Annual Conference 2012: Programme

Conference Timetable | Panels' Timetables | Table of Contents | Panels' and Papers' Synopses

Overall Conference Timetable

Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
	09:15 - 10:45 Parallel panels (7)	09:30 -11:00 Parallel panels (7)
	10:45 - 11:15 Tea / Coffee	11:00 - 11:30 Tea / Coffee
	11:15 - 12:45 Parallel panels (7)	11:30 - 12:45 Plenary Lecture: Professor Joe Arbena
11:30 - 13:30 SLAS Comittee Meeting	12:45 - 13:30 Lunch	12:45 - 13:30 Lunch & PILAS Lunch: Conference Closes
12:00 - 13:15 Registration	13:30 - 15:00 Parallel panels (7)	14:30 - 16:00 Inaugural SLAS Football Tournament
13:30 - 15:00 Parallel panels (7)	13:30 - 15:00 BLAR Open Meeting
15:00 - 15:30 Tea / Coffee	15:00 - 15:30 Tea / Coffee
15:30 - 17:00 Parallel Panels (7)	15:30 - 17:00 Plenary Lecture: Santiago Roncagliolo
17:15 - 18:45 AGM and wine reception	17:30 - 18:30 BLAR/ Wiley wine reception and book launch
19:00 Dinner at Las Iguanas	19:00 Conference dinner at Antibo

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Panels' Timetables

Wednesday | Thursday | Friday

Wednesday 18th April
13:30-15:00 \| Parallel Panel Set: 1	15:30-17:00 \| Parallel Panel Set: 2
Change or continuity in Cuba? (1/2) panel \| papers	Change or continuity in Cuba? (2/2) panel \| papers
¿Por fin toda la verdad?: Questioning Discourses of Latin American History (1/3) panel \| papers	¿Por fin toda la verdad?: Questioning Discourses of Latin American History (2/3) panel \| papers
The Art of Politics (1/1) panel \| papers	Space, Place and Contentious Politics in Latin America (1/2) panel \| papers
Politics, power and culture: colonial Latin American history in 21st-century Britain (1/3) panel \| papers	Politics, power and culture: colonial Latin American history in 21st-century Britain (2/3) panel \| papers
Imagining Better Futures in Brazil (1/1) panel \| papers	Anti-ALBA! The Politics of Opposition in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (1/3) panel \| papers
Approaches to Political Violence in Latin America (1/2) panel \| papers	Approaches to Political Violence in Latin America (2/2) panel \| papers
José Donoso: relecturas de su obra y figura (1/1) panel \| papers	Simulacros: Legitimating Extra-Constitutional and Pseudo-Legal Forms of Politicking in Mexico (1/2) panel \| papers

Thursday 19th April
09:15-10:45 \| Parallel Panel Set: 3	11:15-12:45 \| Parallel Panel Set: 4	13:30-15:00 \| Parallel Panel Set: 5
Rethinking Identity and Culture in the Cuban Revolution (1/2) panel \| papers	Rethinking Identity and Culture in the Cuban Revolution (2/2) panel \| papers	Foreign Policy Challenges facing the Cuban Government (1/2) panel \| papers
¿Por fin toda la verdad?: Questioning Discourses of Latin American History (3/3) panel \| papers	School Reform and Nation-Building in the River Plate, 1860s to 1930 (1/1) panel \| papers	Reflections on the Bicentenary of 1810: the Causes and Consequences of Spanish American Independence (1/2) panel \| papers
Space, Place and Contentious Politics in Latin America (2/2) panel \| papers	Central American Realities Contrasted (1/1) panel \| papers	Social movements in XXI Century Latin America: Rethinking Social Emancipation (1/2) panel \| papers
Politics, power and culture: colonial Latin American history in 21st-century Britain (3/3) panel \| papers	Culture, Place and Tourism in Latin America (1/3) panel \| papers	Culture, Place and Tourism in Latin America (2/3) panel \| papers
Anti-ALBA! The Politics of Opposition in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (2/3) panel \| papers	Anti-ALBA! The Politics of Opposition in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (3/3) panel \| papers	Political and Economic Perspectives on the Crisis in Argentina (2/2) panel \| papers
Interdisciplin-arity in Indigenous Mexican Studies (1/2) panel \| papers	Interdisciplin-arity in Indigenous Mexican Studies (2/2) panel \| papers	Care, Illness and Death in Latin America (1/1) panel \| papers
Simulacros: Legitimating Extra-Constitutional and Pseudo-Legal Forms of Politicking in Mexico (2/2) panel \| papers	Political and Economic Perspectives on the Crisis in Argentina (1/2) panel \| papers	Screening Political Identities (1/2) panel \| papers

Friday 20th April

09:30-11:00 | Parallel Panel Set: 6

Foreign Policy Challenges facing the Cuban Government (2/2) panel | papers

Reflections on the Bicentenary of 1810: the Causes and Consequences of Spanish American Independence (2/2) panel | papers

Social movements in XXI Century Latin America: Rethinking Social Emancipation (2/2) panel | papers

Culture, Place and Tourism in Latin America (3/3) panel | papers

Peruvian Identities in the Twenty-First Century (1/1) panel | papers

Sport and Development(s) in Latin America (1/1) panel | papers

Screening Political Identities (2/2) panel | papers

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Anti-ALBA! The Politics of Opposition in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas VIEW
- SESSION ONE 18th April: 15:30 - 17:00
  - Political Opposition in Hybrid Regimes: Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela
  - As clear as MUD: Opposition politics in Venezuela
  - Opposition to the Ortega Administration in Nicaragua (2007-11)
- SESSION TWO 19th April: 09:15 - 10:45
  - Those who represent no one: the political opposition in Ecuador
  - Let’s All Pretend Nothing Happened – Coping with ALBA Policies in Day-To-Day Political Life, or the
- SESSION THREE 19th April: 11:15 - 12:45
  - Cuba’s alliance with Venezuela/ALBA and opposition politics
  - Dwindling Opposition to ALBA in its Anglophone Caribbean Member-States: The Secular Success of
Approaches to Political Violence in Latin America VIEW
- SESSION ONE 19th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - Politics, Violence and Neoliberalism in Mexico’s Narcoeconomy
  - Accountability and repression in Brazilian states
  - Rethinking Structural Violence in Latin America and Beyond
- SESSION TWO 18th April: 15:30 - 17:00
  - The Prisoner’s Body: Violence, Desire, and Masculinities in a Provincial Nicaraguan Prison
  - Conflict amongst inmate couples in a Salvadoran prison
  - Catharsis and Theatrical Performance at one of Argentina's Human Rights Trials: The Case of The concentration camp "Vesubio"
Care, Illness and Death in Latin America VIEW

SESSION ONE 19th April: 13:30 - 15:00
- Money, Love and Distance: Ecuadorian Migration and Care in the Global Economy
- The Hauntings of Everyday Life in Havana, Cuba
- Empathy, Race, and the Psychology of Victimization in the Truth Commissions in Peru
- An Ethnography of Chronicity: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Smoking Cessation in Uruguay

Central American Realities Contrasted VIEW
- SESSION ONE 19th April: 11:15 - 12:45
  - Confronting and Rejecting the Cultural Inheritence of a Violent History: Horacio Castellanos Moya’s El asco
  - Lo político en lo poético: Algunas reflexiones sobre la poesía de Humberto Ak’abal
  - Tales of real lives: Cinematic expressions to reclaim estranged identities
Change or Continuity in Cuba? VIEW
- SESSION ONE 18th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - Updating Socialism: the politics of the Cuban transitionCuba’s socialist future and radical change in Latin America
  - Cuba’s socialist future and radical change in Latin America
  - Evolution of a Revolution: Market Liberalization and the Politics of Participation
  - Political dimensions of the debate on economic policy
- SESSION TWO 18th April: 15:30 - 17:00
  - Losers and winners of the reform. PCC challenges after its Sixth Congress
  - Updating the Cuban model: economic hazards ahead?
  - Neither Beijing nor Hanoi: why Cuba's 'updating' of socialism is home grown
Culture, Place and Tourism in Latin America VIEW
- SESSION ONE 19th April: 11:15 - 12:45
  - Land conflicts in a valuable but vulnerable town: Tourism development in Mancora, Peru
  - The making of paradise: kite-surf, ecotourism and peace in Barra Grande, Piauí, Brazil
  - Social meanings of place: exploring cultural narratives and symbolic spaces of collective identity in the Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, Brazil
- SESSION TWO 19th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - Driving Sustainability: The Catalysts and Obstacles for Sustainable Tourism in Costa Rica
  - Rural Community Based Sustainable Tourism in Cocachimba, Amazonas, Peru
- SESSION THREE 20th April: 09:30 - 11:00
  - La India Permitida: Mapuche women and ethno-tourism in Southern Chile
  - Textual articulations of contemporary touristic Cuba.
  - The methodological singularization of society and culture in tourism discourse and tourism research from the lens of contemporary US tourism to Mexico
Foreign Policy Challenges facing the Cuban Government VIEW
- SESSION ONE 19th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - Cuban Foreign Policy in the era of economic reforms
  - Brain Drain Politics: U.S. Efforts to Undermine Cuba’s Medical Aid Programs
  - The Place of Sport in Cuban Internationalism: Understanding the dynamics of solidarity, capacity building, and revenue.
  - Contemporary Canada-Cuba Relations: Successes and Challenges”?
- SESSION TWO 20th April: 09:30 - 11:00
  - Cuba and Venezuela: A History of Revolutionary Interaction
  - Love in a cold climate: Cuba’s improving relationship with Latin America
  - Havana and Moscow 50 Years after the October Crisis
Imagining Better Futures in Brazil VIEW
- SESSION ONE 18th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - Trayectorias Intergeneracionales: América portuguesa, siglo XVIII y XIX.
  - Everyday Utopias
  - Poor but Respectable: Masculinity, Honour, and Access to Resources among the Sertanejos of Ceará, Brazil, 1845-1889
  - The Family Grant Program in the Semi-Arid Northeast Brazil.
Interdisciplinarity in Indigenous Mexican Studies VIEW
- SESSION ONE 19th April: 09:15 -10:45
  - Clash of cultures: can Western biomedicine and indigenous Mexican medicine work together to provide the best healthcare for indigenous Mexican communities?
  - Ethnopharmacology in México – Continuity and change in indigenous cultures
  - Aztecs Abroad: Interdisciplinary in the interpretation of trans-Atlantic networks
- SESSION TWO 19th April: 11:15 - 12:45
  - Comparing indigenous multidimensional poverty in Mexico
  - Working with the Maya in the Yucatan: Behavioural, environmental, metabolic and intergenerational factors impacting on the health of the families
  - Los Maya del Norte: Biocultural aspects of health status of Guatemala Maya children living in the United States
  - Drugs and Hallucinogens in Mexico: Past and Present
José Donoso: relecturas de su obra y figura VIEW
- SESSION ONE 18th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - Ausencia presente/presencia ausente: Donoso, el pene perdido y la envidia de la vagina
  - Desarraigo en la obra de Donoso
  - Un epígrafe del demonio. Sobre referencia a Doctor Faustus en El lugar sin límites
  - José Donoso escritor en el campo de batalla del Boom: una interpretación a partir de sus cuadernos de trabajo y correspondencia personal
Peruvian Identities in the 21st Century VIEW
- SESSION ONE 20th April: 09:30 - 11:00
  - Gender and Ethnic Identity Formation within an Anti-mining Resistance in the Peruvian Andes.
  - The making of Peruvian identity by the social networks: The “brand Peru”
  - Surnames, bilateral descent and the mixing that produces persons: ethnographic perspectives on mestizaje from an Afro-Peruvian community
Political and Economic Perspectives on the Crisis in Argentina VIEW
- SESSION ONE 19th April: 11:15 - 12:45
  - Where Theory and Practice Don’t Meet: Economic Assumptions, the Mass Media, and Argentina’s Debt Crisis of 1999-2002
  - “From the ¡Que se vayan todos! to the reconfiguration of the Argentine political elites. Continuities and transformations in the composition of the Senate”.
  - Rethinking the “Resources of Poverty”: Sustainable Livelihoods and the New Urban Poor in Post-Crisis Buenos Aires
- SESSION TWO 19th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - Brazil and Argentina’s participation in social and corporate governance initiatives: local politics and global standards
  - The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning? Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Kirchnerismo, and the changing relationships of the Argentine State.
  - From economic breakdown of 2001/2002 to recovery: Post-neoliberalism in Argentina.
Politics, power and culture: colonial Latin American history in 21st-century Britain VIEW
- SESSION ONE 18th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - ‘Alberoni Again: (Re)Assessing the Role of Julio Alberoni in Eighteenth-Century Bourbon Reform for Spain and the Colonies’
  - 'Military officers as provincial governors and captains-general in early eighteenth-century Spanish America'
  - Manuel de Guirior's viceregal court in Santa Fe of Bogota: space of power and instrument of reform (1772-1776)
- SESSION TWO 18th April: 15:30 - 17:00
  - To Burn the Royal Palace at Leisure. Re-assessing Historiography on early 17th Century Mexico
  - The emergence of a free coloured elite? Individual and collective identity in Panama City, 1750-1765
  - ‘If You Want Slaves Go To Guinea’: Civilisation and Savagery in the Spanish Mosquitia, 1787-1800
- SESSION THREE 19th April: 09:15 - 10:45
  - Twenty-two Kings and a Lost History: on the Sources of Efigies de los Incas o Reyes del Perú con su origen y serie by Alonso de la Cueva (ca. 1725)
  - An American in Paris and a Spaniard in Paraguay: Geographies of Natural History in the Hispanic World (1750-1808)
¿Por fin toda la verdad?: Questioning Discourses of Latin American History VIEW
- SESSION ONE 18th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - La familia en la novela contemporánea del Caribe: Esmeralda Santiago
    Ciudad Juárez, When Reality Becomes Fiction
  - Four Paths Five Destinations: Neozapatismo and Imaginaries of Alternative Globalisation in Documentary and Writing
- SESSION TWO 18th April: 15:30 - 17:00
  - Where Truth is Known?: Reflections on the Emergence of Mexico's State-Student Conflict in July 1968
  - Nothing but the Truth, Take Two: The Mechanisms of Creating a Collective Memory in the Tlatelolco 1968 Discourse
- SESSION THREE 19th April: 09:15 - 10:45
  - In the Service of El Comandante: Towards a Sociology of Chavista Historical Knowledge
  - Variations on Ruins and Democratic Spectrality in Paraguay
  - La frontera and the Role of Film in Truth ‘Processes’
Reflections on the Bicentenary: the causes and consequences of Spanish American Independence, 1810-1825 VIEW
- SESSION ONE 19th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - Indigenous Identity Politics and Chile’s Bicentennial Celebrations of Independence
  - Spanish American Independence: The (Necessary/Unnecessary?) Escalation of Violence
  - Myths and realities of Peruvian Independence, 1780-1826
- SESSION TWO 20th April: 09:30 - 11:00
  - Issues and Problems in understanding the Collapse of the Spanish continental- American Empire, 1790s-1820s”
  - Cuba and Spanish American Independence
  - The Heroes, the Villanos and the Others: Reflections on the Official Historiography of Mexican independence
Rethinking the Cuban Revolution Nationally and Regionally: Politics, Culture and Identity VIEW
- SESSION ONE 19th April: 09:15 - 10:45
  - ‘Cuban Medical Internationalism in El Salvador: Continuity of the Fidelista Tradition ’
  - ‘Celebrating 50 years – But of what exactly and why is Latin America celebrating it?’
  - ‘Regime Change and Human Rights: A Perspective on the Cuba Polemic’
- SESSION TWO 19th April: 11:15 - 12:45
  - ‘¿Aún somos jóvenes? A New Assessment of 1980s Cuba’.
  - ‘Ideas of “Race”, “Ethnicity” and National Identity in the Discourse of the Press during the Cuban Revolution’
  - 'Literary Canon Formation and Imbalance in Cuba: The Interplay of Local, National, Regional and Transnational forces’
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School Reform and Nation-Building in the River Plate, 1860s to 1930 VIEW
- SESSION ONE 19th April: 11:15 - 12:45
  - Home and School: Education Policy in Nineteenth-Century Argentina and Uruguay
  - Inventing a Foundation Myth: Changing Representations of José Artigas in Uruguayan Textbooks, 1870-1915
  - National Regeneration and the Education of the Elites in Early-Twentieth-Century Argentina and Uruguay
Screening Political Identities VIEW
- SESSION ONE 19th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - Rescuing images: accessing the past in democratic Uruguay
  - Afiches and Pintadas: Wall-speak, Tracking Shots, and Collateral Politics in New Argentine Film
- SESSION TWO 20th April: 09:30 - 11:00
  - Deconstructive Humour: Subverting Chicano Stereotypes in Un día sin mexicanos (Sergio Arau, 2004)
  - Trauma y tabú: el incesto como alegoría visual de la violencia política.
Simulacros: Legitimating Extra-Constitutional and Pseudo-Legal Forms of Politicking in Mexico VIEW
- SESSION ONE 18th April: 15:30 - 17:00
  - De tumultos y movilizaciones. Acciones políticas no-formalizadas en Yucatán durante la época de la independencia
  - Rights and Law in the Late Porfiriato. The Revolutionaries in Puebla: 1909-1911
  - La “comunidad indígena” y la legitimidad étnica renovada en Mezcala
    Civismo in Mexico: A History
- SESSION TWO 19th April: 09:15 - 10:45
  - Pronunciamientos and the Use of the Derecho de Insurrección in Nineteenth-Century Mexico
  - Civismo in Mexico: A History
Social movements in XXI Century Latin America: Rethinking Social Emancipation VIEW
- SESSION ONE 19th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - Epistemologies of emancipation in CTUs in Venezuela and MST in Brazil
  - Re-Examining the Role of Law in Emancipation: Law and Struggles Over Land in Bolivia
- SESSION TWO 20th April: 09:30 - 11:00
  - Returning to the past or anticipating the future? The ‘Buen Vivir’ discourse as a principle of social emancipation in Latin America
  - Communal Property vs. Private Poverty: The conflict between neoliberal globalisation and indigenous autonomy in the Peruvian Amazon
  - New Democratic Subjectivities in South America: From democratic regimes to democratic politics? Reflections on Argentina and Brazil
Space, Place and Contentious Politics in Latin America VIEW
- SESSION ONE 18th April: 15:30 - 17:00
  - Producing State Space in Chiapas
  - Outside the Market and without the State: The Piquetero Movement as Part of the Process of the Alterglobalisation Movement in Latin America
  - ‘The Architecture of Passive Revolution: Society, State and Space in Modern Mexico’
- SESSION TWO 19th April: 09:15 - 10:45
  - The ‘Right to the City’ in the Bolivarian Revolution
  - A New Mapuche Movement? Urbanisation, Changing Demands and Political Space
  - Imagined Spaces at Colony Z-10
Sport and Development(s) in Latin America VIEW
- SESSION ONE 20th April: 09:30 - 11:00
  - ‘The Origins of Association Football in Latin America: Part of Informal Empire?
  - Cuba’s Approach to Sport and Development for Peace: Investigating the Dynamics of Cuban Sport Policy against Broader Global Trends.’
  - ‘Futbol y Literatura en México: reflexiones en torno a lo publicado durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX.’
  - ‘General Jubilation? Football, Literature and the 1978 World Cup.’
The Art of Politics VIEW
- SESSION ONE 18th April: 13:30 - 15:00
  - Bordering on Femicide: Space, Representation and the Body in Judithe Hernández’s ‘The Juárez Series’
  - Marcos Kurtycz’s Inf(l)amous Performances and the Reinvention of Potlatch in Contemporary Mexican Art
  - Graffiteando por el T.I.P.N.I.S – activist art in defence of indigenous rights

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Panels' and Papers' Synopses

1. Anti-ALBA! The Politics of Opposition in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas

Convenors: Barry Cannon (barry.cannon@dcu.ie), Salvador Marti i Puig (smartipuig@gmail.com)
Discussant: Geraldine Lievesley (Lievesley@mmu.ac.uk)

Much has been written about the governments of the states which comprise the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’ Trade Agreement (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América – Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos, ALBA-TCP) but not so much about Opposition politics within these states. This panel proposes to look at these in each of the ALBA member countries (Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and the Caribbean islands of Antigua y Barbuda, Dominica and San Vincent and the Grenadines as well as ex-member Honduras), from three inter-related perspectives. First, it will examine the social bases of opposition in each of the countries; second, it will explore the alternative programmes being put forward by these oppositions; and, finally it will look at how such opposition is organized. In this way the panel aims to develop an integrated and holistic picture of the state of current opposition within each of ALBA’s member countries, hence allowing us to develop an overall picture of the state of opposition over the entire association and to speculate as to what policy courses these countries could take, including with regard to the ALBA association itself, in the hypothetical case that the opposition gains power in any of the involved countries.

(3 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Wednesday 18th April 15:30-17:00

Political Opposition in Hybrid Regimes: Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela
David Close, Memorial University, St. John’s, L, Canada (dclose@mun.ca)

Hybrid regimes combine free elections with elements of authoritarianism (e.g., unaccountable executives or weak rule of law). This paper argues that hybrid regimes are inherently unstable as the conditions needed for free elections cannot be sustained indefinitely in an otherwise authoritarian milieu. Either the democratic conditions diffuse beyond elections or they wither and the regime becomes semi-authoritarian. The four Bolivarian governments—Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua—are the cases through which the argument is developed and evaluated. To assess the status of democracy in the four states the paper examines three forms of political opposition. First, party opposition; hence electoral and legislative opposition, which are essential to hybrid regimes. Second, opposition from the media; which is essential in democracies, but frequently abridged in authoritarian states. Third, opposition by non-governmental actors, such as citizens’ movements and pressure groups; this too is essential in democracies but often limited in authoritarian systems. If party opposition is trammelled electoral democracy is plainly impaired. If the media and non-governmental actors are restricted in ways that significantly circumscribes their electoral role this too affects electoral democracy, though less immediately. Initial analysis of the evidence suggests that electoral democracy is least secure in Nicaragua, growing more secure in Venezuela, but less secure in Ecuador and maintaining its place in Bolivia.

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As clear as MUD: Opposition politics in Venezuela
Barry Cannon, IRCHSS Cara Fellow, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University and Instituto de Iberoamerica, University of Salamanca, Spain (barry.cannon@dcu.ie)
Ybiskay Gonzalez Torres, Universidad Símon Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela (hola3007@yahoo.es)

Since President Chávez was first elected in 1998, the Venezuelan opposition has tried civil disobedience, mass demonstrations, a coup, strikes/lock-outs and a recall referendum to remove him from office. None of it has worked. Now concentrating primarily on the electoral route, it has sought a united front through the MUD – the Mesa de Unidad Democrática (Democratic Unity Board). With relative electoral success in 2010 and a physically weakened Chávez, suffering from cancer, the upcoming 2012 presidential elections are the opposition’s best chance yet to finally oust the Venezuelan president. But if they succeed, who and what will replace him? And if they fail, what will they do? This paper aims to examine the Venezuelan opposition at three levels. Based on fresh field research, first it will look at the social forces behind it, second it will examine its different ideological currents, asking which has prominence, and third it will look at the policy content of the parties and movements, which constitute the MUD. Finally it will ask what role the Venezuelan led ALBA trade and solidarity association has in opposition discourse and policy. In this way the paper will offer a comprehensive overview of the support, ideology and policy proposals of the Venezuelan opposition, providing indications of the type of government, which may emerge if it wins in 2012, and its planned strategies if it loses.

