Latin American Experience Research Articles

A literatura latino-americana e as alegorias nacionais de Concierto Barroco

The problematical identity of Latin America is reflected on the recurrence of the theme in the literature created in this part of the continent. The images of Caliban and anthropophagy and the attribution of a Baroque meaning to the Latin American experience characterize an expressive part of such literature. By means of the character Amo, Carpentier's Concierto Barroco exemplifies the difficulties of the Creole elite in finding a noble origin for themselves in their ancestors' Europe, and in identifying themselves with it. The slave musician Filomeno and Amo naturalizes narrative, whereas Filomeno provocatively transits between the hierarchies, turning the Baroque meaning of identity into an allegory. Jazz is a Creole, anthropophagic and Baroque product whose erased origin was replaced by the fabled narrative in the Spirituals that renewed modern music. It is important to emphasize that Carpentier created, by means of Filomeno, the unity of the American experience whose frontier is Mexico.

Cooperação monetária e financeira: o que é bom para a Ásia também é para a América Latina?

Monetary and financial cooperation: what is good to Asian is also good to Latin America?. This article compares the Asian and Latin American experiences with monetary cooperation. It is argued that in the latter such cooperation has hardly progressed, due to low degree of regional integration, the recurrent use of multilateral institutional resources to deal with external shocks and the lack of clear objectives: monetary cooperation is some times seen as a means to foster integration, but also as a means to provide long term funds and as a source of liquidity in foreign currencies. In Asia, differently, cooperation has apparently not been so instrumental to regional integration, but has proven to be quite important as a means to build a regional capital market as well as a mechanism to deal with external shocks.

Entre bastidores: la “memoria larga” de la universidad pública (México - Colombia)

ResumenEl artículo recupera algunas memorias, discursos e hitos que han incidido en la defensa de la universidad pública, en el ámbito de dos experiencias universitarias nacionales ?México y Colombia?. Ello, con el propósito de pensar hoy la defensa y la reconstrucción del sentido de lo ‘público’ en la universidad colombiana, en diálogo con otras experiencias latinoamericanas. Esta búsqueda reconoce que la universidad sigue siendo un espacio de desarrollo y promoción de las posturas críticas,

Area Studies Library Organizations and Multi-Disciplinary Collection and Research: The Latin American Experience

National and international library organizations are important in the academic community because they provide a venue for discussing new methods and ideas that improve the ability of their members to function in their jobs. They also support practical projects that cannot be done at the local level but require the coordination and activities of several libraries or organizations. This paper describes three projects of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM), an area studies library organization that resulted in benefits important to Latin American library collections in the United States. In particular, this paper discusses the role and importance of professional organizations in the success of the Latin American Cooperative Acquisitions Program (LACAP), the Latin American Microform Project (LAMP), and the Hispanic American Periodical Index (HAPI).

Work-Family Tensions and childcare. Reflections on Latin American Experiences

Work-Family Tensions and childcare. Reflections on Latin American Experiences

Commentary on Latin American Experiences on Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

On the basis of Latin American experiences in monitoring and evaluation (M&E), this note addresses learning issues with particular emphasis on the role of trust, the relations between M&E, and barriers to the use of M&E as a source of learning and suggestions to overcome them.

Latin American Regionalism and EU Studies

Outside Europe, nowhere but in Latin America have integration attempts and thinking developed so extensively across space and so consistently over time. This article introduces the historical waves of Latin American regionalism in order to discuss the theories applied to account for, and frequently advocate, regional integration. The aim is twofold: on the one hand, to assess the capacity to travel of theories that have been crafted for the EU; on the other, to draw lessons from the Latin American experiences that may contribute to advance integration theory in general and EU studies in particular.

IAEA regional intercomparison of in vivo measurements of 131I in the thyroid: the Latin American and Caribbean experience

An in vivo intercomparison exercise, organised in the scope of the IAEA Regional Latin American (RLA) Project 9066, was carried out in 2009 aimed to harmonise measurement procedures on the measurement of (131)I in the thyroid among Latin American and Caribbean countries. The exercise consisted in the measurement of an anthropomorphic thyroid phantom spiked with a certified source of (133)Ba. The phantom was supplied by the In Vivo Monitoring Laboratory of Institute for Radiation Protection and Dosimetry (IRD) to 17 Institutions from 12 countries of the regions. Among these, 13 Institutions from 10 countries returned their measurement results as well as a standard report form containing detailed information about their respective counting facilities. All participants reported activities within an acceptable range, considering American National Standard Institute (ANSI) limits. Uncertainties varied from 0.04 to 12.9 %. Although results show that the general performance was acceptable in terms of accuracy, the need for additional action towards the standardisation of uncertainty estimation in this type of measurement in the region should be highlighted.

