6

Social, Political, and Religious
Movements in the Modern

Americas
This volume explores several notable themes related to social, political,

and religious movements in Latin America and offers insightful histori-
cal perspectives to understand national, regional, and global issues from
the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. This volume’s
collected chapters focus on the Latin American society and are divided
into three sections. The first section, Social, presents some cultural, de-
mographic, and urban changes that have occurred with increasing fre-
quency in Latin America from the early twentieth century onward. The
second section, Political, shows migratory, political, and identity move-
ments that in recent decades have re-emerged with force. Finally, the
third section, Religious, analyzes various Latin American religious vi-
sions with their particular characteristics. From the religious hegemony
of Catholicism, a change in the religious panorama in the past decades
can be seen intermingled with politics, history, and society.
Pablo A. Baisotti is currently a research assistant at the Department of

Latin American Studies (ELA) at the University of Brasilia.
Routledge Studies in the History of the Americas
20 The Nixon Administration and Cuba

Continuity and Rupture
Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta
21 Translating Cuba
Literature, Music, Film, Politics
Robert S. Lesman
22 Rio de Janeiro in the Global Meat Market, c. 1850 to c. 1930

How Fresh and Salted Meat Arrived at the Carioca Table
Maria-Aparecida Lopes
23 American Divergences in the Great Recession

Daniele Pompejano
24 Social and Political Transitions During the

Left Turn in Latin America
Edited by Karen Silva-Torres, Carolina Rozo-Higuera and
Daniel S. Leon
25 A New Struggle for Independence in Modern Latin America

Edited by Pablo A. Baisotti
26 Problems and Alternatives in the Modern Americas

27 Setbacks and Advances in the Modern Latin American Economy

28 Social, Political, and Religious Movements in the Modern Americas

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.

routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-the-History-of-the-Americas/
book-series/RSHAM
Americas
Edited by
Pablo A. Baisotti
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Taylor & Francis
The right of Pablo A. Baisotti to be identified as the author of
the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
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trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-49260-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-49310-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-04564-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Graphs xi
List of Tables xiii
Foreword xv
J AY C O RW I N
Introduction: Social, Political, and Religious Movements

in the Modern Americas 1
PA B L O A . B A I S O T T I
SECTION I
Social 25
1 From Rural Villages to Large Metropolises in Latin

America (1880–2020) 27
E M I L I O P R A D I L L A C O B O S A N D L I S E T T M Á RQ U E Z L Ó P E Z
2 Youth and Mobilizations in Latin America: 20 Years of

Persistence and Prominence 50
PA B L O VO M M A RO
3 Between Past and Future: Exile, Cuban Literature and

Identity (1959–2003) 77
M I C H È L E G U I C H A R N AU D -T O L L I S
4 The Revolution as an Inherent Part of Cuban Society: A

Polish Perspective 102
K ATA R Z Y N A D E M B I C Z
vi Contents
5 Recent Trends in Higher Education – Latin America and
Europe: The Cases of Peru, Mexico, and Spain 126
PA B L O A . B A I S O T T I A N D J O S É A N T O N I O P I N E DA - A L F O N S O
SECTION II
Political 149
6 Constructions of “The National” in Latin America 151

J U S S I PA K K A S V I RTA
7 Migration and Border Control Policies in South America

(1900–1945): Non-Admission, Identification, and Deportation 169
E D UA R D O D O M E N E C H A N D A N D R É S P E R E I R A
8 An Overview of the Immigration Process during the

Brazilian Monarchy and Republic, Including the Other
Countries from the La Plata Region (1822–1945) 199
M A R I A M E D I A N E I R A PA D O I N A N D J OÃO V I T O R S AU S E N
9 Indigenous Movements in South America: Culture,

Politics, and Territories in the Andean and Amazon Regions 220
MEN NO OOSTR A
10 Cultural Platforms during the Transitions to Democracy

in the Southern Cone: New Magazines and Institutions
in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay (1973–1990) 247
S O F Í A M E RC A D E R A N D L U C A S D O M Í N G U E Z RU B I O
SECTION III
Religious 279
11 New Perspectives on Latin American Freemasonry:

Three Case Studies 281
G U I L L E R M O D E L O S R E Y E S , F E L I P E C Ô RT E R E A L D E
C A M A RG O , A N D RO G E L I O A R AG Ó N
12 The Rise of “Scientific” Antisemitism in Latin America 302

RO G E L I O A R AG Ó N
Contents vii
13 The Catholic Church and Defense of Human Rights
during the Last Dictatorships in Chile and Argentina 325
S T E P H A N RU D E R E R
14 People, Culture and Liberation in Rafael Tello’s

Theology: A Contribution from Argentina to Latin America 341
OM A R C É SA R A L BA DO
15 Buddhism in Latin America: From Ethnic Religion to

Alternative Spirituality 359
F R A N K U S A R S K I A N D R A FA E L S H OJ I
List of Contributors 383

Index 389
Figures
Graphs
Tables
Foreword
Jay Corwin
This volume offers a compendium of social and cultural histories of the

Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Americas of the twentieth century,
sometimes necessarily spilling over into the twenty-first. This is not
limited to an overview of them but rather a clear view of moments and
lengthy transitions in thought and cultural movements gathered from var-
ious individual places and often crossing national boundaries. The social
and political flux of the continents is endless, of course, and so it is with
two decades of hindsight that particular highlights of independent sister
nations may be reviewed and reexamined with greater clarity. Readers fa-
miliar with Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), the eminent Argentine essay-
ist, poet, and short-story writer, are aware that his works have influenced
literary aesthetics on a global level. The same readers might recall “The
Aleph,” a story about an object that allows its beholder to witness historic
events from different times and places, which we may see as analogous
to these pages. To refer to Borges here also means to concede that the
writing of Latin American history, compiled by various scholars, is in a
sense a re-creation of the imaginary world of Orbis Tertius from the story
that begins Ficciones. From the beginning, the history of Latin America
has been fused with mythological elements as one might notice from early
chronicles, whether they are exaggerated reactions to unknown animals,
or the description of the Muiska cosmogony painstakingly outlined in the
chronicles that Fray Pedro Simón compiled in the sixteenth century.
Twenty-first-century historians are tasked with removing the sense of
mythology and the drama of epic poetry from their subjects, and fur-
ther, avoiding the Hawaiian-shirted cameramen carrying a sense of ex-
oticism in their reporting, and analysis and interpretations of important
facts, always bearing in mind that perspectives are momentous rather
than immutable. This is a difficult task when considering the sometimes
overtly dramatic alterations to the status quo of a nation, or when such a
reviewer of history is subjected to an honest examination, which results
in unpleasant and sometimes unflattering moments.
The collection begins logically with the global trend of urbanization
and the more specific movement from largely rural Latin America to the
growth of its urban centers. Much has to be taken into account to be just:
xvi Jay Corwin
Latin American large landholdings (latifundios) which may in a sense be
comparable to European estates of the feudal period, oligarchies, large
waves of trans-Atlantic migration, and the examination of economics all
play a major role in the processes and changes, along with various types
of governments and distribution of wealth, making for uneven progress.
Emilio Pradilla Cobos and Lisett Márquez López address these move-
ments from 1880 to the present bearing in mind that cultural, social, and
economic remnants of the colonial period loom large in the picture.
Pablo Vommaro focuses rather on the mobilizations of large groups of
young people who have elicited social changes in Latin America. Groups
of different nations, ethnic and racial origins, and politicized factions of
persons marginalized by sex in some form or another are studied. These
issues along with youth unemployment have sparked social change
through unrest: Vommaro notes the origins and progressions of these
movements that are unique to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Among the more salient issues of the twentieth century in Latin Amer-
ica is the Cuban Revolution. One of the results of it are the cases of exile
and most notably Cuban writers who live or lived in exile and continued
writing, and how a process of mythification of the island nation began
through them. The issue is not a small one given that writers of great
merit and renown were among those writing in exile: Severy Sarduy in
Paris, Guillermo Cabrera Infante in London, and Reinaldo Arenas, one
of the marielitos in Miami and subsequently in New York City where he
died by committing suicide. The basis of examination is the work of an-
other Cuban writer in exile, now ninety years old, who hails from Sagua
la Grande, Cuba, and was once my professor: Matías Montes Huidobro.
These writers and others of an earlier generation, such as Lydia Cabrera,
are noted, as well as the Heberto Padilla case, which ended the romance
between Latin American writers from farther afield and Fidel Castro. Rev-
olution, dissidence, and romance are intertwining themes examined in this
chapter although not overtly stated as such, and to be clear it is one of the
most important focal points of social change in Latin American of the last
century. Michèle Guicharnaud-Tollis provides a clear vision into it.
Viewing the Cuban Revolution from another angle, Katarzyna Dem-
bicz explores the vision from the well-documented Polish perspective,
adding to it or rather re-envisioning it through methodologies of history
and sociology. This is undertaken gracefully through the positing of the
following: “what issues are relevant to the history of Cuba and its in-
habitants? Which of those stand out as particularly prominent and may
be deemed worthy of analysis? The answers will most certainly include
the revolutionary processes.” This naturally begins with the processes
that led to the 1959 revolution, most specifically the Spanish-American
war of 1898, and the domination of the Island by one foreign entity or
another. Suffice it to state that the chapters are well organized and that
their introduction should avoid spoilers.
Foreword xvii
Higher education in Latin America has sometimes been plagued by
questions of individual wealth or poverty, not to mention the changing
of the guards and the state of education in Puerto Rico and Cuba in
the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. Pablo Baisotti and José A.
Pineda-Alfonso consider the question in contemporary terms with the
globalization of higher education and the impact of it on Latin America,
taking two cases into account: Mexico and Peru. Military intervention
in Peruvian universities squelched progress that had been evident and
ongoing, via public legislation in the 1970s, the starting point for ex-
amination of that country’s progress. Mexico and Peru are good case
studies because of political hindrances as well as imbalances of funding
which has been sporadically interrupted. Questions of research output
and international rankings are also brought into the equation. Published
perceptions and rankings do not necessarily reflect one another. Contem-
porary universities are currently beset with politics and top-heaviness.
The results in Latin America are not exceptional, although they are dis-
mal at times if not abysmal in particular areas.
Military dictatorships buttressed a persistent if not entirely accurate
external purview of Latin American leadership during the twentieth
century, precisely because of the focus on particular nations’ periods
of military rule. Sofia Mercader and Lucas Domínguez Rubio examine
the period of dictatorships of 1970s Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile and
their respective transitions to democratically elected governments com-
paring their similar traits. And this is in no way a minor period of Latin
American history as words such as “desaparecido” have come in their
original forms into the vocabulary of English. Human rights and vio-
lation of the selfsame rights in the region dominated the world’s focus.
The extremities of political rule from left to right mark have involved the
world’s powers, affected every country in the Americas, and influenced
global migration patterns. Where Cuba represented an experiment and
became for a time the darling of the world’s Academic Left, its rightwing
counterpart in the Southern Cone was the opposite extreme. Mercader
and Domínguez Rubio’s examination of the historical precedents for and
the aftermath of dictatorships in the region represents a crux in the his-
tory of the twentieth century in Latin America and beyond.
Jussi Pakkasvirta of the University of Helsinki in Finland provides an
overview of the imagination of the nation-state in the Americas, taking
questions of racism and racial inequality and Eurocentrism into question
for under discussion, especially in Latin America in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Pakkasvirta asserts through scholarship that republicanism took
hold in much of the Americas as a result of the European enlightenment
while stressing that colonial racial hierarchies remained in place. This is
further supported by the writings of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento who
saw North America as an example to follow. Though clearly Sarmiento
had mistakenly believed in a sort of racial purity among the Anglo-Saxon
xviii Jay Corwin
conquerors rather than absorption of indigenous populations or miscege-
nation, his ideas about civilization and barbarism took hold and helped
shape the vision of local republicanism. The sins of the nineteenth century,
which Pakkasvirta outlines in the Utopianist and often racist ideologies
of emerging nation-states, gave rise to the spread of communist ideology
in the early twentieth century. While the overarching points may at first
glance appear cursory, Pakkasvirta’s points are of utmost importance to
the history of the continents and provide a firm basis for understanding
the political tides that shaped the twentieth century in the Americas.
Following suit, Eduardo Domenech and Andrés Pereira address the
question of immigration and the policies that guided it in South America
from the start of the twentieth century until 1945. Overall the tendency
was to produce guidelines with the hopes of a massive influx of Euro-
pean immigrants, which was unsuccessful except in Argentina and Bra-
zil. The process included determination of what constituted a desirable
immigrant versus an undesirable one, based on the norms and guidelines
of physical fitness, political activities, and sometimes national or ethnic
origins. The subject is a broad one and highly noteworthy given that
much of the cultural wealth of the Americas has relied on immigration,
as well as in certain cases the shaping or altering of national demograph-
ics whether by design or by chance.
Along the same lines of demographic alterations, much attention has
been focused by Maria Medianeira Padoin and João Vitor Sausen on
Brazil and neighboring Southern Cone countries, from the period of the
Brazilian monarchy (1822) until the same point in 1945. The two scholars
