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Counting the Dead
At a time when a global consensus on human rights standards seems to be emerging, this rich study steps back to explore how the idea of human rights is actually employed by activists and human rights professionals. Winifred Tate, an anthropologist and activist with extensive experience in Colombia, finds that radically different ideas about human rights have shaped three groups of human rights professionals working there--nongovernmental activists, state representatives, and military officers. Drawing from the life stories of high-profile activists, pioneering interviews with military officials, and research at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Counting the Dead underscores the importance of analyzing and understanding human rights discourses, methodologies, and institutions within the context of broader cultural and political debates.
The Grid and the Park
Since its publication in Spanish in 1998, The Grid and the Park not only revitalized studies on the history of Buenos Aires, but also laid the foundation for a specific type of cultural work on the city —an urban perspective for cultural history, as its author would describe it— that has had a sustained impact in Latin America. Public space, embodied in the grid of city blocks and the park system, here appears as a particularly productive category because it encompasses dimensions of the material city, politics, and culture, which are usually studied separately. From Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s figurations of Palermo Park in the mid-nineteenth century to Jorge Luis Borges’s discovery of the suburb in the 1920s; from the modernization of the traditional center carried out by Mayor Torcuato de Alvear in the 1880s to the questioning of that centrality by the emergence of the suburban barrio, the book weaves the changing ideas on public space with urban culture to produce a new history of the metropolitan expansion of Buenos Aires, one of the most extensive and dynamic urban centers of the early twentieth century.
Chronicle of a Failure Foretold
Chronicle of a Failure Foretold charts the progress and failure of Colombian President Andrés Pastrana's efforts to bring an end to sixty years of civil war.
Liberalism at Its Limits
In Liberalism at Its Limits, Ileana Rodriguez considers several Latin American nations that govern under the name of liberalism yet display a shocking range of nondemocratic features. In her political, cultural, and philosophical analysis, she examines these environments in which liberalism seems to have reached its limits, as the universalizing project gives way to rampant nonstate violence, gross inequality, and neocolonialism. Focusing on Guatemala, Colombia, and Mexico, Rodriguez shows how standard liberal models fail to account for new forms of violence and exploitation, which in fact follow from specific clashes between liberal ideology and local practice. Looking at these tensions wit...
Post-conflict Colombia and the Global Circulation of Military Expertise
By challenging more common analyses that point to the existence of a "post-conflict scenario" in Colombia and those that resist the narrative of "success", both of which operate within the logic of presence/absence of violence, this book proposes instead that we think of "post-conflict" in terms of the transformation of the rules on the use of violence. The analysis unfolds in two parts: the first explores the conditions of possibility of the Colombian “success story” and the web of criteria legitimizing the “success”, as well as the silencing mechanisms allowing for Colombia to circulate internationally as a formula to be replicated in other parts of the world; the second, focuses on the historicization of the mechanisms through which new rules are transmitted among the professionals of the public force, specifically the transformations of military schools and training centers in Colombia from times of “war” to “peace”. The author argues that key to this transformation is a unique discursive articulation around the “military professional” which slides from “citizen-soldier” to “expert-soldier”.
Debating Civil-Military Relations in Latin America
The study of civil-military relations in Latin America produced a rich debate and research agenda prior to 2000. But this agenda was largely abandoned during the past decade as the spectre of military dictatorship has virtually disappeared, with the political role of the military in many countries dramatically diminished. Indeed, in no country that has initiated a process of holding the military accountable to civilian control has the military openly rebelled. Yet, the institutions and public attitudes that guarantee democratic civilian control of the military exist in a general context of political polarisation, citizen insecurity and in many countries a sense of developing ungovernability....
Latin America's Leaders
Cult-of-personality or true democracy? The rise of populism worldwide, combined with the overwhelming success of leaders in Latin America, has positioned the region at the forefront of political debate. Conventional wisdom presents this trend as a handful of charismatic individuals leading an ideological challenge to liberal democracy. But can it really be that simple? Based on exclusive interviews with over three hundred politicians – former presidents, vice presidents, current party officials and hundreds more – Latin America's Leaders exposes what the Pink Tide really thinks of its presidents. Arguing that the political styles of leaders such as Hugo Chávez, Rafael Correa, Álvaro Uribe and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner are far better explained in the context of their respective countries' party systems, the authors examine political stability through the paradoxical relationship between democracy and the concentration of power in charismatic individuals. This is the definitive guide to the world's most left-wing continent.
Journal of Latin American Theology, Volume 12, Number 2
Corruption... The mere word brings up negative, and all too prevalent, images in our minds: bribes, abuse of power, and favoritism among our political leaders, business leaders, and even among our religious leaders. It is commonplace for Christians to rail against rampant corruption and lament its existence. What is not so common is to hear a thoughtful analysis of the factors that lead to and feed corruption. Even more scarce are practical and proven steps that we can take to reduce the levels of corruption in our societies. With these thoughts in mind, the Fraternidad Teologica Latinoamericana invited Christian leaders to tackle this issue head on at an international conference titled "Corruption Kills: Biblical, Contextual, and Ethical Perspectives." Held in Lima, Peru from July 23-25, 2016, participants gave presentations that ranged from biblical and theological analysis of corruption to practical experiences of fighting it. Though our hearts are heavy due to the subject matter, it is our privilege to share with you in this issue of the Journal of Latin American Theology some of the key presentations of that conference.
Colombia's Narcotics Nightmare
This history of Colombia's illegal drug trade--and of the extreme violence it created--describes how in the late 1960s narcotics traffickers from the United States convinced Colombians who had no previous involvement in the drug trade to grow marijuana for export to America. By the early '70s, foreign (mostly American) traffickers began requesting cocaine. This book focuses on the decades of crime and violence the illegal drug trade brought to Colombia and how this social upset was ended in the early 2000s. Six chapters detail the Medellin and Cali cartels' war against the Colombian government, the revolutionary guerrillas' war against the government, the war that paramilitary groups conducted against the guerrillas, and the way in which the government finally put a stop to the cartel-financed bloodshed. In conclusion, the author assesses Colombia's progress and prospects since the end of the violence claimed the lives of some 300,000 between 1975 and 2008.
Violence in Colombia, 1990-2000
Violence In Colombia provides students with a deeper understanding of the crisis facing Colombia today. The book focuses on the 1990s, a decade that witnessed a strengthening of the oldest and largest guerrilla insurgency in the Americas and the emergence of a powerful paramilitary right. The decade also saw a dramatic rise in homicide, kidnapping, and human rights violations that made Colombia by far the most violent nation in the hemisphere. But the 1990s was also about negotiating peace. The decade began with negotiations between the government and some of the guerrilla groups that led to their demobilization and to the important reforms codified in the Constitution of 1991. It ended with...