Civilian Praetorianism and Military Shirking During Constitutional Crises in Latin America

Civilian Praetorianism and Military Shirking During Constitutional Crises in Latin America David Pion-Berlin and Harold Trinkunas Since the end of the Cold War, an elected civilian leader in Latin America is more likely to be displaced from office prior to the end of his constitutional term by mass mobiliza- tion than by a military coup. As Arturo Valenzuela has observed, thirteen of the fifteen nonconstitutional transfers of power in the region between 1990 and 2004 have been the result of civilian coups rather than military actions. 1 This phenomenon has occurred in Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador, while attempts in Peru and Venezuela have failed. Civilian coups are not confined only to Latin America; they have occurred in the Philippines, where “people power” displaced both dictators and elected presidents; in Ukraine with the “Orange” Revolution; and in Georgia with the “Rose” Revolution. In each case, a civilian elected leader was ejected from power by the mass action of civilian, rather than military, sectors of society. This article focuses on military responses (or the lack thereof) to mass protests against elected governments during moments of constitutional crisis in democratic states. These crises occur when opposition forces decide that merely changing gov- ernment policy is not enough; that what is required is a change in government itself. This may involve violent or nonviolent mechanisms, but the universe of cases ex- amined here is delimited by the opposition’s goals—changing governments outside the normal democratic processes established by the constitution rather than altering government policy. The cases draw on the Latin American experience with democra- tization both because the third wave of democracy struck the region earlier than most and because states in the region have had a long experience with military intervention in politics. At first glance what appears to have changed about contemporary politics in Latin America is the unusual lack of military intervention in moments of social contestation that might have produced a coup d’etat in previous eras. Samuel Huntington once argued that in praetorian societies, students riot, workers strike, and militaries coup. 2 The absence of military protagonism amidst social upheaval could certainly be viewed positively, as a confirmation of increasing civilian control over the armed forces in many new democracies. However, security forces play an important role in these civilian versus civilian contests. They make decisions about whether to support or withhold support from elected leaders. In nine of the thirteen cases examined from Latin America since 1990, militaries have refused presidential orders to intervene against civilian opposition forces during such crises and instead have remained quartered. 3 In a more

DIREITO À MEMÓRIA E À VERDADE: COMISSÕES DE VERDADE NA AMÉRICA LATINA

No contexto da aprovação do Plano Nacional de Direitos Humanos no Brasil, que prevê a criação de uma comissão de verdade para apurar as violações aos direitos humanos ocorridos durante a ditadura militar de 1964 a 1985, este trabalho pretende apresentar um panorama com as principais características das comissões de verdade no mundo, focando especificamente nas experiências ocorridas na América Latina.

Community development: learning from popular education in Latin America

The Latin American experience of popular education is rightly renowned for its approach towards the educational dimension of participatory community development. Acknowledging the difficulties in making sweeping generalizations, this article examines theory and practice in Latin American popular education over the last forty years, including its relationship with social movements and the state, and discusses the potential contribution of the Latin American experience to communities outside the region.

Market Approaches to Water Allocation: Lessons from Latin America

Abstract:Latin American experiences with water markets offer lessons to the U.S. because they have emerged in different political and economic contexts. The Western U.S. experience has been longer and has defined some of the world's classic cases of market allocation of water. These cases, however, have been driven by domestic factors and have evolved within domestic social and institutional contexts, which are easy for people in the U.S. to take for granted. Looking at Chile and Mexico can help us see Western U.S. water allocation with fresh eyes. These Latin American cases have been strongly influenced by international theories and policy debates, forcing the question of how to adapt foreign ideas to local realities. The Chilean case in particular shows the strong relationship between market approaches and institutions for water governance and sustainability. A comparative perspective might help loosen the gridlock that characterizes many Western U.S. water problems.

Quotas: A Pathway of Political Empowerment?

Over the last 20 years, the problem of low levels of representation of women in political office has been mobilising women, and especially feminists, throughout the world. The adoption of quotas has become a much-used tool to address the challenge of increasing women's political representation, and as a route to enhancing women's political empowerment. In Latin America, many countries have adopted quota systems, but with widely varying effects. This article takes stock of Latin American experience and asks to what extent quota systems have served as a pathway of women into politics. Identifying challenges to implementation and factors that have contributed to their success or failure, the article seeks to explore lessons that can be learnt from this experience that can help contribute to strengthening mechanisms and processes that support the achievement of greater equality in a sphere in which women continue to be grossly under-represented.

