Poesía especular: limaduras, desobediencias y otras barricadas

Twentieth-Century Latin American Literary Studies and Cultural Autonomy

Sleep medicine is a relatively young field with exponential growth in development and research in the last decades. Parallel to the advances in the United States, Latin America also had its beginnings in sleep medicine housed in neuroscience laboratories. Since the very first Latin American meeting in 1985, and the first sleep society in 1993, sleep research has undergone significant development in subsequent years. From contributions in animal research that allowed understanding of the activity of the brain during sleep to the studies that improved our knowledge of sleep disorders in humans, Latin America has become a scientific hub for expansion of sleep research. In this article, we present a historical account of the development of sleep medicine in Latin America, the current state of education and the achievements in research throughout history, and the latest advances in the trending areas of sleep science and medicine. These findings were presented during World Sleep Society meeting in Vancouver in 2019 and complement the work on sleep societies and training published by Vizcarra-Escobar et al in their article "Sleep societies and sleep training programs in Latin America" (J Clin Sleep Med. 2020;16(6):983-988).

On the Character and Causes of Inequality in Latin America

Latin, whose origins reach back to the Proto-Indo-European language, pervaded the European culture beginning with the Roman times and its influence continues until the modern era. It arose in its primal form in Latium on the Apennine Peninsula and it continued to develop together with the Roman Empire; it was subject to the influence of other cultures, particularly in the sphere of the spoken language. It was also during Roman times that literary Latin was created, but around that time another variety of Latin as spoken by the lower social classes was also born; this division exerted an immense impact on the evolution of Latin and the derivative European languages in the Middle Ages and in the modern era. Classical Latin was popularized in Europe chiefly by the Church; it functioned as a language of instruction at universities and it became the language of communication of both men of the world of learning and men of the law. In the Middle Ages Latin became rejuvenated, subjected to various modifications, including a process of regionalization. The Renaissance brought about a return to the classical variety of Latin and a desire to purify it from the accretions of the Middle Ages. Latin remained to be very much alive in the era of the Enlightenment, yet it also began to lose its significance in relation to national languages. The origins of legal Latin which initially was not only a technical language, reach back to the writings of Roman jurists. Initially legal language relied heavily on real-life social and economic relations. Yet already in ancient Rome, abstract concepts had been used in Latin and the nomenclature of legal institutions was evolving. This process continued throughout the mediaeval times. A good example of an outstanding expert on Latin in Poland was Wincenty Kadlubek. In Poland Latin had been a universal language, particularly in the sphere of the judicial system. This was combined at the same time with the progressing Latinization of the Polish legal language. Dictionaries were yet another important aspect of the functioning of Latin – in Poland they began to be published in the 14th century. Translations of legal texts into Polish, beginning with the translations of the Statutes of King Kazimierz Wielki, were also popular in mediaeval Poland. Such translations are also a common practice today – the directive which bids to use Latinized forms of technical terms, rather than their Polish translations which are often descriptive and resort to neologisms, seems to be quite justifiable. Though rarely used and hermetic, Latin seems to persist and is waiting to be rediscovered.