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Opposition to the Ortega Administration in Nicaragua (2007-11)
Salvador Marti i Puig, Department of Political Science, University of Salamanca (smartipuig@gmail.com)

The objective of this paper it to analyze the political forces and social and economic actors opposed to the ‘second’ administration led by Daniel Ortega (2007-2011). The fundamental characteristic of this administration is the ‘party-dization’ of State institutions and the elaboration and implementation of extensive social programmes financed through resources derived from ALBA. The paper has three parts. First, it explains the institutional and symbolic characteristics of the Ortega administration, public policies implemented by it, as well as its relations with other political actors. Second, it analyzes, on the one hand, the opposing political forces to the FSLN on the right (liberals and conservatives) and the left (seeking the ‘renovation’ of sandinismo), including their organization, proposals, solidity, bases and elites, while on the other, it looks at the rest of social and economic actors opposing the FSLN, especially elites and economic groups, the media, and some anti-Ortega social groups (feminists, youth, pro-transparency organizations). Third, and finally, the paper will provide an analysis of the political dynamics between the opposition and the government, throughout the current Ortega period, over the role that ALBA resources have played in Daniel Ortega’s political strategy.

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SESSION TWO | Thursday 19th April 09:15-10:45

Those who represent no one: the political opposition in Ecuador
Francisco Sánchez, University of Valencia (fransalo@uv.es)
Jorge Resina, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain (jorge.resina@gmail.com)

Rafael Correa´s Ecuadorian Government is one of the most active members of ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance led by Venezuela. Besides sharing similar positions on international relations, both countries have experienced similar processes of fragmentation and political polarization, exacerbated by the weakness of an opposition unable to present a clear alternative and hence with limited possibilities to form a government.
This paper aims to explain the reasons why political opposition in Ecuador is so weak. To do this, we will analyze President Correa’s strategy of concentration of power and the confrontational strategies that he has used against different actors who have not supported official discourse. Those actors are constantly attacked by Correa because, according to him, they represent no one; they are mediocre and have never won an election.
Our argument traces, in chronological order the different conflicts between Correa and the opposition. First, the crisis in the political party system (the “partidocracia” as Correa refers to it), second the conflict between the Government and the indigenous movement, “infantile left” and the media, and third the relationship between Correa and the institutional opposition, represented by Assembly members who are not part of Alianza País, the President´s political party. Finally, we consider the role ALBA has within these disputes.

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Let’s All Pretend Nothing Happened – Coping with ALBA Policies in Day-To-Day Political Life, or the Dilemmas of the Bolivian Opposition
Herve do Alto, University of Nice, France (herve.doalto@gmail.com)

Since Evo Morales’ triumph in 2005, the political opposition has regularly developed a rhetoric based on a denunciation of ALBA policies. Among them, the Yo sí puedo literacy program, implemented with the help of the Havana government, has fed suspicions of foreign interference by Cuba and Venezuela, as well as a “cubanización” of Morales’ regime. Nevertheless, the popularity of such government-led programs, particularly at a local political level (regions, municipalities), forced political leaders publicly opposed to Morales’ party, MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo), to develop forms of appropriation of these policies linked to ALBA, while attempting at the same time to preserve their own dominant position locally. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2009 and 2010 in the oppositional regions of Pando and Santa Cruz, our presentation aims at drawing some conclusions on the recent evolutions of the Bolivian opposition, in the light of the contradictions raised by the concrete process of implementation of ALBA programs.

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SESSION THREE | Thursday 19th April 11:15-12:45

Cuba’s alliance with Venezuela/ALBA and opposition politics
Susanne Gratius, FRIDE, Madrid, Spain (sgratius@fride.org)

Bilateral cooperation between Havana and Caracas is a major pillar of the ALBA project. Apart from obtaining strong economic support through cheap oil supplies, for the Cuban government ALBA has been a platform for regional insertion and closer links to ideological allies, such as Bolivia, Ecuador or Nicaragua. Different to other member states, there is no controversial debate on ALBA in Cuba neither did the opposition define a coherent position on the issue. The reasons are quite obvious: the authoritarian character of the regime and the weakness of an opposition that is mainly based in the United States. Nonetheless, ALBA and Cuba’s special relations with Venezuela are increasingly criticized by parts of the government. This presentation will explore the regime’s logic to being part of ALBA, internal debates on that membership and the role of opposition groups.

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Dwindling Opposition to ALBA in its Anglophone Caribbean Member-States: The Secular Success of Sovereignty-Sensitive Cooperation
Asa K. Cusack, University of Sheffield (a.k.cusack@sheffield.ac.uk)

Research into the impact and influence of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) has tended to pay scant attention to its English-speaking Caribbean member-states, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda, and less still to its effects on their domestic contestatory politics. Drawing on recent fieldwork, this paper will chart the development of ALBA in the Anglophone Caribbean alongside changes in opposition parties’ attitudes, alternatives, and rhetoric, from initial hostility and suspicion towards a growing acceptance and understanding of its significant contribution to the vulnerable economies of these small island-developing states. Though the developmental constraints of this smallness have reduced the space available to opposition parties for proposing policy alternatives, there are marked trends across the three cases both in the rationales underlying their respective postures towards ALBA and also in their chosen expression of these postures. Though certain criticisms persist, the popular success of ALBA initiatives in the Anglophone Caribbean leaves the alliance well placed to endure in the region regardless of changes in government, suggesting that Latin American members might look to the Caribbean for insights into how best to achieve greater acceptance of the project amongst their own electorates.

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2. Approaches to Political Violence in Latin America

Convenor: Silvia Posocco (s.posocco@bbk.ac.uk)

The panel brings together unaffiliated papers by researchers working on the analysis of political violence in a range of Latin America contexts, including Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Argentina. The first set of papers deals with violence connected to narcotrafficking and organized crime in Mexico, state-level political processes impacting on the repression of land protesters in Brazil, and problems and possibilities in the theorization of ‘structural violence’ in Latin America. The second set of papers deals with gender, sexuality and carceral regimes, and more specifically, with violence, desire and masculinity in a Nicaraguan prison, conflicts between couples in a female prison in El Salvador, and the public responses to a recent Human Rights trial in Argentina.

(2 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Thursday 19th April 13:30-15:00

Politics, Violence and Neoliberalism in Mexico’s Narcoeconomy
Peter Watt, University of Sheffield (p.watt@sheffield.ac.uk)

Violence related to the war on narcotrafficking and organised crime has become one of the most alarming developments in Mexico in recent years. According to the Mexican government’s own figures, more than 35,000 people have been killed since Felipe Calderón assumed the presidency in 2006. Bewildering as this violent eruption is, the current climate of violence, impunity and corruption has roots in trends in Mexican politics, which stretch back several decades. This paper therefore considers precedents and parallels to the current situation and argues that in order to understand the drug war’s current phase, how and why Mexico arrived at this critical and tragic juncture, we must first understand the institutional barriers which allowed the trade in narcotics to develop as it did in the late twentieth century under PRI rule.

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Accountability and repression in Brazilian states
Anna E. Mackin, University of Oxford (anna.mackin@nuffield.ox.ac.uk)

This paper analyses how the repression of land protesters is influenced by state-level political factors in Brazil. Since repression of protesters is a divisive issue, which could cost the incumbent governor votes, it is likely that the decision to repress will be influenced by political factors, especially given that Brazilian governors exert considerable influence over the state police. A state-level data set was constructed for 1997 to 2005 using measures of different forms of repression. The political factors included the share of seats the governor’s party holds in the state assembly, the share of seats held by the governor’s coalition, the percentage of votes obtained by the governor at the previous election and the number of years until the next gubernatorial election. Fixed effects estimation was used to control for time-invariant factors that influence repression. The results are broadly consistent with the notion that governors with precarious political positions are less likely to promote repressive policing strategies. The governor’s party’s share of seats is a significant positive predictor of both harsh forms of repression (murders and acts of torture) and mild forms of repression (physical beatings, arrests) whereas being in an election year is a significant negative predictor of milder forms of repression.

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Rethinking Structural Violence in Latin America and Beyond
Silvia Posocco, University of London (s.posocco@bbk.ac.uk)

Contemporary understandings of ‘structural violence’ in Latin America speak to the way violence is connected to broader social processes of economic exploitation, social marginality, and political exclusion (see, for example, Benson 2008, Bourgois 2001, Fassin and Rechtman 2008, Farmer 2004, Kleinman et al. 1997, Scheper-Hughes 1992). However, the resulting analyses all too often evade the theorisation of the nexus between violence, the productions of social relations, subjectivities, identities and belonging. The paper aims to open up a conceptual space for rethinking ‘structural violence’ paradigms in the analysis of Latin American contexts. More specifically, it asks: What alternative theoretical and critical resources are there to grapple with the complex social dynamics at stake in the ways certain bodies, subjects and populations are deemed dispensable? What analytical challenges are there when seeking to offer an account of the relations between violence and the constitution of ‘community’ through a focus on processes of inclusion – rather than more traditional understandings of violence that focus on exclusion? How are identitarian claims, acquisitive forms of sociality and assimilationist logics implicated in such processes? When, and with what consequences, are ‘community’ and ‘belonging’ articulated through ‘immunitarian dialectics’ and processes of introjection of negativity geared towards the preservation of life? What are the conditions of possibility for non-immunised forms of sociality and justice?

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SESSION TWO | Wednesday 18th April 15:30-17:00 *CHANGE!*

The Prisoner’s Body: Violence, Desire, and Masculinities in a Provincial Nicaraguan Prison
Julienne Weegels, CEDLA - Center for Latin American Research and Documentation, Amsterdam (j.h.j.weegels@cedla.nl)

It is not violence but rather its supposed absence within incarceration that makes every interaction, verbal or physical, ridden with its intentions. This paper follows the Nicaraguan prisoner in his narrative silences and gaps through his ridiculization and fascination with the effeminate ‘other’. The constant threat of de-masculinization plays a paramount part in the reworking of gendered identities within confinement. In a society where the passive man is rendered female, the virgin anus becomes the symbol of masculine dominance. When mapping the inmate’s body, a field of tensions between the desirable and the tough becomes apparent in which being tough (nefasto, duro, vale verga) is desirable, and being desirable can be dangerously ambiguous. The tough/desirable dynamics provide an entry into the conflictive hegemonic discourse of machismo. Violence becomes a necessary performance of masculinity in a constant renegotiation of toughness as the inmates’ gendered bodies are induced with contradictive meanings. This paper explores these performances in male-male relationships, both friendly, violent as well as amorous, based on 13 months of extensive research and participation in a Nicaraguan prison theatre group.

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Conflict amongst inmate couples in a Salvadoran prison
Laura Chinnery, University of Cambridge (Lc277@cam.ac.uk)

Within El Salvador's prison system inmate relations are strongly defined by distrust and dispute. This not only applies to the tenuous interactions of opposing gang members or barely acquainted neighbours. It even extends to those who are intimately involved with one another, so called inmate 'couples' (or 'parejas'). Based on fifteen months fieldwork in the country's sole women's prison, this paper looks at such conflicts between couples. Often beginning with one party accusing the other of infidelity, events can quickly escalate into pitched voices, hair pulling and occasional kicks and punches. Whilst usually dismissed by fellow inmates as typical of women, couples in fact consider themselves to be in male-female relationships. Informed by their own personal experiences in heterosexual unions and cultural ideas from broader Salvadoran society, the majority model themselves on opposite-sex relationships in which one party plays the 'boy' (or 'nino') and the other the 'girl' (or 'nina'). This has evident implications for their divisions in clothing, speech, labour, sexual roles and even the attitudes and habits of fidelity. It also, however, means that any conflicts between them are somewhat informed by their perceptions of typical male and female behaviour.

This paper will look at how particular notions of gender employed by inmate couples impact on the way disputes are pursued. In doing so it will also recognise situations and contexts in which one or both parties reject such male-female modelling as appropriate for a conflict between 'women'.

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Catharsis and Theatrical Performance at one of Argentina's Human Rights Trials: The Case of The concentration camp "Vesubio"
Victoria Cox, Appalachian State University (coxvk@appstate.edu)

In this presentation I wish to examine how the public reacted to the final verdict in the legal case condemning those responsible for the "Vesubio" concentration camp in Buenos Aires, Argentina (15 July 2011). I'm interested in the reactions of the people and human rights organizations, which gathered outside the courtroom to hear the final verdict. I plan to analyze the "performance," the songs, dramatizations and other visual techniques used in order to communicate a message. This performance was organized by human rights organizations and, as I shall demonstrate in this essay, follows a tradition, which stems from the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo's early attempts to draw attention to their cause in the 1970's. I'm especially interested in the techniques used during this "performance" to affirm human dignity and the memory of those young people who were imprisoned, tortured and later "disappeared."

The concentration camp of the "Vesubio" was particularly horrid and was the place where argentine cartoonist Héctor Germán Osterheld was tortured and "disappeared", a euphemism for murder. This concentration camp was also notorious for the torture and murder of Argentine writer and journalist, Haroldo Conti, Argentine filmmaker Raymundo Gleizer, German sociology student, Elizabeth Kasseman, Pablo Miguez, a fourteen year old child, as well as nurse, Generosa Fratassi, who was kidnapped for helping a "disappeared" detainee giving birth in the concentration camp. In this concentration camp 1500 human beings were either, detained, tortured and, or made "disappear."

The fact that this concentration held so many writers and artists makes us think about possible links with the Nazi tendency to create concentration camps for different groups of people. An example of the use of selective concentration camps for certain populations is the Nazi concentration camp outside Berlin, Sachsenhausen, which was especially designed for artists and homosexuals. After analyzing the performance, I will examine the similarities between this performance and the tradition of Argentine theatre, which has its roots in the Spanish popular theatre of the XIX century.

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3. Care, Illness and Death in Latin America

Convenor: Thomas Carter (T.F.Carter@brighton.ac.uk)

The basic conditions of life – the caring for it, the avoidance of and struggle with illness, and the end of life itself – can be and frequently are invoked across the political spectrum. These politics include state interventions into lifestyle, kin relations’ negotiations over family members’ roles and responsibilities to other family members, as well as questions of intimacy, distance, memory, and power. Whether through government interventions or the everyday vagaries of life itself, the politics of illness and health, the emotional affects of care and sickness, and the moralities attached to health, illness, and even death all affect the everyday existence of individuals throughout Latin America. Using a range of disciplinary perspectives employing geographically dispersed examples, the papers in the panel will address questions pertaining to these evocative themes from a range of theoretical and methodological approaches. Set in disparate locations throughout Latin America, each paper will provide a case study that examines some aspect of emotion or ‘care’, sociopolitical construction of illness, or means of dealing with the cessation of life. Individually, these papers draw on the everyday and the minutiae of life rather than grander scales of life while acknowledging the impacts that state and transnational movements can have on individuals’ everyday existence. Together, these papers illustrate the diverse ways in which often taken-for-granted aspects of life are politicized.

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SESSION ONE | Thursday 19th Aprill 13:30-15:00

Money, Love and Distance: Ecuadorian Migration and Care in the Global Economy
Gladis Aguirre Vidal, Stockholm University (gaguirrevidal@hotmail.com)

Migrant parents are often judged for “having abandoned their children” or “giving them only material things”, opinions that highlight their supposed incapacity to meet “real” needs. For instance, common advices for migrant parents can look like this: “Sending money doesn’t solve the lack of affection”. I argue however that this is not a “migrant problem”, but rather that it constitutes a point of departure for a more in-depth analysis of the relationship between capital and emotions, as well as of how individuals in general try to create a balance between intimate lives, the market and working place. Family relationships are discussed here through ethnographic information provided by Ecuadorian migrant women in Barcelona, and their children and relatives in Ecuador. This analysis places the topic of family relationships in the global context where flexibility is currently the mode of organizing finances and labour markets, and consequently, intimate family life.

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The Hauntings of Everyday Life in Havana, Cuba
Thomas Carter, University of Brighton (T.F.Carter@brighton.ac.uk)

This paper draws on long-term ethnographic research that began in 1995 to explore some of the ways in which the Revolution, now more than fifty years young, haunts the everyday lives of Havana’s residents and the anthropologist in their midst. Fieldwork has now entailed relationships with three generations of families and it is the deaths and births in this time that is used to explore how their lives and mine are entangled with each other and the Revolution. The passage of time and my involvement in their lives involves not only examining the changes in their lives but how they have affected me as an anthropologist. In this context, it can be said that the crises faced by the Revolution have haunted them and me. Drawing on Avery Gordon’s exquisite treatise on haunting, I consider how the Revolution makes itself known and impacts everyday life. An animated state in which a repressed or unresolved social violence makes itself known, sometimes very discreetly, sometimes very directly, and sometimes obliquely, the concept of haunting is used to describe those singular yet repetitive instances when home becomes unfamiliar, when one’s bearings on the world lose direction, or when the over-and-done comes alive. In short, I consider the ways in which Cuban lives (and my own) have become haunted by the dilemmas of everyday life in Havana.

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Empathy, Race, and the Psychology of Victimization in the Truth Commissions in Peru
Paula Escribens Pareja, London School of Economics (paulaescribens@gmail.com)

Peru -a multicultural country- had an internal war for twenty years between 1980 and 2000, in that context the victims had a specific profile. More than 70% of them were from the rural areas, indigenous and poor people. The state also had an important role as aggressor, for example 83% of the women who were rapped during the conflict were victims of agent states. After the Truth Commission took place in Peru, many institutions –NGO, state institutions- have done psychotherapy work with the victims, most of the times reproducing power relations that revictimize the people affected and traumatized. Therefore it is really important to investigate how the theoretical approach to reality, when working with patients in psychotherapy, reproduce unequal power relations which much of the time put the patient in a position of disadvantage, for example when therapists work with indigenous women who have a different epistemologic frame. Hence we postulate the importance of working with a central concept such as empathy, which really take into account the intercultural approach and therefore construct the concept of intercultural empathy.

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An Ethnography of Chronicity: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Smoking Cessation in Uruguay
Megan Wainwright, Durham University (megan@meganwainwright.ca)

The English-language anthropological literature on Uruguay is surprisingly sparse compared to its neighbours, Brazil and Argentina. Why has Uruguay attracted so little attention? Intrigued, in 2009 I decided to dedicate a PhD to investigating the cultural-politics of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and smoking cessation through thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in two Uruguayan cities: Montevideo and Tacuarembó. Serendipitously it seemed this “todo tranquilo” country of 3.3 million people made worldwide headlines in 2010 and 2011. It came 4th in the World Cup in South Africa, won the football Copa America 2011, was brought to international court by a tobacco-industry giant and hosted the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control’s biennial Conference of the Parties in November 2010. Through both football and tobacco control, Uruguay was putting itself (back) on the world map. While this paper is about what was learned of a global public health concern in an infrequently researched developing country context, it is also about “life in Uruguay” and “being Uruguayan” at this particularly interesting time in Uruguay’s local-global history. The paper will be of interest to both the “Uruguay-curious” and those with a special interest in health and illness in Latin America.

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4. Central American Realities Contrasted

Convenor: Hólmfríður Garðarsdóttir, (holmfr@hi.is)

Artefacts reflect the past, question the present and at times forecast the future. Contemporary Central American literary and film productions attest to an ever more dynamic self-representation of marginalized voices and peoples. These representations serve as histories, or other archive, as Jorge Panesi has memorably emphasized, and reflect social identities. Literary texts and cinema productions, therefore, serve as extraordinary resource material to explore how numerous Central American social, cultural and ethnic groups perceive themselves and their societies at the present.

Although much theory has been written in recent decades about identity and self-representation, limited work has been published on this exciting and timely topic as it manifests itself in Central America. Valuable contributions about the region and its peoples are on offer by writers on history, anthropology, and development studies. However, there is nothing comparable at present in the fields of comparative film, literary and/or cultural studies. The focus of the session will be on literary texts and films and its purpose it to contribute to the ongoing global inquires into local and national self-understanding and identity.

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SESSION ONE | Thursday 19th April 11:15-12:45

Confronting and Rejecting the Cultural Inheritence of a Violent History: Horacio Castellanos Moya’s El asco
James Knight, University of Liverpool (jk_hh@yahoo.com)

The short novel, El asco: Thomas Bernhard en San Salvador, published in 1997 by the Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya, presents a vehement questioning of the notion of teleological progress implicit in nationalism. This paper examines the implications of the novella’s treatment of themes such as inheritance, mourning and the absurdity of a collective identity that fails to adapt in accordance with the lessons of experience. Drawing from the theory of Idelber Avelar on Post-dictatorship fiction in Latin America and the notion of abjection developed by Julia Kristeva, I attempt to conceptualise the representation in El asco of a frustrated home-coming, in which the protagonist, is forced to confront and purge himself of an identification with a historical trajectory experienced as a decadent accumulation rather than progress.

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Lo político en lo poético: Algunas reflexiones sobre la poesía de Humberto Ak’abal
Astvaldur Astvaldsson, Universidad de Liverpool (A.Astvaldsson@liverpool.ac.uk)

Leask ha observado que, a pesar de la violencia y las injusticias que han sufrido los pueblos maya de Guatemala, Ak’abal ha manifestado que no guarda ningún resentimiento contra los opresores y su medio de expresión, sino que ‘el talante característico de Ak’abal es más bien uno de intensidad lírica que de protesta política directa’ (2010: 1 y 2). Esta postura queda reflejada en su poesía que, aunque en algunos poemas trata asuntos sociopolíticos, se enfoca sobre todo en la conservación y el rescate de aspectos primordiales de su cultura que están en peligro de perderse y que él considera fundamentales como contrapunto a la cultura de violencia que ha predominado en Guatemala desde la conquista española. De ahí que en sus, en vez de una argumentación discursiva obvia, abunden imágenes relacionadas con su gente, la naturaleza y la relación entre ambos. Pero esto no quiere decir que la obra de Ak’abal sea apolítica. Como observa Leask, ‘El propio acto de expresión es en sí mismo un acto político’ (2010: 4). Lo cual indica que lo político bien puede residir en lo poético, y también que cabría preguntarse si no es posible que la aparente falta de discursividad sea sintomática del hecho de que la epistemología maya es diferente de la occidental. La ponencia sugiere que el hecho de que Ak’abal se niegue a entrar directamente en un debate sobre la represión indígena es una consciente interrupción y desarticulación del status quo, ya que es un debate que está dominado por una racionalidad política occidental y que ignora un pensamiento y una cosmología indígenas que integran lo político con lo cultural y lo natural.

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Tales of real lives: Cinematic expressions to reclaim estranged identities
Hólmfríður Garðarsdóttir, University of Iceland – Háskóla Íslands (holmfr@hi.is)

Contemporary Central American cinema offers an ever more dynamic representation of marginalized voices and peoples, and serves as an extraordinary resource material to explore how contemporary intellectuals view and represent their societies. The aim of this paper is to discuss recent theorizing on rootedness (arraigo vs. desarraigo) and analyze three recent films, - all set in Central American. I propose to revile how the filmmakers portray their young female protagonists and answer how their calculated weighing of realistic possibilities, as represented in La Yuma (2009), El Camino (2007) and Gestación (2009) confirm on one hand the vulnerability of the female subjects and simultaneously contradict the image of the helpless victim living at the mercy of others. I argue that growing up in all embracing insecurity and underdevelopment has promoted the protagonist’s estranged image of a unified self and by altering and reclaiming the past they aspire to create a new sense of self. Their search for suitable social settings and patterns entail, as the Costa Rican/Russian director of El Camino, Ishitar Yasin, has emphasised, “perseverance, risk taking and wilfulness”. The films confirm predominant disorder of traditional social role models and showcase attempts; some failed other succeeded, to claim new places and changed positions.

