Governmental Mismanagement and Symbolic Violence: Discourses on Corruption in the Yucatán of the 1990s1

Abstract — Departing from a conceptualisation of corruption as a form of symbolic violence, this article analyses the character and impact of the discourses about corruption which were produced in Yucatán in the beginning of the 1990s. The discourses produced by official and oppositional forces are scrutinised against the background of the federal government's neoliberal policies and the sociopolitical situation in the region during 1992 and 1993. The analysis gives some insights into the character of Mexican's and Yucatecan's experiences with corruption in their own setting. It explores some of the conflictual processes involved when social forces turn this form of symbolic violence into the object of moral critique in public discourses, drawing in this way also attention to how the state is imagined by those who exercise state power and those who are subject to it.     

Using ‘Public Health Crossings’ to Create Community‐Based Rural Healthcare in Mexico: The Case of Two Health Centres in Xochimilco

Health centres established in Xochimilco, Mexico during the 1930s and 1940s represent a larger shift in the national health agenda from training medical students in rural health to addressing the specific health challenges of rural communities. While the 1935 centre offered urban students practical experience in rural environments, it did not adequately address the area's health problems. In contrast, the 1947 centre utilised improved community exchanges to enhance the region's health and sanitation. This decade of transformation resulted from a network of politicians, international organisations, and health professionals who helped to establish broader community‐based public health programmes in rural Mexico.     

Bringing the Revolution to the Countryside: Rural Health Programmes as State‐Building in Post‐1952 Bolivia

Bolivia's Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, MNR) took power in April 1952 via a popular social revolution. After 1952, the party implemented state‐sponsored modernisation projects, including extending rural public health programmes. The MNR used health programmes to change rural practices, cultivate political loyalty, and expand the state's political power. Yet rural indigenous communities were hardly passive recipients of these programmes. These communities often requested government services, and they borrowed the MNR's own political rhetoric to position themselves as worthy of state attention. Public health programmes increased access to rural health care, but they also allowed state officials and rural communities to negotiate the MNR's authority.     

‘A Sick,Weak, and Ignorant People’: Public Health Education and Prevention in Rural Colombia, 1930–1940

This article analyses Salud y Sanidad (Health and Sanitation), a government journal edited in 1930s Colombia. It examines the state's model of public health, which proposed education and prevention as strategies to guarantee the success of its programmes. It argues that despite the journal's more progressive approaches, editors and contributors reproduced stereotypes about Colombia's rural inhabitants that contradicted state rhetoric and showed the limits of public health models that do not address the underlying social inequities that drive the propagation of poverty and disease in rural areas, and that ultimately continued to blame victims for their illness and misfortune     

Argentine Nacionalismo before Perón: The Case of the Alianza de la Juventud Nacionalista, 1937–c. 1943

As the 1930s moved towards their close, a new generation of young men began to dominate the political wing of a generally more radical and assertive Argentine Nacionalismo, replacing the old guard that had found its inspiration in General José F. Uriburu and the regime he had led between September 1930 and February 1932. The Alianza de la Juventud Nacionalista, set up in September 1937, was the most important nacionalista faction of the period. It shared with other nacionalista factions the rejection of liberalism, parliamentary democracy and communism, but in contrast to the elitist and anti-popular orientation of earlier organisations, it aggressively tried to enlist popular support by portraying itself as a group genuinely concerned about the needs of the masses. The Alianza also distanced itself from the glorification of nineteenth-century Argentina, another hallmark of previous groups. Although it failed in its efforts to build up a significant following, the analysis nevertheless demonstrates that the organisation can be described as a genuinely fascist movement.     

Popular Culture, Power Relations and Urban Discipline: The Festival of the Holy Spirit in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro

The Festival of the Holy Spirit was considered the most important religious celebration in nineteenth‐century Rio de Janeiro. I discuss the popular practices of music, dance and theatre during the festival. By merging European waltz and the African batuque, the heterogeneous public re‐created and re‐invented a number of new genres that are at the roots of twentieth‐century Brazilian popular music. The festival of the Holy Spirit allows an examination of elite strategies and municipal policies regarding popular culture. In this respect, it is remarkable how much political use the Brazilian Empire made of the festival of the Holy Spirit and how its revellers fought for their celebration.     

State,Society and Markets in Argentina: The Political Economy of Neodesarrollismo under Néstor Kirchner, 2003–2007

The national Peronist social contract in Argentina has a long history rooted in syndicalism and populism. However, Menemismo in the 1990s, El Argentinazo in December 2001, and Kirchnerismo post crisis have all served to change the fundamental framework of the Argentine economy, the social underpinnings of that economy and how it intersects with global capital. This article is an attempt to identify the nature of Kirchner's administration through analysis of political economy, therefore seeking to facilitate a deeper understanding of the developmental nature and impact of the Kirchner administration of 2003–2007.     

Yucatecan–Mexican Relations at the Time of Independence: The Yucatecan Pronunciamiento of 1821

This article will explore local Yucatecan politicking and the Yucatecan–Mexican relationship at the time of independence, using Yucatán's pronunciamiento for independence in September 1821 as a case study. This examination will highlight the fact that, while local ambitions played a significant role in Yucatán's bid for independence, this did not necessarily detract from Yucatecans' attempts to not only engage with national political movements, but also to unite with Mexico. This in turn will take further historians' recent attempts to revise the traditional perception of Yucatán as one of the more pro‐autonomous and isolated states of early nineteenth‐century Mexico.     