Literature and Subjection: The Economy of Writing and Marginality in Latin America (review)

Reviewed by: Literature and Subjection: The Economy of Writing and Marginality in Latin America Norma Klahn Horacio Legrás. Literature and Subjection: The Economy of Writing and Marginality in Latin America. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2008. 288 pp. This is an ambitious and provocative book that explores the nature of the literary, its poetics and politics, powers and limitations, creative force and territorialized practice in Latin America. Even as the book in its seven chapters encompasses literary production from pre-conquest to contemporary times, it is far from constituting a comprehensive account of its literature. Posing Latin American literature as a theoretical problem, Legrás engages the aesthetic to explore the tension between the universal reach of the literary word, what [End Page 495] he calls the inaugural moment of enunciation, and the singular, intractable areas of the Latin American experience that literature, as he says, not only symbolizes but also searches for, struggles with or ultimately abandons. He sets up the framework from a post-colonial perspective as he follows the historical project of the literati at the end of the nineteenth century. Led by a belief in the powers of literary representation, that is, the ability to capture the heterogeneous make up of Latin American societies, these writers, notwithstanding the differentiated worlds they inhabited in relationship to the popular masses, created symbolic worlds that inevitably also showed the limits of their reach, and even more so the ways the literary made evident the representation of power. This assimilative incorporation of the margins to literary discourse symbolically constituted the integration of "the others" into the discourse of the modernizing nation-states, that is, to the timetable of European modernity. The disjuncture between the modernizing logic of the writers and those marginalized opens a fissure that separates the work from the "real," and is still in search of resolve in both literature and reality, as is evident, states Legrás, in the terminology of cultural analysis brought forth by the renowned critics with whom he dialogues: transculturation (Rama), heterogeneity (Cornejo Polar), hybridity (García Canclini), colonial semiosis (Mignolo), third space (Moreiras), tropological mimesis (Gonzalez-Echeverría), auto-ethnography (Pratt) (6). However, there are texts, continues Legrás, that either subvert the postulates of the domesticating historical project or test the limits of literary representation from within their own constitution. Demystifying the ungrounded claims of literature to truth/immanent value, are not sufficient to understand its on-going validity, suggests Legrás, defining the aesthetic not as ornament or judgment, but as act, as coinciding in part with poiesis. Legrás differentiates between literature as institution, as state project, as canonized by pedagogical aims, publishers, prizes, academia; and literature as an instituting power that creates social bonds through enunciation making those "others," subjected in the "historical project," being subjects that negate any hegemonic form of representation. Taking from Levinas, he differentiates between the said and the saying and through his analysis of texts by among others, but especially pertinent, Saer, Roa Bastos, and Arguedas studies, "the dynamic by which literature must look to its own arsenal for weapons that may allow it to negate its historical domestication" (2) rendering discerning and stirring revisionist readings of these canonical texts. From the first introductory chapter and throughout the six chapters that follow, Legrás draws on a wide range of thinkers, theorists, and critics as he argues for the counter-hegemonic potential of the saying, the "how" rather than the "what" of literary texts. Chapter 2, focusing on The Witness by Saer and one of the most stimulating in the book, is as much a re-reading of Western philosophy as an analysis of the novel. In a challenging pairing of Descartes (real) and the protagonist (fictional), Legrás, drawing from Levinas's upsetting of ontology by ethics, studies the novel as imagining "another thinking" [End Page 496] outside western metaphysics, as a refusing to reduce the "other" to the "same," and in turn, resisting the historical project of the lettered city. In Chapter 3 Legrás, in critical dialogue with colonialist critics and historiographers (Mignolo, Brotherston, León-Portilla, Rappaport, Lockhart) returns to Levinas's differentiation between the said and the...

Import substitution and economic growth

Despite Latin America's dismal performance between the 1950s and 1980s, the region experienced strong capital deepening. We suggest that these facts can be explained as a consequence of the restrictive trade regime adopted at that time. Our framework is based on a dynamic Heckscher–Ohlin model, with scale economies in the capital-intensive sector. Initially, the economy is open and produces only the labor-intensive good. The trade regime is modeled as a move to a closed economy. The model produces results consistent with the Latin American experience. Specifically, a sufficiently small country experiences no long-run income growth, but an increase in capital.

Latin America: Highlights from the implementation of the System of National Accounts 1993

This paper reviews the Latin American experience with the implementation of the 1993 System of National Accounts and the updating of the national accounts’ base year. It also makes a preliminary assessment of the possible measurement biases in nominal gdp estimates stemming from the use of outdated national accounts base years, downward biases in household final consumption estimates, and an overestimation of gross fixed capital formation in construction activities.