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5. Change or Continuity in Cuba?

Convenors: Dr. Steve Ludlam (s.ludlam@shef.ac.uk) | Dr. Steve Wilkinson (doctorswilkinson@gmail.com)

A series of recent reforms to Cuba’s political economy have raised urgent questions about the future of its socialist model in the C21st. Important new evidence has been provided in the debates and decisions surrounding a major shake-out of state (under)employment from 2010, the promotion of new self-employment opportunities; the long-postponed Party Congress in 2011 that set out guidelines for an ‘updated’ model of development based on reduced state management, wider private enterprise, and an extension of individual economic rights; and the 2012 Party Conference intended to recast the party’s role in Cuban society. While this internal context has changed, as has the external context in Latin America and the global political economy, relations with the USA remain little improved. This panel offers papers reflecting on these changes and based on ongoing research into the internal and external dimensions of change in Cuba.

(2 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Wednesday 18th April 13:30-15:00

Updating Socialism: the politics of the Cuban transition
Dr. Rafael M. Hernández, University of Havana/Temas (rafaelmhdez@yahoo.com)

The crisis of the Cuban socialist model. Economic, social, cultural, political changes (1990-2010). What new political consensus? The political issues on the transition agenda. Key areas in Cuban reordering strategy: current policies. The politics of Updating Socialism. Main reform targets: “structural changes”. Centralization, hyper-statization, bureaucratization, enforcing the rule or law. A transition to what? Is there an alternative political model? A sociological view of the leadership: age, gender, professions. National and provincial powers. The question of the succession.

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Cuba’s socialist future and radical change in Latin America
Dr. George Lambie, De Montfort University (grl@dmu.ac.uk)

Cuban socialism today, despite its problems and experimentation, must be viewed in contrast to a failing global capitalist order that can offer little to developing countries. Even the BRICs or ‘Big Four’ countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China, which many analysts believe hold the new economic dynamic for the 21st century, cannot escape the global recession, and growth is already falling in China and India. They are also not models for any country with socialist ambitions, as they have huge levels of inequality and in traditional development terms their performance is poor. It is likely in the next few years there will be further massive convulsions in the highly integrated global financial system, of which the most immediate and probable will be a synchronised banking failure. As Western governments print money and feed it into the indebted transnational banks to stave off collapse, they are obliged to cut social spending and domestic investment creating ever-deepening recession with political consequences. Today in developed countries popular interests are now shifting from acquisitive consumption to more immediate and relevant needs such as education, healthcare, housing and employment. In Latin America the ‘lost decade’ of the 1980s and the neo-liberalism of the 1990s made this agenda a high priority before the global recession. This presentation will argue that the Cuban revolution and the priority it gives to essential human needs and equality has become a guiding force in Latin America both ideologically and practically as populations and governments seek to bring about progressive change for a sustainable future. Moreover in the context of global crisis, these priorities may begin to appeal to a wider audience as is already being demonstrated by Cuba’s successful international health aid programme. Therefore rather than Cuban socialism being an anachronism, it offers hope and examples in a world that is beginning to seek a new set of hegemonic values.

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Evolution of a Revolution: Market Liberalization and the Politics of Participation
Tamara Lee, Cornell University (tll48@cornell.edu)

This paper examines contemporary industrial relations reorganization in the Cuban socialist system to explore effects on, and impact of, worker participation on industrial relations transition. The focus is on national institutions and the process for negotiating transition. The author asserts that our understanding of the impact of market liberalization on industrial relations system actors can be enhanced through a better understanding of how the state and workers arrive at agreement with respect to the underlying justification for economic transition- what the author calls the "cognitive basis" for market reform. Key to this negotiation process is how actors direct their emotions and attribute blame for adverse consequences of reform.

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Political dimensions of the debate on economic policy
Dr. Steve Ludlam, University of Sheffield (s.ludlam@shef.ac.uk)

The Guidelines on Economic and Social Policy adopted by the Cuban Communist Party’s 6th Congress in 2011 focus on the detail of economic policy, and have attracted political comment mainly in terms of the general implications for Cuban socialism of stronger market forces and a larger private sector. The ‘updating’ process, however, is not only political in terms of these implications, but also in terms of state legitimacy that may have more influence on the success of the ‘updating’ than economic expertise and profitability. This paper addresses the legitimacy issue in terms of the impact of the public consultation on the Guidelines, and of the ‘re-ordering’ of the workforce; and in terms of the severe critique of Cuba’s elite political culture made in President Raúl Castro’s recent keynote speeches, which form part of the ‘updating’ of the Party’s role at the 2012 Party Conference.

SESSION TWO | Wednesday 18th April 15:30-17:00

Losers and winners of the reform. PCC challenges after its Sixth Congress
Ramón Igor Centeno Miranda, University of Sheffield (r.i.centeno-miranda@sheffield.ac.uk)

Cuba is living an impasse around the fulfilment of planned layoffs as well as the openness to private labour. Sure enough, this is not explained by an economic rationale. It is rather a reformulation in the management of political risks that entail both measures, which explain the government's choice for a maximum gradualness (and security) of the economic reform. The goal: to avoid popular anger from the prospective losers, and assertiveness from the future winners. How to achieve it? By improving existing corporate mechanisms in regards to the existing sectors, and by creating those needed to attract the self-employment. This political strategy is probably the way to read PCC actions after its Sixth Congress. Will this approach work?

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Updating the Cuban model: economic hazards ahead?
Dr. Emily Morris, Institute for the Study of the Americas (Emily.Morris@sas.ac.uk)

Cuba's ambitious process of updating its economic model may not be a 'transition' to capitalism, but nonetheless it will be difficult to manage. Major changes in relative prices, the exchange rate system, the structure of production and system of management will risk inflation, loss of confidence in the currency, economic dislocation and fiscal crisis. Each of these hazards will be examined in turn, in the context of the Cuban model of change, and with reference to the experience of other countries that have undertaken rapid economic reform.

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Neither Beijing nor Hanoi: why Cuba's 'updating' of socialism is home grown
Dr. Steve Wilkinson, International Institute for the Study of Cuba (doctorswilkinson@gmail.com)

The recently announced ‘updating’ of the Cuban socialist model has raised the supposition on the part of some commentators that Havana has chosen a Chinese or Vietnamese model of development. This paper examines the both the Chinese and Vietnamese economic miracles and compares them with the Cuban situation. It concludes that while the Cuban process has undoubtedly been informed by a study of their Asian counterparts, there are so many differences between each country’s characteristics, context and experience, that the Cuban model is inevitably one that is forged out of its own circumstances and praxis.

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6. Culture, Place and Tourism in Latin America

Convenor:
Fernando González Velarde (fernando.gonzalez-velarde@newcastle.ac.uk)
Sarah Duggan (sarah.duggan@newcastle.ac.uk)

This panel will examine the cultural transformations that come about in local communities in Latin America where tourism has become an ever-increasing source of income. While the discussion around tourism has focused on its potential for bringing economic development or provoking economic dependency (Britton, 1996), little attention has been given to the ways in which cultural meanings of place are affected by year-round or seasonal influxes of ‘outsiders’. We propose to echo Gupta and Ferguson in challenging the idea that locality and community are given or natural, arguing instead that political and social forces dictate the process of place making. In addressing this point, the discussion will inevitably raise questions about nature and the ways in which it is represented and conceived of in communities seeking to promote tourism. The themes to be explored include: the relationship between nature, tourism and place, identity-making and symbolism of place, the reinvention of tradition, the commodification of culture and the interplay between tourism and migration. Given that the impact of tourism on culture varies greatly from place to place, we include empirical case studies focusing on regions throughout Latin America and the Caribbean region.

(3 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Thursday 19th April 11:15-12:45

Land conflicts in a valuable but vulnerable town: Tourism development in Mancora, Peru
Fernando González Velarde, Newcastle University (sarah.duggan@newcastle.ac.uk)

This paper analyses the tensions brought about by tourism development in the formerly fishing village of Mancora, in Northern Peru, where this fast growing industry is generating tensions and conflicts gaining increasing notoriety. As it happens globally, tourism is seen in Peru as a dynamic activity that will bring economic development and progress to local communities. However, the transformation of Mancora as a beach tourism destination has increased exponentially the pressure upon land and space, turning this process of place making into a land-grabbing race. While local and national authorities have built touristic infrastructure within the scarce and vulnerable areas of the town aimed at making this place more touristic, land invaders are fostering a traffic land market to make a profit out of the popularity achieved by the place, bringing tensions and conflicts amongst tourist developers from different levels of society.

The striking fact in all the frenzy around the growth of Mancora as a tourism destination is the silence about the fact that Northern Peru is cyclically affected by the natural phenomenon “El Niño-Southern Oscillation” (ENSO). The heavy rain this climate phenomenon brings with it resulted in 1983 and 1997-8 in floods and landslides that profoundly affected most of the coastal villages; the regional economy collapsed, and the space changed drastically. This paper will examine these tensions as they emerge in interviews with fishermen, local dwellers, and official and private touristic agents. I will inform my analysis with anthropological theories about the social construction of place and space, and the nature and society interface, as well as tourism studies, development studies, and natural disasters in coastal areas.

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The Making of Paradise: kite-surf, ecotourism and peace in Barra Grande, Piauí, Brazil
Daniela Caruza, Universidade Federal do Piauí, Brazil (danielacaruza@hotmail.com)

The main focus of this ethnographic study is the transformation of a place into a tourist destination, drawing empirical reflections from the small coastal town Barra Grande in Piauí, Brazil. Though Piauí is not one of the most representative states in Brazilian tourism, Barra Grande stands out in particular due to its integration within an international network of destinations distinguished by the practice of kite-surf. As tourism has increased in importance over the last decade, not only has it become the most important source of income in the town but also new people have arrived and new practices and values have emerged, contrasting with the way local people live and relate to place, to nature and to each other.

My purpose, thus, is to analyze the social conflicts and symbolic struggles that take place in this context. I suggest that the process of becoming a tourist destination itself provides rich evidence of the ways in which the destiny of a place is designed by social and political forces in dispute. Social Anthropology provides my theoretical background and grounds my assumptions; I draw particularly from situational analysis (Gluckman, 1940; Van Velsen, 1967) with regards to notions of social structure, social change, and conflict. In the field of tourism studies, I consider the contributions of Nash (1989, 1995), Graburn (2009), Kaplan (1998) and Waldren (1996), among others to be of importance.

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Social meanings of place: exploring cultural narratives and symbolic spaces of collective identity in the Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, Brazil
Sarah Duggan, Newcastle University (sarah.duggan@newcastle.ac.uk)

This paper explores the cultural transformations generated by changing resource relations in Lençóis, a small town located within the boundaries of the Chapada Diamantina National Park. Once renowned as the “Diamond Capital”, in recent years environmental concerns have displaced mining as the principal socio-economic activity in the region in favour of tourism. This has taken place in the context of steady widening and consolidation of national systems of protected areas at a regional level (Guerrero and Sguerra, 2009) and the growing recognition of the economic potential of nature-based tourism for the Brazilian state (Puppim de Oliviera, 2002). However, little ethnographic research has considered the cultural processes implicated in these changing human-environmental relations at local level.

In this context of rupture and renewal, I am interested in exploring how different social actors conceptualise the material and symbolic significance of the physical environment and the way in which different visions of the past, present, and future are implicated in the negotiation and elaboration of personal and collective identities. Taking cultural narratives of place, culture and identity as a point of departure my research will reflect on the role of both remembered and imaginary experiences in the constitution of lived meanings. My research will draw from a growing body of work that considers notions of place and nature as deeply embedded in social relations and fundamental to constitution of community self-understandings. In this paper I will give a brief overview of this current research project, discussing the main theoretical frameworks that ground my approach and situating my research in relation to similar work in the Latin American region.

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SESSION TWO | Thursday 19th April 13:30-15:00

Driving Sustainability: The Catalysts and Obstacles for Sustainable Tourism in Costa Rica
Su Arnall, University of Sheffield (s.arnall@sheffield.ac.uk)

This research project explores the drivers and challenges for the sustainable tourism industry with a particular focus on the case of Costa Rica. These “drivers” include both governance factors, such as the role of certification systems, state laws and non-governmental organisation activity; and structural factors, such as the location, price level and size of a resort. The research is investigating the relative significance of these different drivers in an attempt to explore how sustainable tourism might be effectively pursued in the future. Costa Rica is a useful site for this research as sustainable tourism is well embedded into the economy and society and thus, the drivers for sustainable tourism in Costa Rica are likely effective. Costa Rica’s Certificate for Sustainable Tourism, in particular, is one of the most advanced regulatory systems for sustainable tourism in the world, and thus likely has some useful insights for successful voluntary governance mechanisms in the industry more generally. This presentation will set out the theory behind the project, including frameworks for understanding “sustainable tourism”, and the different governance mechanisms that potentially act as catalysts. The methodology for the project will then be presented, including documentary analysis and interviews both in Europe and Costa Rica. Finally, the potential nature of the findings will be outlined, including a number of possible outcomes and preliminary thoughts from the research.

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Rural Community Based Sustainable Tourism in Cocachimba, Amazonas, Peru
Malayna Raftopoulos, Liverpool University (M.A.Raftopoulos@liverpool.ac.uk)

Although the concept of sustainable tourism development has gained widespread acceptance, its practical applicability has proved more difficult to achieve (Holden, 2002; Northcote and Macbeth 2006). Community participation has come to represent a more tangible means of implementing development processes and outcomes and providing alternative incomes (Matarrita-Casante, 2010). However, despite some authors arguing that sustainable tourism is feasible at the micro level (Butler, 1996), the multifaceted complexities found within this sphere make small-scale sustainable tourism projects just as difficult to achieve. The aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the issues involved in sustainable tourism development at the micro-level. Sustainable tourism has provided a legitimate excuse to open up new areas to tourism in the name of preserving the environment and cultural heritage. The discovery of the third highest waterfall, Gocta in 2006, has seen a small rural community thrown into the tourism sphere. This study looks at how tourism has affected the relationships within the small community of Cocachimba, as well its changing relationship with nature and its cultural heritage. It examines the problems and challenges that now face the local community.

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SESSION THREE | Friday 20th April 09:30-11:00

La India Permitida: Mapuche women and ethno-tourism in Southern Chile
Cathleen Schmitke, University of Bristol (cs5856@bristol.ac.uk)

Mapuche ethno-tourism in Southern Chile is marketed outside the communities it affects as an experience where visitors learn about indigenous customs and traditions, their closeness with nature and their strength in community. Images of Mapuche women in traditional dress are used in promotional material and there have been large government campaigns to promote and support Mapuche tourism. Despite possible reservations about this type of state intervention, ethno-tourism is also seen by some Mapuche as a strategy to remain on their land, to continue traditional modes of subsistence (agricultural, fishing and crafts), to revive and dignify Mapuche culture and to strengthen community ties. In this context, this paper focuses on ways in which female Mapuche identity has been represented and shaped by ethno-tourism. The combined influence on identity making by Mapuche communities, tourists, the state and women themselves creates a space for analysis of the place of Mapuche women in both Chilean and Mapuche societies. This paper will consider the meaning of la india permitida in the Chilean context and explore ways in which it has been encouraged by the state, experienced by tourists and both challenged and utilised by Mapuche women.

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Textual articulations of contemporary touristic Cuba.
Rebecca Ogden, University of Manchester (ogden.rebecca@googlemail.com)

Cuba’s economic crisis of the 1990s, following the Eastern bloc collapse, meant a radical rupture in the direction of its social revolution and forced the strategic growth of the tourist industry in order to generate foreign exchange. Despite the conditions of poverty Cubans endured during the Special Period, the tourist environment had to respond to the many expectations and fantasies of the tourist imaginary, through which “the hospitality sector is highly conditioned and structured to meet a tourist’s needs – physical, emotional and sexual” (Cabezas, 2006: 509).

In Cuba’s touristic exchanges, lack of material resources is negotiated by the appropriation of other seemingly abundant types of capital – exotic, human, emotional and affective - marketed as inherent features of the Cuban landscape and population. Different types of capital are thus consolidated; creating the construction of place that is both real and imagined. Indeed, beyond the transactional sexualized encounters (sex-for-money) that has so far been the focus of scholarship (O’ Connell Davidson, 1996; Brennan, 2004; Cabezas, 2004) this project aims to explore the complex politics of relationships operates, based on multiple imaginaries and discourses of sexuality, exotica, love, and human solidarity.

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The methodological singularization of society and culture in tourism discourse and tourism research from the lens of contemporary US tourism to Mexico
Anna E. Papanicolaou, University of Southampton (aep106@soton.ac.uk)

In this paper, I discuss a common and commonly overlooked phenomenon that has pervaded not only travel discourse from the apogee of modernity to the present, but also the literature that seeks to understand it: the methodological singularization of society and culture. As a largely ideological framework for conceptualizing space, the methodological singularization of society and culture - a conceptual framework through which each country is painted as embodying a unique and distinctive culture and society (Gupta and Ferguson 1992: 6-7) - must be challenged and problematized, I argue, because it obfuscates a very simple fact: that no nations enclose singular cultures or definable societies. Because our worlds are ‘pluriethnic’, multilingual and indeed ‘pluricultural,’ mobilizing tropes that call upon the singular, serve to not only discursively but also conceptually contravene this very fact. Interlacing my research on US travel discourse on Mexico with a review of contemporary academic literature on the topic, this paper illustrates some of the key discursive tropes through which methodological singularization can be found in the context of tourism and tourism research, discussing some of the key challenges and sociopolitical implications that arise from its mobilization and uncritical (re) production.

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7. Foreign Policy Challenges facing the Cuban Government

Convenor: Mervyn Bain (mervyn.bain@abdn.ac.uk)

Since its victory in January 1959 the Cuban Revolution has continually faced a number of challenges with regards its foreign policy, not least a hostile United States administration. Despite this, Cuba, for a Caribbean island, has been able to display a disproportionately large amount of influence within international relations. Key for this phenomenon during the Cold War was Havana’s relationship with Moscow. However, even after the implosion of this relationship Cuba has continued to pursue a foreign policy which has a global reach. This continues to dumbfound the Revolution’s critics with this global reach being all the more remarkable as a result of the continued strained nature of Cuban-U.S. relations and economic problems which have befallen the island.

This panel will examine both a number of Cuba’s key contemporary bilateral relationships and also the Revolution’s internationalism, which has been a crucial aspect of the island’s contemporary foreign policy. This will allow the panel to not only conclude why Cuba continues to pursue a global foreign policy, but also to offer some thoughts on its future as Cuba continues to face a number of global challenges, not least economic ones in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 economic global recession.

(2 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Thursday 19th April 13:30-15:00

Cuban Foreign Policy in the era of economic reforms
Dr Carlos Alzugaray Treto, Centro de Estudios Hemisféricos y sobre Estados Unidos. Universidad de La Habana (carlosalzugaray@gmail.com)

Since 2009, the Cuban leadership, with President Raul Castro leading the way, has been conducting what it has branded as an “updating of the economic model”. Just as the “Doi Moi” process in Vietnam, what has been going on is a profound reform of the whole socialist economic and political system. Although less emphasized inside Cuba and not very much visualized from the outside, Cuba has also been adapting its international relations regime to the transformation of its internal economics and politics. One important factor in this process has to do with the fact that the international political context is very favorable to Havana, which is not the case with the world economic situation, which has created additional difficulties for the Government. Without abandoning its anti-hegemonic character, Cuban diplomacy has been emphasizing a more pragmatic and economic-oriented foreign policy.

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Brain Drain Politics: U.S. Efforts to Undermine Cuba’s Medical Aid Programs
Professor H. Michael Erisman, Indiana State University, U.S (Henry.Erisman@indstate.edu)

The genesis for this paper can be found in my most recent book (co-authored with John Kirk of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia) entitled Cuban Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution, and Goals (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009). This book was very well-received by reviewers, but one important unexplored dimension of the topic concerns the dynamic interaction between these international aid programs and the larger arena of US/Cuban relations (i.e., how do these programs impact US/Cuban relations and vice versa?). This paper seeks to fill that gap, focusing in particular (as indicated in the title) on U.S. efforts to undermine Havana’s medical aid programs.

Cuba’s international medical aid programs are more extensive than those of any other country or international organization in the world. In a typical recent year, Cuba will have approximately 30,000 medical aid personnel dispatched to 75-80 developing nations (primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America). Washington, fearing that such aid activities will generate increased international political influence (i.e., soft power) for Havana and thereby complicate U.S efforts to bring about regime change there, has responded with its own countermeasures. The primary U.S. initiative has been the Cuban Medical Professional Parole (CMPP) Program, which is designed to encourage and facilitate defections to the U.S. by Cuban medical personnel assigned to overseas aid missions. The dynamics and impact of the CMPP program will be the main focus of this paper.
The key components of and main goals to be pursued in this paper are:

Operating within a policy analysis format, which will represent the main thrust of the paper, some of the key questions/issues to be addressed will be:

Providing summary background information/data about Cuba’s medical aid programs with respect to the number of personnel involved, the type of personnel involved (e.g., doctors, nurses, technicians, etc.), and their distribution (e.g., countries and regions). For comparative purposes, similar summary data will be provided regarding U.S. medical aid activities. This component will essentially serve to update the 2008 data used in my 2009 book on Cuban medical internationalism.
Providing detailed background information about the formation and operation of Washington’s CMPP program. Special attention here will be devoted to probing the (U.S.) political dynamics underlying the CMPP program, focusing on such issues as the political variables operating to create/sustain the program and those generating opposition to it.
Probing the extent to which the CMPP program has succeeded in persuading Cuban medical internationalists to defect and analyzing the potential variables impacting its performance.
Beyond providing basic empirical information (e.g., number of defectors, percentage defecting, etc.), special attention here will be devoted accessing such “impact variables” as the measures taken by the Cuban government to discourage/prevent defections and the program’s effectiveness in terms of assisting defectors in assimilating into the medical profession in the U.S.

The results of the above (bulleted) research considerations will serve as the foundation for the study’s overall analytical/normative conclusions, which will focus on the following key questions:

To what extent has the CMPP initiative been successful in seriously undermining Havana medical aid programs?
To what extent has or can the CMPP program negatively impact the larger dynamics of US/Cuban relations (e.g., does it represent a major impediment to improved relations or is it merely a minor irritant)?
What implications might the CMPP program have within the larger context of US/Latin American relations?

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The Place of Sport in Cuban Internationalism: Understanding the dynamics of solidarity, capacity building, and revenue.
Dr Robert Huish, Dalhousie University, Canada (Henry.Erisman@indstate.edu)
Dr Simon C. Darnell, University of Durham (simon.darnell@durham.ac.uk)

Cuban internationalism is widely studied by scholars in various fields. It is also well-acknowledged and respected in foreign policy circles. Traditionally the focus has been on the impact of 38,000 Cuban health care workers working in 76 countries. However Cuba internationalism also extends to sport and development. The Escuela Internaciónal de Educación Fisica y Deporte de Cuba (EIEFD) has received 1,386 students from 71 countries in order to be trained as coaches under the auspices that they will return to their home country to provide care. As well, over 600 Cuban coaches and trainers are currently working in over 100 countries. In some cases these programs are for community-based sport education, and in other cases the programs aim for elite Olympic-level training. Based on the ongoing findings of a 3-year SSHRC funded studied we are beginning to map out the impacts of Cuban Sport Internationalism. Thus far we have found three distinct, but related, paths of Cuban Sport Internationalism that somewhat challenge traditional sport and development paradigms:

As part of broader South-South solidarity projects
In building community-based sport education capacity in other countries
For-profit contracts aimed at developing elite achievement

In this presentation we set out to identify the impacts these three tiers of Cuban Sport Internationalism have both for foreign relations and for development impacts at the local level. In all three paths we believe that underlying values of participation, solidarity and cooperation the driving dynamics that will continue to foster Sport Internationalism even as Cuba experiences altering economic conditions.