address issues touched upon in previous chapters, such as the solidification
or individuation of nationalism or nationhood in countries emerging from
the colonial period and hope for prosperity through mass immigration.
The history of immigration in particular to Brazil often mirrors trends
in North America with colonies of German-speaking people setting up
farming communities, not unlike the so-called Pennsylvanian Dutch or
Amish and Mennonite communities as well as the large influx of Italians.
This was shaped locally however by internal politics, the history of which
is of course unique and of great value to the overall understanding of the
present. Padoin and Sausen provide clear comparisons and demographics
of immigrants to Brazil and Argentina during the noted period, such as
the influx of Japanese to Brazil and the vast waves of Italian migrations to
Argentina. This is complemented by highlighting internal enforced immi-
gration policies within Brazil. The study is both fascinating and of great
importance to understanding the current demographics of both countries.
On another demographic subject, Menno Oostra provides an over-
view of indigenous Latin America, particularly where their former
national boundaries had been supplanted by colonial ones and newly
emerging nation-states. Separate movements towards extermination
through bloody wars or of acculturation and miscegenation varied from
Foreword xix
place to place, as Oostra notes, while also pointing out the unique posi-
tion of Amazonian peoples and their relative isolation until well into the
twentieth century. Indigenous movements in Amazonia and the Andes,
as the author notes, began in the 1960s and 1970s, resulting in spe-
cial recognition by the United Nations. Oostra examines the movements
from the uniqueness of the situation of the indigenous peoples of the
Americas, their beginnings, and the formation of different groups in
different countries most notably Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil.
An interesting incursion into another topic is that of freemasonry and
how it has helped shape the social fabric in parts of Latin America. Guill-
ermo de Los Reyes, Felipe Côrte Real de Camargo, and Rogelio Aragón
provide three case studies on the topic, touching on different countries:
Mexico, Cuba, and Brazil. The authors suggest and set about making a
good case for the adaptability of the fraternal organization to three sep-
arate societies in Latin America and their distinct cultural environs: such
is the case made for the success of the organization in the region that it
has thrived for quite some time and withstood the flux of political pow-
ers. The stated objective of the authors is to examine the regional spread
of freemasonry in an objective, detached manner worthy of an academic
study and to demonstrate its value in shaping the noted societies, with
an eye to pave the path for further exploration of the topic, a worthy and
valuable endeavor given the long history of suspiciousness and unfair
attempts to categorize the organization as a cult.
In a similar vein, Rogelio Aragón addresses a more immediate target
of political hostilities in an examination of Latin American antisem-
itism, including pseudo-academic and pseudo-scientific antisemitism,
its history, and its obvious place in the present. Aragón dismisses the
left-right dichotomy as both political extremes have been guilty on nu-
merous occasions of having espoused antisemitism in the guise of criti-
cism of Israel. In fact, Aragón notes a very recent article from the BBC’s
Mundo network, broadcast in Spanish, in which there are guidelines
for criticism of Israel while avoiding accusations of antisemitism. This
is a much-needed study since there is basically no difference between
anti-Zionism and antisemitism. A cursory glance through 2500-year-
old Psalms would undermine the attempt at dissimulation, in the most
obvious ways. Aragón begins with the earliest examples from Colonial
Latin America and proceeds to the present. An insidious form of racism,
which has been normalized through media and stoked incessantly over
the centuries, political antisemitism is a social illness that needs spot-
lighting, yet again, in a geopolitical region in which it has gone practi-
cally unchallenged. In a roundabout way, Aragón’s chapter exposes the
intellectually bereft wave of shallowness posing a science that cloaks
the pettiest and ugliest forms of racism in a sort of benighted moral
superiority. It is in fact an imported ailment and a lingering symptom
of regional inability to rise above the level of the colonial mindset, and
xx Jay Corwin
its continuance at least in the first case noted shows the point of origin:
the BBC.
Stephan Ruderer examines the Catholic Church and its role in defend-
ing human rights during the last dictatorships of Argentina and Chile.
Examining documents and studies of the situations and positions of the
Church in both countries from a detached view and a scholarly eye that
demands absolute refrainment from either apologetics or demonization,
often the responses associable with emotion, Ruderer begins from the
premise that the Church is not monolithic but rather contains many dif-
ferent actors who may at times be at odds with one another, which would
hardly be surprising to anyone aware of the enmity that has sometimes
plagued persons belonging to different orders under the auspices of the
same institution. The case of Chilean Jesuits is noted in the chapter,
as clearly exemplary of the author’s correct application of his scholar’s
caveat to his examination. In contrast to the Jesuits who did not reject
the coup against Allende in Chile, bishops in both Argentina and Chile
tended to support the military both publicly and privately because of
their anti-Communist stance, a natural reaction to a political threat to
religion. Those cases are but a few of those examined by Ruderer, who
maintains a clear and objective balance throughout his presentation of
this controversial issue.
From the largely secular and sometimes anti-clerical perspectives of
different observers of Latin American history, the historical portrait
of the continent is sometimes incomplete or lacking in a clearer vision of
the region, as it is not unjust to state that religion, especially Christianity,
has a large number of followers. From that strand, Omar César Albado
writes of a particularly well-known Roman Catholic priest and theolo-
gian with a background in law, Rafael Tello (1917–2002). Tello’s works,
most popular between the 1970s and 1990s, underscore the theologian’s
embrace of poverty and his pastoralism which is based largely on the
teachings of Thomas Aquinas. It is fitting here as a counterbalance to the
visions of political secularism that are found, along with certain levels of
hostility which is sometimes justifiable with regard to the participation
of the Roman Catholic Church in certain unfortunate periods. Those
matters aside, individual Latin American clerics have had an impact re-
gardless of their political sympathies, such as the current Pope, the first
Latin American to hold the office and an Argentinian as well. Alba-
do’s examination of Rafael Tello’s life and work in the context of Latin
American history and the place of the Church within it as something
more than a cultural relic is timely and adds to these readings in history
the sole traditionally Roman Catholic dimension of a region whose pres-
ent has been shaped in no small way by the institution of the Church.
A much less obvious contributor to the flow of religious-philosophical
ideas to the continents is examined by Frank Usarski and Rafael Shoji:
Buddhism. It is a relatively new arrival to the region, as the authors point
Foreword xxi
out, with a history of a mere 100 years in particular areas and much less
in others, some having arrived in ethnic Asian enclaves from different
traditions within the religion. Japanese immigrants in Brazil and Peru,
the authors note, are largely responsible for the establishment of Bud-
dhist institutions on the continent. Statistics have provided proof for
the spread of the religion through conversion among Latin Americans
through the older and more established orders. To revert to an earlier
point, the topic of Buddhism took hold in the literary world of Latin
America through the writings of Borges whose readings into the philos-
ophy were numerous, thereby establishing its literary presence where a
physical one was forming. Usarski and Shoji reinforce that their work
is tentative and that no conclusions may be drawn from it, although the
eyes may be opened and inroads into further studies into the incursion
of Buddhism in Latin America may be due.
What we may glean through this tome is something akin to the work
of a single scholar, endeavoring to paint the history of a century of Latin
America, rather than the oft-found pastiche with large missing pieces
in similar collections. The themes and topics presented herein cannot
engulf the entirety of the region’s history, nor can they substitute for
specialized readings into vast episodes such as the Mexican Revolution,
which itself might require several volumes and years of preparations.
The Colegio de Mexico’s History of Mexico, for example, is worth men-
tioning while an excellent and standard work would still require many
more sub-readings for specialists. Here we might suggest instead that
the visions of twentieth-century Latin America are those of a history
of ideas, many of which are still in the process of evolution, and others
such as the Cuban Revolution, with its promises and failures, are wan-
ing. The ties that bind are well-addressed, such as immigration patterns
and indigenous movements, political evolution from dictatorship and
militarism to democratic forms of government, and the sort of fin-de-
siècle afflictions of the region expressed through movements of younger
people belonging to the social and cultural fringes whose voices, perhaps
inspired from abroad, are no longer silent in the face of oppression, po-
litically motivated, and genuine or perceived. The older dichotomies of
left and right and their political extremes are addressed in various forms,
and are included in many of the aforementioned social ills examined in
the texts of this volume. Orbis Tertius envisaged by one of Argentina’s
greatest cultural exports has altered. Whereas in the chronicles fiction
was sometimes presented as reality, a more authentic and more broadly
conceived vision of Latin America is now possible.
Jay Corwin, Ph.D.

