Recent clacs items

Born in the USA: The Identities of American-Born Latinos

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This report provides data from a survey on how the identities of U.S.-born Latinos, both personal and public, are evolving. Part of the focus is on the naming and ethnic identification of these Latinos, the influence of national origins and identity, and the way in which a Latino identity is understood and practiced. Family and community associations are explored for their influence on, for example, Spanish language transmission and use. Attitudes towards religious affiliations, homosexuality, and dating are also examined as key indicators of the social beliefs of those Latinos born in the USA. This is further explored by the nature of political engagement and attitudes towards popular culture. The report concludes that while there is considerable variability in the nature of Latino-ness, there are also important communalities (Spanish language use) as well as tensions (homeland versus U.S. loyalty).

Sustainable Development Opportunities at the Climate, Land, Energy and Water Nexus in Nicaragua , Lopez, F. , Luger, and Daniel M. Kammen

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There are strong interconnections between the practices needed to sustainably manage land, energy, and water resources, which become even more pronounced when the many implications of climate change are taken into consideration. An exploration of these resource sectors in Nicaragua, a country at high risk from climate change, shows how their linkages directly impact the opportunities for development available to a rapidly growing economy. In particular, these linkages may shape solutions for sustainably managing agriculture, confronting water scarcity, and promoting local energy resources, which together can provide independence from global market volatility. Here we synthesize the state of climate, land, energy, and water issues in Nicaragua and highlight the potential for integrated resource planning in the country. We focus on three ongoing, sustainable development initiatives as case studies: rain-water harvesting in the Pacific...

Adolescent Marriage, Agency, and Schooling in Rural Honduras

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This research examines the connections between adolescent marriage, agency, and schooling in rural Honduras. Through an in-depth qualitative case study, we address the questions: (1) In what ways, if any, do girls exercise agency in their decision to marry? (2) How might education enhance girls’ agency, expanding their choice sets and delaying the age of marriage? We argue that a lack of understanding of the decision-making processes of young girls impedes the design and implementation of interventions to address early marriage. Our in-depth, qualitative case study allows us to document how the agency that girls exercise is simultaneously thin, opportunistic, accommodating, and oppositional. Stemming from these findings, we suggest that schools can enhance girls’ agency through a number of policies including: (1) the provision of resources to design and implement teacher training and curriculum development; (2) flexible enrollment policies and innovative/non-traditional educational...

Dangerous Spaces of Citizenship: Gang Talk, Rights Talk, and Rule of Law in Brazil

Tue, 2 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This article considers an apparently perplexing aspect of democratization in Brazil: the use by notorious criminal gangs (comandos) from the poor urban peripheries and prisons of the discourses of democratic citizenship, justice, and rule of law to represent their own organizations and intentions. I situate this use within an unsettling development in Latin America generally during the last thirty years: the coincidence nearly everywhere of increasing political democracy and increasing everyday violence and injustice against citizens. My discussion considers these new territorializations of power and violence and their consequences for citizenship, democracy, and urbanization. To bring them to light, I focus on public pronouncements by Brazilian criminal gang that typically combine rationalities of crime with those of democracy, citizen rights, rule of law, and revolution. I also compare them with public declarations made by the police. I analyze both in relation to the historically...

Effective Renewable Energy Policy: Leave It to the States?

Mon, 27 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Effective Renewable Energy Policy: Leave It to the States?

Historical Timing and Party Building in “Third Wave” Democracies: The Latin American Experience

Mon, 27 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Historical Timing and Party Building in “Third Wave” Democracies: The Latin American Experience

Investigative Journalism and Access to Information in Mexico

Mon, 27 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Investigative Journalism and Access to Information in Mexico

In China's Mirror

Mon, 27 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In China's Mirror

The Art of Fernando Botero

Mon, 27 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The Art of Fernando Botero

Transparency and Accountability: The Changing U.S. Perspective

Wed, 7 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Transparency and Accountability: The Changing U.S. Perspective

Decentralization and Access to Social Services in Colombia

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

A central claim in favor of decentralization is that it will improve access to public services, but few studies examine this question empirically. This paper explores the effects of decentralization on access to health and education in Colombia. We benefit from an original database that includes over 95 percent of Colombian municipalities. Our results show that decentralization improved enrollment rates in public schools and access of the poor to public health services. In both sectors, improving access was driven by the financial contributions of local governments. Our theoretical findings imply that local governments with better information about local preferences will concentrate their resources in the areas their voters care about most. The combination of empirical and theoretical results implies that decentralization provides local officials with the information and incentives they need to allocate resources in a manner responsive to voters’ needs, and improve the quality...