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Contemporary Canada-Cuba Relations: Successes and Challenges”?
Professor John M. Kirk, Dalhousie University, Canada (kirk@dal.ca)

Canada is extremely well-placed to take advantage of its traditional relationship with Cuba. In 1962 Canada and Mexico were the only two countries of the western hemisphere not to break relations with revolutionary Cuba. Canada is also the major supplier of tourists to Cuba (950,000 in 2010), and the largest foreign investor is Sherritt International, a Canadian mining and energy company. Yet despite these natural advantages, the relationship between Ottawa and Havana is frosty. This presentation analyzes the nature of this diplomatic relationship and explains how it has developed under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.

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SESSION TWO | Friday 20th April 09:30-11:00

Cuba and Venezuela: A History of Revolutionary Interaction
Dr Diana Raby, University of Liverpool (dlraby@liverpool.ac.uk)

Since the arrival of Hugo Chávez to the presidency of Venezuela in 1999 the relationship with Cuba has been a crucial factor in the country’s politics, with successive agreements for trade, social and cultural exchanges culminating in the foundation of the ALBA Alliance by the two countries in December 2004. Indeed, Chávez had visited Cuba a few months after his release from gaol in 1994 and proclaimed that – although Venezuela had to make its own revolution without copying anyone else – Cuba represented “the dignity of Latin America”. In fact the revolutionary interaction between the two countries has a long history, going back to the time of Simón Bolívar. This paper will not delve so deeply into the past, but will examine the relationship from the 1950s onwards: the Venezuelan democratic revolution of January 1958 and the activities in Caracas of Cuban members of the 26th of July Movement, Fidel Castro’s triumphant visit to Venezuela in January 1959, the Cuban relations with the Venezuelan guerrillas of the 1960s, down to the current ALBA exchanges and the shared debate over XXI Century Socialism.

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Love in a cold climate: Cuba’s improving relationship with Latin America
Dr Stephen Wilkinson, International Institute for the Study of Cuba (s.wilkinson@cubastudies.org)

Notwithstanding the continuing ‘cold war’ aspect of the relationship between the United States and Cuba, the island’s relations with its neighbours in the Latin American region have never been more cordial or propitious. This paper summarises the reasons for the recently improved position of Cuba vís a vís the rest of the continent and concludes by assessing what this might mean for Havana’s relationship with Washington as the century matures.

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Havana and Moscow 50 Years after the October Crisis
Dr Mervyn J. Bain (Panel Chair), University of Aberdeen (Mervyn.bain@abdn.ac.uk)

In October 1962 the world was brought to the edge of nuclear war after the Kremlin’s decision to deploy nuclear weapons to Cuba. International Relations in the twenty-first century may appear to bare little resemblance to those of 1962, but in 2012 the relationship between Havana and Cuba remains robust. This is illustrated by various bilateral agreements, including for exploratory drilling for oil in Cuban waters. This is a very different scenario from the years 1992 to 1995 when little of the relationship appeared to survive the disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991. This paper will analyse the contemporary relationship to examine not only what allowed the relationship to survive, but to prosper from the mid-1990s onwards.

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8. Imagining Better Futures in Brazil

Convenor: Elizabeth Cooper (elizabeth.cooper@bl.uk)

This panel addresses the formation and reproduction of social inequality in Brazilian society in the 18th and 19th centuries. Each paper investigates an aspect of the relationship between human actions and structural forms of inequality. In doing so, the papers also open up a critical dialogue about the trajectory of social change in contemporary Brazil. Monica Ribeiro de Oliveira’s paper analyses parish records in order to shed light on the relationship between social reproduction and social stratification in agrarian Brazil. Elizabeth Cooper’s paper explores the relationship among changes in popular culture, work and concepts of Africa after the abolition of slavery in Salvador da Bahia. Martha Santos’ paper examines the connections between concepts of masculine honour and the socio-economic challenges faced by sertanejos in 19th c Ceara. Flávia Pires’ paper examines the impact of the Family Grant Programme (Programa Bolsa Família). The paper assesses the success of the programme as well as the unintended consequences – including the production of new power dynamics among recipients. Through studying the cultural practices of social and economic power, each paper also unearths the historical and social building blocks of a more egalitarian and humane Brazil.

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SESSION ONE | Wednesday 18th April 13:30-15:00

Trayectorias Intergeneracionales: América portuguesa, siglo XVIII y XIX.
Monica Ribeiro de Oliveira, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brasil (monicaufjf@gmail.com)

Presentaremos resultados de un proyecto de investigación que viene siendo desarrollado en los últimos años acerca del comportamiento socioeconómico familiar de sociedades agrarias en la América Portuguesa del siglo XVIII/XIX. Acompañaremos trayectorias de individuos y sus grupos familiares por tres generaciones en, aproximadamente, 150 años. A través del uso combinado de fuentes cuantitativas, como los registros parroquiales de bautismo, con aquellas que permiten un análisis cualitativo, acompañaremos la experiencia individual y familiar buscando percibir en ese recorrido, las formas de reproducción social y económica que posibilitaron un proceso de diferenciación del grupo original del cual fueron reclutados. En ese sentido, la investigación dialoga con las proposiciones de la microhistoria, al reflexionar sobre las realidades pasadas, tratando de recuperar las vivencias cotidianas a través del reconocimiento de la acción del individuo y la percepción de su trayectoria. Elegir al individuo para la condición de protagonista al buscar articular distintos aspectos de la realidad en un abordaje diferente de la historia social. Para más allá de las singularidades propias de cada individuo, consideramos sus trayectorias relevantes para el entendimiento de las formas de ascensión social dentro de un contexto marcado por profunda estratificación social, característica de sociedades moldeadas por valores del Antiguo Régimen. Es nuestro objetivo entender cómo se realizó el proceso de diferenciación social de esos individuos en el largo plazo.

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Everyday Utopias
Elizabeth Cooper, The British Library (elizabeth.cooper@bl.uk)

This paper analyses inter-related changes in culture and labour during the late 19th and early 20th century in the city of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. The paper argues that struggles over new labour practices and popular culture were fundamentally inter-twined, and that these urban struggles created new discourses of power - in particular new racial ideologies - and new forms of subaltern politics after the abolition of slavery.

Through an analysis of the development of Salvador da Bahia’s new streetcar industry – including hiring and firing practices, labour activism and strikes, and customer service – the paper follows the contested evolution of modernity and freedom in the era of abolition and post-abolition. Using carnival, popular religious festivals and street markets as productive spaces of popular politics and historical memory of workers in the urban post-emancipation Salvador da Bahia the paper analyses the transformation of the daily life and culture in Salvador.

I argue that through uncovering the relationship among changes in popular culture, work and concepts of Africa in post-emancipation Salvador we illuminate the roots of Brazilian ‘populist politics’ and the political significance of racial thought in Brazil. At the same time, this paper argues that an analysis of urban post-emancipation labour and cultural struggles offers new insights into the philosophies and social projects of working people.

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Poor but Respectable: Masculinity, Honour, and Access to Resources among the Sertanejos of Ceará, Brazil, 1845-1889
Martha S. Santos, University of Akron, USA (santos@uakron.edu)

This paper explores the connections between cultural concepts of masculine honour and the socio-economic conditions affecting sertanejos, or free poor men, from the backlands of the Brazilian North-eastern province of Ceará between 1845 and 1889. Through analysis of land registries, postmortem inventories, and criminal cases, this paper reveals that a concern with honour among sertanejos living through this period was not the result of a timeless cultural prescription, as popular and even scholarly representations of backlands culture and history maintain. Instead, a preoccupation with masculine honour became strengthened as sertanejos with access to small plots of land and other productive resources faced intensified competition for access to these resources, within the context of rapid expansion of the commercial agriculture and livestock economies of this semiarid region. The importance of masculine honour was also exacerbated since honour, displays of bravado, and even violence became the main means through which sertanejos defended access to land, cattle, and water in absence of effective State institutions capable of guaranteeing the usufruct of landed property.

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The Family Grant Program in the Semi-Arid Northeast Brazil.
Flávia F. Pires, University of Sheffield (ffp23279@gmail.com)

This paper is based on fieldwork research conducted in the semi-arid region of North-eastern Brazil and is part of a larger research project, which examines the impact of the Family Grant Programme (Programa Bolsa Família), a massive federal government program, which provides a monthly cash transfer to more than 13 million poor Brazilian families.

Our research focuses on children and mothers of a small town in Paraiba State, called Catingueira, located in the semi-arid region, where more than half of the population is enrolled in this program. We argue that the impacts of the new government benefit are huge in terms of household consumption, especially food, and in addressing school truancy. However, we will focus on a non-predicted effect: the shifting status among family members. Children are asked to play a crucial role in the program, as it is their school attendance, which guarantees the family will continue to receive benefits.

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9. Interdisciplinarity in Indigenous Mexican Studies

Convenor: Dr Caroline Pennock (c.pennock@sheffield.ac.uk)
Session Chairs: Dr Caroline Pennock | Dr Corrinne Burns (corrinneb@hotmail.co.uk)

This panel will bring together academics from across the disciplines with a shared interest in the indigenous cultures of Mexico, both ancient and modern. Building on and exploring the already profitable interactions between archaeologists, historians, cultural anthropologists and art historians, this panel also reaches beyond the humanities to examine the potential value of burgeoning ethno-scientific fields for the understanding of indigenous Mexico.
Specialists from fields as diverse as history and ethnopharmacology will discuss the values and challenges of interdisciplinary work in the field of indigenous studies and consider the ways in which collaborative research can illuminate matters of race, social inequality, political power and traditional practice – all of which are currently major challenges for Central American societies.

Interdisciplinary work can often encourage a richer and more nuanced understanding of indigenous practices and beliefs. In a world where shared traditions abound, cultural continuities have frequently led to a somewhat static perspective on indigenous Mexican civilisations, and interdisciplinary work can not only draw parallels and correspondences, but also shed light on the uniqueness, adaptability and continuing vibrancy of indigenous Mexican groups.

The Network for Indigenous Mexican Studies (previously hosted by DMU, now hosted by the University of Sheffield) sponsors the panel. If you would like more information about NIMS then please contact one of the panel chairs.

(2 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Thursday 19th April 09:15-10:45

Clash of cultures: can Western biomedicine and indigenous Mexican medicine work together to provide the best healthcare for indigenous Mexican communities?
Dr Randolph Arroo, De Montfort University (rrjarroo@dmu.ac.uk)
Dr Corrinne Burns, De Montfort University (corrinneb@hotmail.co.uk)

Access to the best of modern healthcare is a human right, but care should be taken that introduction of biomedical clinics to indigenous communities is done sensitively. Research by Dr Vania Smith-Oka has shown that the introduction of Western-style clinics can precipitate a loss in indigenous knowledge of traditional medicine, with a concomitant reduction in the status of women, who are frequently the holders of such knowledge.

Culture-bound syndromes and the importance of ritual medicine may also fail to be recognized by medics untrained in indigenous Mexican medical anthropology. Clinical trials based in Italy have shown that medicinal rituals can induce brain neurochemical changes which are identical to those produced by active pharmaceutical ingredients, and so the preservation of ritual medical practices has an importance that goes beyond simple cultural sensitivity.

This paper will discuss ways in which Western-style medicine can be incorporated with indigenous medical practices, and how medics can work with indigenous medical specialists to develop systems of medicine optimized for indigenous Mexican communities.

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Ethnopharmacology in México – Continuity and change in indigenous cultures
Professor Michael Heinrich, UCL (mheinric@scu.edu.au)

Ethnopharmacology is interdisciplinary fields of research that looks specifically at the knowledge and practices of indigenous peoples relating to empirical (and symbolic) aspects of medicinal substances, their potential health benefits and (as with all drugs) their potential toxicological risks. Very often it has been limited to its potential basis in the context of drug discovery, but in fact the research foci in this area are much wider (Etkin and Elisabetsky 2005) and such research needs to empower local communities to make best use of such resources.

There can be no doubt that México has both a very long tradition of medicinal plant use (Lopez Austin 1971; Ortiz de Montellano 1975) and that this is still an essential element of everyday practice (e.g. Linares and Bye 1987, Heinrich et al. 1996). In many regions self-treatment is the most common first therapeutic choice. This knowledge is dynamic and our recent research has highlighted that we need to go beyond the externally imposed dichotomic categories of traditional and modern medicine in order to better understand the local use of medicines (Giovannini and Heinrich 2009). An assessment of how effective and safe this treatment is needs to be an essential part of such research. Mexican medicinal and food plants offer a rich field for interdisciplinary research, which in the longer term also needs to benefit local populations.

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Aztecs Abroad: Interdisciplinary in the interpretation of trans-Atlantic networks
Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock, University of Sheffield (pennock@sheffield.ac.uk)

There is rich potential for interdisciplinary collaboration to shed light on the history of indigenous Mexican cultures. Focusing on Mexican travellers to Europe in the sixteenth century, this paper will consider some of the possible links between ethnohistory and other disciplines and consider how an interdisciplinary approach can contribute to a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the encounters, confrontations and hybrid cultures which shaped the Atlantic world.

Amerindians have been sorely neglected in studies of the ‘Atlantic’ world, but between 1492 and 1550 alone, more than two thousand Amerindians travelled to Castile, including nobles, entertainers, musicians, slaves, ambassadors and ‘freaks’. A fascinating and significant migrant group in their own right, these previously-unacknowledged Amerindian travellers are also vital both to our understanding of specific issues, such as the diffusion routes for food, music and artistic styles, and to a wider appreciation of the hybrid cultures which shaped our modern world.

This paper reflects on how, through interdisciplinary work, it may be possible to illuminate not only the experience of these indigenous travellers, but also the transcontinental and cross-cultural networks within which they operated. My own research is rooted in traditional manuscript and published documents, but through the use of sources such as archaeology, music, art, material culture, botany, pharmacology and genetics, I hope it may be possible to enrich our understanding of this fledgling diaspora and their global impact, and also to acknowledge more explicitly the reciprocal nature of the so-called ‘Columbian Exchange’ which followed the encounter of 1492.

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SESSION TWO | Thursday 19th April 11:15-12:45

Comparing indigenous multidimensional poverty in Mexico
Mr Ivan Gonzalez de Alba, University of Oxford (ivan.gonzalez-de-alba@wolfson.ox.ac.uk)

Deprivation has many faces and many dimensions. Following critiques of income-based poverty measures; multidimensional approaches are increasingly becoming a popular alternative, allowing for a broader understanding of the ways in which poverty affects people´s lives. Academics, governments and international organisations have adopted multidimensional measures to target and monitor poverty reduction policies / programmes and compare the ways in which poverty affects different groups. However, behind the broad numbers and statistical comparisons lie the personal experiences, the ways in which people deal with every day challenges and resolve their shortfalls. Drawing on data from the Mexican context, this paper aims to consider the following questions: how is the experience of poverty lived by indigenous people in Mexico? Is it any different from non-indigenous poverty? How informative is a multidimensional method of poverty measurement for this? Adopting a mixed methods approach, this paper links quantitative results from Mexico´s multidimensional poverty measures with recently collected qualitative data relating the experiences and stories of indigenous and non-indigenous people living in rural Mexican communities. This paper is a shortened version of an empirical chapter in a doctoral dissertation, and therefore should be considered a work in progress.

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Working with the Maya in the Yucatan: Behavioural, environmental, metabolic and intergenerational factors impacting on the health of the families
Dr Inês Varela-Silva, Loughborough University (M.I.O.Varela-Silva@lboro.ac.uk)

[Authors: Inês Varela-Silva, Federico Dickinson, Hannah Wilson, Hugo Azcorra, Paula L Griffiths and Barry Bogin]

Our research group has been working with the Maya in the Yucatan since 2005. The overall aim of our project is to identify factors that impact on the health of the families. The ultimate goal is to use our findings to implement intervention programmes among the Maya communities in order to improve their health and well-being. Our research, so far, has shown that the Maya in the Yucatan are poorer, less healthy, with very short stature (stunting), and with fewer opportunities to improve their lives than non-Maya groups.

The Maya are undergoing nutritional and epidemiological transitions. The nutritional transition is leading them to shift from a traditional diet with more fibre, less fat and less calories to a globalised diet, rich in calories and fat content and poor in fibre. Consequently they are becoming very overweight. The epidemiological transition means that the Maya are suffering less from infectious diseases (caused by pathogenic microorganisms) but more from non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. In turn, the epidemiological transition is aggravated by their overweight status. Short stature associated with overweight is the worst possible health outcome. When the two outcomes (very short stature and overweight) coexist in the same group, same family or same individual we say that a situation of nutritional dual-burden has occurred.

Our research shows the existence of many dual-burden families in which the mother is overweight and at least one child is undernourished. Most of the mothers are dual-burden individuals. In this presentation we discuss the current health status of these Maya and offer some ideas for intervention to improve their health.

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Los Maya del Norte: Biocultural aspects of health status of Guatemala Maya children living in the United States
Professor Barry Bogin, Loughborough University (B.A.Bogin@lboro.ac.uk)

[Authors: Barry Bogin1, Maria Inês Varela Silva1, Patricia K. Smith2, and James Loucky3]

The migration of Maya refugees to the United States since the late 1970s affords the opportunity to study the consequences for the health status of Maya children. The Maya of this study live in Florida and California. Maya children were interviewed about lifestyle and measured for growth status. Maya-American children are significantly taller and have longer legs than their counterparts in Guatemala. However, the Maya-American children also have high rates of overweight and obesity. Television, computer games, and English language use increase the risk for overweight. Families with greater economic resources and families that invest economic and social resources in their children tend to have taller children.

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Drugs and Hallucinogens in Mexico: Past and Present
Dr. Elizabeth Baquedano, UCL (e.baquedano@ucl.ac.uk)

In this paper I intend to study drugs and hallucinogens in Ancient Mexico and their use in some indigenous communities at present. The importance of drugs and hallucinogens goes back to the Formative Period (BC) and it continues to be important in several ethnic groups in several Mexican regions. The drugs most often employed were: morning glory seeds (Rivea corymbosa) Ololiuhqui, mushrooms, cactus buds and even tobacco.

The sacred mushroom teonanacatl ((Psilocybe aztecorum) was considered by the Aztecs to be the ‘flesh of the gods’. Friar Bernardino de Sahagún (1970: XI, VII) left descriptions in his Florentine Codex of this black mushroom as well as the effects that it produced for those who ate them. In addition, there is at least one Aztec sculpture that according to Wasson (1973) depicts the hallucinogenic mushroom as well as flowers of Rivea corymbosa.

Drugs were used in a variety of contexts from relieving pain to seeking communication with the gods and in aiding human sacrifice. One of the most powerful hallucinogens is the Peyote plant (Lophophora williamsii). It grows in the deserts of northern Mexico and the buds of the cactus are still taken today by the Huicholes and the Coras. I intend to explore the relationship between the consumption of certain drugs and certain activities such as hunting. This paper will incorporate ethnohistory, codices and archaeology and will consider modern ethnographic work. This kind of subject will greatly benefit from interdisciplinary work, particularly from scientists who will no doubt contribute to a fuller understanding of the use of drugs and hallucinogens in the ancient cultures of Mexico as well as in the present ethnic groups.

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10. José Donoso: relecturas de su obra y figura

Convenor: Philip Swanson (p.swanson@sheffield.ac.uk)

El presente panel tiene como objetivo ofrecer nuevas lecturas de la obra y figura de José Donoso mediante la incorporación al debate del concepto de desarraigo, de la interpretación de textos publicados recientemente, como es el caso de La lagartija sin cola (2007) y Correr el tupido velo (2010), y finalmente, a partir de la integración de materiales inéditos -cuadernos de trabajo, borradores y correspondencia personal- contenidos en los José Donoso Papers.

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SESSION ONE | Thursday 19th April 13:30-15:00

Ausencia presente/presencia ausente: Donoso, el pene perdido y la envidia de la vagina
Philip Swanson, University of Sheffield (p.swanson@sheffield.ac.uk)

El fenómeno de la desaparición o la pérdida de sí es una constante problemática en la narrativa de José Donoso, algo que normalmente se asocia con la ansiedad social o existencial. Sin embargo, casi siempre tal pérdida o desaparición se desarrolla en el contexto de la ansiedad sexual masculina. La desaparición de la marquesita en La misteriosa desaparición de la marquesita de Loria, por ejemplo, puede leerse como una manifestación del terror a la vagina dentata y de la ansiedad de la castración. La desaparición en Tánger del supuesto narrador de El jardín de al lado resulta, parece ser, en la transformación de un hombre fracasado en una mujer exitosa. Y en “Chatanooga Choochoo” de Tres novelitas burguesas, el personaje masculino pierde el pene y su mundo se revela como controlado por un cabal de mujeres. Desde la perspectiva de la recién descubierta Lagartija sin cola y ciertas nuevas revelaciones sobre la vida personal de Donoso, se puede ahora asociar esta aparente crisis de la masculinidad con el deseo homosexual o hasta el deseo de ser penetrado o ser hembra. Esta ponencia intentará re-leer la obra donosiana mediante la idea de una crisis fálica y la envidia de la vagina, añadiendo una dimensión profundamente sexual al trauma ontológico y epístemológico que subyace en la ficción del autor chileno.

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Desarraigo en la obra de Donoso
Sebastián Schoennenbeck, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (schoenn@uc.cl)

Tal como lo afirma en su ensayo “Ítaca: el regreso imposible”, José Donoso es un desarraigado. Sus contradictorias relaciones con la cultura nacional están determinadas por la ausencia del sujeto en su tierra natal y por la pérdida del lenguaje local. En este sentido, Donoso se presentaría como un huacho: una voz que ha perdido su sujeción a la tierra del padre y que vaga por el mundo, representando la patria perdida. Considerando los manuscritos de la Universidad de Iowa y de Princeton y el material periodístico del autor, el objetivo de esta ponencia es construir una imagen de José Donoso determinada por su cosmopolitismo que dialoga equívocamente con la cultura chilena. ¿Cómo un cosmopolita representa su perdida cultura local? ¿Cómo esta visión se manifiesta en su obra narrativa? ¿Cuáles son las implicancias de la máscara cosmopolita en una voz narrativa que ha dado luces sobre la identidad chilena?

En la ponencia, se pretende identificar aquellos rasgos que constituyen el cosmopolitismo donosiano tales como la filiación con voces literarias anglosajonas, la recreación de formatos de cultura masiva y la pérdida de un lenguaje vernáculo. También será necesario precisar los modos a través de los cuales José Donoso se apropia del discurso cosmopolita, el cual contempla una tradición en América Latina.

Por otro lado, la cultura local será identificada en el imaginario del autor con el paisaje, la ciudad de Santiago de Chile, el realismo del siglo XIX, los efectos de una sociedad chilena jerarquizada y el mito como, por ejemplo, el imbunche.