Professor of Latin American Literature
University of Cape Town
Introduction
Americas
Pablo A. Baisotti
Social
Since 1945, Latin America has experienced strong demographic growth,
which has challenged economic policies and social projects. By 1950, the
continent had around 166 million inhabitants, rising to 286 million in
1970, 361 million in 1980, 448 million in 1990, 541 million in 2000,
and over 670 million today. The constant demographic growth was ac-
companied by a strong impulse in the processes of urban concentration
(vegetative growth coupled with strong internal migration from rural
areas to urban centers) (Pérez Herrero 2001, 335, 336).
Since the mid-1970s, a global neoliberal restructuring took place,
which provoked a severe crisis of the welfare state. It was reinforced by
the processes of globalization and sustained by new information and
knowledge technologies that helped to further concentrate power and
wealth in small groups. During the following decade, Latin America’s
metropolises were affected by deep economic and political crises, which,
years later, opened the way for the massive influx of capital and invest-
ments that accelerated the decentralization processes. In the 1990s, the
State carried out deregulation processes ceding power to the private mar-
ket in urban development (UN-Habitat 2012). According to McKinsey
Global Institute (2012), by 2007, the 189 largest cities in Latin Amer-
ica generated 3.6 trillion dollars; a figure equal to the GDP of India
and Poland combined (Jileta 2016, 7, 16; United Nations-Habitat 2012;
Cadena et al. 2011). As a result, negative externalities were produced in
cities due to unplanned urbanization processes that affected even insti-
tutional frameworks, governance structures, and social, economic, and
environmental dynamics (Cepal/ONU-Habitat/Minurvi 2018, 39).
Until the early years of the second decade of the twenty-first century,
there was a relatively prolonged phase of economic expansion associated
with the export cycles of minerals and agricultural products (Cuervo
2010). This phenomenon went hand in hand with strong urban growth
in the continent. In 2015, the region had close to 80% urban population,
and this figure climbed to 83% if only South America was taken into ac-
count (the world average is around 54%). According to Oxfam, 20% of
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-1
2 Pablo A. Baisotti
the population in this region concentrates 83% of the wealth. The num-
ber of billionaires went from 27 to 104 since 2000, demonstrating that
inequalities (and of course, poverty and extreme poverty) are on the rise
(Oxfam 2020). It is the most unequal region in the world, as shown by
figures from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP); seven
of the 20 most unequal countries in the world are in Latin America and
the Caribbean. Faced with this situation, the region is experiencing an
increase in mobilizations and social protests, rejecting the postulate that
argues that the most unequal societies tend to accept this situation and
even legitimize it (Markowsky 1988; Chauvel 2006).
One of the consequences was the excessive growth of some megacities
such as Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Belo Hor-
izonte, Bogota, Lima, and Santiago, expanding spatial economic circuits
that gradually imposed themselves on the social relations and welfare of
their citizens (Sassen 1998, 71; 2003, 36, 88; 2005, 77; 2009, 210, 211).
The resurgence of the social question in the region operates in land, cap-
ital and labor markets as the origin of inequalities from a vision of social
classes, groups and categorical pairs (gender, racial, ethnic, territorial,
etc.) (Reygadas 2020, 50, 51). Latin American and Caribbean territorial
inequalities took two forms; the first was the large geographic concen-
tration of the population; and the second, the main economic activity
was reduced to a small number of locations within each country, usually
major metropolitan areas. A comparison with a selection of Organiza-
tion for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries
shows that levels of spatial concentration are generally very high (Cepal
2016a, 118, 120, 132, 133). At the beginning of the twenty-first century,
Latin America had 52 urban agglomerations of between 1 and approxi-
mately 18 million inhabitants.
In 2010, Latin American countries had, as mentioned above, around
80% of urban population in cities with little connection to national and
regional sub-economies, despite the fact that the global was installed in
the local and the global in turn was constituted by a multiplicity of locals
(Cepal 2014, 27). Several Latin American urban planners pointed out
that in this continent, polycentric urban systems were emerging without
clear boundaries between the countryside and the city, as was the case in
Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Santiago, and Buenos Aires (Davis 2006, 10).
Many of these urban centers were transformed into a kind of city-region,
defined as a large uni- or multicentric urban system with the typical
structural features of neoliberalism: gigantism, disorder and dispersion,
privatization, fragmentation, informalization and impoverishment, ex-
clusion, conflict, violence, and pollution (Scott 2001; Pradilla Cobos
2008, 154–156, 158). Linked to this phenomenon was a juxtaposition
of architecture that destabilized the old features of urbanization and
many underutilized spaces appeared. David Harvey asserted that the
capitalist city was replete with buildings of fabulous architecture with
Introduction 3
rival iconic meanings and global financial centers that contrasted with
the old industrial architecture and a proliferation of urban peripheries
built for the working class and immigrant population (Harvey 2014,
161). Likewise, the role of the government, a fundamental part of the
fight against inequality since it sets market rules, promotes spending
policies and creates laws that favor (or not) greater equity (Stiglitz 2012),
had a rather null or negative action.
According to Luis Reygadas (2008): “inequality is sustained in per-
sistent structures that are reproduced in the long term. But they are not
immutable, but are constructed and transformed as a result of processes
in which human action intervenes”. It follows that inequalities in the
continent are framed in material and symbolic networks that produce
asymmetrical distributions among citizens (Reygadas 2008). These are
heterogeneous dynamics which introduce important differences between
life trajectories, especially in terms of the economic differences produced
by the market, since they become social inequalities of dependence, sub-
jugation, and domination, leading to greater economic differences to the
extreme of the commodification of the person (Tilly 2000; Fitoussi, and
Rosanvallon 2010). There is also a paradox in this market society where
the population is relatively integrated into the market but at the same
time excluded (or transformed into a latent threat), penetrating all social
groups and sectors (Sánchez Pargo 2007, 65, 66). For all these reasons,
in Latin America and the Caribbean, poverty is intense, extensive and
exclusionary, and growth is based on a particularly fragile and weak
regime of accumulation and job creation, which leads (once again) to
accentuate social inequalities (Salama 1999). As Thomas Piketty (2014)
argued, inequality in capitalism should be sought in the gap between the
return on capital and economic growth. The real inequality, he pointed
out, lies in the rentier society and in the weight of inheritance transform-
ing it into a structural phenomenon. This means that inequality is given
by the ownership of capital and the inequality of income from work. The
author then deduces that capitalism has an intrinsic tendency to produce
inequalities that can only be counteracted by external phenomena (wars
or deep crises): “inequality implies that accumulated wealth [...] grows
faster than product and wages [...] the entrepreneur tends to become a
rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their
labor” (516). Inequality, Piketty continues, has several aspects and com-
ponents “first for normative and moral reasons [...] and second because
the economic, social and political mechanisms capable of explaining the
observed evolutions are totally different” (224). The extreme concen-
tration of wealth could transform a democracy into a “plutocracy”, in
which the real decisions are made by a minority of millionaires based
on their interests, which ultimately leads to institutional destabilization.
In Latin America, we can see a region where inequality increases with
the emergence of new productive methods and new forms of economic
4 Pablo A. Baisotti
organization that generate a lot of wealth, but which are confronted
with very traditional local economies with low productivity levels. Coin-
cidentally, the continent’s great fortunes have a racial-ethnic component:
there is a minority of European-origin highly educated people who par-
ticipate in a dynamic sector of the economy, with a majority who do not.
This, in part, explains the structural inequality (Roberti 2020). Social
inequality has become increasingly multidimensional and collective and
tends to converge and overlap in the same classes and spaces. At the same
time, inequalities deepen in the economic living conditions of different
social sectors. However, they also mark processes of residential and spa-
tial segregation in cities, segment the educational system into unequal
school circuits, stratify the health system with widely differentiated ben-
efits and levels, and fracture the styles and spaces of consumption and
entertainment, even the socio-demographic patterns and life expectancy
that differ substantially between sectors (Saraví 2019, 79). For Douglas
Massey (2007), inequality is underpinned by two prior processes: the
assignment of people to different social categories and the institutional-
ization of practices that allocate resources unequally to these categories.
Many of these dimensions operate in a routine and inadvertent manner
in the production and reproduction of inequalities (Lamont et al. 2014;
Saraví 2019, 81).
Reygadas (2008) advocates a transdisciplinary approach to un-
derstand inequalities by analyzing them as a social historical process
plagued by appropriation and expropriation mechanisms. These mech-
anisms include the State, the market and civil society, involving a po-
litical, social and cultural process that legitimize symbolic and power
relations encompassing the relationship between groups, organizations
and countries. This author (2020) affirmed that the attempt at integra-
tion in the continent was insufficient and inequalities are related to gen-
der or social class, although also between old and young. Moreover, the
labor market encourages these inequalities in part. People’s mentality is
another key factor that prevents equality from being achieved, in addi-
tion to structural problems (resources, structures, etc.) that have terri-
torial and educational consequences (Roberti 2020). One of the greatest
challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean is the low public and
private investment in urban infrastructure, which has implications for
economic competitiveness, access to employment, basic services, quality
of life, and environmental protection, among others.
People, Poverty, and Politics

