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No description available.

Since the 1970s, Colombia’s indigenous communities have been the beneficiaries of state-sanctioned cultural and territorial rights. They have also been extensively impacted by the drug trade in their territories. This dissertation examines how drug crop cultivation in indigenous territories has impacted the struggle for indigenous rights in Colombia. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out primarily with the Nasa indigenous community in the southwestern department of Cauca, Colombia. I argue that the drug trade has contributed to the accelerated transition of indigenous agricultural communities from a primarily subsistence-based economy to a cash-based economy that is dependent on the circulation of global commodities. I also argue that drug control policies have contributed to neoliberal multiculturalism in that they have helped to undermine the political autonomy of indigenous communities. Finally, state-regulated institutions such as schools and child welfare circulate moral narratives that emphasize family structure as a cause for social problems rather than political and historical conditions. I conclude with an assessment of how identity may be used for indigenous communities who continue to struggle for cultural and territorial rights in Colombia’s post-conflict era. / Anthropology

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No / During the last two decades the judiciary has come to play an increasingly important political role in Latin America. Constitutional courts and supreme courts are more active in counterbalancing executive and legislative power than ever before. At the same time, the lack of effective citizenship rights has prompted ordinary people to press their claims and secure their rights through the courts. This collection of essays analyzes the diverse manifestations of the judicialization of politics in contemporary Latin America, assessing their positive and negative consequences for state-society relations, the rule of law, and democratic governance in the region. With individual chapters exploring Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, it advances a comparative framework for thinking about the nature of the judicialization of politics within contemporary Latin American democracies.

No / How have Latin American exporters been affected by the rapid increase in the PRC's exports to the USA and other large markets? Are PRC and Latin American exports complementary or competitive with each other? This paper examines detailed trade data to provide answers to these important questions. It examines the meaning of a "competitive threat" and provides a way of assessing the degree of threat from trade statistics. In general it finds that export structures in PRC and Latin American economies are sufficiently different for trade to be basically complementary with at present only a small portion of Latin American exports under a "direct threat" from PRC exporters. Mexico is the economy that is potentially at greatest risk; but as yet this has not shown up in the data.

No / The papers collected in this volume are a selection from the proceedings of the Cultura Popular conference held at Manchester Metropolitan University in September 1999. The essays deal with aspects of contemporary Spanish or Latin American popular culture, and with the problematics of applying theories of Cultural Studies to these contexts. A diverse range of popular cultural forms is covered by contributors including mural art, artesanía, horror film, advertising, music, telenovela, television, literature and tourism, and case studies are drawn from Spain, Argentina, Peru and Mexico.

No / Incorporated into the discourse of academics, policymakers, and grassroots activists, of multilateral development agencies and local NGOs alike, "civil society" has become a topic of widespread discussion. But is there in fact any common understanding of the term? How useful is it when applied to the South, and what difference does it make to bring the concept into the debate on development? Howell and Pearce explore the complex relationships among civil society, the state, and market in the context of democratic development. Drawing on case studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, they also unravel what is meant by development agencies¿bilaterals, multilaterals, NGOs, and international financial institutions, with their diverse approaches and agendas¿when they refer to the urgent need to strengthen civil society.

Yes / The rule of law, that is, the fair, competent, effective, and predictable application of laws that enhance, rather than undermine, social accountability and fundamental human rights, is a core function of the state, and forms part of its social contract with the citizenry. However, ensuring that a government upholds the rule of law requires a number of checks and balances. Some of this accountability and enforcement function lies with the other branches of government: oversight of the executive by the legislative branch through its committees and reports, and by the judiciary, which has its own proactive powers and can be petitioned by citizens and their representatives. But this republican structure can still be unresponsive or resistant to scrutiny, particularly when elites across the branches of government are indifferent to, or collude in, maintaining chronic problems in the justice system. Active non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are therefore recognised as a crucial component in the effective application of the rule of law due to their independence from government and their often-different perspective on the impact of unevenly applied and unjust laws and law enforcement through direct contact with the victims of arbitrary treatment. This chapter explores ways in which NGOs (both international and local) can contribute to strengthening rule of law through a case study of how the Open Society Institute and its Justice Initiative (OSJI) and a network of Brazilian NGOs developed a campaign to reduce the excessive use of pre-trial detention. It demonstrates how NGOs can fulfil important watchdog functions and are able to change laws, policies and practices that significantly improve the rule of law by working strategically with one another, with international partners and with sympathetic state actors.

Yes / This chapter focuses on the forms of legality and illegality produced by, and within, prison systems in Latin America where prison populations have risen five-fold, leading to a serious structural crisis in the criminal justice system. The chapter develops the concept of “prisoner capture”, a double-sided phenomenon of illegality in the state’s practices of detention, on the one hand, and informal, or parallel, governance exercised by those that it detained, on the other. State authorities held tens of thousands of people in extended and legally unjustifiable pretrial detention, and frequently denied convicted prisoners their legal rights, including timely release. This officially sanctioned form of kidnapping created such overcrowding and under-investment in prisons that national, constitutional, and international minimum norms on detention standards were routinely, systematically and grossly violated. These multiple illegalities on the part of the state in turn encouraged the emergence of prisoner self-defence and self-governance organizations. This resulted in “prisoner capture” of a different kind, when inmates took over the day-to-day ordering of prison life. In turn, this produced a parallel normative and pseudo-legal world in which inmates adjudicated on and disciplined other inmates in the absence of state officials within the prison walls. The chapter further examines what the study of Latin American prisons and penal practices can add to the field of socio-legal studies in the region and the implications of this phenomenon of prison capture for the dominant socio-legal literature on prisons and imprisonment.