This Campbell systematic review examines the effect of interventions to strengthen land property rights on outcomes such as investment, agricultural productivity and farmer incomes in rural areas in low and middle‐income countries. The review summarises evidence from 20 quantitative studies (quasi‐experimental studies with statistical adjustment for bias) and nine qualitative studies. Land property rights improve productivity, consumption expenditure and income. However, caution is needed in interpreting this finding as there are few high‐quality studies available. The studies suggest that land property rights interventions contribute to welfare through improved perceived security and resulting long‐term investment. No studies showed that land property rights interventions improve access to credit. Executive Summary BACKGROUND Secure and predictable access to land as a productive resource is key to the livelihoods of millions of farmers around the world. Secure land tenure enables farmers to invest in long‐term improvements to their farms and soils in the expectation that they will reap the benefits of those investments without fear that their land be confiscated arbitrarily. Formal and informal land rights are therefore seen as key to improving the conditions of the poor in developing countries in terms of economic growth, agricultural production, food security, natural resource management, gender‐related inequalities, conflict management and local governance processes more generally. Existing evidence on the effects of land property rights interventions is mixed and to a considerable degree dependent upon the initial land rights conditions. In many cases where existing rights are already secure through stable informal and customary systems, the formalization of rights through land titling, one form of strengthening rights, may have little impact. In other cases, mechanisms for formalizing property rights where no formal institutions had previously existed are argued to have increased productivity and slowed forest loss. Much of the literature underscores the complexity of attribution and the importance of context to understanding relationships between security, registration and productivity, and to understanding gender dimensions. They also suggest tenure security alone is not a ‘silver bullet’ leading directly to higher farmer incomes, or that it is solely attributed to tenure reforms– that is, context matters. No known systematic review or meta‐analysis on the relationships between land property rights and productivity or welfare has been undertaken to date, and concerns have been highlighted by others over inconsistent effects and design limitations in some studies of tenure reform. This has therefore provided strong motivation for a systematic review that serves as an independent review of the quality and reliability of findings offered in the available literature. In particular, this review sought to examine the specific impacts of two types of land rights interventions: Conversion of communal or non‐demarcated rural land to freehold title and registration of such rights in an official registry; and Statutory recognition and codification of customary or communal rural land rights, and registration of these rights in an official registry. OBJECTIVES The objectives of the review are as follows: to understand the quantitative and qualitative impacts of interventions to strengthen land property rights on agricultural and livelihood outcomes in rural areas of low and middle income countries to assess whether these effects are different for men and women, and under what circumstances to assess specific mechanisms that enable or limit productivity improvement (barriers and facilitators) SEARCH STRATEGY The search strategy involved searches of 16 online databases, grey literature, hand searches of 27 key journals and bibliographic snowballing. The searches were carried out in October 2012 and the non‐impact evaluation, or qualitative, results were revisited again in July of 2013 after feedback on an initial draft of the report. SELECTION CRITERIA The review synthesizes quantitative evidence only from studies that: used randomized experiments or quasi‐experimental methods employing strategies for causal identification and using some method for removing biases due to non‐random assignment of treatment; estimated the impact of either conversion to freehold title or statutory recognition of land rights; measured at least one intermediate outcome defined in the study, or final outcomes (productivity of land use, welfare of pre‐ and post‐policy rights holders in terms of income/ consumption or poverty, gender‐based welfare outcome measures, or income/ consumption or poverty); estimated impacts with outcome data measured at the individual or household level; were undertaken in developing countries (as defined by the World Bank); and that measured outcomes at some point between 1980 and 2012. The qualitative criteria aimed to provide context and address possible answers to how and why interventions may or may not have been successful overall or for certain groups in particular. Eligibility of non‐impact evaluation studies was determined via a two‐stage screening process to facilitate the review of only the most relevant studies while quickly filtering out inappropriate research based on the Critical Skills Appraisal Programme (CASP) tool. This involved similar criteria to the quantitative search, albeit with different methodological requirements. Specifically, studies were filtered based on clearly defined research objectives, links to relevant literature, context and sample selection, data collection, methods, as well as quality and relevance of their analyses. Other types of reform were not eligible for inclusion in the review, including those relating to justice, capacity‐building, outreach, and inheritance. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Data extraction sheets were devised to facilitate comparison of interventions discussed in studies meeting the inclusion criteria. For quantitative studies, estimated effects on any of the intermediate and final outcomes were extracted. For all studies, quotes from the study on how the intervention seemed to have affected any of the intermediate outcomes were extracted. For outcomes measured in terms of monetary value (productivity, value of credit received, and consumption), we carried out our quantitative analysis in monetary terms as well. When natural logarithms were not used (for example, value of credit received), we used a standardized difference that standardizes the outcome relative to the control group standard deviation. For binary outcome measures (indicators for long term investment, formal borrowing) of treatment effects in terms of absolute changes, a variety of analyses were carried out including consideration of the natural logarithm of the risk ratio. When a study included multiple estimates of the same treatment effect, we used the one judged to have minimal risk of bias. Quantitative studies were coded in terms of risk of bias in estimating impacts, and were assessed using the IDCG Risk of Bias Tool. Because of high inter‐study heterogeneity in effect sizes, random effects synthesis and random effects meta‐regression on moderator variables were used. Furthermore, given the low number of studies (20 quantitative studies), only bivariate meta‐regressions of effect estimates on moderators were performed. For the qualitative component of this review, an aggregative metasummary approach was undertaken, focusing on quantitatively identifying the frequency of qualitative results found in the research via a five stage process of findings extraction, category grouping, theme abstraction, identification of frequency and intensity of findings, and results interpretation. This approach avoids the synthesis of concepts and creation of lines of argumentation. RESULTS The quantitative results presented are based on a corpus of 20 studies focusing on the impact of land rights recognition or formalization at the level of the farming household. In the Latin American and Asian cases, recognition typically took the form of freehold titling. The African studies assessed programs where rights were recognized through provision of freehold title, through formal registration of customary rights, or through conversion of customary rights to long‐term leasehold rights. We were not able to identify any quantitative evidence of sufficient quality examining the investment or productivity effects of statutory recognition of customary land rights. The studies on freehold titling provide evidence mostly consistent with conventional economic theories of property rights. The limited quantitative evidence base suggests benefits of land tenure interventions, measured in terms of productivity and consumption expenditure or income, and suggests that long‐term investment and increases in perceived tenure security are plausible channels through which tenure recognition may contribute to welfare for tho

