Postwar Latin America Research Articles

The Fishmeal Revolution: The Industrialization of the Humboldt Current Ecosystem

In 1953, fishing yields in Peru were 28th highest in the world. Less than ten years later Peru had vaulted to number one. The registered capacity of the country's fishing fleet increased 39-fold, and the processing capacity of its fishmeal factories grew by a factor of 19. The subsequent collapse of Peruvian fishery in the early 1970s was almost equally as vertiginous.Kristin Wintersteen's The Fishmeal Revolution sets the fantastic story of the rise, fall, and partial rise again of Peru's fishery in a larger, ecological context that considers the industrialization of fishing not in one individual state or of a single species of fish but across the Humboldt Current ecosystem as a whole (including both Chile and Peru). The book is, in the author's words, a “translocal” history. In the best traditions of environmental history, The Fishmeal Revolution describes the effects of climatological oscillations on how humans have lived in and interacted with their physical surroundings. The result is a work that is not reducible to a single overarching argument or analytical intervention but instead emphasizes and underlines the unique contingencies and conjunctures of individual historical processes.The short text has exceptional thematic, historical, and geographic breadth, informed by a diverse source base. The author notes in the acknowledgments that work on the book took place in thirty-two cities, across eight countries and three continents, and this becomes quickly evident to the reader (p. ix). This speaks volumes to the author's dedication as well as patience in working through copious and frequently dry documents on fisheries and fish.The book begins with a “deep” historical background of the Peruvian and Chilean coasts from prehistory to the early nineteenth century, in which the author stresses the long history of climate's influence on human society. From there the story pivots to an overview of changing farming and livestock technologies in North America and Europe up to 1930 and the scientific work that served as a catalyst for fishmeal's incorporation into global circuits of industrial agriculture. The heart of the book recounts the industrialization of fishing in Peru and Chile. In Peru, the fishing industry experienced exponential growth in the 1960s based on exploitation of a single species, the anchoveta (Engraulis ringens), and around a single boomtown, the city of Chimbote. The fishery collapsed, with drastic ecological and social consequences, in 1972–73. Chile's fishery, while hit with some of the same climatological oscillations and exhibiting many similarities to the Peruvian industry, adopted a multispecies fishery and was thus less vulnerable to population changes in single species. Throughout the author fluently discusses biological and physical natural science literature on the Humboldt Current.The decision to ground the analysis in biogeography and climate oscillations rather than political, social, or economic structures of Peruvian and Chilean history, however, has trade-offs typical of much scholarship in environmental history. Interestingly, in a book about industrialization and economic development in postwar Latin America, dependency theory and economic development strategies are not mentioned; these might have fruitfully informed the analysis of fishery development. The priorities of dependency theory, for instance, might have framed with more nuance the question of whether southeast Pacific fisheries would be used to satisfy social needs (addressing malnutrition) or private greed (exporting via high-paying international commodity markets). Could it have been that export by private actors aided hard currency reserves (on the eve of the anchoveta collapse, some one-third of Peruvian hard currency earnings were due to fishmeal and oil) that were in turn deemed essential to import capital stock for Peruvian development? Indeed, the book's focus on close reading of qualitative, local archival sources, coupled with limited engagement with secondary literatures, tends to reveal more about historical actors' feelings and thoughts about historical events, trends, or policies than allow for analysis of these. Thus the reader learns, for example, about industrialists' thoughts on economic policies and fishing regulations rather than what those policies and regulations actually were. Similarly, the chapter on Chimbote scratches the surface of a fascinating Peruvian melting pot and social experiment. The narrative, however, engages minimally with Peruvian social and political history and thereby does not pack as much analytical or historiographical punch as it might have. The book compares Chilean and Peruvian fishery development but without systematic consideration or analysis of national-level policy or regulation. The reader thus gains little insight into why Peru and Chile developed fisheries with different characteristics, beyond factors of geography and climate.In short, The Fishmeal Revolution provides an excellent overview of a dizzying array of primary source material in a concise history based on a well-informed discussion of the Humboldt Current region's natural properties. It is a welcome addition to literature on resource extraction and human-environment interactions in Latin America.