Latin America’s chaotic urbanization went hand in hand with inequali-
ties (income and access to education, health and other public and private
services) with high levels of spatial and urban concentrations (see Aroca
and Atienza 2012, 114; 2013; 2016, 234; Cepal 2012; Ilpes-Cepal 2012;
Introduction 5
Cuadrado-Roura, and González-Catalán 2013). According to Henri
Lefrevre, social space was in danger of being transformed, supplanted,
or even destroyed by a superposition of successive and entangled lay-
ers of networks whose existence went beyond their materiality: roads,
highways, railroads, telephone lines, etc. (Lefebvre 2013, 432). ECLAC’s
global estimate of poverty (available for 1970) indicated that 40% of
Latin American households were poor; this figure dropped to 35% in
1980 (around 40% of the population, given the larger size of poor fam-
ilies), a percentage that was only reached again a quarter of a century
later, in the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The so-
cial costs of the crisis were massive, with the incidence of poverty rising
sharply between 1980 and 1990, from 40.5% to 48.3% of the popula-
tion. This trend was accentuated by the deterioration in income distribu-
tion in several countries, which aggravated the high historical patterns
of inequality that already characterized Latin America and reversed the
progress achieved in the 1970s in several countries. In general, this went
hand in hand with falls in real wages in the formal sector, and a growing
proportion of employment was generated in the urban informal sector.
The rapid pace of progress in quality of life indices that had character-
ized the period of state-led industrialization changed to a much more
moderate rate of progress.
Due to the boom that preceded the great recession of 2008–2009,
poverty levels, which had declined at a very slow pace since 1990, fell
by more than 10% between 2002 and 2008. Only in 2004 was poverty
reduced to below 1980 levels. Moreover, the absolute number of poor
people remained at around 200 million during the 1990s, before falling
by 40 million at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The distribu-
tion of poor people also underwent important changes over these de-
cades. Although the incidence of poverty and indigence remained much
higher in rural areas, in absolute numbers, there was a trend towards the
urbanization of poverty.
The labor market was unable to fully absorb the growing urban hu-
man capital, even in a context in which the demographic transition and
the export of labor through international migration reduced the pres-
sure on Latin American labor markets. The most pronounced decreases
in the unemployment rate occurred in Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay,
Uruguay, Venezuela, and Panama, countries that in previous periods
had recorded higher rates of unemployment. An important reason for
this pattern was the boom in commodity prices, which came to a halt
with the 2008 recession. Indeed, in this period the unemployment rate
and labor informality remained above 1990 levels (Bértola and Ocampo
2010).
One issue is to recognize that historical inequalities always existed
from multiple approaches: economic, political, ethnic, cultural, gender,
etc. (Harvey 2014, 73); another issue is to accept as historically inevitable
6 Pablo A. Baisotti
and necessary the submission, domination and exploitation of one group
(or men) by others. The work of Amartya Sen (1999) studied a trend that
tried to combine solidarity and egalitarian altruism with the reduction of
inequalities or a combination of efficiency, distributionism and egalitar-
ianism with solidarity (Fleurbaey 2007; Chauvel 2006; Gamel 2012). At
the beginning of the twenty-first century, progressive governments used
revenues from the export of minerals, agro-industrial products, natural
gas and oil to finance specific social policies for poor strata, increase and
maintain employment rates (albeit typically in insecure and poorly paid
jobs), and expand domestic consumption. There were improvements in
the living conditions of the popular sectors of society, although the re-
gion continues to be the most unequal in the world. As growth faltered,
the proportion of the region’s poor population increased by about 84
million between 1980 and 2002 (Webber 2019, 99, 106). Pierre Salama
(2015, 86) considered that, in Latin America, inequalities were lower
in the twenty-first century in terms of racial issues. For example, he
pointed out that in Brazil, affirmative action policies were implemented
to facilitate the entry of a greater number of young people of color to
universities, while in some Andean countries, a process of citizenship
had been launched in favor of indigenous people (mainly in Bolivia and
Ecuador). However, the COVID-19 pandemic produced a generalized
crisis that made existing social shortcomings even more visible.
Charles Ragin stated that in those countries with greater income in-
equality, there was greater political turbulence (2007, 72). The state,
in addition to its functions of capital accumulation and coercion, was
added the inclusive responsibility of diverse social groups as the condi-
tion of citizenship expanded “with respect to the activities of the govern-
ment and its personnel, and protects citizens against arbitrary actions of
government agents” (McAdam et al. 2001, 295; Guzmán et al. 2017).
According to Gerhard Lenski (1969), inequality is inevitably a political
issue and is linked to the analysis of inequality of gender, ethnicity and
other social groups.
Around 2010, the growing income inequalities in urban areas, espe-
cially in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador and the Dominican Repub-
lic were alarming. This was also frightening in Chile and Colombia in
particular, as their cities have the largest income inequalities (Parnreiter;
Prado, and Kiss 2017, 73, 74). These existing gaps translated into large
differences in access to better jobs, wages and social protection, educa-
tional and recreational opportunities, and decent housing (Cepal 2016b;
Segovia, and Nieves Rico 2017, 49). The massive urbanization process
pushed many citizens to live in informal neighborhoods with substan-
dard housing and urban services, as cities were unable to meet their basic
needs. By 2015, around 100 million people in Latin America were living
poorly in this situation (Jaitman 2015, 50). Many large Latin Ameri-
can cities such as Buenos Aires, Caracas, Mexico, Santiago, Sao Paulo,
Introduction 7
and Rio de Janeiro went from having a mainly European reference of
city, compact and homogeneous, to one of an extended, discontinuous,
socially and spatially fragmented city where wealth and poverty, back-
wardness and modernity coexisted in the same place (Ciccolella 1998,
5; Cuervo 2003, 20, 21). On the other hand, in 2016, an ECLAC report
adopted the goals of the 2030 Agenda including high priority issues for
Latin America and the Caribbean. Some priorities are the reduction of
inequality in all its dimensions, inclusive economic growth with decent
work for all, sustainable cities, and the vital issue of climate change,
among others.
Inequalities and Migration

