence from Ecuador

As the COVID-19 lockdowns were implemented, Latin American countries raced to announce plans to address gender-based violence in response to the increase in reports of intrafamily abuse. However, states' interventions had limited results. This article explores the Ecuadorian case. The Andean country's emergency strategy was based on reporting violence via the 911 emergency number, a plan that failed to consider that women quarantined with their aggressors would not have the opportunity to make the call. This article lays bare the extent of the gap between policy and practice in gender mainstreaming and the acute consequences of this during the pandemic.     

In Search of Alternatives: The Making of Grassroots Politics and Power in Argentina

This article analyses ethnographically the reconfigurations of the state and relations of power through their dynamic interactions with subaltern alternatives that emerged in the 2001 uprising in Argentina. In this regard, it counters influential interpretations of these events articulated within John Holloway’s framework of ‘anti‐power’, which ignores the reconstruction of the state, and rank and file trade unionism. The article concludes that intensified class and political struggles in the region offer new spaces for contesting hegemonic reinventions of populism and ‘top‐down’ socialism in Latin America.     

Rein Taagepera: The vanguard of the Baltic thinking class

This article constructs a picture of change and stasis in cultures of gender in Latvia and theorizes the effect of these gender cultures on practices of family formation in the early post-communist period. Drawing in particular on women's perspectives, it offers an analysis grounded in gender and culture of the decline of marriage and the rise of non-marital births. The work argues that a narrative of male ‘marriageability’ has evolved as a component of feminine gender culture and offers one possible lens for analyzing post-communist demographic changes. While this research focuses on Latvia, the demographic trends noted have also characterized neighboring states.     

Poner el Cuerpo: Women's Embodiment and Political Resistance in Argentina

This article explores the relationship between women's embodiment and political resistance in Argentina during 2002–2003. This was a time of socioeconomic crisis, influenced by neoliberal globalization. In this tumultuous context, women's bodies became embattled sites, shaken by the crisis but also actively engaged in constructing a new society and new forms of womanhood. Bodies are important to understanding political resistance, as reflected by the meanings attached to poner el cuerpo , a common expression in contemporary Argentine social movements. This article analyzes how women construct embodied subjectivities through their activist practices and how they define poner el cuerpo in terms of collective protest and daily activist work, coherence between words and actions, embodied sacrifice, and risk taking and struggle. As life in Argentina deteriorated because of the crisis, women's bodies represented not only suffering but also resistance and renewal.     

State Discourses, Police Violence and Democratisation in Argentina

Police violence is a persistent problem throughout Latin America despite the return of electoral democracy; it is pervasive and includes torture, murder and disappearances. Certainly institutional reforms aimed at changing police practice are important. However, it is equally important that state actors maintain a clear and relatively consistent discourse in favour of democratic policing. This article argues that, in the case of Argentina, state actors do not maintain a consistent position in favour of democratic policing and instead oscillate between denying the occurrence of police violence, justifying such police action and absolving themselves of responsibility.     

Beyond Domestic Violence Survivor Services: Refocusing on Inequality in the Fight against Gender‐Based Violence in the Americas

Despite a consensus in the Americas that gender‐based violence is rooted in inequality and historic precedent and exacerbated by socio‐economic hardship, government programmes and institutional evaluations of programmes to combat violence against women tend not to tackle the problem at source. Instead, governments and policy evaluations tend to focus on domestic violence survivor services. This article analyses current work to evaluate government efforts to fight violence against women and unpacks scholarly and policy consensus on the root causes of the violence. I then illustrate the disconnect between root causes of violence and government programmes, to emphasise the need to link programmes more closely to agreed‐upon causes of violence.     

Violated Women,Reason, and Lo Político in the Imaginary of the Guatemalan Nation

Guatemalan newspapers are dappled with the spectre of women's violence and the bodily evidence of the military response that is typical for a woman's transgression of gender roles. Gendered representations of violence – so often repeated in the media – engender particular forms of political agency. This article explores how political violence is imagined with women's bodies and suggests that such violence is always built on pre‐existing cultural practices. It argues that gender categorization is paramount to constructing a modern Guatemalan nation that all too often works to exclude women as knowing participants in Lo Político.     

Women's Organisations and the Politics of Gender in Cuba's Urban Insurrection (1952–1958)

This article sheds new light on Cuba's urban insurrection to oust Fulgencio Batista by focusing on two all‐women's anti‐Batista groups. It charts the origins and developments of the groups, explores their conceptions about the importance of women's political action and examines the impact that participating in the insurrection had on group members. The article complicates long‐standing assumptions about women's low levels of participation in the insurrection and the absence of demands for gender equity among those who did participate by noting that some older women militants had histories with the feminist movement of the 1930s, and that many younger women were forced by the circumstances of the insurrection to confront and challenge contemporary gender norms.     