In the last few years, the importance of diversity in precision medicine has been highlighted. However, in many cases, the scientific focus has been put on the need of genetic studies in diverse populations, even when the very definition of precision medicine has included both genetic and environmental aspects that affect the development of a certain disease in an individual. In particular, cancer, like other complex diseases, is considered a result of how chronic exposure to etiologically relevant environmental factors (the “exposome”) impacts on the more or less susceptible genetic information of a subject. Studies on cohorts other than White have highlighted variations on cancer incidence, prognosis, and response to treatment that reinforce the need to establish the unique genetic and environmental characteristics that are present in geographically diverse populations. In particular, Hispanic/Latinos have been the subject of several initiatives in the US that try to discriminate the impact of the variations on genome and exposome in the incidence and severity of cancers. Among other findings, it is fairly clear now that Latinos tend to have overall better health indicators than those of other ethnic groups with whom they share demographic and socioeconomic characteristics; however, cancer incidence rates tend to increase in US Latinos with respect to those reported in Latin America. Registries of cancer are scarcely populated in Latin America and for this reason, differences in completeness of registries cannot be ruled out as a confounding factor in this generalization. Unfortunately, there are still very little data publicly available in Latin America to address the causality of these differences. Moreover, Latin America is in itself a complex mixture of genetic variation and geographical features, and in particular the South American admixture, which represents less than 15% of US Latinos, is hardly represented in the current precision medicine landscape. Thus, there is a compelling need to establish Latin American case and control cohorts that may help to discern the relevance of genetic and environmental factors in the characteristics of cancer in this population. A few regional initiatives try to address, at least partially, this lack of knowledge. An example of these initiatives is the Latin American Cancer Research Network (LACRN), which comprises a coalition of hospitals (mostly public); basic, translational, and clinical science investigators and institutions; and government officials from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay. Its first study, sponsored by NCI's Center for Global Health (CGH) and regional partners, focuses in the molecular and epidemiologic characterization of a real-world cohort of breast cancer patients (the MPBC study, for Molecular Profile of Breast Cancer) and has currently 1,314 eligible patients who have been enrolled from 2011 to 2013 and have been studied and followed for >5 years under GCP quality standards. As well, associated biobanks have been established to keep TCGA-quality biospecimens in optimal conditions for molecular studies. In my talk, I am going to address some of the difficulties that arise when these projects are developed in Latin America, especially when developed at the level of public health services. The success in these projects depends upon applying specific strategies to overcome the aforementioned difficulties so as to contribute to the knowledge of diversity in precision medicine in Latin America. Citation Format: Andrea S. Llera. Precision medicine in cancer: Opportunities and challenges in Latin America [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Eleventh AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2018 Nov 2-5; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2020;29(6 Suppl):Abstract nr IA41.

This study aims at highlighting the role of Latin America in the context of the development of the cultural strategy of Spain in the 20th century. Latin America was a key area for the development of the Spanish cultural policy mainly due to elements having linked the two countries in the past. In what follows, we present the course of significant actions of Spain since the beginning of the 20th century, such as the establishment of the “Columbus day” (“Dia de la raza”) and the action of the Institute of Spanish Culture during the Franco regime. Our aim is to understand and analyze the relationship between Spain and Latin America and investigate how this relationship was exploited by Spain for the organization and implementation of the Spanish cultural strategy at an international level. During the 20th century, Spain worked towards the creation of a cluster containing all Spanish-speaking countries, since language was identified as an important element unifying peoples. In order to regain its strength in international politics, Spain had to work in a coordinated way and efficiently exploit factors of significant cultural potential, such as language. In terms of culture, Latin America was the space most closely connected to Spain . Therefore, the initial phase of the development of the Spanish cultural strategy was heavily based on the exploitation of the strong cultural bonds between Spain and Latin America . In this context, we present a detailed analysis on the role of the relationship of Spain with Latin America, we investigate how Spain exploited Latin America for implementing its cultural strategy and discuss whether the Spanish approach succeeded in the promotion of the Spanish cultural heritage at an international level.