The rapid process of rural-urban migration reflects a labor surplus. The
exception was the Southern Cone countries, which had already achieved
very high levels of urbanization and formalization of employment. These
labor surpluses also had important consequences for international mi-
gration. Although a few countries continued to attract European
migrants – notably Venezuela during its prolonged oil boom – the old
international migration flows lost dynamism after World War II. The
share of Latin American residents born outside the region experienced
a long-term decline since the 1960s. At the same time, intraregional mi-
gration increased, with Argentina and Venezuela as the main poles of
attraction, especially for the inhabitants of neighboring countries. More
importantly, emigration to industrialized countries began. Between
1970 and 1980, the total number of Latin American and Caribbean em-
igrants registered in the United States increased from 1.6 to 3.8 million
(Bértola, and Ocampo 2010, 209). In 1990, population growth rates
(PGRs) continued to differ from country to country. In Central America,
the PDRs were high and still showed a growth trend. In Bolivia, Brazil
and Paraguay they were still very high; in Ecuador and Peru they had
timidly begun to decline. In Argentina, Uruguay and Cuba they had
reached the demographic transition; in Mexico, Costa Rica and Venezu-
ela they were moderate after having declined since the third quarter of
the century. Haiti was still in full demographic growth; Chile, Colombia
and the Dominican Republic still showed high rates.
Population growth posed serious problems in the mid to late twen-
tieth century. In general terms, education levels (strong growth has led
to a marked rejuvenation of the population pyramid) have decreased,
health care has deteriorated, GDP per capita has declined, unemploy-
ment has risen, income distribution has continued to worsen, the ratio of
active-formal/passive-informal population has become unbalanced, and
economic competitiveness and profitability have declined (less skilled
labor force). Productive growth has not been able to accommodate de-
mographic growth, and the decline in consumption has hindered the
8 Pablo A. Baisotti
extension of domestic markets. Moreover, the acceleration of metropo-
lization processes has ended up generating major challenges for the
respective governments (construction of housing, services, electricity,
water, food, etc.), causing a clear deterioration in local living conditions
(increased citizen insecurity) and even generating international tensions
(the gap between developed and developing countries) (Pérez Herrero
2001, 335, 336).
When inequality constitutes an internal division of the same society,
it entails a rupture of the “social contract” that founded and reproduces
society, and introduces internal domination, a system of dependencies
and submissions, and consequently struggles and conflicts, which desta-
bilize the governability of society and threaten it with growing totali-
tarianism (Sánchez Pargo 2007, 50, 52, 60). According to the theory of
justice elaborated by Rawls (1971, second principle), social and economic
inequalities can be accepted as long as they produce benefits for the most
disadvantaged people in society. Sen (1999), on the other hand, affirmed
that the need to satisfy vital or more complex needs must be provided in
a public environment that facilitates economic, political and social well-
being (Reygadas 2020, 48–57). According to Martin Ravallion (2001,
1808) in countries where inequality increases with average per capita
GDP growth poverty is reduced at a much slower pace than in countries
with more equitable forms of growth. This author (2007) argued that
75% of the developing world’s poor lived in rural areas, although the
urban poor were increasing rapidly. Between 1993 and 2002, 50 million
people in urban areas were added to the population subsisting on less
than USD 1 per day, but the aggregate number of poor fell by about 100
million as the number of rural poor fell by 150 million (15, 16).
Zygmunt Bauman noted that the urban territory became the battle-
field of a continuous war for space where the powerless inhabitants of
the “separated” areas, increasingly marginalized and reduced, tried to
install new borders in their ghettoized territories (1998, 20). Similarly,
Ash Amin Ash asserted that juxtaposed differences in spatial proxim-
ity generated political challenges; for example: between the business
community and the urban poor, or the competing demands of different
classes, social and ethnic groups for the city’s cultural resources (2002,
397). The major challenges for Latin American cities are the fight against
poverty, crime and unemployment. The growing role played by the ur-
ban informal sector evolved, fostered by: the reorganization of medium
and large size firms that were downsized and restructured to more inten-
sively use the services of subcontractors; survival strategies that led more
members of a single family to seek employment; and the retrenchment
of the public sector that eliminated jobs. The new forms of employment
led to more precariousness due to the absence of contracts, regulations
and health protection, affecting more women than men. Young people
also suffered the consequences of the adjustment: data from 12 Latin
Introduction 9
American countries indicate that youth unemployment rates were al-
most double those of the general population (Thorp 1998, 237, 238).
According to ECLAC in 2018, in six Latin American countries, 10%
or more of the population still lives in extreme poverty, while in three
of them the figure is 20% or more. This represents an estimated total
of 168 million people at the regional level (Cota Yañez 2001, 8; Cepal
2018, 27, 41).1 COVID-19 can also be considered a pandemic of in-
equality; its arrival causing profound damage to the living conditions of
millions of people with highly precarious livelihoods and high poverty
in Latin America and the Caribbean. According to the latest ECLAC
data, some 186 million Latin Americans and Caribbeans live below the
poverty line, and 67.5 million are indigent. These figures could increase
significantly due to negative economic growth and rising unemployment
(Bárcena March 31, 2020). In Latin America and the Caribbean, there
are at least 140 million people working informally, which represents
about 50% of the labor force. According to a recent report by the In-
ternational Labor Organization (ILO), the pandemic will cause the loss
of 5.7% of working hours in Latin America and the Caribbean in the
second quarter of this year, which is equivalent to 14 million full-time
workers (OIT April 8, 2020).
Jones et al. (2012) identified issues that leaders must prioritize the
intrinsic value of equity and the relationships between equity and other
economic, political, or social objectives. Otherwise, inequity translates
into poor institutional quality, mistrust, violence and conflict (See also
Easterly 2007; Bird 2009; Pérez Sáinz 2020; Reygadas 2020, 49, 51, 52).
Aníbal Quijano (2014) analyzed social inequality by highlighting the
effects of colonialism and the coloniality of power that subsists even in
independent countries. The idea of race organizes social classification,
labor, and its resources to concentrate capital. The coloniality of power
acts in subjectivities and in everyday relationships and behaviors (71).
For this author, modern colonial capitalism articulates labor, authority
and its instruments of coercion in particular, since the state, which al-
lows to ensure the reproduction of that pattern of social relations and
regulate its changes. Michèle Lamont (1992, 2014) analyzed the charac-
terization of such differentiation processes by establishing the concept of
symbolic or real boundaries, while Boltanski and Thévenot (1983) em-
phasized that people are trained to recognize and manipulate the social
identity of actors as a consequence of the socialization process. Charles
Tilly relied on the study of the functioning of relational models of social
life that are initiated by interpersonal transactions or ties. In his book
Persistent Inequality (2000), he delved into social structures as a prod-
uct of the transactional actions and interactions of individuals, where
inequity was constructed within and through them and were framed in
inequity. This generates mechanisms such as exploitation, monopoliza-
tion of opportunities, emulation, and adaptation that cause permanent
10 Pablo A. Baisotti
advantages for certain people and limit or exclude others. Tilly consid-
ered that the problem of inequalities is a social phenomenon, and while
a functional solution is promoted, it is the starting point for a new sys-
tematic tension, and so on. For Tilly, it is necessary to modify the way
society is organized, to question the interactions, the naturalization and
institutionalization of persistent inequalities (see Sánchez Pargo 2007).
Religion
At the end of the nineteenth century, the Church did not have a great
influence in the socio-political and cultural life of Argentina, Peru or
Mexico, in confrontation with their governments. In Colombia, the
Church still retained the prestige inherited from colonial times (Dussel
1986, 104, 106; 1990). In 1905, in Uruguay, the separation between
Church and State was established, initiating a process of secularization,
and a similar situation happened in Mexico in 1910 at the time of the
Mexican Revolution. In Argentina, the confrontation took place in the
field of education, when the ruling elite implemented a system of public
and secular education. Although Latin America was tending towards
a secular state, in several countries of the region during the 1920s and
1930s, the Catholic Church regained certain spaces of power through
the reinsertion of Catholic education and the formation of new politi-
cal leaders. In Argentina, Catholicism retained an important place, but
without regaining the status of official religion, although many hierar-
chies supported the military coup of 1930. The situation was similar in
Colombia, where Protestant groups were prohibited from proselytizing
in indigenous communities by means of a legal agreement between the
State and the Holy See. In Chile, in 1925, the Catholic Church was offi-
cially separated from the State, but retained a strong political and social
influence; in Brazil and Cuba, the acceptance of “syncretic” forms was
common, which combined Catholic practices with values and beliefs of
pre-colonial origin and African cults introduced with the importation of
slaves (Gutiérrez).
During the 1940s and 1950s, a diversification of the religious field be-
gan among the popular sectors, driven by the growth of Pentecostalism,
associated with the processes of modernization (industrialization, urban-
ization) that many Latin American societies underwent (Bahamondes
González 2012, 113). The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of
Marxist-inspired parties and a renewed dynamism of Protestants, espe-
cially Pentecostals. Christian Democratic parties also appeared, which
achieved great importance in Chile and El Salvador, among other coun-
tries. The Cuban revolution in 1959 posed a new challenge to the institu-
tional Churches that tried to undermine the revolutionary project.
After the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the Catholic Church
regained popular legitimacy. During that decade, important segments of
Introduction 11
Catholicism underwent a profound process of politicization. A certain de-
centralization in decision-making was promoted, supporting ecumenism,
the recognition of pluralistic societies where secularism and leftist ide-
ologies existed. In this framework, an initial “Marxist-Christian” dia-
logue took place, which was seen either as a dangerous rapprochement
or as a religious renewal that became “popular” and embraced all the
faithful. In the Latin American case, there was a distancing of the most
conservative layers of the population and the episcopate from the rest of
the poor people and the “progressive” episcopate (Richard 1978, 41).
This happened – as pointed out by the theologian Otto Maduro – due
to the mutual cooperation of the different conservative segments for the
production of a religious discourse alien to the fundamental conflicts of
a class society, denying, for example, the existence and importance of
the social division between the dominated and the dominators (Maduro
1979, 437, 438). These were years of great turbulence for the continent:
from the National Security dictatorships and the guerrilla to the theory
of dependency, which considered that underdevelopment and capitalism