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Un epígrafe del demonio. Sobre referencia a Doctor Faustus en El lugar sin límites
Carlos Mario Mejía Suárez, South Dakota State University (carlos.mejia@sdstate.edu)

La narrativa de Fausto tiene como base la construcción de un autor capaz de ejercer autoridad sobre el personaje, alineándose con una comunidad que enjuicia acciones transgresoras. Cuando José Donoso incorpora un epígrafe que viene de esta tradición a El lugar sin límites, se reconoce como autor que tiene a su cargo una tarea evaluadora fundamental para su comunidad. En mi presentación muestro que el epígrafe hace parte de un conjunto de procedimientos que dan forma al performance autorial del novelista chileno que con El lugar sin límites comienza a explorar formas de romper con modelos anteriores de la novela criollista. Para ello contrasto la lectura usual del epígrafe con lo que Donoso consignó en sus cuadernos de trabajo, con su producción crítica que define el papel del escritor y, finalmente, con los recuerdos que publica en su Historia personal del boom. Este contraste permite iluminar cómo la voz del autor es un constructo donde las fuentes del autor (otras novelas, tradiciones como la de Fausto, etc) se diluyen para construir a los personajes y hacer de ellos más que una representación mimética y más que un eco intertextual de Fausto.

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José Donoso escritor en el campo de batalla del Boom: una interpretación a partir de sus cuadernos de trabajo y correspondencia personal
María Laura Bocaz Leiva, University of Mary Washington (mbocazle@umw.edu)

La crítica ha asociado el nombre de José Donoso con el Boom principalmente a partir del valioso testimonio del escritor en su Historia personal del Boom (1972). El estudio e interpretación del material inédito contenido en los José Donoso Papers de la universidades de Iowa y Princeton, permiten al investigador reevaluar la posición que hasta el presente se le ha concedido a Donoso en este controversial período, y alumbrar el impacto que éste tuvo en tanto contexto de producción en el proceso de escritura de El obsceno pájaro de la noche (1970). Durante la ponencia tendré por objetivos discutir cómo Donoso es tempranamente incorporado a la plataforma del Boom por Carlos Fuentes y Emir Rodríguez Monegal, así como las consecuencias que su incorporación tuvo tanto en el extenso proceso de escritura de El obsceno pájaro de la noche como en la internacionalización de la literatura latinoamericana.

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11. Peruvian Identities in the 21st Century

Convenor: Lexy Seedhouse (a.seedhouse@newcastle.ac.uk)
Discussant: Katy Jenkins

The co-constitutive relationship between identity and space is explored in this panel as speakers interrogate the concept of place and its impact on individual and collective identities. Contemporary Peruvian Identity formation is investigated by exploring three main contexts: social movements, mestizaje and social media. In this session, we aim to open up discussion on the complex ways in which identities are constructed, maintained, and imagined, and the far-reaching social implications of these. Crucially, we emphasise the fluidity of identity, which we view as evolving and contingent on power relations. By bringing together speakers from anthropology, human geography and cultural studies, we aim to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on contemporary Peruvian identities.

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SESSION ONE | Friday 20th April 09:30-11:00

Gender and Ethnic Identity Formation within an Anti-mining Resistance in the Peruvian Andes.
Lexy Seedhouse, Newcastle University (a.seedhouse@newcastle.ac.uk)

The dramatic expansion of the extractive industries in Peru in recent years has brought with it an escalation of indigenous social movements. These social movements have seen women assuming key roles and accessing previously male-dominated spaces. This paper investigates the negotiations of ethnicity and gender within two communities resisting natural resource extraction in the Peruvian Andes. Conceptually informed by feminist political ecology, it analyses Quechua women’s experiences of resistance movements. The discussion is based on empirical findings from fieldwork, which utilised a mixed-method approach; triangulating ‘rapid ethnography’ with semi-structured interviews, focus groups and document analysis. The findings underline the complex interconnections between gender and ethnicity, and highlight the fluidity of the ways in which participants perceive their identities. Finally, I argue that while mining is not unequivocally “good” or “bad” for development, under certain circumstances it may serve as a catalyst for the amelioration of women’s empowerment. Through this research, I aim to fill a gap in current understandings, created by the previously scant attention accorded to women’s experience of resistance to natural resource extraction.

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The making of Peruvian identity by the social networks: The “brand Peru”
Felix Lossio Chavez, London School of Economics (F.A.Lossio@lse.ac.uk)

The “brand Peru” is the latest national marketing strategy developed by PROMPERU, a governmental institution, in order to promote Peruvian attractions inside and outside the country. Particularly, with the conduction of private advertising companies, PROMPERU has produced a short video where well-known Peruvian figures such as actors, sportsmen and women, chefs and musicians arrive to a faraway small town in the United States also named “Peru”. There, the protagonists disseminate their national cultural practices and products that are welcomed by the locals. These practices are shown as the backbones of Peruvian identity, finally integrated in the “brand Peru”.
The video has been strongly disseminated around the social networks and the media. Several reactions in favour and against it have been presented and discussed. My paper will focus, on one hand, in analyzing the video; and on the other, in describing and analyzing the discussions held among participants on social networks -particularly Facebook and Youtube. By doing is, I intend to deepen on the question around the struggles on the construction of Peruvian contemporary identity, where the market, the advertising and the social networks are central actors and spaces.

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Surnames, bilateral descent and the mixing that produces persons: ethnographic perspectives on mestizaje from an Afro-Peruvian community
Tamara Tatem-Hale, London School of Economics (T.Hale1@lse.ac.uk)

This paper, based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork in an Afro-Peruvian and mestizo community in rural Peru, explores the link between ideologies of kinship and ideas about ‘race’ and ‘blackness’ through cultural idioms about naming. The production of bilaterality at the level of the individual person is narrated by ordinary Peruvians in this village through ideas about surnames, in particular the Hispanic practice of surname transmission (paternal followed by maternal surname). Surnames provide a link to local people’s folkbiological understanding of ‘race’ as a substance which is the outcome of the mixing of ingredients provided by fathers and mothers to make a child. As a result an individual’s ‘racial’ ascription is, by its very nature, dual or even multiple. In talking and thinking in this manner ordinary Peruvians in this field-setting respond to and recreate national discourses of mestizaje; most importantly, the concept of “race” found here does not involve an awareness of historical forced migration implying a latent sense of ethnic collectivity. While people here make use of a cultural practice shared by most Latin Americans and Iberians, they use it to position themselves in a way which downplays straightforward racial classification while also demonstrating a preference for ‘mixedness’. Names reflect the kinship idiom of ‘mixedness’ but also point towards intersections of history, kinship, and personhood.

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12. Political and Economic Perspectives on the Crisis in Argentina

Convenor: Christopher Wylde (christopher.wylde@york.ac.uk)

The 2001-02 crises in Argentina represented a moment of critical juncture. This panel seeks first to map out the contours of the crisis, and then attempt to assess its longer-term impact. This impact is to be understood through a variety of multi- and trans-disciplinary approaches, from a Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) to viewing the post-crisis period through the lens of the political economy of development. From the domestic perspective, in what ways did this moment of critical juncture translate into a new politics in terms of the Senate? What was the lasting social impact of the rise of the ‘new poor’ on Argentine state-society relations? From the international perspective, in what ways have Argentine corporate relations changed, and how do these relations compare with other members of the so-called ‘pink tide’ such as Brazil? In its totality, does the renegotiation of the Argentine social contract, combined with a reorientation of Argentina’s international relations, represent a new model? If so, how can this be characterised?

(2 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Thursday 19th April 11:15-12:45

Where Theory and Practice Don’t Meet: Economic Assumptions, the Mass Media, and Argentina’s Debt Crisis of 1999-2002
John Sherman, Wright State University (john.sherman@wright.edu)

After his election in October 1999 Argentina’s centre-right President Fernando de la Rúa embarked—at the behest of international lenders and the International Monetary Fund—on an aggressive austerity program that spawned unemployment and placed his nation’s economy in a deep-freeze. Chicago School technocrats accelerated the austerity process in the midst of this downturn, further exasperating an economic crisis that soon infected Argentina’s body politic. Going from crisis to crisis, through Domingo Cavallo’s ‘Plan Zero Deficit’ in winter 2001, a repeating cycle of new funding and more austerity led only to a dead-end—a solvency crisis that shook the very foundations of Argentina’s fiscal system, forced a break in the dollar-to-peso peg, and obligated the nation to default on its massive public debt. A historical reflection on this process, coupled with analysis of mass media representations of it, suggests that much of the Argentine debt crisis could have been mitigated or even avoided, if it were not for powerful assumptions about currency valuation, deficit spending, and austerity that permeated the economic and political cultures. What was in fact a solvency crisis from the beginning was repeatedly misinterpreted as a liquidity crisis—in large part because political leaders, International bankers, and prominent economists could not fathom the possibility of a disconnect between their theories and economic realities on-the-ground.

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“From the ¡Que se vayan todos! to the reconfiguration of the Argentine political elites. Continuities and transformations in the composition of the Senate”.
Gabriel Levita, CEIL – CONICET (levgab@hotmail.com)

This paper contributes to the literature on Argentine political elites by shedding light on the way that the Senate composition has changed since the social, political and economic crisis of 2001. The prosopographical analysis of Senator profiles drawn from the 2001-2011 period illustrates both an increasing diversification of their basic social characteristics and also their political careers. In Argentine political history, the Senate has always been more conservative than the lower chamber of the Congress. Whilst its members have belonged to the most powerful political groupings, they have also occupied the highest positions in the national and provincial State structures and political parties. Since 2001 this defining characteristic of the Senate has been called into question as a consequence of a series of legal reforms. In this paper we investigate this widely demanded and so-called political renewal in order to find out to what extent it has occurred as a consequence of institutional reforms, social pressure and/or long-term social changes in political elites. As the preliminary results of a wider research, we propose a typology of senators’ trajectories, which demonstrates the pluralization of the chamber and, in relation to this, of Argentine political elites. Thus, this also leads us to rethink the category of political outsider.

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Rethinking the “Resources of Poverty”: Sustainable Livelihoods and the New Urban Poor in Post-Crisis Buenos Aires
Daniel Ozarow, Middlesex University (D.Ozarow@mdx.ac.uk)

The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) has traditionally been used to facilitate understanding about how structurally poor urban households maintain or enhance their resources, capabilities and activities in order to recover from stresses and shocks. However, this paper evaluates whether the framework can also be used to assess how those in the middle class who become impoverished utilize these resources. Drawing upon interviews conducted between 2007 and 2011 with “new poor” Argentines in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires who were affected by their country’s economic crisis in 2002, it finds that whilst some were able to effectively exploit their wealth of assets they had accumulated during their non-poor pasts like their education, employment experience, social networks and knowledge of their legal entitlements in order to emerge from poverty, for many others, far from bestowing them advantages in achieving this end, these “superior” resources actually aggravated their impoverishment. The research therefore finds that the transferability of the SLA to fluid situations of downward social mobility is problematic. In order to improve the framework, it is suggested first that its contextual sensitivity be improved to account for the impacts of macroeconomic and political crisis on livelihoods, secondly, that greater consideration be given to the psychological consequences of a sudden change in lifestyles and thirdly, it renews the call for the incorporation of political capital into the model.

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SESSION TWO | Thursday 19th April 13:30-15:00

Brazil and Argentina’s participation in social and corporate governance initiatives: local politics and global standards
Alejandro Milcíades Peña, City University London (Alejandro.Pena.1@city.ac.uk)

This article analyses the participation of Argentinean and Brazilian actors in the higher bodies of global initiatives of social and corporate standardisation launched within the last decade, such as the UN Global Compact, the Global Reporting Initiative and ISO 26000. Through these case studies the paper argues that the participation profile in such projects of global governance is strongly conditioned by the structures shaping the local relations between the different politico-economic sectors in these two countries, in particular the state, business, labour and civil society organisations. Both countries shared a stable and growing economic environment during the decade, and the presence of progressive left-leaning administrations that promoted a strong state and friendly arm-length relations with both labour and social movements. Nonetheless, this paper suggest that the closure of Argentine politics to external cleavages, while blocking the development of specialised actors able to communicate with new instances of policy-making, allows for the subsistence of independent local socio-political cleavages. On the other side, while Brazil displays a more institutionalised approach to political inclusion, and greater involvement in global governance initiatives, its organised corporatism fosters the consolidation of technocratic elites that monopolise access to participation. These ideas propose not only the existence of structural relations between global governance and local institutions, but reflect on whether different functional systems configure different types of politics articulating the local and the global.

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The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning? Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Kirchnerismo, and the changing relationships of the Argentine State.
Christopher Wylde, University of York (christopher.wylde@york.ac.uk)

This paper will analyse the trends in government policy between the administrations of the two Kirchner’s in Argentina. Focus will be on the nature of Cristina’s policies, and determine sources of continuity and change with Nestor Kirchner. This will form a basis to examine deeper processes of social change in Argentina present since the crisis of 2001. Therefore, analysis of changes in the state-market dichotomy will be complemented by analysis of changes in the state-society dichotomy, or social contract, in Argentina under Cristina Kirchner. In addition the role of the ‘international’, or state-global dichotomy, will be analysed to determine impact on the national development trajectory of Argentina. This will contribute to the development of a better understanding of the impact of the current international financial crisis (among other factors such as the role of international commodity prices) on Argentina.

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From economic breakdown of 2001/2002 to recovery: Post-neoliberalism in Argentina.
Hilal Gezmis, University of Sheffield (h.gezmis@sheffield.ac.uk)

The 2001/2002 financial crisis in Argentina raised important questions about the viability of Washington Consensus paradigm, which dominated development thinking in the 1990s. The Consensus promoted reducing the role of the state in economy and the rise of market-led development as a response to the debt crisis of 1982 across Latin America. Under Convertibility regime, Menem government embraced neoliberal recipes in a very drastic way, which resulted in the collapse of the economy, high social protests and temporal loss of governability. The recovery of the economy started in 2003 during Nestor Kirchner government, which addressed a paradigm shift in development towards state interventionism in economy referred by scholars as ‘neodevelopmentalism’ (Godio, 2004) or ‘return of the state’ (Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2007). In effect, the shift was embedded in government policies that favoured production over finance, promoted formal economy through re-regulation of labour market and redistribution through export taxes in the context of favourable international economic conditions. Overall, this paper argues that financial crises can be understood as part of complex relations between global political economy and state-society structures. Hence, it asserts that the crisis of 2001/2002 in Argentina was embedded in recurrent contradictions in Argentine historical development path which was sharpened during the neoliberal phase in the 1990s and post-crisis strategies for development was shaped by the historical question of the state’s role in economy in Argentina. Finally, this paper aims to explore the nature of the post-crisis recovery in Argentina in the context of a more globalised economy. It questions to what extent policies in the post-crisis era were successful and constitute alternative model from previous policies of Menem government in terms of the changing role of the state in development.

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13. Politics, power and culture: colonial Latin American history in 21st-century Britain

Convenor:
Francisco Eissa Barroso (F.A.Eissa-Barroso@warwick.ac.uk)
Silvia Espelt Bombín (silvia.espelt-bombin@newcastle.ac.uk)
Ainara Vázquez Varela (ainaravazquez@hotmail.com)

During the last quarter of the twentieth century British historiography of Colonial Latin America deservedly attained the highest international reputation. The work of scholars such as David Brading, Malcolm Deas, John Fisher, Brian Hamnett, John Lynch and Anthony McFarlane transformed our understanding of the politics, economy, and society of the region, especially during the late colonial period and the transition into independent nations. Yet, the last decade witnessed the retirement of a number of the leading figures of this generation. Today, however, the study of Colonial Latin America in Britain remains well alive, even if unrepresented in the recent SLAS Conferences. A generation of mid-career scholars, many of them former students of the big names of the twentieth century, have reinvigorated the field, introducing new cultural approaches and expanding the ways in which we study the politics of early modern Latin America. At the same time, the ranks of early career researchers and lecturers continue to grow. This panel will provide an opportunity for scholars of colonial Latin America at different stages of their careers, and linked to British Academia, to get together, and discuss the current state of British colonial Latin American Studies, by presenting their individual research within the themes of politics, power and culture.

(3 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Wednesday 18th April 13:30-15:00

‘Alberoni Again: (Re)Assessing the Role of Julio Alberoni in Eighteenth-Century Bourbon Reform for Spain and the Colonies’
Adrian Pearce, King’s College London (adrian.pearce@kcl.ac.uk)

The close identification of the Parmesan cleric Julio Alberoni with the aims and priorities of Elizabeth Farnese, Philip V's second Queen, made him all but absolute ruler of Spain from his arrival in 1715 to his sudden downfall in late 1719. Alberoni has been recognised since his own day as among the most important 'Spanish' statesmen of the eighteenth century, one whose programme of rapid rearmament and military adventures in Italy astonished Europe. His broader significance to the history of Bourbon reformism in Spain and in Spanish America was long obscured, however, by the relative brevity of his administration and by the fact that only part of the programme he developed was implemented before his own departure from the scene. Recently there has been renewed interest in Alberoni as a major figure in Spanish Enlightened reformism, not least from the leading scholar of Bourbon Spain and America, Allan J. Kuethe. This paper seeks to further contribute to the study of Alberoni as perhaps the key figure in early Bourbon Spanish government, above all by arguing that the significance of his colonial programme can only be understood when set within the context of the wide-ranging and closely related programme he developed for the Peninsula. In doing so, it argues that Edward Armstrong's judgement of some 120 years ago, that 'almost all the beneficial projects of the century may be traced back to him', bears stronger scrutiny than might at first appear.

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'Military officers as provincial governors and captains-general in early eighteenth-century Spanish America'
Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso, University of Warwick (f.a.eissa-barroso@warwick.ac.uk)

This paper challenges the argument that reforms introduced in Spanish America during the first half of the eighteenth century were limited in scope and significance by exploring the careers and profiles of men appointed to a number of strategic Spanish American provincial governorships and captaincies-general between 1700 and 1746. It argues that during the period the Spanish crown stopped selling appointments to these offices and increasingly chose experienced military officers, who had progressed through the ranks and earned their stripes in Iberian and Mediterranean battlefields, to serve them. The paper highlights significant parallels between these developments and the transformation of many Spanish corregimientos into politico-military governorships occurring during the final years of the War of Spanish Succession. At the same time, the paper argues that the preference given to military officers was only partially related to the need to improve the defences of Spanish America and that it was a reflection of broader changes in Spain’s politics and political culture which came to prioritise executive government and direct exercise of the king’s authority as means for providing good economic government and conditions for development.

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Manuel de Guirior's viceregal court in Santa Fe of Bogota: space of power and instrument of reform (1772-1776)
Ainara Vázquez Varela, Universidad de Navarra (ainaravazquez@hotmail.com)

The years during which Manuel de Guirior ruled as viceroy of the New Kingdom of Granada –from 1772 to 1776- were crucial for the implementation of the bourbon reforms in the territory. For the viceroy to successfully carry out this process of transformation and exert his delegated power, he needed to secure the collaboration of the already established instances of power. The arrival of a new administrative official and his retinue –composed of family members, friends, followers and servants, all of them seeking to improve their personal circumstances- tended to modify the balance of power between the different networks of influence that existed in the capital of the viceroyalty. Analyzing the composition of the viceroy’s entourage and the mechanisms used to fit into –or transform- these networks is key to understanding the process of implementation of the bourbon reforms.

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SESSION TWO | Wednesday 18th April 15:30-17:00

To Burn the Royal Palace at Leisure. Re-assessing Historiography on early 17th Century Mexico
Angela Ballone, University of Liverpool (a.v.ballone@liverpool.ac.uk)

This Paper postulates that an examination of the various reactions of the metropolitan court of Madrid and the vice-regal court of Mexico City to the so-called “Tumult of Mexico”, 1624, calls into question the hitherto widely-accepted notion that a well developed Creole community was already in existence in the early seventeenth century. Fresh analysis of official documentation exchanged between Madrid and Mexico City reveals that the implementation of the peninsulares-criollos dichotomy is far from straightforward for the early part of the Colonial Period and invites a re-assessment of those traditional historiographical approaches, perhaps most notably championed by J.I. Israel and D. Brading, that seek to present a self-conscious Creole (national) identity as differentiated from the Peninsular (Spanish) identity. A detailed consideration of the period of conflict in Mexico during the first half of the seventeenth century shows, contrary to what Israel and others suggest, a clear predominance of Peninsulares as opposed to Creoles. In particular, the concept of royal authority was freely adapted to fit different cases and political schemes regardless of strictly “Peninsular” or “Creole” agendas. This Paper proposes that interpretations of contemporary events surrounding the Tumult have been cast in the mould of “proto-nationalistic” sentiments that have more to do with the Latin American independence period than with a close reading of the primary sources due attention being paid to the language therein used.

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The emergence of a free coloured elite? Individual and collective identity in Panama City, 1750-1765
Silvia Espelt Bombín, Newcastle University (silvia.espelt-bombin@newcastle.ac.uk)

During the eighteenth century, Panama City was the theatre of a series of trade conflicts, which involved coloureds and whites. Between 1750 and 1765, the conflicts intensified between a subset of free coloured people and the (white) merchants (mercaderes) of the city. This conflict favoured the formation of a so-called coloured guild, which defended its economic interests and challenged local and viceregal legislation that prevented them from trading. Through the analysis of some of these conflicts, this paper will look at individual free coloureds’ lives and techniques for upward socio-economic mobility and their individual identity, will discuss whether these trade conflicts show the existence of a free coloured elite in Panama City, and whether the subset of free coloureds had a collective identity or the guild was simply the best way to defend their economic interests.

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‘If You Want Slaves Go To Guinea’: Civilisation and Savagery in the Spanish Mosquitia, 1787-1800
Caroline Wiliams, University of Bristol (caroline.williams@bris.ac.uk)

In late September 1798, George, king and principal chief of one of the three parcialidades that comprised the Afro-Amerindian Miskitu nation, set up camp on the savannah close to the Spanish settlement of Río Tinto, and demanded the presence there of the most senior resident Spanish officer, Antonio de Echeverría. George’s purpose in travelling to this unpopulated stretch of territory, accompanied by 44 jefes and principales, a native interpreter, two drummers, and a further 120 men armed with lances, bows, and arrows, was to bring before the colonial authorities the grievances that had accumulated against Spaniards since, under the terms of the 1786 London Convention, they had taken possession of lands and settlements previously occupied by the British. Delivered over the course of four days, the chief’s statement itemised 44 separate objections to the methods, attitudes and behaviours of most of the Spaniards with whom he and his people had dealt over the previous decade. The written record of the speech – the content of which Spaniards described as ‘unprecedented’, and its arguments as characteristic ‘more of a cultured man than of a savage’ – extends over 29 pages, and shows the range of concerns that the chief addressed, including Spain’s increasingly evident inability to deliver on early promises of gifts and trade goods more plentiful than they had ever before received. More significant, as I show in this paper, are the rare insights it offers into the ways in which the region’s native population, even while enthusiastically incorporating into their own elements of the European cultures with which they came into contact, also challenged the ideologies that equated Christianity with virtue, literacy with knowledge, clothing with civilization, and blackness with slavery.

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SESSION THREE | Thursday 19th April 09:15-10:45

Discussant: Alejandra Irigoin, London School of Economics, m.a.irigoin@lse.ac.uk

Twenty-two Kings and a Lost History: on the Sources of Efigies de los Incas o Reyes del Perú con su origen y serie by Alonso de la Cueva (ca. 1725)
Sara Gonzalez, Oxford University

The pictorial composition Efigies de los Incas o Reyes del Perú con su origen y serie, designed by Alonso de la Cueva around 1725, displayed the ‘portraits’ of the Incas and Spanish kings with their short biographies in accompanying captions. It resulted into an engraving and numerous canvases, which popularized the effigies of the Peruvian rulers for the next century, and a half. My paper will analyse the sources of Cueva’s programme, and in particular the role played by two historical accounts: Pedro Peralta Barnuevo’s Júbilos de Lima y fiestas reales (1723) and Francisco Fernández de Córdova’s lost Cuadernos de mano (ca. 1602). I will also prove that the captions of Efigies add information on the contents of Córdova’s intriguing manuscript, which influenced contemporary chronicles like Buenaventura de Salinas’ Memorial de las historias del nuevo mundo Pirú (1630) and Guaman Poma’s El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (ca. 1615).