Latin America and the Caribbean are regions that for more than 520 years have witnessed exceptional mixtures and exchanges of civilizations and cultures from all corners of the world, which clearly sets them apart from other places. This rich diversity is also seen through their experiences in sports. Latin America and the Caribbean have distinctive histories of sport that merit attention and study. Football (soccer) is the most popular sport in continental Latin America, while baseball is more popular in the Caribbean, including the Caribbean shores of Mexico, Central, and South America. For a separate bibliography on football (soccer) in Latin America see the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Football (Soccer) in Latin America. In this article we focus on other sports, as they can also provide us with important diverse vistas into Latin American and Caribbean dynamics. Baseball is the prime sport in the broader Caribbean. As one of the foremost sports in the United States, baseball has deep connections with this North American country, which in turn has a deep and problematic relationship with Latin American and Caribbean societies. Given the importance of baseball in this region of Latin America and the Caribbean, one full section of this article is devoted to this sport. Yet Latin American and Caribbean sport is more than football (soccer) and baseball. Indigenous societies practiced their own games, and elements of indigeneity can be seen presently. Some readings on indigenous games and indigeneity in today’s sports are provided. Sports such as horse racing, marathon running, and even sports such as bowling and billiards, have been practiced since colonial times. By the 19th century, many Latin American and Caribbean societies practiced cycling, boxing, swimming, athletics, and gymnastics, while many educators advocated for physical education curriculums nationally. Basketball, volleyball, car racing, tennis, golf, and many others were practiced in the 20th century, all contributing in different ways to making vibrant and diversified sport and athletic societies throughout the regions. Particularly important in Latin American and Caribbean sport is the regions’ involvement in the Olympic Movement, since its early revival in the modern era. José Bejamín Zubiar from Argentina was among the thirteen founders of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894 and Latin American and Caribbean individuals have participated at the Olympic Games since 1896. The oldest regional games patronized by the IOC are the Central American and Caribbean Games held since 1926. Before that, Argentina held the Centennial Olympic Games in 1910, Dominican Republic organized their own Olympic Games in 1915, and in 1922 Brazil hosted the Latin American Games. The Pan-American Games, one of the world’s largest multi-sports event after the Olympic Games, have been held since its first hosting in Buenos Aires in 1951. Buenos Aires hosted the 2018 Youth Olympic Games. This bibliography is only a selection of the material on Latin American and Caribbean sport published since the late 1990s and 2000, excluding soccer/fútbol/balompié/futebol. For material pre-2000 see Joseph Arbena’s bibliographies (cited under Bibliographies). Sports can be studied through many disciplines, but the readings and materials listed here focus on the humanistic social sciences, humanities, and related fields. There was an effort to include all countries, but those with more literature will be represented more completely.