had been generated by the same historical process (Frank 1963; Faleto,
and Cardoso 1969).
The democratic transitions since the 1980s found the Catholic
Churches in different positions. In Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, they
occupied a discreet political role, unlike in Brazil, where they were more
active in the political and social sphere, as they opened up to include is-
sues such as ethnicity and the contribution of Afro-indigenous religions
(Gutiérrez). In general, the Latin American theological environment be-
gan a coexistence and collaboration between Catholics and Evangelicals
(Barros 2011). The 1979 encyclical of Pope John Paul II, Redemptor
Hominis, recognized that the spirit of God was at work in all religious
communities, and that ecumenical activity meant “openness, rapproche-
ment, readiness to dialogue, a common search for truth in the full evan-
gelical and Christian sense”. He stated that one of the main tasks of the
ecumenical commissions was to promote unity “by presenting to the
Catholic people the objectives of ecumenism” as part of their baptismal
call (Speech John Paul II 1979).
It was in this decade that Liberation Theology suffered attacks from
the conservatism of the Catholic Church – and the Protestant Church,
in the case of the Caribbean (Soares 2008, 481–483) – as well as from
military governments and even the government of the United States,
which in 1980 published the Santa Fe Document, considering Libera-
tion Theology as a threat to U.S. security. In 1984, the Sacred Congre-
gation for the Doctrine of the Faith – under the direction of Cardinal
Joshep Ratzinger2 – issued an instruction on some aspects of Liberation
Theology (Libertatis Nuntius) warning of deviations and dangerous ap-
proaches to Marxism, to conclude by defining it as a mixture of Bible,
Christology, politics, sociology, and economics. The Argentine Episcopal
Conference in November of the same year issued a statement on Liber-
ation Theology, highlighting the use of a Marxist analysis that revolved
around the concepts of “class” and “poor”, understood as “proletarian
class”. It was pointed out that there were elements of Marxism that had
been transposed to Catholic theology. However, from 1986 onwards,
a phase of vindication of Liberation Theology began, when the Sacred
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published another Instruc-
tion (Libertatis Conscientia) with a propositional character (Declaración
sobre Teología de la Liberación 1984).
In the 1990s, the Latin American religious panorama was crossed
by diverse actors, from traditional Catholics, supporters of Liberation
Theology and charismatics, to Protestants (Presbyterians, Menno-
nites, Episcopalians, Methodists and Lutherans), and Pentecostals and
Neo-Pentecostals (Gutiérrez). The 1990 encyclical, Redemptoris Missio,
initiated an openness to religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue
as part of the Church’s evangelizing mission founded “on hope and char-
ity, [...] Other religions constitute a positive challenge for the Church
today [...] they stimulate [...] to deepen one’s own identity”.
In 1992, the first continental meeting of the Assembly of the People
of God in Latin America was held, where the term “macro-ecumenism”
was coined, proposing a new ecumenism that would go beyond the unity
among the official Christian Churches and would be an intercultural
encounter among religions. At the same time, “inculturation” should
be overcome as a missionary strategy for the insertion of the Church
in indigenous and black communities, and called on the Churches to
recognize the cultural and religious rights of these populations (Bar-
ros 2011). The Latin American Episcopal Conference called for a new
evangelization in a globalized world marked by a fragmented religious
plurality “but also by the encounter and rapprochement between the
great religious traditions”. Interreligious and ecumenical dialogue was
“absolutely necessary for a new ‘governance’ of globalization and for
the establishment of a framework of ethical values of broad worldwide
recognition” (Celam 2003). Clodovis Boff and Hugo Assman supported
this affirmation, considering that neoliberalism was located at the antip-
odes of social discourse, and that it produced those excluded from the
social system: “discarded” people dragged to hunger and bad life, which
inevitably led to social breakdown (Assman 1997; Boff 1997).
In tune with this, the theologian Jon Sobrino said that the encounter
of the Church with the suffering converted the former, because pov-
erty was the formal negation and deprivation of the minimum to which
humanity aspired and on which all history revolved. It was the formal
annulment of fraternity, and dehumanized the world (Sobrino 1992, 40,
41, 52, 53). Years later, Sobrino affirmed that theology should place the
question of poverty and the poor at the center; otherwise, it would lose
its Christian identity and its historical relevance (Sobrino 2001, 154).
Introduction 13
John Paul II also denounced the multiple violations of human dignity. In
the Apostolic Exhortation Christifidelis Laici, he maintained that “the
human being is exposed to the most humiliating and aberrant forms of
‘instrumentalization’, which miserably turn him into a slave of the stron-
gest”. For the Pope, the strongest would be an ideology, an economic
power, a political system, scientific technocracy, etc.
In recent decades, new religious movements have flourished in Latin
America, and others that, after decades of existence in a marginal place
on the religious spectrum, have been strengthened. There have also been
renewal movements within the traditional religions themselves, as well
as the expansion, for example, of Pentecostalism, Afro-American and
indigenous cults, and others linked to the New Age movement. It must
be considered that “popular” religion, the one that lived and felt by the
people, played a vital role in these changes (Frigerio 1995, 38, 39). At
the end of the twentieth century, Christianity maintained its hegemony
in the continent, but lost its monopoly. Along with this religion, Prot-
estantism, Orthodoxy and Anglicanism began to stand out, as well as
more recent groups such as the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the
“independent churches”, mostly represented by non-white indigenous
Churches. The phenomenon of dual affiliation began to occur frequently,
with many people belonging to more than one religion (Damen 2003,
22, 23). Likewise, in several countries (Nicaragua, Venezuela, Brazil,
Guatemala, and Peru, among others) experiences of political parties of
evangelical inspiration were born, especially Baptists and Pentecostals.
In this way, the Catholic Church and Protestant groups developed a re-
markable strategy to occupy “empty spaces” in urban communities, as
a result of the deep crisis of participation in political organizations. In
addition to all this effort, the churches tried to mediate in conflicts: the
demilitarization of the FARC in Colombia, the social conflicts in El Sal-
vador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others (Gutiérrez).
With the globalization process experienced in the last years of the
twentieth century, the Catholic Church deepened its involvement in
issues of ecology, human rights and indigenous peoples. Protestants
(Assembly of God, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other groups) continued to
increase their presence in Brazil and Central America. In Cuba, the di-
alogues of the Catholic hierarchy with the political regime were crossed
by the ups and downs of the revolutionary process on the one hand,
and the strategies of the Church on the other. In the case of the Carib-
bean, religiosity was to a large extent syncretic, with the following be-
ing noteworthy: voodoo in Haiti, candomblé, macumba and umbanda
in Brazil; santería, el palo or witchcraft rule and abakuá in Cuba; los
shangós of Trinidad and Tobago, and many others. Spiritism was widely
spread in Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and in almost
all the Caribbean among the popular sectors (Gutiérrez). In Aparecida
(Brazil) 2007, the V Conference of the Latin American Episcopate was
held, followed by greater fidelity in the line of Medellin and Puebla, as
highlighted in the final document, edited by Jorge Bergoglio, the current
Pope Francis. Themes such as the poor and the marginalized were taken
up again, and others emerged, such as care for the environment.
As for indigenous peoples, some countries (Guatemala, Haiti, Nica-
ragua, Panama, Paraguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador) constitutionally
recognized their existence and established protection for their beliefs.
According to the 2018 Religious Freedom report (https://religious-
freedom-report.org/es/home-es/), 26 preambles of the 33 constitutions
of Latin American countries invoke God or an Almighty, his name and
his protection before enacting the Fundamental Charter (Eyzaguirre
Gálvez 2019). In Latin America in general there is a peaceful coexistence
between the worldviews of indigenous peoples – mainly Christian be-
liefs – and those of African origin, as well as with the religions of Islam
and Judaism (Eyzaguirre Gálvez 2019).
Between October 2013 and February 2014, research was conducted
in 18 Latin American countries on religious affiliation, beliefs and prac-
tices. This survey was part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Fu-
tures project, and its results were revealing. The percentage of Catholics
went from 90 in the 1960s to 69 in 2014; Protestants at the latter date
stood at 19% (mostly identified with Pentecostalism). These had gone
from about 128,000 in 1916, to 30–40 million in the 1990s. Jean-Pierre
Bastian postulated that the proliferation of non-Catholic religious move-
ments can express both the disenchantment of the masses with a Catholic
Church incapable of reform, and a way of organizing religious networks
of religious counter-power. In this sense, the dynamics of religious com-
petition may appear as a struggle for the legitimate domination of sym-
bolic capital (Bastian 1997, 96; Bahamondes González 2012).
In addition to these numbers, 8% reported no religious affiliation
(atheist, agnostic, or no particular religion). Approximately one in
ten adults or more in Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador,
and Chile claimed to have no particular religion. According to Imelda
Vega-Centeno (1995), the activity of a large percentage of believers
ceased to be ecclesiastical, as they lost interest in official churches.
Finally, the survey revealed that only 4% included Jehovah’s Wit-
nesses, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Spiritualists, and adherents
of African-American religions (Umbanda, Santeria, etc.) (Pastorino
2014). Subsequently, another similar research called Transformations
of religiosity was carried out by Boston College, the Catholic Univer-
sity of Córdoba (Argentina), the University of Montevideo, the Pon-
tifical University of Lima, the University of Bilbao, and the University
of Rome III. The results are riveting: Catholicism has decreased since
1980 by about 15%, with a part of this percentage shifting to Pente-
costalism and another to “unaffiliated” believers. The most important
current phenomenon is that of secularization, the change of a once
Introduction 15
overwhelmingly Christian society into a profane and pluralistic one.
The final report highlighted that the use of the web, social networks,
and cell phones are new resources for praying, meditating, receiving
spiritual advice, or participating in celebrations, demonstrating that
religion is no longer limited to a specific space (Dussel 1992, 65, 68;
Origlia July 15, 2018). There was, then, the rise of an ideology that led
to what was called “the privatization of religion”, where faith was rel-
egated and even expelled from the public sphere, in favor of a worldly
materialism (O’Neil 2010 67, 68). As Pablo Semán (1997, 130) pointed
out, the pluralization of religious phenomena in Latin America was an
incontrovertible fact, ranging from the new Catholic currents to indig-
enous and Afro-American religions to other expressions such as Prot-
estantism and mystical and esoteric practices belonging to the New
Age movement. Bauman argued that this was partly due to the growing
individualism of the population that came hand in hand with moder-
nity, which led to a loss of faith in religious dogmas. He asserted that
this could be repaired by resurrecting a religious creed or idea that,
although secular, could embrace those great religions that in the past
had enjoyed almost absolute dominion (Bauman 2005, xiii).
Organization of the Book