A Record Number of Conflicts? Michelle Bachelet’s Inheritance of Unresolved Employment Issues

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

In November 2008 a Mercurio headline proclaimed: “Record number of strikes under this government.” We can allege that the right-wing newspaper is engaging in manipulative fear-mongering, but the numbers do warrant attention. During the Bachelet administration Chile experienced twenty-seven strikes in less than three years, which constitutes a multiple of the total strikes under all previous Concertación governments put together. This paper will attempt to explain why labor issues have gained a much higher profile under the Bachelet administration than its policy makers had originally anticipated. It first presents some empirical evidence that summarizes key problems of the Chilean labor market before going on to discuss how employment issues moved up the political agenda of priorities as the political consensus surrounding labor policy was shaken up by the increased number of protests. Finally, it reviews the government’s attempt to establish a new policy consensus on labor...

The Bachelet Administration: The Normalization of Politics?

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This paper argues that the strengths of Chile’s model transition have turned into the weaknesses of its post-transition democracy. These weaknesses have become particularly apparent during the Bachelet administration. While the Bachelet government has undoubtedly suffered from leadership issues and poor judgement, we argue that an excessive focus on these issues has obscured some of the, perhaps more important, root causes of the difficulties of the Bachelet government. We argue that the governing coalition continues to rely on a model of elite politics developed during the democratic transition, which while initially successful, is counterproductive during the current period of democratic consolidation. This means that the very strengths of Chile’s transition have now turned into the weaknesses of the country’s post-transition status quo. Furthermore, the concomitant development of a normalized pattern of democratic politics among the Chilean public without significant change...

After the Water War: Contemporary Political Culture in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

After the Water War: Contemporary Political Culture in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Governance from Below in Bolivia: A Theory of Local Government with Two Empirical Tests

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Governance from Below in Bolivia: A Theory of Local Government with Two Empirical Tests

Mythical Terrain and the Building of Mexico’s UNAM

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The new campus for the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), designed during Miguel Alemán’s presidency, opened in 1952 to become the visible emblem of the Mexican revolutionary ambition to provide free universal education for all. Politicians, scholars, and architects were united in supporting the notion that Modern architecture was a powerful force—a way for México to take her rightful place among the world’s progressive, modern nations. Supporters of the Modern Movement rejected the Colonial in favor of an International style while simultaneously claiming to create a link to the pre-Columbian past

It was believed that El Pedregal, the site chosen for the new university buildings, would endow the new campus with a sense of historical continuity. Indeed, with its landscape of volcanic lava, its peculiar vegetation and fauna, and the legends linked to it, the site itself seemed to symbolize death and regeneration. Architects and critics claimed that while the...

Innovative Firms in Three Emerging Economies: Comparing the Brazilian, Mexican, and Argentinean Industrial Elite

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Innovative Firms in Three Emerging Economies: Comparing the Brazilian, Mexican, and Argentinean Industrial Elite

Global and U.S. Immigration: Patterns, Issues, and Outlook

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In 2005, 3 percent of the world’s residents left their country of birth or citizenship for a year or more. These migrants include persons in all legal statuses whose reason for being abroad range from study to work to settlement. Most industrial countries have organizations that advocate no borders at one extreme and no immigrants at the other. These extremes have hardened, and each faction seems to prefer the status quo to a compromise that can be enacted into law, which may explain the persistence of the status quo.

The U.S. had 37 million foreign-born residents in 2007, totaling 12.3 percent of the U.S. population and almost 20 percent of the world’s international migrants. The Senate in May–June 2007 debated and failed to approve the “comprehensive immigration reform” favored by President Bush and most Democrats, which aimed to reduce the influx of unauthorized foreigners and provide a path to legal status for many of them. The failure of immigration reform has led...