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An American in Paris and a Spaniard in Paraguay: Geographies of Natural History in the Hispanic World (1750-1808)
Helen Cowie, University of York (helen.cowie@york.ac.uk)

This paper examines the transatlantic dimensions of Spanish science in the years 1750-1808. During this period, Spain made strenuous efforts to survey and exploit the natural productions of her overseas possessions, organizing a series of scientific expeditions to the New World and displaying American fauna and flora in metropolitan gardens and museums. Focusing on the careers of two contemporary naturalists, the Spanish-born Felix de Azara and the creole Pedro Franco Davila, the paper explores the geographical dimensions of natural knowledge in the Hispanic World and considers how the place in which 'scientific' knowledge was formulated affected the nature and credibility of that knowledge. The paper also questions the traditional dichotomies drawn between imperial/central knowledge and colonial/peripheral knowledge, emphasising instead the permeability of these categories.

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14. ¿Por fin toda la verdad?: Questioning Discourses of Latin American History

Convenor: Dr. Victoria Carpenter (v.carpenter@derby.ac.uk)

The title of Juan Miguel de Mora’s 1973 book Tlatelolco 1968. Por fin toda la verdad suggests that the truth about a historical event can eventually be told or written. It also implies that there is ‘the whole truth’, as opposed to either partial or incomplete truths about an event. However, the existence of many texts presenting the same event with just as many variations questions the validity of a single account accepted by collective conscience. Instead, we posit that a number of variations on the theme of the event are sustained by either cognitive or affective control mechanisms (or even a combination of the two) used by both the state and populace.

The panel will examine a variety of discourses of historical events in Latin American countries in order to determine whether there are multiple mechanisms of creating multiple collective memories of an event, and if so, how these mechanisms interact. We are particularly interested in finding out whether the interaction is complementary or confrontational. The topics discussed in the panel include, but are not limited to, the representation of coups d’état, revolutions, violent confrontations between the government forces and the populace, and other similar events. Publicly available state texts, newspaper articles, academic studies and literary texts will be examined.

(3 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Wednesday 18th April 13:30-15:00

La familia en la novela contemporánea del Caribe: Esmeralda Santiago
Ivonne Flores Caballero, University of Bristol (Ivonne.Florescaballero@bristol.ac.uk)

La familia para las escritoras caribeñas contemporáneas, es parte integradora de su existencia, y constituye uno de los principales elementos de su escritura. Las relaciones entre abuelas, hijas y nietas representan los diversos roles que asume la mujer latina que van de la sumisión a la rebeldía, de la tradición a la modernidad, y una metáfora entre su cuerpo femenino, la madre y la patria.

Esas relaciones también abarcan a los demás miembros de la familia: hermanos y a la figura del padre ausente. Esta novela autobiográfica muestra a un Puerto Rico, vulnerable que aún no ha resuelto el problema de su identidad nacional. Asi, Esmeralda Santiago es la voz que construye un discurso relevante hecho como puertorriqueña, mujer y migrante. Los textos y contextos, con la escritura del yo está firmada por la excesiva vinculación con la figura maternal. Los referentes de las presencias y ausencias en todas sus figuras y composiciones vienen desde su hogar en Puerto Rico hasta Nueva York, para así conformar en su novela autobiográfica, una muestra de la escritura femenina en el marco de la tradición de la familia latina.

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Ciudad Juárez, When Reality Becomes Fiction
Sarah Bowskill, Queen’s University Belfast (s.bowskill@qub.ac.uk)

Ciudad Juárez, Mexico is notorious in the world’s media for femicide, gangs, drug trafficking, corrupt police, illegal border crossing and the maquila industry. Such events have come to the attention of human rights activists and academics that have produced documentaries and testimonio accounts with a view to improving conditions in the city and heightening international awareness. Increasingly, however, Ciudad Juárez is being used as the setting for contemporary popular fiction. Recent English-language examples include The Dead Women of Juarez, Lost in Juarez, The Crossing, SAS Ciudad Juárez, In the Shadows of Juárez: Victim 213 and Vampires of Ciudad Juárez. In Spanish-language literature some of the best known works of Roberto Bolaño and Paco Ignacio Taibo II are set in the border city. This paper will compare fictional representations of Ciudad Juárez in English and Spanish in order to examine whether there are any significant differences and explore how these texts negotiate the line between consciousness-raising and exploitation.

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Four Paths Five Destinations: Neozapatismo and Imaginaries of Alternative Globalisation in Documentary and Writing
Cornelia Gräbner, Lancaster University (c.grabner@lancaster.ac.uk)

This paper examines the ways in which the concepts, ideas and forms of action articulated in Neozapatismo are present in documentaries and writing, which aim at an international audience, and how these cultural products contribute to the articulation of imaginaries of the other world that is possible. I will trace the use of particular formal characteristics – the interpenetration of different genres and the use of different voices – in a variety of cultural products.

Firstly, I will focus on intertextualities between some writings by the Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, and works by Eduardo Galeano and José Saramago. The intersection between storytelling and analysis will be foregrounded here.

Secondly, I will look at the use of voices in John Gibler's journalistic writing on Mexico, Manu Chao's Clandestino, and Nicolas Défossé's documentary ¡Viva México! These texts, which were created with the intention to travel easily between a Mexican and an international audience, combine self-reflexiveness regarding the parameters of representation, with an implicit appeal for dialogue to the readers/viewers.

Drawing on these case studies, I will outline a re-conceptualization of the relationship between commitment and autonomy in, along the lines of dialogical, consensus-based and horizontal forms of interaction and of political organizing.

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SESSION TWO | Wednesday 18th April 15:30-17:00

Where Truth is Known?: Reflections on the Emergence of Mexico's State-Student Conflict in July 1968
Christopher Harris, University of Liverpool (c.harris@derby.ac.uk)

In a sense, it is easy to identify the emergence of the state-student conflict in Mexico in 1968. The first signs of confrontation became visible on July 26th when protesting students clashed with the police and, after three days of fighting, the first two deaths had already been registered. According to Hodges and Gandy (2002: 93), it is these events that constitute ‘the spark that set off the student explosion of that year’. It is true that these events, to retain and extend the metaphor, were one of the many sparks that ignited a fiery conflict that would burn for months. Yet even now, in 2012, the emergence of the conflict remains partially obscured by a number of unanswered questions and by our knowledge of certain events that still have no obvious and convincing explanation. This paper therefore examines the major problems we face in our attempts to narrate the history of the state-student conflict at its inception in July 1968.

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Nothing but the Truth, Take Two: The Mechanisms of Creating a Collective Memory in the Tlatelolco 1968 Discourse
Victoria Carpenter, University of Derby (v.carpenter@derby.ac.uk)

The hypothesis put forward in this project is that there are two mechanisms of creating a collective memory of the event: one is hegemonic (dominated by state discourses and, potentially, academic studies of the shooting), and the other is posthegemonic (dominated by literary and popular discourses). We also posit that neither mechanism produces or even aims to produce an accurate representation of the event; instead, the two systems control cognitive and affective domains in collective conscience.

The present paper will compare the way the two mechanisms are used in the contemporary analyses of the Tlatelolco massacre. The two works in question are Roberto Blanco Moheno, Tlatelolco: historia de una infamia (1969), and José Carrión et al, Tres culturas en agonía (1970). I aim to determine whether the two authors, apparently representing the opposing camps in the Tlatelolco discourse, approach the representation of the massacre from two divergent perspectives or whether their texts are characterised by the unity of the mechanisms involved in creating a memory of the event in the collective conscience.

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SESSION THREE | Thursday 19th April 09:15-10:45

In the Service of El Comandante: Towards a Sociology of Chavista Historical Knowledge
Andrew Tillman, University of Cambridge (at520@cam.ac.uk)

Hugo Chavez is a man in command of history, albeit a particular version of it. Unlike his ideology, which political scientists have noted is rather incoherent, Chavez´s historical thought is lucid – an intelligent but anachronistic narrative that reconsiders the past with the express purpose of redefining the future. This paper focuses on Chavez´s Bolivarian thought and the accompanying historiographical expressions it has inspired. To begin it places Chavez´s Bolivar in historiographical context, displaying the ideological conviviality between the comandante´s narrative and certain characteristics of the Bolivar found in la Historia Patria, Marxist literature, militaristic interpretations, and – less tangibly – the popular consciousness. Next, the paper examines how the Chavez regime has actively sponsored historical research, concentrating on the role of the National Center of History as the creator and defender of a new national consciousness. Specifically, it asks: what is history to the Chavistas? What is their new approach? And, in the purview of Venezuelan historiography, why is it necessary? After capturing the Chavista perspective, the paper concludes by working towards what can be called “demailiarization;” that is, in Peter Burke’s words, “a kind of distanciation which makes what was familiar appear strange and what was natural seem arbitrary.” With a greater consciousness and understanding of the Chavista’ knowledge system and epistemological community, one can ask: is the work of the National Center of History truly contributing to the study of history and benefitting the Venezuelan people, is it simply a state institution in the service of el Comandante, or is it somewhere in between?

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Variations on Ruins and Democratic Spectrality in Paraguay
Alejandro Quin, Michigan Tech University, USA (aquinmed@mtu.edu)

Throughout his literary career, Augusto Roa Bastos repeatedly declared that his famous trilogy (Hijo de hombre (1960), Yo el supremo (1972), and El fiscal (1993)) was intended to be a literary rewriting of the Paraguayan historical process, and a reflection on what the author used to call “the monotheism of power”, that is, the foundational violence that produces sovereignty and its subservient subjects. The trilogy deals with defining historical events of Paraguayan modernity: the 18th-century Jesuit evangelization, the 19th-century authoritarian regimes (Rodríguez de Francia and the López’ dynasty), the War of the Triple Alliance, and the fall of the Stroessner dictatorship in 1989. In my presentation I will argue that Roa Bastos’ rewriting of the Paraguayan historical process takes the curious form of an act of “writing over ruins”. I will examine the figuration of ruins in the trilogy as allegories of the articulation between history and the monotheism of power that is at the heart of Paraguayan modernity; furthermore, I will contend that the fictionalizations of the act of writing function as critical interventions that not only displace what the ruin represents, but also signal the spectral return of democratic events not recorded in the country’s official history.

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La frontera and the Role of Film in Truth ‘Processes’
Amit Thakkar, University of Lancaster (a.thakkar@lancaster.ac.uk)

A key aspect of the allegorical quality of La frontera’s treatment of the Pinochet regime’s political repression is latency, or 'hiddenness'. At the same time, the act of hiding dissidents is the principal aim of the punishment of relegación, or internal exile, by that regime. I propose that this punishment represents a form of Johan Galtung’s ‘structural violence’ (1969). The trope of latency applies, therefore, to both the form and content of this film. The protagonist Ramiro, having been subjected to internal exile, makes a virtue of his condition of being hidden by rebuilding his masculinity within what Raewyn Connell would term the ‘reproductive arena’ (1995). But the viewer is also required to explore what is hidden in this film in order to construct its meaning. What is hidden, I argue, are structures of gender practice based on Connell's three categories of power, production and cathexis. Once these are uncovered, we gain an understanding of Ramiro's masculinity based firstly on exclusion within and then on regeneration from within these categories.

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15. Reflections on the Bicentenary: the causes and consequences of Spanish American Independence, 1810-1825

Convenor: John Fisher (J.R.Fisher@liverpool.ac.uk)

The Hispanic penchant for celebrating/commemorating significant anniversaries – whether centenaries, bicentenaries, intervening sesquicentenarios, and so on – seemed to have reached its apogee in 1992 with the (in)famous Quinto Centenario. Notwithstanding the mixed responses in the academic world to the festivities of nearly twenty years ago, 2010 also spawned a flurry of activities to mark the bicentenary of the supposed independence of Spanish America. Even scholars in Spain found something to celebrate by focussing upon the convening in 1810 of the Cortes ,which went on to produce the country’s first constitution in Cádiz in 1812, in the Isla de León (now better-known as San Fernando) by the Council of Regency: ‘The birth of liberty in the Iberian peninsula and Latin America’, to quote the core theme of the triennial congress of the European Association of Latinamericanist Historians held in San Fernando in September 2011. Even in the UK, celebrations of the bicentenary were organised by a range of official entities, including The British Library, the British Academy, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. With this context in mind, the symposium will discuss what actually happened in Spanish America in and around 1810, why, and with what consequences. It will pay particular attention to the fact that so many Spanish Americans fought against independence until the final collapse of Spanish imperialism on the mainland of Spanish America (but not in Cuba and Puerto Rico) in the early-1820s.

(2 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Thursday 19th April 13:30-15:00

Indigenous Identity Politics and Chile’s Bicentennial Celebrations of Independence
Joanna Crow, University of Bristol (jo.crow@bristol.ac.uk)

This paper discusses the debates about indigenous rights that arose in the context of the recent celebrations of Chile’s first declaration of independence from Spain. It focuses on Mapuche organisations and intellectuals, exploring the multiple and creative ways in which many of them rejected the validity of the official celebrations, and made use of the occasion to elaborate their own counter histories of the Chilean republic and to denounce the continuing repression of Mapuche political activism in contemporary Chile. Significantly, such rejections, denunciations and alternative histories have often come from Mapuche working with or within the Chilean state apparatus. Thus, we see how official discourses of neoliberal multiculturalism in Chile have led to some important (albeit small) openings, as well as constraints, for Mapuche activism.

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Spanish American Independence: The (Necessary/Unnecessary?) Escalation of Violence
Catherine Davies, University of Nottingham (catherine.davies@nottingham.ac.uk)

A consideration of violence using Gregory Bateson’s concept of complementary schismogenesis and the following quotes:

Bolívar: “Decreto de Guerra a Muerte” (15/6/1813): ‘Españoles y canarios, contad con la muerte, aun siendo indiferentes, si no obráis activamente en obsequio de la libertad de la América. Americanos, contad con la vida, aun cuando seáis culpables’.

San Martín “Proclama”, Pisco 8 de setiembre 1820, ‘La revolución de España es de la misma naturaleza que la nuestra: ambas tienen la libertad por objeto y la opresión por causa. Pero la América no puede contemplar la Constitución española sino como un medio fraudulento de mantener en ella el sistema colonial’ (addressing Peruvians about to swear the 1812 Constitution).

General José María Torrijos, Spanish liberal, shot in Málaga 1831, “es de esperar que los Españoles [que] no consideren a los Americanos como hijos rebeldes sino como patriotas que hicieron lo que ellos en su caso habrían hecho, y que los Americanos no miren a los Españoles como sus opresores, sino víctimas de unos mismos abusos y de un mismo gobierno”. In Prologue to his translation of Memoirs of General Miller, London , 1829, with whom he had fought in the Peninsular War.

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Myths and realities of Peruvian Independence, 1780-1826
John Fisher, University of Liverpool (fisher@liv.ac.uk)

In 1971, in an attempt to celebrate the supposed 150th anniversary of Peru’s independence from Spain, the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces convened a major historical congress in Lima, designed to pluck from relative historiographical obscurity José Gabriel Túpac Amaru, leader of the ‘Great Rebellion’ of 1780. The official line was that he rather than Miranda or Bolívar (the latter was not born until 1783) was the great precursor of Spanish American independence. Almost a decade later, despite a shift to the right in Peruvian politics, bicentennial celebrations, somewhat less extravagant than those of 1971, further perpetuated this myth. Since then Peruvians have had few significant anniversaries to celebrate, and 2010 doesn’t seem too promising, unless commemorations are arranged of the despatch of expeditionary forces to defeat bids for independence in Upper Peru, Chile and Quito. In the longer term, the 1814 separatist rebellion of Cusco, the first serious bid for Peruvian independence, might be worth celebrating, despite the fact that it horrified the upper echelons of the creole elite. This paper explores these themes in some detail, and concludes with a discussion of why the majority of Peru’s creoles continued to fight for the royalist cause even after the landing of San Martin’s motley army south of Lima in September 1820.

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SESSION TWO | Friday 20th April 09:30-11:00

Issues and Problems in understanding the Collapse of the Spanish continental- American Empire, 1790s-1820s”
Brian Hamnett, University of Essex (brogerhamnett@hotmail.co.uk)

Surprisingly little has been written to explain how the empire lasted so long and what sustained it. For this we need to look inside the American territories for the linkages, family and commercial, which enabled it to survive. These realities subsisted on a regular basis beneath the structure of institutions and laws provided by the metropolitan government. These linkages often reached beyond the official colonial system to the world market and involved complex internal and inter-colonial relationships. Focussing on these might help to direct attention away from metropolitan policies and imperial objectives.

A major historiographical problem has been the relationship between later Bourbon policies and the disaggregation of the Hispanic Monarchy after c. 1795. This has tended to attribute to the ‘reforms’ a greater significance than they might well have had at the time. Even so, the collapse of the empire on the American continent cannot be understood without attention to the condition of metropolitan Spain. The Steins have argued that failure of reform in Spain led to increased pressure on the American sector of the monarchy. Although a compelling argument, structural problems – economic, social, juridical and political – frustrated an effective mobilisation of the resources essential for resistance to French or British competition. Metropolitan Spain, at the same time, failed to resolve the tension between the strategic needs of empire and American pressures for a greater share in decision-making within the Indies.

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Cuba and Spanish American Independence
Antoni Kapcia, University of Nottingham (a.kapcia@nottingham.ac.uk)

The inclusion of Cuba within this symposium is, of course, unusual in that an independence movement failed to form in Cuba in the 1810-25 period, leading to the persistence of Spanish colonialism to 1898 and a long-lasting contestation among Cuban criollos about the possibility and desirability of independence (witnessed in the separatist movement for US statehood, rather than national independence, and also in the failure and divisions of two of the subsequent independence rebellions). However, the interesting thing about the eight decades between the Latin American revolutions and Cuba’s own conditional and questionable independence in 1902 is that, while there may have been very specific and self-interested reasons why many Cuban criollos sought security with Spain rather than a worrying independence (fear of slave rebellion, fear of British abolitionist pressure, the growth of the peninsular population, and so on), those divisions and self-doubts were not necessarily unique, and can be seen as reflecting many of the post-independence debates in the rest of the continent.

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The Heroes, the Villanos and the Others: Reflections on the Official Historiography of Mexican independence
Natalia Priego, University of Liverpool (principe@liv.ac.uk)

Mexican independence has been interpreted from a variety of standpoints, reflecting both the interests of groups in power and shifting academic fashion. Heroes and villains, with some exceptions, have swapped roles, and sometimes it has been very difficult to determine who was what. After the consolidation of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in the early-twentieth century, the Liberal tradition became predominant in both Mexican political life and in the official curricula of state schools and other educational establishments. Many of the streets of Mexico City lost their traditional names, replaced by those of leaders of the PRI and its Liberal heroes. The party’s official vision of Mexican history was accepted socially during the 75 years when it was in power. However, the shift of power to a conservative, Catholic political party (Partido Acción Nacional, PAN) changed the situation, and, as a consequence, the contradictions and misunderstandings of the so-called ‘official history’ began to be challenged. This paper examines key features of these historiographical trends, with particular reference to the historiography of Independence.

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16. Rethinking the Cuban Revolution Nationally and Regionally: Politics, Culture and Identity

Convenor: Par Kumaraswami (Parvathi.Kumaraswami@manchester.ac.uk)

The Cuban Revolution’s 50th anniversary was not only a time for celebration of survival, but also, for reflection, reassessment and reform, highlighting the fact that the Revolution was at a crucial stage in its trajectory. As many Cubanists recognise, the unexpected survival of the Revolution cannot be attributed solely to political or economic factors. Indeed, one of the more unique aspects of the Revolution, at least for its first 30 years, was the way in socio-cultural practice and political participation enabled personal visions of the Revolution to interact with national versions of cubanidad and cubanía revolucionaria, a level of integration which was severely compromised by the economic crisis of the 1990s. The papers assembled here, based on the forthcoming volume in the BLAR Book Series (Wiley-Blackwell 2012), thus rethink the relationships forged between the national and the regional, the past and the present, in contemporary Cuban political, social and cultural life, and propose new approaches to cultural and political identity in Cuba.

(2 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Thursday 19th April 09:15-10:45

‘Cuban Medical Internationalism in El Salvador: Continuity of the Fidelista Tradition’
John Kirk, Dalhousie University (kirk@dal.ca)

Cuban medical internationalism began in 1960, when the revolutionary government sent its first medical mission to Chile following an earthquake there. Since that time, thanks to the leadership of Fidel Castro, Cuba have developed an enormous profile in terms of medical support throughout the Third World—and there are now almost 40,000 medical personnel in 67 countries. Under Raúl Castro this trend has continued. This presentation, based upon fieldwork in 2010 with the Cuban medical mission in El Salvador, is one example of this “cooperación médica,” and is an analysis of the Cuban role in El Salvador following a major natural disaster, Hurricane Ida in November 2009. It seeks to illustrate the ongoing commitment of Cuba to provide medical support around the globe.

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‘Celebrating 50 years – But of what exactly and why is Latin America celebrating it?’
Antoni Kapcia, University of Nottingham (a.kapcia@nottingham.ac.uk)

This paper suggests answers to two contemporary questions often posed about the Cuban Revolution, which, after over a half-century of existence and survival (against the odds), now seems to be threatened with change, not from outside (as most have always imagined) but from Raúl Castro’s reform programme, seemingly questioning many of the basics of the Revolution. Firstly, what exactly has survived of the original 1959 ‘Revolution’ that seems to be threatened? Secondly, despite changes that few could have imagined in the early days, why does the whole phenomenon still continue to attract admiring glances from the region? On the first question, the chapter suggests that the main element of continuity has been in the process’s original meaning and purpose, namely in enacting a long-delayed, if inevitably radicalised, strategy of nation-building (comparable to many other contemporary decolonising experiences in the Third World), with only the means to achieve or defend that goal changing over the years. On the second, it suggests that, while it was an oppositional Left which, attracted by the Revolution’s ‘difference’, admired the Revolution as a model of seizing power, it is now leftist or nationalist governments who seek to learn lessons from the process’s survival, not least from Cuba’s long-standing and seminal emphasis on participation, seen then as a vital part of nation-building but seen after 1994, as equally vital to nation-rebuilding, and thus of relevance to the ‘new’ sympathetic Latin American governments after neoliberalism and military depradations.

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‘Regime Change and Human Rights: A Perspective on the Cuba Polemic’
Steve Ludlam, University of Sheffield (s.ludlam@sheffield.ac.uk)

This paper considers the universalistic human rights polemic surrounding Cuba in the specific political context of US-Cuba relations. The origins of US human rights attacks on Cuba are discussed in terms of the impact of US policy on the enjoyment of human rights by Cubans in general and by Cuban dissidents in particular. The paper discusses the political prioritising of civil over social and economic rights in the human rights campaigning of states and of rights NGOs. The paper considers whether Cuba is disproportionately targeted for criticism in terms of civil rights abuses, and distinguishes between criticism based on rejection of the Cuban Constitution per se, and criticism of the persecution of dissidents on the island. The paper concludes that the most dramatic improvement in human rights in Cuba would result from the abandonment by the US government of its regime change policy, and the consequential impact for civil rights if the equation of dissidence with treason ceased to have validity.

