Latin American Perspectives 

About: Latin American Perspectives is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Latin Americans. It has an ISSN identifier of 0094-582X. Over the lifetime, 2242 publications have been published receiving 31649 citations. The journal is also known as: LAP.

The Politics of Memory: The Human Rights Movement and the Construction of Democracy in Argentina

Abstract: Under the circumstances of the political violence in Argentina in the mid1970s that climaxed in the military coup of 1976 and the ensuing massive violations of human rights, a new social movement emerged. At first almost in hiding and unseen, then becoming steadily more visible, gaining step by step in political relevance and centrality, the human rights movement and the issues it raised gradually came to occupy a significant position in the public arena. Under the military dictatorship (1976-1983) the movement unfolded a varied range of activities: supporting victims and their relatives, spreading the information that was to break the imposed silence about the nature and scope of the violations, launching open protests, organizing and promoting international solidarity. As a result, it was the key actor in the development of societal demands for the defense of human rights. After the transition to democracy in 1983, the tasks of the human rights movement changed, although its basic aim of defending human rights and protesting violations remained. Faced by new institutional and political demands and symbolic and cultural challenges, it gradually lost its central political position, entering a phase of internal debate about its role under a democratic regime and revealing its internal cleavages and heterogeneities. At present it is still searching for a new profile.

Testimonio and Postmodernism

Abstract: More than any other form of writing in Latin America, the testimonio has contributed to the demise of the traditional role of the intellectual/artist as spokesperson for the "voiceless." As some major writers-most notably Octavio Paz and Mario Vargas Llosa-increasingly take neoconservative positions and as the subordinated and oppressed feel more enabled to opt to speak for themselves in the wake of the new social movements, Liberation Theology, and other consciousness-raising grass-roots movements, there is less of a social and cultural imperative for concerned writers to heroically assume the grievances and demands of the oppressed, as in Pablo Neruda's "Alturas de Macchu Picchu" ([1946] 1955) "From across the earth bring together/all the silenced scattered lips/and from the depths speak to me . . . Speak through my words and my blood" (38-39). In contrast, the testimonialista gives his or her personal testimony "directly," addressing a specific interlocutor. As in the works of Elvia Alvarado (1987), Rigoberta Menchut (1983), and Domitila Barrios de Chungara (1977), that personal story is a shared one with the community to which the testimonialista belongs. The speaker does not speak for or represent a community but rather performs an act of identity-formation which is simultaneously personal and collective. For example, Domitila Barrios (1977: 13) tells Moema Viezzer, her interlocutor:

After the Revolution: Neoliberal Policy and Gender in Nicaragua

Abstract: Programs of stabilization and structural adjustment spread widely throughout Latin America during the 1980s. In revolutionary Nicaragua, the Sandinista government introduced an adjustment program late in the decade, but harsher measures mandated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have come more recently, since the 1990 elections ushered in the Union Nacional Opositora (United National Opposition-UNO) government of Violeta Chamorro. A debate has emerged in the country over the consequences of these measures for the most vulnerable social groups. In Nicaragua as elsewhere, the poor, women, and children are hit hardest by these policies. Yet in Nicaragua the recent history of social mobilization has prepared these sectors in distinct ways to confront the devastating effects of neoliberal economic programs, setting the country apart from others in Latin America. Low-income urban women are among those affected most by the political change of the past few years, and this article argues that these women are actively confronting worsening conditions both at work and at home. I first consider some of the general consequences of structural adjustment policies for Third World women and men and then turn to examine the particular effects these policies have had in Nicaragua. My focus is on the

David versus Goliath in Cochabamba: Water Rights, Neoliberalism, and the Revival of Social Protest in Bolivia

Abstract: "Ours is a small country and it hardly owns anything any more. Our mines were privatized, the electrification company was privatized, and the airlines, the telecommunications, the railways, our oil and gas. The things we still own are the water and the air, and we have struggled to make sure that the water continues to be ours," said Oscar Olivera, a trade-union leader from Cochabamba, Bolivia, addressing one of the assemblies protesting the annual spring meeting of the IMF/World Bank in Washington, DC, in April 2000. Olivera had been freshly flown in from the city that had been the scene of violent protests that forced the transnational consortium Aguas del Tunari out of Cochabamba Department and called upon the Bolivian government to modify Law 2029 on Potable Water and Sanitary Drainage, proclaimed only five months earlier. The assembly that protested the power of transnational capitalism and neoliberal policies cheered him as a hero. "David has defeated Goliath," claimed Olivera, and "thus set an example for the rest of the world." From the early days of April Bolivia had been the scene of a wave of protests such as it had not seen for several decades, prompting the Banzer government, elected in 1997, to declare a state of siege. The day the state of siege was declared, 880 police mutinied to press wage demands and students protested in La Paz, and later coca growers from the yunga region set up roadblocks to protest forced eradication. By the time the state of siege was lifted on April 20, the confrontations had claimed five lives, four of them civilian.

Turning Weakness Into Strength: The Internationalization of Indian Rights

Abstract: Social movement activists of the 1980s urged their constituencies to integrate grass-roots activity and international consciousness with the slogan "Act locally-think globally." But movements to support the rights and better the conditions of indigenous peoples of the Americas have followed the opposite path. A movement that epitomizes "local knowledge" and consciousness has engaged in extensive international activity with surprising success; the anthropologist Stefano Varese has described this as "Think locally, act globally" (NACLA, 1991). How has a movement representing the most marginalized within its own societies been empowered by acting globally? What can a study of the Indian rights experience tell us about social movements and transnational relations?' International relations are an increasingly important determinant of domestic social change, while transnational alliances play a growing role in social movement activity (Alger, 1988). Yet most treatments of social movements are still framed in terms of implicit levels of analysis that subsume domestic protest and reform under relations with the state. These questions assume particular significance in Latin America. Historical patterns of U.S. domination have so thoroughly colored the region's international relations that many scholars treat Latin American international relations as a version of inter-American relations in a way that takes the claims and agenda of the