e23038 Background: Latin America (LATAM) represents 8.4% of the world's population and has a growing cancer incidence compared with other regions. However, most clinical trials are conducted in high-income countries. The clinical research regulatory regimen in LATAM has been evolving consistently in the last decade and now is stable and mature, and data quality is comparable to other geographies. Enhanced LATAM involvement in global clinical trials would help these studies to meet recruitment goals, increase diversity, and reduce costs and perhaps timelines associated with clinical research. This abstract shows the current landscape of clinical research in LATAM trough data and experience of a global clinic research organization (CRO) (Fortrea). Methods: We obtained the 2020 cancer incidence in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, LATAM, and worldwide, from the World Health Organization’s GLOBOCAN database, as well as the information about ongoing, terminated, or completed clinical trials in these regions using Citeline’s database, from 2018 to 2023. We gathered LATAM countries' regulatory approval timelines from Fortrea’s database. Results: Overall, 7.7% of all cancer cases in 2020 were diagnosed in LATAM; however, only 3.64% of oncology trials were conducted there. The major disparities are in prostate cancer (15.2% vs 3.9% of cases and trials, respectively), followed by thyroid (10.8% vs 3.7%), cervix uteri (9.8% vs 4.6%), leukemia (8.1% vs 3.6%), and colorectal (7% vs 2.51%). Brazil had 3.1% of all cases but 1.9% of trials, while Mexico had 1% vs 1.3%, Argentina had 0.7% and 1.3%, Chile had 0.3% vs 0.7%, Peru had 0.4% vs 0.6%, and Colombia had 0.6% and 0.45% respectively. Regarding trial phases, 0.7% of Phase I trials were run in LATAM, 2.2% of Phase II, 15.6% of Phase III, and 2.8% of Phase IV. In the Table below, we present the proportion of clinical trials in LATAM in the past 5 years, based on the actual enrollment first date. Regulatory approval timelines in LATAM vary among countries, being 4.5 months in Argentina, 4 to 7 months in Brazil, 4.6 months in Chile, 7 months in Colombia, 2.8 months in Mexico, and 9 months in Peru. Conclusions: As a region, LATAM has been underrepresented in the clinical research scenario in the past five years, including in much-needed areas like prostate, colorectal, and cervical cancer. It is better represented in phase III studies but has almost negligible participation in other trial phases. There are differences among individual countries, with Brazil being underrepresented as opposed to Argentina and Mexico. Start-up timelines are variable among countries but overall comparable to other regions. We notice a significant potential to increase the number of clinical trials in LATAM. [Table: see text]