Shifting Tides of Informal Worker Resistance in Mexico: A Domestic Work-Construction Contrast

Informal workers in Mexico, the majority of the country's workforce, have organised to demand rights, but with varying results. In this article, we contrast recent organising by Mexico's domestic workers and informal construction workers. Household worker movements have succeeded in institutionalising significant new organisations and raising public awareness. Construction workers, despite earlier militant counterexamples, have remained trapped by corporatist structures, and their organising capacity has atrophied. We place these outcomes in the context of the overall decline of labour, suggesting conclusions for the limits and possibilities of contemporary Mexican labour mobilisation.     

Labour Discipline and Resistance: The Oruro Mining District in the Late Colonial Period

This article discusses the characteristics of the (principally indigenous) work force in the mines of Charcas, Bolivia, in the last decades of the eighteenth century. It analyses the ways in which mine workers were disciplined under law and in daily practice, as well as their resistance to such discipline, so as to assess the application and impact of mining legislation. The chief obstacles to proletarianization lay in the characteristic mixture in the mines of wage labourers and peasants, as well as in the different concepts of work held by Spaniards and Indians. An increase in coercion during this period, both by the State and private individuals, so as to recruit and retain workers provoked different strategies of resistance among the Indians, as is illustrated by a significant joint protest among smelting–mill workers in Oruro and Paria in 1793.     

Paraíso terrenal, mujeres bellas, gente cordial: Gender Performances and Narratives of Modernity in La Sierra

La Sierra (Martínez and Dalton, 2005), a portrait of a paramilitary-run community on Medellín's eastern edge, is both anthropological study and self-conscious creator of narratives. The documentary is both globally and locally inserted, and straddles both generic and public/private boundaries. The article discusses the film's self-conscious examination of gender performances, describing the way it plays out the conflicting demands of masculinity on the male body. It argues that the responses of feminine desire and identity to the various masculine models may subvert dominant codes through (re) citation and failed interpellation. Central to the article's argument is the notion that through female desire, the film performs Colombian undecidability surrounding masculine violence.     

Suffrage in San Juan: The Test of Women's Rights in Argentina

The 1927 reform of the Constitution of San Juan province, Argentina, contained a variety of innovative reforms that set a precedent for later national events. Of these, one of the most unusual was the provision for female participation in provincial elections. The authorisation of this right, which preceded the national suffrage law by twenty years, came about as a consequence of local and national circumstances. The fundamental conditions for suffrage had taken root in Argentina prior to 1927, but for suffrage to become a reality, a government had to be in place that could take advantage of an influx of new voters.     

Pleasures of Late Socialism in Soviet Lithuania: Strategies of Resistance and Dissent

This paper deals with popular perceptions of Soviet ideology during the period of Late Socialism. On the premises of colonial theory, mass communication and pop culture studies, the author argues that even totalitarian ideologies are subject to active consumption, excorporation and interpolation. While the official Soviet media provided a rather stable picture of the Soviet citizen, loyal to the Soviet authorities and the Soviet ideals, this paper reveals, on the basis of multiple interviews, how ideology operates at the level of everyday life and popular consciousness.     

Joining the Gang and Becoming a Broder: The Violence of Ethnography in Contemporary Nicaragua

The fact that anthropologists ‘construct’ the field in which they conduct their ethnographic research has long been recognised, but less considered are the ways in which the field can ‘construct’ both the anthropologist and fieldwork practices. In many ways, this process is a natural corollary of the fact that researchers must always adapt and sensitise themselves to the realities of their field locations, and more importantly, the inherently dialogical nature of ethnographic research. At the same time, this ‘construction’ can potentially have more singular ramifications, particularly when fieldwork is carried out in situations characterised by chronic violence. In such circumstances, the ethnographic process almost inevitably exposes the anthropologist to violence, but can also become intrinsically imbued with violence, to the extent that it can make sense to talk of the ‘violence’ of ethnography. This article illustrates this idea through a consideration of the author’s doctoral fieldwork experiences in Managua, Nicaragua, including his ritual initiation into an urban youth gang, and considers some of the ethical and practical ramifications of this experience.     

The Persistent Influence of December 2001: Collective Action in 21st-Century Argentina

The protests of December 2001 in Argentina were the most visible manifestation of a larger cycle of contention, which continues to have a substantial influence on the forms, tactics and goals of social movements throughout the country. This paper provides a critical overview of these lasting effects. In particular, we focus on three areas where the consequences of the crisis for collective action have been particularly strong: performative politics, coalition-building, and institutional support for grassroots networks. We conclude by reflecting on the implications for participatory democracy and the consolidation of a highly engaged civil society.     

State Response to Transnational Asset Accumulation: The Case of Argentina

Using the asset accumulation framework, and relying on interviews with civil servants working in the department of migrations for the Argentine government, this article addresses the response of the Argentine state to the accumulation and transfer of capital among Argentine emigrants. Contextualising the situation of Argentina in the ‘Latin American context', our primary focus is on four asset categories: financial, human, social and political. This inquiry identifies recent initiatives developed to approach Argentines residing abroad as well as some of the challenges faced by the Argentine state to ‘reconnect’ with emigrants.