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SESSION TWO | Thursday 19th April 11:15-12:45

‘¿Aún somos jóvenes? A New Assessment of 1980s Cuba’.
Anne Luke, Birmingham City University (anne.luke@bcu.ac.uk)

The stabilisation of meaning of the concept of youth in the 1960s provides us with the context in which to assess the later years of the Cuban Revolution, and the 1980s remain an under-researched decade in scholarship in this field. Just as the past 15 years has seen the Sixties develop into a popular field amongst historians, the contention is that studies of the eighties will in coming years occupy a prominent position in our assessment of twentieth-century history because of the point of crisis at the end of that decade. If the experience of the eighties in the West seems to be proof that the utopian visions of the sixties failed, Cuba – where that utopia vision still held relevance – is a revealing counterpoint. The paradigm of regime change, furthermore, dominated early 1990s research on Cuba so much of the 1980s was overlooked in the traditional end-of-decade analysis. This paper will address the gap in the historiography, looking less at moments of change (such as rectification and the collapse of the Soviet Union) but rather focusing on continuities. As a group identified as crucial in the 1960s, demonstrating agency and radicalism, this paper will focus on youth and the lives of young people in the early 1980s, assessing how (and whether) this dominance continued.

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‘Ideas of “Race”, “Ethnicity” and National Identity in the Discourse of the Press during the Cuban Revolution’
Elvira Antón-Carrillo, Roehampton University (e.anton@roehampton.ac.uk)

The chapter presents a discourse analysis of opinion articles on race and otherness in the Cuban press during various periods of the Cuban revolution: its beginnings in 1959, its institutionalisation and during the writing of the new constitution 1975-76, the last two years of the 20th Century and the first decade of the 21st. It analyses the construction of ideas of race, ethnicity and racism. It also examines some discourse strategies, particularly those referring to argumentation and the representation of social actors, used by the newspapers to propose and legitimise their idea of race and national identity. The corpus of analysis for 1959 comes from two newspapers with a very different ideology, Revolución and Diario de la Marina. For the 1975-76 and 1998-99 period, the articles come from Granma, and for the current decade, due to the complete silence of the press about the subject, the analysis focuses on the articles published in various academic periodical publications. Finally, the definition of the Cuban national identity is contextualised and compared with others in the Latin American region.

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'Literary Canon Formation and Imbalance in Cuba: The Interplay of Local, National, Regional and Transnational forces’.
Par Kumaraswami, University of Manchester (parvathi.kumaraswami@manchester.ac.uk)

The aim of this chapter is to explore two neglected areas or blindspots in the construction of the various Cuban literary canons that exist, both inside Cuba and off the island, with the purpose of beginning to develop a more comprehensive framework within which to analyse Cuban literature as both textual production and everyday practice. Especially in view of Cuba's specific trajectory of postcolonial development and nation-building after 1959 (and the centrality of culture within these) but also the phenomena which emerged after 1989, the chapter ultimately aims to present a more complex and comprehensive view of the interplay of local, national, regional, transnational and international forces in the construction of canons of Cuban literature since the Revolution.

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17. School Reform and Nation-Building in the River Plate, 1860s to 1930

Convenor: Jens R Hentschke (j.r.hentschke@newcastle.ac.uk)

Argentina’s and Uruguay’s late nineteenth– and early twentieth-century reforms of primary and normal education were to support economic modernization, strengthen the central state, and construct a national community. This panel explores the philosophical and pedagogical ideas that guided reformers and their attempts to forge a national culture and historical conscience, tackle the ‘problems’ of race and public hygiene, and moralize and discipline the workforce. It also asks for responses of teachers, students, and their families to these policies. Panellists apply a transnational perspective and use a wide range of sources, from school regulations, study plans, and textbooks to historias patrias, foundational fiction, and periodicals of the time.

(1 session)

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SESSION ONE | Thursday 19th April 11:15-12:45

Home and School: Education Policy in Nineteenth-Century Argentina and Uruguay
Carolina Zumaglini, Florida International University (CZumaglini@gmial.com)

My paper focuses on the creation of Argentina's and Uruguay's public school system which formed an integral part of the emerging nation-state. I argue that, although intellectuals drew up their blueprints for education reform with an eager eye on the United States and other foreign models, local conditions, gender roles, religious beliefs, and the elites’ ideas about “national character” strongly shaped the actual scale and structure of programs. Most liberal planners and educators from Argentina and Uruguay believed that education should be free, compulsory, and lay for all children ages 6 to 14; yet, their ideological differences became apparent in the implementation of their projects. In this light, state legislation in conjunction with children’s daily school activities provide hints to better understand the role the State, parents, and teachers ought to play in this newly created public education system.

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Inventing a Foundation Myth: Changing Representations of José Artigas in Uruguayan Textbooks, 1870-1915
Jens R Hentschke, Newcastle University (j.r.hentschke@newcastle.ac.uk)

In Uruguay, the construction of a national pantheon to unify and energise the populace proved to be difficult. The country lacked both a ‘Liberator’ and a shared political philosophy. It owed its independence to the need for a buffer between South America’s rivals Argentina and Brazil and British diplomatic intervention. Orientales themselves had never contemplated full separation from the United Provinces, the patria grande. Late nineteenth-century politicians and education reformers worried about Uruguay’s continuing vulnerability and searched for a national father figure who could be revered by all parties. This paper explores the excavation of José Artigas as ‘precursor of nationality’, the debates on his role in history, and his changing depiction in primary school textbooks. It shows how the official foundation narrative omitted Artigas’s social programme, glanced over the failures of his political project, and defined Argentina as the external ‘other.’

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National Regeneration and the Education of the Elites in Early-Twentieth-Century Argentina and Uruguay
Michela Coletta, University College London

In the first decade of the twentieth century, the 'problem of the race' ('el problema de la raza') started to be addressed in Latin America by stressing the role of education in the formation of the national body. Education increasingly came to occupy a central place in the debates on the constitution of a healthy society that would be able to stand the challenges of the modern world. As this paper aims to show, in the new century the question of the formation of the national elites became paramount in the River Plate in relation to a concern with the regeneration of the national character. More specifically, I will address, on the one hand, the debates on Latin versus Anglo-Saxon education and, on the other hand, the emergence of a new cultural and political project of Latin American modernity based on Krausist pedagogical theories.

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18. Screening Political Identities

Convenor: Sarah Barrow (sarahbarrow789@btinternet.com, sbarrow@lincoln.ac.uk)

This panel explores the relationship between cinema, politic and identity in range of Latin American nations. Individual films, including examples of documentary as well as fiction, popular genre as well as art house movie, are analysed with regard to their modes of representation of events and issues that have been pertinent to the shaping of the production and perception of Latin American identities. Of particular interest to several of the papers is the relationship between cinema and politically motivated violence, and the reshaping of cinema and society after periods of repression. The capacity for cinema to invoke or re-imagine memories of traumatic events and figures is also explored, as is the tendency by some film-makers to deploy humour and romance to bring controversial issues such as the exploitation of migrants to the attention of more mainstream cinema audiences. This notion of ‘collateral politics’ is further explored as a deliberate mode of working for some contemporary directors, while the focus on instances of personalised trauma as allegory for much broader political concerns is also pursued.

(2 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Wednesday 18h April 13:30-15:00

Rescuing images: accessing the past in democratic Uruguay
Beatriz Tadeo Fuica, St Andrews University (btf@st-andrews.ac.uk)

This paper explores the relevance of documentary films made in the aftermath of the Uruguayan dictatorship (1973-1985) by CEMA (Centro de Medios Audiovisuales). It reflects upon how its cinema, from production to recovery and preservation, mirrors the way Uruguay has dealt -and still deals- with its recent past.

This paper bases its analysis on El cordón de la vereda (Esteban Schroeder, 1989), a documentary about people’s reactions towards the passing of an amnesty law (1986), which prevents the crimes committed during the dictatorship from being judged. This film, together with other CEMA’s productions, was kept in poor preservation conditions during more than twenty years. They started to be rescued from mould and humidity in 2008. This action has allowed the recovery of documentaries that show some of the immediate consequences of the dictatorial regime.

The analysis of the representation of fear, forgiveness, desire of justice and denial in Shroeder’s film will bring back images that echo present reactions towards the legality of this law. Actually, it was just in October 2011 that the parliament, in a divided and conflictive context, annulled its effects. The path followed by these films reflects the Uruguayan attitude towards a past that has also been inaccessible for more than twenty years.

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Afiches and Pintadas: Wall-speak, Tracking Shots, and Collateral Politics in New Argentine Film
Fernando Sdrigotti, University of London (sdrigotti@gmail.com)

This research paper, part of a broader investigation into the representation of urban space in New Argentine cinema (1990s-2010s), is interested with the diegetic appearance of political street-signs (afiches) and wall paintings (pintadas) in many of the films associated with this movement. A familiar sight in any Argentine city, it could be argued their presence in film is not founded in choice but in coincidence or mere beingthereness. I will argue the opposite and suggest that these presences are coherent with New Argentine cinema's surreptitious modes of doing politics (also evident in dialogues, choices of characters, use of sound, narrative decisions, rejection of the allegory, etc). My argument will be sustained with what I will call "the politics of the frame" and "the politics of the depth of field".

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SESSION TWO | Friday 20th April 09:30 - 11:00

Deconstructive Humour: Subverting Chicano Stereotypes in Un día sin mexicanos (Sergio Arau, 2004)
Sarah Barrow, University of Lincoln (sbarrow@lincoln.ac.uk)

For a long time, US cinema developed almost unshakeable stereotypes of Chicano ‘otherness’, with characters stigmatised as criminals or as sensual objects of desire. Filmmakers in Mexico, meanwhile, largely treated Chicanos as misfits who belonged nowhere, or ignored them and their complex experience completely. The emergence of a ‘Chicano cinema’ has allowed for the development of a more powerful image of Mexican-Americans, exploiting the very tool of communication that had been used against them, and for a more productive and reflective dialogue around the questions of identity, agency and resistance that arise.

This paper focuses on the use of humour as subversive tool to deconstruct the stereotypes of Chicano identity in Sergio Arau’s debut feature, Un día sin mexicanos (2004). The film, which was a hit in Mexico and in the US, where it was seen by four million non-Latinos, was inspired by the introduction of anti-immigration legislation in California in 1994, and was first made as a documentary. The paper asks whether in fiction feature form, the work offers anything more than a light-hearted critique of the Chicano immigrant experience, and to what extent the politics of resistance that are so often aligned with this experience are inscribed in its narrative form.

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Trauma y tabú: el incesto como alegoría visual de la violencia política.
Talía Dajes, Michigan Technological University (tdajes@mtu.edu)

Recientemente el cine peruano se ha beneficiado de un productivo período gracias tanto a nuevas políticas estatales como a un influjo de jóvenes directores con el acceso necesario a fuentes de financiamiento y equipo de producción. Dos de las películas realizadas en este contexto, Madeinusa (Claudia Llosa, 2005) y Dioses (Josué Méndez, 2008), si bien cuentan historias que se ubican en el presente, poseen un claro referente a un momento concreto del pasado nacional: el conflicto armado interno (1980-2000). Ambas cintas intentan no solo lidiar con las ramificaciones de ese pasado a través de lo visual, sino que buscan crear un lenguaje que dé forma a los rastros de la violencia que aún brotan en la actualidad, en medio de un discurso oficial que considera a aquella como un asunto zanjado.

Tanto Madeinusa como Dioses utilizan como protagonistas a una figura femenina involucrada en una relación incestuosa—la primera con su padre y la segunda con su hermano—para conducir al público hacia una reflexión sobre las tensiones que prevalecen en la vida nacional. Me interesa explorar el uso simbólico del incesto en ambas películas, en tanto alegoría de la crisis que experimenta el imaginario colectivo peruano al abordar los traumas que debe procesar en su memoria. Asimismo, analizaré la manera en la que estos traumas se encarnan en un cuerpo femenino para exponer el espacio en el que se libran conflictos subyacentes—raciales, culturales, de género y clase—como un locus cargado de tabúes y deseos moral y socialmente reprimidos.

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19. Simulacros: Legitimating Extra-Constitutional and Pseudo-Legal Forms of Politicking in Mexico

Convenor: Rosie Doyle (rd272@st-andrews.ac.uk)

This interdisciplinary panel will look at patterns of collective action, politicking and making claims against the state or the government in the longue durée of Mexican history from independence to the present day with a particular emphasis on periods of transition; independence, revolution, the formation of the modern corporate state, transition from corporate state to neo-liberal order and the transition to democracy. The panel seeks to explore issues relating to political action and the rule of law in the public sphere in Mexico over the past two centuries; How do political actors engage with politics or the state in contexts of uncertain or contested legitimacy? How are the lines between legitimate and illegitimate political action defined and drawn and by whom? How often do extra-constitutional political movements self-legitimate by calling on abstract discourses of rights and the rule of law? How much of political action constitutes a simulacro, performance or imitation of constitutional procedures by non-state actors? How often are parallel institutions or parallel forms of politicking established where the state has proved to be or is considered to be insufficient or lacking? Are these pseudo-legal forms of politicking exclusive to periods of transition or has contention continued in periods of relative stability?

(2 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Wednesday 18th April 15:30-17:00

De tumultos y movilizaciones. Acciones políticas no-formalizadas en Yucatán durante la época de la independencia
Ulrike Bock, WWU Münster, Germany (ubock_01@uni-muenster.de)

En el Antiguo Régimen, en la Nueva España las acciones políticas colectivas como los tumultos o los motines formaban una parte importante del repertorio político, especialmente de las comunidades indígenas en el ámbito rural. Las autoridades españolas reconocían estas acciones políticas directas como una forma de negociación no-formalizada y, por lo tanto, las incluían como un factor en sus consideraciones con respecto al comportamiento de los funcionarios reales. Un aspecto importante de estas formas de negociación consistía en que normalmente, las protestas se reducían al ámbito local, en su gran mayoría a un solo pueblo. Por lo general, el objetivo de las movilizaciones era tomar posición en contra de unas medidas impuestas por las autoridades coloniales o bien llamar la atención acerca de situaciones de injusticia. Los participantes legitimaban estos tumultos con la denuncia del “mal gobierno” ejercido por los funcionarios locales, ya que se suponía que este tipo de comportamiento no podía estar en concordancia con el rey, considerado benevolente. Como consecuencia, los tumultos solo se oponían al ejercicio concreto del poder local y no cuestionaban el orden político en general.

Con los acontecimientos de 1808, esta situación cambió sustancialmente. Por un lado, los insurgentes iniciaron una lucha violenta en contra del orden establecido mientras por el otro lado, la introducción de la Constitución de Cádiz conllevaba una transformación en la legitimación del poder que a largo plazo resultó en el establecimiento de un nuevo orden político en México. En esta ponencia se estudian los efectos de estas transformaciones del orden en algunas movilizaciones políticas en la provincia y después estado de Yucatán. Por un lado se examinan cuales fueron los cambios en la forma de las acciones colectivas y en su manera de legitimar las protestas. Por otro lado se busca explorar las percepciones y reacciones de las autoridades políticas a estas acciones colectivas y, por consiguiente, las interacciones de los movilizados y los representantes políticos tenidos por legales.

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Rights and Law in the Late Porfiriato. The Revolutionaries in Puebla: 1909-1911
Humberto Morales Moreno, Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico (hmoreno98@yahoo.com)

En México, la oposición política contra la nueva reelección del General Porfirio Díaz, (1877-1911) encabezada, entre otros grupos, por Francisco Ignacio Madero, adquirió mayor fuerza a partir de la exacerbación que causó el anuncio de la formula Díaz-Corral para las elecciones presidenciales de 1910. Díaz postulara tajantemente su retiro de las contiendas electorales apenas acabara el periodo de 1904-1910, en la conocida entrevista Díaz Creelman. Everardo Arenas, que era un poblano común que trabajaba como vendedor, en un viaje a Coahuila en 1909 conoce a Madero, simpatiza con su causa y entabla una pronta relación amistosa con el político de la oposición; poco después se encontraría en Puebla distribuyendo varios ejemplares de La sucesión presidencial de 1910, libro escrito por Madero en el que criticaba la condición política del país y acusaba al gobierno despótico y dictatorial encabezado por Díaz como causante de la inestabilidad. En la propuesta de Madero se urgía a un cambio político, a una reconfiguración del esquema electoral y democrático en el país, lo cual sólo sería posible con la salida de Díaz y, en principio, de todos los porfiristas del Poder Ejecutivo. Proclamas como esta animaron a personajes de la ciudad de Puebla que se mostraban inconformes con el clima de anti-democracia que se percibía en todo el país. Un comerciante de la industria del calzado, adquirió uno de los ejemplares que Arenas había traído del norte, su nombre: Aquiles Serdán. A lo largo de la ponencia se hace un recuento de su actuación y de su grupo político en el contexto de las contradicciones entre el discurso legal y la realidad autoritaria que llevó a los rebeldes a la guerra civil el 18 de noviembre de 1910.

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La “comunidad indígena” y la legitimidad étnica renovada en Mezcala
Santiago Bastos, CIESAS Occidente, Mexico (santiagobastos@gmail.com)

En Mezcala de la Asunción (Jalisco) la figura agraria de la Comunidad Indígena permitió mantener la integridad territorial cuando, en la segunda mitad del siglo XX, la presión inmobiliaria despojó de sus tierras a otra comunidades del Lago de Chapala. Al hacerlo, las instituciones comunitarias tomaron en parte las funciones que la federación, el estado y el municipio no cumplieron. Con el cambio de siglo ha aumentado la presión sobre el territorio de Mezcala, la vez que el Estado mexicano ha cambiado su lógica corporativa que sustentaba la legislación agraria, por una neoliberal que pretende sacar al mercado las tierras comunales. Ante esta nueva situación, los Comuneros de Mezcala renuevan su identidad étnica, para pensarse como parte de un Pueblo Coca con derecho a un territorio sobre el que ejercer una autonomía históricamente ganada. Con ello, en Mezcala se están transformando los sentidos dados tanto al ser indígena como al vivir en comunidad.

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SESSION TWO | Thursday 19th April 09:15-10:45

Pronunciamientos and the Use of the Derecho de Insurrección in Nineteenth-Century Mexico
Rosie Doyle, University of St Andrews (rd272@st-andrews.ac.uk)

The pronunciamiento was a subversive political practice that became a favourite tool of the Mexican political class after Independence and for the greater part of the nineteenth century. Pronunciamientos were movements of political petitions drawn up by coalitions of military and civilian actors who claimed the right to protest against the authorities and call them to account in the event of their breaking the social pact. The pronunciamiento was a mechanism through which Mexicans could exercise their derecho de insurrección which was included in the first de facto constitution in Mexico, the Constitución de la Monarquía Española of 1812. Mexican and Latin American political actors drew a clear distinction between on the one hand, just and legitimate insurrection and, on the other hand, violent, unjust and therefore illegal coups and revolts. In nineteenth-century Mexico pronunciamientos became not only an accepted political practice but the usual means of affecting political decision-making. Most of the major political changes between 1821 and 1876 were preceded or precipitated by pronunciamientos. Pronunciamientos affected the lives of most Mexicans and pronunciados were frequently celebrated and lauded for protecting the interests of the people and the public good. Pronunciamientos developed alongside the new constitutions and institutions of the early republics. They became so closely involved with the new authorities, governments and political systems that distinguishing between constitutional and extra-constitutional practices became difficult. How and in what conditions could an extra-constitutional, subversive and insurrectionary practice become the norm? Did this set a precedent for the use of insurrectionary political practices in Mexico? This paper analyses the process of legitimating pronunciamientos and looks at the precedent set by the pronunciamiento as a driver of change in the early stages of state-formation in Mexico. It explores the accepted and sometimes celebrated nature of insurrectionary politics in Mexico, particularly in times of political transition, institutional disarray and uncertain legitimacy.

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Civismo in Mexico: A History
Trevor Stack, University of Aberdeen (t.stack@abdn.ac.uk)

During fieldwork in 2007-10 in west Mexico, I asked informants what it meant to them to be citizens; I found that their replies echoed the Civics textbooks that they had read at school. The focus of my paper will be on the tradition of Civics teaching in Mexico, which I trace back beyond the twentieth century – when it had an often central role in the curriculum – to the “civic catechisms” of the nineteenth century and, still further back, to the sixteenth-century visions of policía cristiana that took shape in the pueblos and ciudades founded by the Spanish missionaries. I examine how that Catholic version of civility persisted, even in the secular textbooks of the twentieth century, while being modified and combined, coherently or otherwise, with the versions of classical liberalism, revolutionary nationalism and neo-liberalism. I will end by reflecting on what these notions of civic virtue do in contemporary Mexico – how they shape what people do.

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20. Social movements in XXI Century Latin America: Rethinking Social Emancipation

Convenor: Ana Cecilia Dinerstein (A.C.Dinerstein@bath.ac.uk)

The theme of social emancipation has been historically marginal within the Academic circles of Latin American studies. Yet, for the last two decades, driven by the desire to experiment with alternative forms of organisation and social relations, social movements have been articulating action around new utopias, revitalised the interest in the subject but also pose significant challenges to Latin American studies. As Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2000:380) suggests, we are facing a ‘paradigmatic transition’ and, subsequently, there is a need to invent ‘the maps of social emancipation’ and the ‘subjectivities able to use them’ This panel will examine how social emancipation is being imagined, practiced and re-defined by social movements in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. Papers will discuss epistemological innovation, theoretical redefinitions; socioeconomic, legal and political transformations, democracy, participation, autonomous practices, alternative discourses, values, subjectivities and politics.

(2 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Thursday 19th April 13:30-15:00

Epistemologies of emancipation in CTUs in Venezuela and MST in Brazil
Sara Motta, University of Nottingham (Sara.Motta@nothingham.ac.uk)

Social movements are rupturing the epistemological assumptions of traditional understandings of emancipatory change. They do this through the incorporation of radical education pedagogies and methodologies in their struggles to construct new forms of politics. Such practices challenge and transgress the idea that movement intellectuals construct theory and strategy at a distance from everyday practice. Instead they focus on the construction of knowledge through practice and reflection and the creation of mass intellectuality where all are, and have the potential to be, theorists. Emancipation is thus understood as a process not as an end. In this contribution I attempt to explore such epistemological ruptures and their implications for our understanding of emancipatory change through an engagement with the experiences of the Rural Landless Movement (MST) in Brazil and the Urban Land Movement (CTUs) in Venezuela.

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Re-Examining the Role of Law in Emancipation: Law and Struggles Over Land in Bolivia
Honor Brabazon, Oxford University (honorbrabazon@gmail.com)
Jeffery R. Webber, University of London (J.R.Webber@qmul.ac.uk)

While the international left has found renewed hope in recent mass mobilizations in Bolivia (2000-2005) and the subsequent formation of an indigenous-populist government (2006-present), this paper reflects critically such transformations in both periods, by intersecting prisms of land, law, and resistance. The paper offers an analysis of the potential of the law to do both: hinder and facilitate emancipatory struggles. First, the paper establishes the land reform as an important ‘site’ where the institutions and logics of neoliberalism have been constructed, as communal land has been enclosed and private property deepened. Secondly, the paper explores the role of law in the land reform in Bolivia by drawing on analyses based on the idea that neoliberalism has involved the juridification of society i.e. the law is used increasingly to construct and cohere the global economic system. The paper systematically charts changes and continuities between the neoliberal land reform legislation, INRA in 1996 and current government’s reformist initiatives in 2006 — with the intention to assess the significance and impact of the law and legality in each of these moments. Finally, the paper examines how indigenous-peasant ‘s resistance to the neoliberal land reform have responded to the juridification, by using the law in creative ways that contest the neoliberal project that it was designed to consolidate. By drawing on recent research, the paper tracks these interesting uses and mis-uses of the law by the Bolivian Landless Movement and re-examines the significance of the law for both projects of oppression and emancipation.