Coalitional Choices and Strategic Challenges: The Landless Movement in Brazil, 1970–2005

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This paper analyzes strategic challenges inherent in alternative coalitional choices made by social movements. Not only do grievances and resources influence alliance patterns, but movements that survive over the long-term do so in part because they successfully manage the dilemmas associated with different coalitional positions. The first section discusses the risks and trade-offs that accompany particular types of alliances and introduces a typology of different alliance patterns formed by social movements. This typology is then applied to the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil, with the goal of tracing the specific alliance patterns that have emerged as this movement has evolved. Based on interviews with MST activists within the leadership structure, as well as at the grassroots level, the paper considers recent changes within the movement's membership base. These emerging sectors—the “diminishing core” and the “new recruits”—differ sharply from each other...

Meeting the Need for Safe Drinking Water in Rural Mexico through Point-of-Use Treatment

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Millions of rural Mexicans risk contracting serious diseases every time they drink water. Building centralized treatment and distribution systems for every community is cost-prohibitive and time consuming. In contrast, inexpensive and rapidly deployable technologies designed to disinfect water at the point-of-use (POU) are now available. Unfortunately, Mexican water institutions have thus far not taken advantage of these technologies. The trend toward decentralization has shifted the responsibility for water provision to local authorities without providing the resources they need to achieve success. Several federal agencies, including the Secretary of Health (SSA) and the Secretary of Social Development (SEDESOL), have active outreach programs in local communities across the nation and could be highly effective at implementing POU technologies. In this paper we argue that POU technologies, implemented by federal agencies in cooperation with states and municipalities, have a...

Climbing Up the Technology Ladder? High-Technology Exports in China and Latin America

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper we determine the “dynamic revealed competitiveness position” (DRCP) of nations for high technology exports between 1980 and 2005. We find that the developed world has lost significant market share in high technology and that China has climbed the high technology ladder during this period. In 1980 China was ranked 99th of all nations in terms of the percentage of global exports in high technology. By 2005 China climbed to second place in the world, first place if high technology exports from Hong Kong are included. We also find that close to 95 percent of all of Latin American and Caribbean countries’ (LAC’s) exports are under some sort of “threat” from China, comprising almost 12 percent of total exports from LAC. This is most pronounced in Mexico and Costa Rica, where over 87 percent of all high technology exports are under threat and where such exports represent over 24 percent of total exports in both countries. Most of these trends become very accentuated...

Art and Violence

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

During the spring semester of 2007, the Center for Latin American Studies hosted an exhibit of Fernando Botero’s Abu Ghraib series of paintings and drawings which depict the abuses committed by U.S. soldiers at that notorious Iraqi prison. In addition to holding a public conversation with the artist, the Center also organized a series of lectures to elaborate on the themes evoked in the artworks. The two essays included here were originally prepared for the panel discussion “Art and Violence” held on January 31, 2007. In “Fernando Botero and the Art History of Suffering,” Thomas Lacquer, the Helen Fawcett Professor of History at UC-Berkeley, explores the “historicism” of Botero’s art; the longstanding role of suffering in his work; and what distinguishes the experience of viewing Botero’s paintings of torture from viewing photographs of the same acts. In “Art and Violence: Notes on Botero” Francine Maciello, the Sidney and Margaret Ancker Distinguished Professor in the Humanities...

Pemex: Problems and Policy Options

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Mexico—the sixth biggest oil producing nation in the world and one of the three main oil exporters to the United States—would appear to have reached a peak oil scenario in which oil output levels are likely to decline sharply in the near term. Meanwhile, the company, which enjoys monopoly status in the Mexican market, suffers from a crisis situation in many aspects, running from major indebtedness to corporate governance to aging infrastructure. The next Mexican president has a number of reform options to choose from, none of them easy.

Mexico’s Deteriorating Oil Outlook: Implications and Energy Options for the Future

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The decline in oil reserves and in output from the supergiant Cantarell oilfield sets new challenges for Mexico’s oil industry. Wide-ranging reforms are required, including ambitious new plans for Gulf of Mexico deepwater development. The Calderón government is giving priority to new infrastructure and to increasing Pemex’s capital expenditures, but it will be important for state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to restructure thoroughly and for the Mexican energy industry to meet a wide range of challenges in order to supply domestic needs adequately and have a sustainable, competitive future.