Theory after Practice

Theory after Practice

New Geographies of Abstract Art in Postwar Latin America

New Geographies of Abstract Art in Postwar Latin America

Rethinking Basic Infrastructure: French Aid and Metro Development in Postwar Latin America

In der zweiten Halfte des 20. Jahrhunderts entstanden in lateinamerikanischen Metropolen acht neue U-Bahn-Systeme, darunter in Mexiko, Brasilien, Chile und Venezuela. Welche Fak- toren konnen diese dramatischen Veranderungen in urbanen Raumen erklaren? Der Aufsatz argumentiert, dass dafur franzosische Akteure verantwortlich waren. Wahrend internationale Entwicklungsagenturen grundlegende Infrastrukturprojekte wie Hafen oder Damme forderten, bot sich Frankreich urbanen Modernisierern an. Die Beziehungen zwischen lateinamerikanischen Planern und franzosischen Investoren kamen franzosischen Herstellern und lateinamerikanischen Befurwortern von U-Bahn-Systemen gleichermasen zugute. Der Aufsatz basiert auf spanischen, portugiesischen und franzosischen Quellen, darunter Archivmaterial der Societe francaise d’etudes et de realisations de transports urbains (SOFRETU), lokalen Zeitungsberichten und offiziellen Stellungnahmen. Er hebt die Bedeutung bilateraler Entwicklungskooperation zwischen Frankreich und lateinamerikanischen Landern hervor.

Review: New Geographies of Abstract Art in Postwar Latin America, edited by Mariola V. Alvarez and Ana M. Franco

Review: New Geographies of Abstract Art in Postwar Latin America, edited by Mariola V. Alvarez and Ana M. Franco

The Cine Club de Colombia and Postwar Cinephilia in Latin America: Forging Transnational Networks, Schooling Local Audiences

Founded in Bogotá in 1949, the Cine Club de Colombia exemplifies the transatlantic character of Latin American cinephilia after WWII, when film societies, archives, festivals, and film schools flourished in close contact with European cultural institutions with global aspirations, including FIAF and UNESCO. Dedicated to ‘improving the taste of the movie-going public’ in a rapidly growing metropolis, the Cine Club de Colombia (CCC) served as a source of cultural legitimacy for an emerging middle class. The organization worked to institute an imported model of the film society, both in terms of programming (films from an emerging canon of art cinema or judged historically significant) and audience (imagined as discerning and actively engaged, an ideal indebted to the French cineclub movement). The CCC’s efforts were hampered by members’ resistance to these spectatorial norms and difficulties obtaining suitable programming within the local infrastructure of commercial distribution, which prompted its leadership to connect with an international network of cultural institutions to access prints. Drawing on programs and internal documents, this essay expands on recent scholarship on noncommercial exhibition beyond Euro-American contexts, arguing that the CCC’s history signals the tensions between institutional norms established elsewhere and locally entrenched tastes and practices in postwar Latin America.

The Specter of Races: Latin American Anthropology and Literature between the Wars

The Specter of Races: Latin American Anthropology and Literature between the Wars

C. René Padilla and the Origins of Integral Mission in Post-War Latin America

This article discusses the origins of ‘misión integral’ or integral mission, a term coined by the Ecuadorian theologian C. René Padilla (b. 1932). As the first critical study of Padilla, it argues that the origins of ‘misión integral’ are to be found within a cluster of political and social forces that were reshaping post-war Latin America: rural-urban migration, the resulting complications of urbanisation and the rapid expansion of the universities, where Marxist ideas of revolutionary change were of growing appeal to students. This article relies on interviews with many of the leading personalities involved, together with personal papers, archival research and Latin American census data.

Moving the Masses: Toward a History of Public Transport in Postwar Latin America

Moving the Masses: Toward a History of Public Transport in Postwar Latin America

Vinicius de Moraes and "P�tria minha": The Politics of Writing in Post-war Brazil

This article analyzes Vinicius de Moraes's "Pátria minha" (1948) within the historical context of his first diplomatic post abroad. "Pátria minha" was written while Moraes was stationed in Los Angeles as a Cônsul de Segunda Classe (Ministério, "Moraes" 385). Moraes's poetic interpretations of Brazil often originated from the standpoint of the relationship between the sexes. "Pátria minha" is no exception to this rule, since symbolically gendered relationships play an important role in the poem. Written as an open letter to Brazil of the late 1940s and conceived within the specific politico-cultural context of post-war Latin America, "Pátria minha" traces through intimate imagery the contours of Brazilian identity as it conjures a complex and vulnerable nation. In the poem, the nation is articulated as being in transition and threatening dissolution because of its precarious position between local and global hegemonic discourses, namely the Vargas legacy and US expansionism. This article analyzes some of the analogies between Moraes's diplomatic work and his poetic conception of Brazilian identity during this tense period in national history by utilizing original archival materials, such as personal correspondence and diplomatic documents located in the Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa and in the Arquivo Histórico do Itamaraty in Rio de Janeiro.