Failed Presidencies: Identifying and Explaining a South American Anomaly

Are presidential democracies inherently unstable and prone to breakdown? Recent work on Latin America suggests that the region has seen the emergence of a new kind of instability, where individual presidents do not manage to stay in office to the end of their terms, but the regime itself continues. This article places the Latin American experiences in a global context, and finds that the Latin American literature helps to predict the fates of presidents in other regions. The first stage of a selection model shows that presidents who are personally corrupt and preside over economic decline in contexts where democracy is paired with lower levels of GDP/capita are more likely to face challenges to their remaining in office for their entire terms. For the challenged presidents in this set, the risk of early termination increases when they use lethal force against their challengers, but decreases if they are corrupt. These factors help account for the disproportionately large number of South American presidents who have actually been forced from office, the “South American anomaly” of the title.

The public CV database of Argentine researchers and the 'CV-minimum' Latin-American model of standardization of CV information for R&D evaluation and policy-making

This paper discusses the conceptual and methodological design and objectives of the Standardized and Unified CV Database of the Argentine Scientific and Technological Human Resources (the CVar database) project. This is a public electronic database of researchers' CVs developed by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation in Argentina. The paper also addresses the main potential uses of this source of information (complementary to more traditional sources of data such as bibliometrics or patent analysis) for research evaluation, understanding the dynamics of career trajectories, policy-making and network studies. The Argentine case has some defining characteristics which make it different from other Latin-American experiences: the political perspective of the national government on the project, the inclusion of the main S&T institutions of the country in its design as a strategy to encourage its further adoption for the academic and scientific community, and the implementation of a specific database design strictly directed to the exploitation of the information and the creation of new indicators (database design used as the ‘basic core’ of a standardized template of a Latin-American CV, from which it will be possible to integrate information coming from different electronic CV databases in the region). Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Analysis of prognostic factors in patients with adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma

8575 Background: Adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) is associated with human T-cell lymphotropic virus type-I (HTLV-1) described in Southern Japan, Europe, Caribbean and South America. Risk-stratification tools for ATLL have not been adequately evaluated. This study attempts to define prognostic factors for patients with ATLL. Methods: A total of 102 cases from our Institution were collected between January 1997 and September 2008. Diagnosis was based on clinical history and histological findings consistent with ATLL and either positive HTLV-1 serology or evidence of HTLV-1 integration. Survival curves were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Univariate and multivariate analyses were evaluated using log-rank and Cox regression tests, respectively. Results: Median age was 61 years with a female:male ratio of 1.15:1. Clinical types were acute (n=45), lymphomatous (n=43), cutaneous (n=10), smoldering (n=3) and chronic (n=1). Median OS for acute, lymphomatous, smoldering and cutaneous subtype were 2, 11, 17 and 39 months, respectively (log-rank 28.5, p<0.00001). In the univariate analysis, presence of B symptoms, ECOG performance status 2, clinical stage II or higher, elevated LDH level and bone marrow (BM) involvement were independent factors for survival with p<0.05. The IPI score was available in 92 patients; 13 (14%), 12 (13%), 29 (32%) and 38 (41%) patients were low, low-intermediate, high-intermediate and high-risk, respectively. Median OS by IPI risk group was 40, 13, 6 and 2 months, respectively (p<0.005). The prognostic index for T-cell lymphoma (PIT) score was determined in 80 patients; 20 (25%), 17 (21%), 33 (41%) and 10 (13%) patients had scores of 0–1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively. Median OS by PIT risk group was 19, 5, 3 and 2 months, respectively (p<0.005). In multivariate analysis, BM involvement and elevated LDH were significant for survival. Conclusions: This retrospective series represents the largest Latin-American experience on ATLL, which is a heterogeneous disease with distinct clinical features and outcomes. The IPI ant PIT scores, used for risk-stratification of aggressive B-cell and peripheral T-cell lymphomas, respectively, appear as good prognostic indicators for ATLL as well. Further research is needed to better risk-stratify this unique lymphoma. No significant financial relationships to disclose.

Paying for Watershed Services in Latin America: A Review of Current Initiatives

Latin American experience with payments for watershed environmental services is examined in this article. Interest in the approach is substantial in the region, probably more so than in other parts of the developing world. However, existing conservation payments frequently lack key features, such as conditionality. Impediments to the approach are analyzed, including factors that drive up costs or interfere with internalization of benefits. Included in this article is detailed examination of three schemes: two local initiatives in Ecuador (one in Pimampiro and the other in Quito), as well as a nationwide program in Mexico.