Torture, Human Rights, and Terrorism

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

During the spring semester of 2007, the Center for Latin American Studies hosted an exhibit of Fernando Botero’s Abu Ghraib series of paintings and drawings which depict the abuses committed by U.S. soldiers at that notorious Iraqi prison. In addition to holding a public conversation with the artist, the Center also organized a series of lectures to elaborate on the themes evoked in the artworks. The essays included here were originally prepared for the panel discussion “Torture, Human Rights, and Terrorism” held on March 7, 2007. In “Absolute Power,” Aryeh Neier, President of the Open Society Institute and Founding Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, explores the psychology and politics of torture as a means of asserting “absolute power”—and the means by which that assertion is always frustrated. In “The Law of Torture,” Jenny Martinez, Associate Professor of Law at Stanford and Counsel to Jose Padilla in Rumsfeld vs. Padilla, explores the history of torture’s...

Long Road to the Voto Postal: Mexican Policy and People of Mexican Origin in the U.S.

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In the spring of 2006, for the first time ever, tens of thousands of Mexican citizens living in the U.S. received absentee ballots to vote for the next president of Mexico, crowning a major transformation in Mexican policy. This paper, published in advance of the 2006 election, explores this form of transnational migrant empowerment as a major step in the redefinition of the terms of Mexican nationality and citizenship which allows for permanent residence abroad and even de facto dual citizenship and binational civic participation—and explores how the new policy may open a new dimension of minority politics in the United States. The arrival of distance voting in Mexico’s elections is part of a larger response to the rise of a new network of Mexican immigrant leaders, activists, and organizations in the U.S.—a network that the Mexican government helped develop and which is distinct from established U.S. Latino leadership. Both the U.S. and Mexico have repeatedly altered their...

Re-Regulating the Mexican Gulf

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Re-Regulating the Mexican Gulf

The Chilean Presidential Elections of 2005–2006: More Continuity than Change

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The Chilean Presidential Elections of 2005–2006: More Continuity than Change

FDI as a Sustainable Development Strategy: Evidence from Mexican Manufacturing

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

FDI as a Sustainable Development Strategy: Evidence from Mexican Manufacturing

Economic Integration and the Environment in Mexico

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Economic Integration and the Environment in Mexico

The Women of Ciudad Juárez

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

The Women of Ciudad Juárez

Urban Planning:Innovations From Brazil

Wed, 9 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Urban Planning:Innovations From Brazil

La evolución política de Chile (1988-2003)

Wed, 9 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

La evolución política de Chile (1988-2003)

Privatized Unemployment Insurance: Can Chile’s New Unemployment Insurance Scheme Serve as a Model for Other Developing Countries?

Wed, 9 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

In 2002 the Chilean government implemented new legislation for an unemployment insurance scheme which has been presented both at a national and international level as a model for other developing countries, because it provides protection against unemployment, avoids issues of moral hazard associated with traditional unemployment insurance systems, and has a relatively low public finance requirement. The scheme, which is financed principally through individual savings accounts, but also institutes a government financed contingency fund for workers with insufficient savings, has been described by the ILO as “new legislation that could lead to a new generation of reforms in unemployment insurance matters.” But before this scheme is copied by other developing countries, and perhaps also by developed ones, we should ask whether it really does provide adequate insurance for the unemployed. Initial research conducted on the Chilean case suggests that good quality jobs in the formal...

A Social, Public Safety, and Security Argument for Licensing Undocumented Drivers

Wed, 9 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

A Social, Public Safety, and Security Argument for Licensing Undocumented Drivers

From the Quantity to the Quality of Employment: An Application of the Capability Approach to the Chilean Labour Market

Wed, 9 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This paper applies the capability approach to the case of the Chilean labor market. It highlights the fact that the only information related to the labor market which the development literature usually considers is the unemployment rate, and sometimes wage levels. Applying the capability approach to the labor market, however, obliges us to take a broader view of the functionings that work can provide. Although having a job and thus earning an income is clearly the most important factor for the individual, other issues related to the characteristics of this job should also be taken into account as they are equally capable of generating capabilities and functionings for the individual, especially if one takes a longer term view.

The paper presents a methodology for measuring the quality of employment, a concept which so far has lacked definition and application in the literature. It takes the view that the usual consideration of the labor markets by means of the unemployment...

Progressive Governance for the 21^st Century: The Brazilian Experience