At the Bottom of the Heap: Socioeconomic Circumstances and Health Practices and Beliefs among Garbage Pickers in Peri-Urban China

This article explores the health, disease and socioeconomic circumstances of garbage collectors in Guiyang, southwestern China. It aims to contribute to medical anthropology and understandings of Chinese society by examining garbage collectors’ understandings of waste picking, pollution and the health risks and diseases associated with their struggles for survival at the “bottom of the heap” of peri-urban society in contemporary China. Drawing on one month of ethnographic fieldwork, it provides new insights into the oft-neglected subjectivity of individuals struggling for survival at the margins of Chinese society, and how this subjectivity is shaped by their structural position as well as by their own agency in making sense and making the best of their lives.     

Institutional Design, Military Rule, and Regime Transition in Argentina (1976–1983): an Extension of the Remmer Thesis1

Abstract— In this essay, I argue that institutions in military regimes have a significant impact not only on regime durability, but also on the level of control the military is likely to exert when it withdraws from rule. Borrowing from a typology of military regimes developed by Karen Remmer, I note how the feudal regime engenders a level of investment that drives it to remain in office despite the inability of this institutional arrangement to contain politicisation in the armed forces. The obstinacy of the feudal regime thus inevitably leads it toward collapse. The argument is tested with a detailed case study of the Proceso regime in Argentina.     

'Adorned with the Mix of Faith and Profanity that Intoxicates the People': The Festival of the Senhor do Bonfim in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 1930–19541

This essay looks at a formative period in the history of the festival of the Senhor do Bonfim, one of Salvador's most important religious festivals. The essay focuses on the public ritual washing of the Church of Bonfim and the tensions between the Catholic Church, who periodically banned the washing from the larger festival, and a variety of historical actors including politicians, journalists, authors and working-class Salvadorans whose efforts eventually contributed to the lifting of the prohibition once and for all in 1953. The author suggests that the defence of the washing both reflected and contributed to a larger hegemonic process taking place in Salvador after 1930, as actors within Salvador's dominant class accepted and even praised Afro-Bahian cultural practices, including them as integral parts of a larger Bahian identity.     

‘A Natural and Voluntary Dependence’: The Royal Academy of San Carlos and the Cultural Politics of Art Education in Mexico City, 1786–1797

In this article, I explore the controversies that characterised the foundational years of the Royal Academy of San Carlos of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in Mexico City (1786–1797). They provide provocative insights into questions of competing agendas and ambitions among the artists and bureaucrats of the royal academy. They also illuminate contemporary understandings about the hierarchical relationships between a metropolitan power, Spain, and its American colonies and their visual culture and artistic production, which mirror broader political hierarchies and relationships of power and subordination.     

Disciplining Society through the City: The Genesis of City Planning in Brazil and Argentina (1894–1945)

This paper looks at the genesis of a discourse on urbanismo (city planning) in Brazil and Argentina between 1894 and 1945 using the ideas of Michel Foucault on discipline and his concept of bio–power. The demographic pattern of the major cities in both countries from 1890 onwards and the renewals of the centres of these cities are also discussed. Other sections are dedicated to the plans proposed for the same cities in the 1920s and to urban representations, such as ideas about social reform, the role of hygiene as a point of departure for planning, and the relationship of ideas on Taylorism (scientific management) and the city. The paper also discusses the planners opposition to elections, when they claimed that they were the only ones qualified to deal with urban problems and therefore they should be employed in the state apparatus.
Other concerns of the paper are the use of planning as an element of nation building and ideas defining eugenics (race 'betterment') as an important aspect of city planning. I conclude by arguing that, if implemented, city planning was a way of creating an industrial culture, disciplining society through the city, although the industrial proletariat has never made up the majority of the population in Brazil or Argentina. Even if many aspects of the plans proposed for both countries were not implemented, the discourse of planners can be seen as a will to discipline society through the city. This discipline would affect the freedom of movement of human bodies, and is therefore approached through Foucault's concepts of bio–power and discipline     

Childhood,Movement and Play: An Analysis of Child Agency and Heterotopia in Linha de Passe (2008) and Los colores de la montaña (2010)

This paper draws on contemporary theoretical debates surrounding the significance of cinematic children in order to examine two recent Latin American films. The Foucauldian concept of ‘heterotopia’ is used to explore the abilities of child protagonists to produce spaces with which they interact both imaginatively and in the films' diegetic realities. Despite distinct urban and rural settings, these productions' staging of playful heterospaces and heterotemporalities permit brief moments of relief within otherwise harsh environments. Such spaces enable child characters to demonstrate an ‘agency’ that is denied their elders, whilst somewhat evading the symbolic ‘futurity’ with which children are often burdened.     

Negotiating Natural Resource Conflicts: A Study of State Practices,Peasant Mobilisation and Sub‐National Government in the Peruvian Andes

This article explores the dynamics of natural resource conflicts and local government in the Peruvian Andes. Recent publications have found that efficiency and democratic accountability in local government are key variables for mitigating conflict. By focusing on the ethnographies of two conflicts and as participant observers within local government, we argue that by re‐framing the analytical focus within local histories and current practices of natural resource conflicts, we can better make sense of the dynamics of current land politics. The article presents a sequential framework that explores key moments of the relations between the state and peasant communities during natural resource conflicts. Through this framework, we argue that natural resource conflicts are negotiated in a sphere of politics that transcends the state's institutional and legal limits.