In January 1958 the Council of Ministers of the Romanian People's Republic launched a worldwide effort to showcase Romania's progress in health care. The decision reflected the Communist regime's medical Cold War diplomacy and was also a result of growing interest in what outside Eastern Europe was called “socialized medicine,” that is, a state-funded and organized health care system with equal and universal access for all citizens. Among the governments that wished to learn from Romania's experience were those of Bolivia and Argentina. Their representatives were invited to Bucharest for official visits or specialization courses. In the case of Argentina, the collaboration also stemmed from interwar encounters at international medical congresses between physicians of the two countries.This example of early exchanges between Romania and Latin American countries signals a broader research field that has recently emerged in Cold War studies: the multiple geographies of medical exchanges, mobilities, and conceptualizations in the 1945–1989 period. The volume edited by Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Raúl Necochea López is an essential addition to the growing literature about the relationship between health care, the bipolarity of the Cold War, and decolonization. Along with other pioneering studies, such as those by Marcos Cueto (Cold War, Deadly Fevers: Malaria Eradication in Mexico, 2007), Young-Sun Hong (Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime, 2015), and Dora Vargha (Polio across the Iron Curtain: Hungary's Cold War with an Epidemic, 2018), the collection explores the fascinating terrain determined by the relationship between Cold War politics and rhetoric, on one hand, and notions of health, disease, and welfare, on the other.Peripheral Nerve brings two new dimensions to this scholarship. First, it offers a comprehensive panorama of Latin American cases of local, regional, and transregional alignments engineered by medical experts. It goes beyond the usual focus on U.S. interventions in and hegemony over this part of the world. The contributors convincingly emphasize the agency of Latin American actors, their ability to engage with multiple partners, and their savviness in taking advantage of the ideological competition between the two camps of the Cold War.Second, Peripheral Nerve brings a new chronological perspective for discussing health care entanglements, circulations, and partisanships: ideas, choices, and affinities during the Cold War were rooted in the interwar period. They are linked to the institutional and intellectual history of medical reforms in Latin America before 1945, to international experiences such as cooperation within the League of Nations Health Organization, or to the fascination with the Soviet Union's radical experiment in state-managed health care. Moreover, many of the contributors provide suggestive connections between pre-1989 policies and phenomena that unfolded after the end of the Cold War.The overarching theme of Peripheral Nerve is that of local agency and, consequently, of revising the history of the Cold War from its margins. Such an approach brings Latin America back into the global history of the period, a task flagged by other recent publications as well. For instance, in the introduction to the impressive volume Latin America and the Global Cold War, Thomas Field Jr., Stella Krepp, and Vanni Pettinà affirm that they compiled the book to revive “the history of what were once powerful interactions between Latin America and the rest of the Global South” (p. 2).Peripheral Nerve opens with a foreword by Gilbert Joseph, who places the volume in the general trend of “remaking . . . Latin American Cold War history” (p. ix). Three sections follow, each with its own distinct vantage point. The first deals with the interplay between leftwing internationalism and U.S. pressure on Latin America during the early Cold War. Katherine Bliss examines the biography of Lini de Vries, a former U.S. antifascist volunteer in the Spanish Civil War who sought to elude the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation by going into exile to Mexico in the 1940s. The Mexican government welcomed her contribution to rural health care reform, despite encountering criticism from U.S. officials. Nicole Pacino shows how the shrill anti-Communism of the 1950s in Washington led to the politicization of the Rockefeller Foundation's grants to medical schools in Bolivia, a departure from the institution's more ecumenical approach before 1945. Gabriel Soto Laveaga offers a fascinating study of how U.S. pharmaceutical companies skillfully employed Cold War rhetoric to control international prices and exert pressure on the Mexican government to open up its steroid hormone industry. If in the early 1950s a Mexico City company, Syntex Laboratories, controlled much of the world's steroid trade, by the end of the decade U.S. investors had purchased Syntex and relocated its headquarters to Palo Alto, significantly diminishing Mexico's domestic pharmaceutical capacities. In these three cases one can observe the degrees to which Latin American governments were able to maneuver in the increasingly troubled waters of U.S.-Soviet competition.The second section of the volume deals with the circulation of ideas and experts within the ideological camps of the Cold War. Each contribution underlines levels of ideological adaptation and transfer in various Latin American countries. Raúl Necochea López analyses how fertility surveys in Puerto Rico were the basis for U.S. advocacy of family planning policies throughout Latin America. He insists that this process antagonized Puerto Rican nationalists who used the Cold War to consolidate their position on the island. Gilberto Hochman and Carlos Herinque Paiva present the intellectual and ideological itinerary of parasitologist Samuel Pessoa. They link his fascination with Communist states’ health care systems (from the Soviet Union or China) and his membership in the Brazilian Communist Party to his interwar advocacy for medical, social, and economic reforms in the Brazilian countryside. The chapter provides glimpses into the multifaceted Latin American engagements with “socialized medicine.” From 1956 to 1961, Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek emphasized state centralization and planning of programs for the control and eradication of rural endemic diseases (p. 151). Jennifer Lambe examines the evolution of psychiatry in Cuba from the perspective of debates pitting Sigmund Freud against Nikolai Pavlov as central paradigms of the profession. She stresses the prerevolutionary roots of these discussions. She insists on the eclecticism, particularly in the 1960s, of Cuban responses to official attempts to emulate the Soviet focus on the Pavlovian tradition. She also shows how the two Soviet psychiatrists sent to Havana to advise on the revolutionary reform of the discipline had to acknowledge the diversity of local approaches (pp. 172–173).The third section is centered on the multidirectionality of Latin American medical experiences throughout the Cold War. Jadwiga Mooney focuses on two biographies—those of Salvador Allende and Benjamin Viel—when recounting Chilean attempts to create a national health service. For both men, Mooney emphasizes the pre-1945 origins of their reformist projects as well as the role of other health care models, such as the British or the Soviet, in shaping their visions of the Chilean medical system. Marco Ramos's chapter explores Argentinian psychoanalysts’ syncretic interactions and cross-fertilizations with Soviet, Western, and Third Worldist approaches in the field. These exchanges pushed some professionals to call in the 1970s for the “nationalization” of psychiatry so that it would better reflect Argentine realities. Ramos shows the shifting meaning of anti-imperialism and its embeddedness in the local context. This sometimes caused “failed encounters” (desencuentros) between strands of anticolonial medicine (p. 212). Cheasty Anderson contributes a study of Cuban medical teams’ activity in Nicaragua during the Sandinista regime. The Cuban government sought to insulate its medical workers from Nicaraguan society, beyond their medical provision tasks. Nicaraguan officials likewise safeguarded their policymaking autonomy. Anderson offers an engrossing analysis of daily contacts between Cuban personnel and the Nicaraguan population, but she does not fully explore the potential hierarchies of this interaction, particularly the Cuban superiority complex that sometimes appears between the lines of her interviewees’ accounts. Anderson could have also pursued a comparison between Cuban activities and East German doctors’ experience at the Carlos Marx hospital, created and operated by the German Democratic Republic in the 1980s. Iris Borowy has written a captivating account of this medical institution in the journal História, ciências, saúde—Manguinhos (2017). Peripheral Nerve would have benefited from a more comparative exploration connecting Latin American experiences with other instances of medical entanglement and circulation in different regions during the Cold War.Peripheral Nerve ends with a conclusion by the two editors that discusses the new vistas for research on health, medicine, and the Cold War in Latin America. The linchpin for the issues they raise is the central role played by international institutions (e.g., the World Health Organization or United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) in global health care dynamics. These bodies offered world forums for various governments and their experts to pursue their interests, engage in dialogue, and imagine their positions in international political and medical hierarchies. Birn and López also explore the continuities across the 1989 threshold, underlining that the end of the Cold War did not bring “a wholesale rebooting of health philosophies and proposals in Latin America, instead hosting a mingling of the old and the new” (p. 272). They connect medical solidarities across the region during the post-2000 Pink Tide of elected left-leaning governments with programs first established during the Cold War. For instance, they show how the 2005 PAHO Declaration of Montevideo revived the primary health care principles of the Alma-Ata Declaration (1978), and they point out that the Cuban-Venezuelan Misión Barrio Adentro (Inside the Neighborhood) was an offspring of Havana's pre-1989 medical diplomacy. In this last case, they should have stressed the blatant manipulation of the program by Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to ensure his and his party's reelection, as detailed for instance in extensive reporting by Nicholas Casey in The New York Times in March 2019.The volume edited by Birn and López is a trailblazing contribution to the global history of medicine during the Cold War. It presents geographies and expertise that recapture the complex connections pursued from Latin America, which equally echoed and defied ideological divides during the second half of the 20th century. Such versatile reading of international health care politics is highly topical for the present: the COVID pandemic has reopened debates about medical diplomacy, competition among health care models, and vaccine nationalism.