The Dilemmas of Democracy in the Open Economy: Lessons from Latin America

Scholars have usually understood the problem of democratic consolidation in terms of the creation of mechanisms that make possible the avoidance of populist excesses, polarized conflicts, or authoritarian corporatist inclusion that undermined free politics in much of postwar Latin America. This article makes the case that, under contemporary liberal economic conditions, the nature of the challenge for democratization has changed in important ways. Earlier problems of polarization had their roots in the long-present statist patterns of economic organization. By contrast, under free-market conditions, democratic consolidation faces a largely distinct set of challenges: the underarticulation of societal interests, pervasive social atomization, and socially uneven political quiescence founded in collective action problems. These can combine to undermine the efficacy of democratic representation and, consequently, regime legitimacy. The article utilizes data from the Latin American region since the 1970s on development, economic reform, and individual and collective political participation to show the effects of a changing state-economy relationship on the consolidation of democratic politics.

Shock and Awe: Interpretations of the Events of September 11

Scholars have usually understood the problem of democratic consolidation in terms of the creation of mechanisms that make possible the avoidance of populist excesses, polarized conflicts, or authoritarian corporatist inclusion that undermined free politics in much of postwar Latin America. This article makes the case that, under contemporary liberal economic conditions, the nature of the challenge for democratization has changed in important ways. Earlier problems of polarization had their roots in the long-present statist patterns of economic organization. By contrast, under free-market conditions, democratic consolidation faces a largely distinct set of challenges: the underarticulation of societal interests, pervasive social atomization, and socially uneven political quiescence founded in collective action problems. These can combine to undermine the efficacy of democratic representation and, consequently, regime legitimacy. The article utilizes data from the Latin American region since the 1970s on development, economic reform, and individual and collective political participation to show the effects of a changing state-economy relationship on the consolidation of democratic politics.

“Disobedient” Generals and the Politics of Redemocratization: The Clinton Administration and Haiti

U.S. policy toward political transitions in postwar Latin America has centered around the goal of securing regime changes that ensure the continuity of the state. This is true of Republican and Democratic administrations under both conservative and liberal presidents. While issues of democracy and dictatorship have remained secondary, the task of preserving the institutions of the state (civil bureaucracies, judiciaries, military and police, etc.) have taken priority. The level of Washington's concern over challenges to the state has been incomparably greater than over changes in regime because the state, especially its coercive institutions, is perceived as the ultimate arbiter of power and guarantor of basic U.S. interests in these societies. Consequently, Washington's policy toward the state in Latin America has remained constant; toward the regime it has been variable. Whether we are discussing Eisenhower policy toward Cuba, the Kennedy-Johnson approach toward the Dominican Republic and Brazil, Richard Nixon's hostility toward Allende's Chile, Jimmy Carter's policy toward Nicaragua and El Salvador, or Ronald Reagan's support for redemocratization in Guatemala, the thread that linked them all was a singular determination to preserve key state institutions

Debt, development, and democracy: modern political economy and Latin America, 1965-1985

In the 1970s and 1980s the countries of Latin America dealt with their similar debt problems in very different ways--ranging from militantly market-oriented approaches to massive state intervention in their economies--while their political systems headed toward either democracy or authoritarianism. Applying the tools of modern political economy to a developing-country context, Frieden analyzes the different patterns of national economic and political behavior that arose in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. This book will be useful to those interested in comparative politics, international studies, development studies, and political economy more generally. Jeffry Frieden weaves together a powerful theoretical framework with comparative case studies of the region's five largest debtor states. The result is the most insightful analysis to date of how the interplay between politics and economics in post-war Latin America set the stage for the dramatic events of the 1980s.--Carol Wise, Center for Politics and Policy, Claremont Graduate School