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SESSION TWO | Friday 20th April 09:30-11:00

Returning to the past or anticipating the future? The ‘Buen Vivir’ discourse as a principle of social emancipation in Latin America
Ana C. Dinerstein, University of Bath (a.c.dinerstein@bath.ac.uk)

The notion of buen vivir (good living/plentiful life) was brought to light by the struggles of indigenous and non-indigenous movements and communities in Latin America (particularly from the Amazon and Andean regions). It contains both a practical orientations towards production, organization and distribution, and a discourse based on the meaning of time, human realisation, and the relationship between sociability and nature, both of which have been interpreted as an anti modern return to the past. By examining a variety of textual and narrative sources and relying on discourse analysis, I explore four axes of the buen vivir discourse: the crisis of hegemonic civilisation, the decommodification of life, the decolonisation of power, and alternative forms of knowledge. Subsequently, I analyse how this discourse is being articulated and diffused by means of both: (i) the creation of ‘subaltern counter publics’ (Fraser, 1990), e.g. the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, 19-22 April 2010, and (ii) the inclusion of the rights to nature into national constitutions of new plurinational states (e.g. Ecuador and Bolivia). I argue that el buen vivir does not romanticise the past but anticipates the future by collectively organising ‘hope’. I elaborate on the category of ‘hope’ as ‘a directing act of a cognitive kind’ (Bloch 1959/1996:12) and suggest that buen vivir belongs to the dimension of openness that exists in any reality (Bloch 1959/1996: 196): it articulates a future reality that has not- yet- become towards an alternative production of the common.

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Communal Property vs. Private Poverty: The conflict between neoliberal globalisation and indigenous autonomy in the Peruvian Amazon
Roger Merino Acuña, University of Bath (rm468@bath.ac.uk)

In June of 2009, the protest and mobilisation of indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon resulted in a massacre of 34 and hundreds others wounded. The ‘Bagua Massacre’ was the outcome of the indigenous’ resistance to national legislation enacted to implement the Free Trade Agreement with the United States of America, which was directed to change the indigenous legal property regime from communal to private. According to the government, this legal innovation would promote economic development and improve the social conditions of indigenous people. To the communities, the governments’ hidden agenda was to facilitate the exploitation of indigenous lands and natural resources in the Peruvian Amazon. This paper addresses three dimensions of the indigenous struggles against neoliberal globalization that were made apparent by the Bagua Massacre. First, the paper offers a critique of the idea of private property as the ultimate tool to achieve development among indigenous Peruvian communities, and argues for the sustainability of common property regimens. Secondly, in the anthropological arena the paper contests the idea that indigenous communities could adapt easily to neoliberal globalization. It argues that this view of indigenous people is a Western construction functional to corporate interests. Finally, regarding the sociopolitical aspects of the problem, the paper challenges the idea of inevitability of neoliberal globalisation and offers an analysis of autonomous practices by indigenous communities as a form of struggle to promote legal and economic counter-hegemonic discourse from the indigenous perspective.

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New Democratic Subjectivities in South America: From democratic regimes to democratic politics? Reflections on Argentina and Brazil
Juan Pablo Ferrero, University of Bath (jpf22@bath.ac.uk)

The enduring presence of non-institutional forms of collective action alongside traditional ones has opened a space to revisit and challenge dominant ideas on democracy in South America. By using data from two case studies from Argentina and Brazil I analyse how they relate to historical (re) definitions of democratic boundaries in the light of what Jacques Ranciėre calls ‘disagreement’. By characterising the features and dynamic of new democratic subjectivities (NDS), I explore how NDS displace the given boundaries of democracy and what it is their contribution to the process of democratisation. I show that the relationship between NDS’s features (organisation, alliances & networks, and demands) and their underlying dynamic (practice of translation) results in two contentious spaces (‘real policies’ and ‘imagined politics’). The materialisation of the latter is visible through tensions underpinning a) Public Policies, b) Institutional crystallisations and c) legitimising discourses. I argue that disagreement is ‘interpreted’ across a, b and c resulting into new forms of institutionalised dissent (for instance, ‘participatory democracy’, ‘democratic governance’, etc.). As a result of this, the dimension of imagined politics is lost in translation. I conclude with three ideas. First, the study of NDS has been largely neglected by the dominant ‘transition’ tradition, which enforces rather than questions ‘democratic boundaries’. Secondly, the understanding of the scope, meanings and effects of NDS is critical to perceive what are the drivers for socio-political change in South America. Finally, social movement theory and radical democracy approaches have both become theoretically essential to move the democracy debate from ‘bad translation’ to ‘good listener’.

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21. Space, Place and Contentious: Politics in Latin America

Convenor: Adam Morton (Adam.Morton@nottingham.ac.uk)

In recent decades Latin America has been at the epicentre of creating alternative spaces both within states and to the dominant global order. In light of these developments this panel delivers papers that examine theoretically and empirically the manner in which space and place have been shaped by state power and contentious politics in the region⎯the politics of resistance, the politics of social movements, the politics of the state, as well as the changing conditions within the global economy into which Latin America is inserted.

(2 sessions)

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SESSION ONE | Wednesday 18th April 15:30-17:00

Producing State Space in Chiapas
Chris Hesketh, Birkbeck College, University of London (C.Hesketh@bbk.ac.uk)

This paper examines the changing processes of state formation in Chiapas, as well as the concomitant processes of resistance. Nationally, the transition to neoliberalism in Mexico has seen a shift from corporate forms of citizenship to a more individualistic market-based approach. However, not only has this change been articulated unevenly across the country, it has also been contested in significant ways. In Chiapas, most notably in the eastern part, where state structures of authority have been weak or absent, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN, Zapatista Army of National Liberation) have taken on a variety of functions normally associated with the state including health, education, law and social services. However, as Chiapas has increased in geo-economic importance, due to multinational development plans for the region, there have been renewed attempts to re-inscribed the hegemony of the state into the everyday life of the population. Drawing from Antonio Gramsci’s concept of ‘passive revolution’ and Henri Lefebvre’s work on everyday life, as well as the new cultural studies in Mexico, this paper will synthesise a new theorisation of state-formation in the neoliberal era.

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Outside the Market and without the State: The Piquetero Movement as Part of the Process of the Alterglobalisation Movement in Latin America
Carolina Cepeda-Másmela, Universidad de los Andes/Colombia (yc.cepeda29@uniandes.edu.co)

Latin America is a region where social movements reacted against neoliberal globalization with some kind of organization and proposing alternatives such as establishing forms and spaces outside the market and without the State in order to achieve their goals and satisfy their demands. One example of that kind of process is the piquetero movement in Argentina, a heterogeneous movement claiming for jobs and access to education, housing and productive life, among other things. This movement developed its own ways to achieve such goals and establish contact with other actors within the alterglobalisation movement in that process. So, the aim of this paper is to describe how the piquetero movement built those alternative strategies and analyse how they are linked to the wider alterglobalisation movement.

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‘The Architecture of Passive Revolution: Society, State and Space in Modern Mexico’
Adam David Morton, University of Nottingham (Adam.Morton@nottingham.ac.uk)

This paper analyses how space is produced and reconstructed in Mexico City through civic monuments, with specific attention cast towards the Monument to the Revolution, completed in 1938. Generally speaking, the conditions of modernity can be related to the spatial ordering of urban landscapes within capital cities that conjoins the specifics of national identity with general imitative processes. The issue of mimesis is promoted by architectural codifications, alongside other practices, in the sense that foreign ideas come to play a prominent role in the representation of space and in legitimating state power. Antonio Gramsci captured such sentiments through his understanding of the condition of passive revolution, referring to a situation when ‘the impetus of progress is not tightly linked to a vast local economic development . . . but is instead the reflection of international developments which transmit their ideological currents to the periphery—currents born of the productive development of the more advanced countries’. Attention is therefore cast to both ‘vernacular architecture’ as well as cosmopolitan forms, linking Mexican-based architects and practices to nationalist aspirations and modernist ideological styles, as significant in the built expression of the modern state. The Monument to the Revolution is instructive due to the spatial practices linked to its status as one of Mexico’s most important historical commemorative sites as well as a site for significant protest; the latter recently involving trade unionists and campesinos in support of the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME) struggling against the closure of the Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LFC), in 2009. A focus on the Monument to the Revolution will therefore reveal specific spatial practices in the state codification of architecture that have contributed to the reproduction of social relations and the construction of the modern state in Mexico. These are revealed as vital expressions, literally, in the architecture of passive revolution in modern Mexico.

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SESSION TWO | Thursday 19th April 09:15-10:45

The ‘Right to the City’ in the Bolivarian Revolution
Jennifer Martinez, University of Nottingham (jenlynmarti@gmail.com)

Demands for the ‘right to the city’ are emerging throughout the world as urban popular movements seek access to land, housing, education and other urban benefits. This paper examines how the ‘right to the city’ is being articulated and fought for in Venezuela by the Movimiento de Pobladores, an urban-based popular movement. Drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre who coined the term in the late 1960s, the paper will argue that in order to fully understand the ‘right to the city’ campaign in Venezuela we must consider how it is linked to struggles that are guided by a vision for popular power-driven socialism. With this in mind, we can see that the ‘right to the city’ is not simply a demand for liberal inclusion into the city, as some have suggested, nor is it an interest in greater state intervention. Rather, the ‘right to the city’ calls for the fundamental, radical transformation of social relations and urban space, and as such raises important questions about the state-driven efforts of the Bolivarian Revolution.

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A New Mapuche Movement? Urbanisation, Changing Demands and Political Space
Natalie Cresswell, University of Newcastle (natalie.cresswell@newcastle.ac.uk)

Levels of Mapuche migration from rural to urban areas increased significantly in the second half of the 20th century, a process which has resulted in the urbanisation of over half of Chile’s Mapuche population. While several studies have tackled the subject of Mapuche urbanisation in relation to notions of cultural identity and the Mapuche experience within the city, few works have examined the relationship between urbanisation and the Mapuche struggle for rights. Drawing on qualitative data, this paper illustrates the ways in which young urban Mapuche are leading a revival of the Mapuche movement. The paper argues that Mapuche culture is undergoing resurgence within urban areas and while young people are integrated into wider society, they feel a sense of pride in being Mapuche. New educational and political demands pertinent to the lives of urban Mapuche show how the Mapuche are adapting and re-framing notions of Mapuche identity and culture, giving new meanings to being Mapuche in urban areas. Urbanisation has also facilitated the creation of alliances with other organisations and provided new spaces from which the Mapuche can demand their rights. This paper argues that these processes have generated new opportunities for the Mapuche movement to engage and negotiate with the Chilean state.

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Imagined Spaces at Colony Z-10
Luciana Lang, University of Manchester (Luciana.Lang@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk)

Colony Z-10 is a community in the periphery of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Originally populated by fishermen, in 1920 it became the first of a number of fishing cooperatives along the coast of Brazil founded as part of a governmental initiative. In 1993, the same colony, already a simulacrum of what was once a fishing community due to demographic expansion and pollution from big oil enterprises based in the Guanabara Bay, secured an APARU (Area of Environmental Preservation and Urban Regeneration) by means of grassroots action to protect the surrounding mangroves and livelihood of the fishermen. This paper intends to explore the category of ‘environment’, a concept that has increasingly been considered a universal value in the contemporary world, as it is represented and perceived by the people in the colony, and in its many facets. By seeing space as the result of interrelations, the place where histories and hopes meet and in constant process of becoming, this research explores how the landscape, including the mangrove that borders Colony Z-10, has been exploited, sculpted and imagined by the national and the environmental projects, as well as by the activities and affects of those who inhabit that space.

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22. Sport and Development(s) in Latin America

Convenor: David Wood (david.wood@sheffield.ac.uk)

Sport in Latin America constitutes an integral part of daily life for significant sectors of the continent’s inhabitants and a frequent point of contact with the region for many outside it. Beyond these everyday encounters, the development of analytical discourses around the subject of sport has made rapid progress in recent decades, with major contributions from scholars in Latin America and from researchers based in Europe and North America. Against this background, the papers in this multi-disciplinary panel adopt a range of critical perspectives to approach sport in Latin America as a means of exploring political, historical and socio-cultural issues across the region. By offering analysis that runs from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first, and from Mexico to Argentina, the speakers will discuss ideas that are representative of a cross-section in a dynamic and rapidly growing field.

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SESSION ONE | Friday 20th April 09:30-11:00

'The Origins of Association Football in Latin America: Part of Informal Empire?
Matthew Brown, University of Bristol (matthew.brown@bris.ac.uk)

This paper will present a comparative survey of the existing secondary literature on the origins of association football across Latin America around the end of the nineteenth century. I will assess the state of the historiography, and analyse whether there is potential for a study of the origins of association football within a paradigm shaped by new research on British informal empire in Latin America. Most relevant to the analysis will be the involvement (or not) of European migrants (especially Italians, Germans, Spaniards) in promoting this 'British' game, and the way in which weekend footballing relationships might have been carried over into weekday cultural, commercial and financial relations between the European and local communities. In conclusion, the paper will hope to answer the question posed in the title.

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Cuba’s Approach to Sport and Development for Peace: Investigating the Dynamics of Cuban Sport Policy against Broader Global Trends.’
Robert Huish, Dalhousie University (huish@dal.ca)
Simon Darnell, Durham University (simon.darnell@durham.ac.uk)

Recent years have seen increased critical attention paid to the mobilization of sport to meet international development goals in the Global South, accompanied by calls for a de-centred approach that investigates sport-for-development beyond the traditional top-down notion of North to South deliverance (see Lindsey and Grattan, in press). We suggest that the model of sport policy utilized by Cuba offers an important comparative analysis given its uniquely explicit political commitment to bilateral development through sport. For example, the Escuela Internacional de Educación Física y Deporte offers students a fully inclusive scholarship to study physical training and coaching and the school currently supports 983 coaches from vulnerable communities in 53 Low and Middle Income Countries across the Global South. Through critical analysis of state policy and current sports initiatives, and drawing on fieldwork at Cuba’s national sports ministry, the Instituto Nacional de Deportes, Educación Fisica, y Recreación, we suggest that the commitment to South-South development solidarity factors into Cuba’s sport policies, alongside nationalism and foreign remuneration. This unique approach is illustrative of Cuba’s broader goals of counter-hegemonic policies related to both development and sport. The Cuban case therefore offers an opportunity to analyze sport as more than just a tool for development, but also as a socio-political practice firmly embedded within international relations and the global political economy.

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‘Futbol y Literatura en México: reflexiones en torno a lo publicado durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX.’
José Samuel Martínez López, Universidad Iberoamericana, Ciudad de México (samuel.martinez@uia.mx)

En tanto deporte, espectáculo masivo y texto popular que genera experiencias lúdicas y de goce, el fútbol -además de haberse convertido en un negocio, un escaparate y un espacio de luchas y tensiones culturales- ha posibilitado la producción de una extensa gama de obras literarias de diferente género y valor cultural. Reflexionando específicamente entorno a lo publicado en México entre el año de 1978 y el 2011, en esta ponencia se ofrecerá un recuento histórico (por género) de la singular producción literaria sobre el tema.

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‘General Jubilation? Football, Literature and the 1978 World Cup.’
David Wood, University of Sheffield (david.wood@sheffield.ac.uk)

The harnessing of sporting mega-events to political ends has a long history that shows no signs of abating, but the 1978 World Cup, hosted by Argentina, constituted the most glaring convergence of sport and politics seen in Latin America. The Argentine public (Borges aside) may have cheered with the generals when the host nation triumphed in the final, but the human rights abuses endured under El Proceso were already common knowledge, and the generals’ efforts to use the World Cup to mask the widespread tortures and disappearances enacted by the juntas were only partially successful. In recent decades authors such as Fontanarrosa, Soriano and Saccheri have become renowned as writers of football stories, their work featuring in many of the anthologies of football stories to have been published. This paper analyses a selection of literary texts that centre on football in Argentina and considers their role in the creation of a discourse that challenged the celebratory vision of the 1978 World Cup.

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23. The Art of Politics

Convenor: Holly Ryan (Holly.Ryan.1@city.ac.uk)

Statecraft, diplomacy, and the act of war have all at some point been described as art forms, invoking a sense of the creativity and skill involved in such pursuits. At other times and in other places, artworks have been readily reduced to the political purposes of their patrons, a nod to their functional and (mis) informative potential. The location of art in politics brings up a variety of questions over the role, possibilities and limits of creative power. This panel brings together three papers, which seek to interrogate and establish a dialogue around the complex relations between art, power and resistance in Latin American societies. Whilst divergent in methodology and geographical scope, the papers are unified in their aim to make the instrumental value of the arts visible in discussions of political manoeuvring.

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SESSION ONE | Wednesday 18th April 13:30-15:00

Bordering on Femicide: Space, Representation and the Body in Judithe Hernández’s ‘The Juárez Series’
Anna Kingsley, University of London (A.Kingsley@rhul.ac.uk)

Since 1993 thousands of young Mexican women have been reported missing and found murdered in the northern Mexican border town, Ciudad Juárez. These brutal crimes against women have been branded ‘femicides’ and although the murders continue, justice has yet to prevail. As a result, the Juárez femicides have incited a large cultural response, notably in the form of visual arts and literature; in order to both broaden public awareness of the extreme violence against women occurring in Juárez and equally to underpin the probable causes of the phenomenon. This paper will examine a particular body of artwork, entitled ‘The Juárez Series,’ created by acclaimed Chicana artist, Judith Hernández. More specifically, I will observe Hernández’s representation of the female and propose that the female form within her artwork alludes to both a physical and metaphorical embodiment of the borderspace, visually encapsulating and narrating the socio-political plight of women within Ciudad Juárez. Moreover, I will consider the empowerment Hernández’s aesthetics bestow the female victims and how the construction of the imaginary body and space on canvas attempts to re-negotiate post-mortem the power struggles faced by the young women in the Mexican border town.

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Marcos Kurtycz’s Inf(l)amous Performances and the Reinvention of Potlatch in Contemporary Mexican Art
Mara Polgovsky-Ezcurra, University of Cambridge (marapolgovsky@gmail.com)

Marcos Kurtycz (1934-1996) is one of the most unorthodox figures of the Mexican contemporary art scene. He is also a performance pioneer in Latin America, whose work combined ritual poetics with a pungent critique of war, the nuclear era and consumer culture. This Polish-born artist, whose immediate family died during the Holocaust, lived his childhood and youth in an occupied (communist) country, but settled in Mexico in the late 1960s. In this paper I study one of Kurtycz’s art actions entitled Potlatch. Grounded in George Bataille’s notion of ‘ritual expenditure’, Kurtycz’s action used chemicals and an axe to destroy an offering-type installation in an art gallery. The performance was developed in a non-religious, yet highly ritualised atmosphere. How does this performance relate to the religious practice of sacrifice? What does it tell us about the presence of ‘the sacred’ in postmodernist aesthetics? As practice of effacement and annihilation, Kurtycz’s action rises up questions of aesthetic and material value in heavily fetishistic contexts, but does it escape the logic of consumerist disposal and replacement? I suggest that Kurtycz’s work draws religion away from religiosity, taking it to unsettling terrains, such as the politics of intimacy, the ethics of liminality, and the pitfalls of capitalist accumulation. The Benjaminian overtones of his work are unmistakable.

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Graffiteando por el T.I.P.N.I.S – activist art in defence of indigenous rights
Holly Eva Ryan, City University, London (Holly.Ryan.1@city.ac.uk)

Street-based art forms including graffiti, mural painting, photography, posters, street performance and handicrafts have historically proven an indispensible device for competing political groups across the globe, yet they are routinely neglected in the literature on social movements and non-violent action. This paper goes some way to correct this oversight by demonstrating how theoretical insights from scholars of both traditions might be usefully combined to bring to light the unique and important ways in which street art can and has been utilised to attract resources, frame objectives and opponents, mobilize support, disseminate information and evoke public responses.

This paper takes political street art in La Paz, Bolivia its case study. It begins by briefly charting the evolution of street art forms alongside key events in Bolivian politics. It then proceeds to explore the specific interventions utilised by La Paz-based activists in support of indigenous marchers from the T.I.P.N.I.S reserve during 2011. Drawing on first-hand interview data, this paper explores the motivations and perceptions of artist-activists through the production process, drawing attention to the ways by which street art interventions can mediate and feed back into the social milieu, fostering new opportunities for resistance, or closing down on old ones.

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Wednesday 18th April
13:30-15:00 \| Parallel Panel Set: 1	15:30-17:00 \| Parallel Panel Set: 2
Change or continuity in Cuba? (1/2) panel \| papers	Change or continuity in Cuba? (2/2) panel \| papers
¿Por fin toda la verdad?: Questioning Discourses of Latin American History (1/3) panel \| papers	¿Por fin toda la verdad?: Questioning Discourses of Latin American History (2/3) panel \| papers
The Art of Politics (1/1) panel \| papers	Space, Place and Contentious Politics in Latin America (1/2) panel \| papers
Politics, power and culture: colonial Latin American history in 21st-century Britain (1/3) panel \| papers	Politics, power and culture: colonial Latin American history in 21st-century Britain (2/3) panel \| papers
Imagining Better Futures in Brazil (1/1) panel \| papers	Anti-ALBA! The Politics of Opposition in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (1/3) panel \| papers
Approaches to Political Violence in Latin America (1/2) panel \| papers	Approaches to Political Violence in Latin America (2/2) panel \| papers
José Donoso: relecturas de su obra y figura (1/1) panel \| papers	Simulacros: Legitimating Extra-Constitutional and Pseudo-Legal Forms of Politicking in Mexico (1/2) panel \| papers

Thursday 19th April
09:15-10:45 \| Parallel Panel Set: 3	11:15-12:45 \| Parallel Panel Set: 4	13:30-15:00 \| Parallel Panel Set: 5
Rethinking Identity and Culture in the Cuban Revolution (1/2) panel \| papers	Rethinking Identity and Culture in the Cuban Revolution (2/2) panel \| papers	Foreign Policy Challenges facing the Cuban Government (1/2) panel \| papers
¿Por fin toda la verdad?: Questioning Discourses of Latin American History (3/3) panel \| papers	School Reform and Nation-Building in the River Plate, 1860s to 1930 (1/1) panel \| papers	Reflections on the Bicentenary of 1810: the Causes and Consequences of Spanish American Independence (1/2) panel \| papers
Space, Place and Contentious Politics in Latin America (2/2) panel \| papers	Central American Realities Contrasted (1/1) panel \| papers	Social movements in XXI Century Latin America: Rethinking Social Emancipation (1/2) panel \| papers
Politics, power and culture: colonial Latin American history in 21st-century Britain (3/3) panel \| papers	Culture, Place and Tourism in Latin America (1/3) panel \| papers	Culture, Place and Tourism in Latin America (2/3) panel \| papers
Anti-ALBA! The Politics of Opposition in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (2/3) panel \| papers	Anti-ALBA! The Politics of Opposition in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (3/3) panel \| papers	Political and Economic Perspectives on the Crisis in Argentina (2/2) panel \| papers
Interdisciplin-arity in Indigenous Mexican Studies (1/2) panel \| papers	Interdisciplin-arity in Indigenous Mexican Studies (2/2) panel \| papers	Care, Illness and Death in Latin America (1/1) panel \| papers
Simulacros: Legitimating Extra-Constitutional and Pseudo-Legal Forms of Politicking in Mexico (2/2) panel \| papers	Political and Economic Perspectives on the Crisis in Argentina (1/2) panel \| papers	Screening Political Identities (1/2) panel \| papers