Theotonio Dos Santos (1936–2018): The Revolutionary Intellectual Who Pioneered Dependency Theory

Introduction to<i>Visual Arts Research</i>Special Issue, Body Cam: The Visual Regimes of Policing

Several museums and libraries in North America and Europe house in their collections expressive works of art from Latin America. An understanding of the source of such collections requires study of their history and of the background from which they come, even if, as a matter of fact, collecting works of art and bibliographical assets on such a theme is not new. The interest in studying artworks which do not belong to the so-called western canon enables a wider knowledge of the art in Latin America. Notwithstanding the reasons behind such interest, it is worth noting that some facts related to their development are still lively, such as the interests roused by the travelling artists in the 19th century, who departed in search of the unknown or exotic and came back to their homeland with an imagination full of images from the New World. It is undeniable that Latin America has had a key role in the major changes that occurred during the age of discovery, when Europe focused on its colonies. Nowadays, as we observe the recurrence of such a foreign look at Latin America, we might ask ourselves how Latin America sees itself.

Over the past decades, inequality has risen not just in advanced economies but also in many emerging market and developing economies, becoming one of the key global policy challenges. And throughout the 20th century, Latin America was associated with some of the world’s highest levels of inequality. Yet something interesting happened in the first decade and a half of the 21st century. Latin America was the only region in the World to have experienced significant declines in inequality in that period. Poverty also fell in Latin America, although this was replicated in other regions, and Latin America started from a relatively low base. Starting around 2014, however, and even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, poverty and inequality gains had already slowed in Latin America and, in some cases, gone into reverse. And the COVID-19 shock, which is still playing out, is likely to dramatically worsen short-term poverty and inequality dynamics. Against this background, this departmental paper investigates the link between commodity prices, and poverty and inequality developments in Latin America.

Europeans embarked upon the colonization of Latin America early in the 16th century, about 100 years before colonizing North America. Latin America seemed an auspicious choice at the time, in part because there were reports of gold and silver in the Caribbean and to the south, but also because the Caribbean and northeastern part of Brazil would prove to be promising areas for the cultivation of sugar cane. With this head start, estimated incomes in Latin America were generally higher than those in North America for the first 250 years of settlement, or until about 1750. Then, for the next 125 years, Latin America approached stagnation, while North America prospered and pulled ahead. Since about 1875, Latin America has experienced improved performance but has not achieved the convergence that economic theory would lead one to expect. What are the underlying causes of this poor economic performance over the last 250 years or so? Why has Latin America had such a hard time taking advantage of the increased opportunities in world markets, including in our own time?