The volume is divided into three sections. The first one, Social, pres-
ents some cultural, demographic, and urban changes that have occurred
with increasing frequency in Latin America since the beginning of the
twentieth century. The second section, Political, shows migratory, po-
litical, and identity movements that in recent decades have re-emerged
with force. Finally, the third section, Religious, analyzes various Latin
American religious visions with their particular characteristics. From
the religious hegemony of Catholicism, a change in the religious pan-
orama in the last decades can be seen intermingled with politics, history,
and society.
Social
In Chapter 1, From Rural Villages to Large Metropolises, Emilio Pra-
dilla Cobos and Lisett Márquez López describe demographic and territo-
rial changes as a result of an accelerated process of urbanization, which
occurred mainly in the twentieth century, although it continued into
the twenty-first century. Latin American economic, social, and urban
development has been uneven between countries and internal regions.
The analysis of the chapter highlights the general features verifiable in
the economic-social formations, derived from the historical conditions
and societal structures common to all and does not eliminate national
and/or regional particularities.
In Chapter 2, Youth and Mobilizations in Latin America7, Pablo
Vommaro addresses the main characteristics of the youth mobilization
and organization processes of the last twenty years in Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, and Mexico. The guiding hypothesis of this text is that the
most important features delineating the generational configurations of
politics in the region are expressed there, and considering the manners
of youth participation is essential to understand the characteristics, dy-
namics, and meanings of this process.
In Chapter 3, Between Past and Future, Michele Tollis examines
the emergence of the new mental and imaginary universe that emerges
through the literature of Cuban writers who emigrated during the Cas-
tro period, either to the United States, or to Europe. Tollis first recalls
the Cuban tradition of exile and literature since the nineteenth century
and the conditions of the Writer in the Cuban Revolution, which were
at the origin of several waves of emigration. The chapter then offers an
analysis of this refoundation of identity which finally gives rise to dif-
ferent discourses between memories, avoidance strategies and the use of
parody, humor, or wordplay, which highlight the power of imagination
in the formation of a new culture situated between nostalgia for the past
and the prospect of a promising future.
In Chapter 4, Revolution as an Inherent Part, Katarzyna Dembicz
researches the changes in Cuban society from the Polish perspective,
taking into account the experiences and the scientific contribution in this
regard. The author takes into account that the term “revolution” con-
tains a diversity of meanings and interpretations. One of them explains
this phenomenon as a drastic change that entails the transformation in
the political, institutional and social structures of a given society and
State.
In Chapter 5, Recent Trends in Higher Education, Pablo Baisotti and
José A. Pineda-Alfonso describe the development of higher education in
Peru, Mexico and Spain. In the past decades, there has been a tendency,
hand in hand with the Bologna plan, towards the strengthening and
improvement of the quality of university institutions, although this has
not been accompanied by an improvement in equity and the insertion of
the neediest social sectors. The market-centered dynamic has led to the
diversification and privatization of the university system in line with the
neoliberal discourse of internationalization and quality, which underlies
“managerialism”, i.e., the business management of education. It should
be noted that in Latin America, in recent decades, there have been con-
stitutional reforms, legislative innovations and public policies aimed at
giving greater importance to education at all levels. In the case of Spain,
the effort made in the training of university teachers stands out, since
research has shown that they are the key factor in the improvement of
university teaching and in the training of future teachers at other edu-
cational levels.
Introduction 17
Political
In Chapter 6, Constructions in Latin America, Jussi Pakkasvirta pro-
vides a framework exposing the colonialism’s legacy as an essential ele-
ment for the American continent’s structural transformation. Most Latin
American countries drew a peripheral raffle in the ruthless game of im-
perialism and colonialism. From the “continentalist” point of view, the
colonial era’s importance consisted of the fact that, because of Iberian
centralism, all the disparate Latin American regions were incorporated
into a network of functionally interrelated units.
In Chapter 7, Migration and Border Control Policies, Eduardo Do-
menech and Andrés Pereira adopt a regional perspective to account for
the development and transformations of migration and border control in
South America. In this sense, the intention is to show that migration and
border control policies and practices exceed the national framework.
They form part of a network of institutional schemes and strategies,
intergovernmental spaces, relations, and networks of actors whose daily
deployments connect the national, regional, and international scales.
In Chapter 8, Immigration Process in Brazil (1822–1945), Maria
Medianeira Padoin and João Vitor Sausen provide an overview of Brazil’s
immigration and migration process, highlighting the same process in
some countries of the so-called Southern Cone or “Platinean America”,
in addition to Brazil (especially the south), Argentina, Uruguay and
Paraguay.
In Chapter 9, Indigenous Movements in South America, Menno
Oostra demonstrates that five centuries after the “Discovery of Amer-
ica” and subsequent integration into the emerging world system, soci-
ety is divided between the original inhabitants and “national” societies
with profound cleavages in each and every country of the New World
mainland.
In Chapter 10, Cultural Platforms in the Southern Cone, Sofía Mer-
cader and Lucas Domínguez Rubio analyse the changes in culture and
academic institutions in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay during the dicta-
torial and post dictatorial years. Although the transitions to democracy
took on different forms in each country, the return to the rule of law
was generally accompanied by a cultural and institutional opening, a
reconfiguration of the cultural field and academic institutions, and the
broadening of the public sphere.
Religious
In Chapter 11, New Outlook on Latin American Freemasonry, Rogelio
Aragón, Guillermo de los Reyes, and Felipe Côrte Real de Camargo
demonstrate that Freemasonry has had an undeniable impact in the for-
mation and development of Latin America during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries in aspects such as parliamentary democracy, laicity,
and rationalism, which were put forward or reinforced by the freema-
sons. Through these aspects, the authors show the importance of Free-
masonry in Mexico, Brazil, and Cuba.
In Chapter 12, Antisemitism in Latin America, Rogelio Aragón proves
that antisemitism has been present in Latin America since the time of the
Spanish rule, but has morphed from an idea based on anti-Judaism into
a more “scientific” approach to the “Jewish question”, supposedly based
on historical facts and evidence, propagated by many authors since the
late nineteenth century and by a growing number of social media users
in the twenty-first century.
In Chapter 13, Catholic Church and Cover of Human Rights, Stephan
Ruderer draws the reaction of Catholic Church in Argentina and Chile
considering the efforts of both churches to protect human rights and
help the victims. The article also analyzes the differences in the reaction
of both churches and underlines the reasons for these differences, trying
to show that a comparison between the two churches could give some
interesting insight about the reaction of the Catholic Church to gross
violations of human rights.
In Chapter 14, A bestowal from Argentina to Latin America, Omar
César Albado presents some of the topics developed by Argentinian
theologian Rafael Tello. Though relatively unknown in the academic
world, he exerted a notable influence on Argentina’s pastoral action be-
tween the 1960s and the 1990s, with proposals characterized by their
originality and their perception of the signs of the times.
In Chapter 15, Buddhism in Latin America, Rafael Shoji and Frank
Usarski study the institutional relevance of Buddhism in the entire re-
gion as a basis for comparison both between different Latin American
countries and between Buddhism in Latin American and other parts of
the Western world.
Notes
1 Dicha desigualdad es heterogénea entre los países de la región: Chile, Méx-
ico y Venezuela, tuvieron mejoras en el coeficiente de gini, aunque muy
modestas en los últimos tiempos; mientras que Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salva-
dor, Perú, República Dominicana y Uruguay mostraron avances significati-
vos. En contraste, en Costa Rica, Nicaragua y Paraguay donde se registraron
retrocesos.
2 From 1981 to 2005 then Pope Benedict XVI, 2005–2013.
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Section I
Social
1 From Rural Villages to
Large Metropolises in Latin
America (1880–2020)
Emilio Pradilla Cobos and
Lisett Márquez López
Introduction
At the beginning of the twentieth century, when industrial capitalism and
the concomitant urban growth had already been consolidated in Europe,
Latin America was an eminently rural region, both demographically and
economically. Although it had obtained independence from the Iberian
colonial empires, it was politically dominated by the mercantile cities in-
herited from the Spanish colony in which the latifundia and commercial
oligarchy imposed their power (Singer [1973] 1975, 128–130). At that
time (1900), the rate of urbanization1 in Latin America was 20%; in
contrast, that of Europe, the most urbanized continent, was 30%, and
the global rate was only 16% (Deler 2008, 55). Only three of the 50 larg-
est cities in the world were in Latin America: Mexico City with 541,516
inhabitants (1900), Rio de Janeiro with 811,443 inhabitants (1900), and
Buenos Aires with 950,891 inhabitants (1904), then capitals of the larg-
est nations in the area: Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, respectively.
In 2019, 120 years later, the urbanization rate reached 81.5% (ECLAC
2019b, table 1.1., 1); eight of the 50 largest cities in the world were Latin
American: Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Lima,
Bogota, Caracas, and Santiago de Chile. In 2010, the population of the
four largest cities in the early twentieth century had increased to 20.117
million in Mexico City, 19.664 million in Sao Paulo, 13.588 million in
Buenos Aires and 11.836 million in Rio de Janeiro; the other four cities
housed in excess of 6 million inhabitants each. This substantial change
in the demographic dimension, and consequently in the physical dimen-
sion, has been the result of an accelerated process of urbanization, which
occurred fundamentally in the twentieth century; however, it continued
into the twenty-first century, whose economic and social determinations
we will try to outline in the following pages.
It is necessary, however, to make a preliminary clarification: Latin
American economic and social development has been an unequal process
between countries and between internal regions of each, so the analysis
will be carried out by highlighting the most general features that can
be observed in the region, derived from the historical conditions and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-3
28 Emilio Pradilla Cobos and Lisett Márquez López
societal structures common to all of them, which does not eliminate, in
any way, national and/or regional particularities (Márquez, and Pradilla
2018). Likewise, on this scale, we will highlight the notorious inequali-
ties that have arisen between what has happened in Latin America and
the so-called “European model” of industrialization and urbanization as
well as the structural particularities of our historical process.
Late and Truncated Industrial and

Agricultural Development
At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries,
the main countries of the region, formed as independent nation-states
in the first half of the century, had found the primary products, agri-
cultural or mining, for export to the world market (Singer [1973] 1975,
127, 128). This generated the foreign exchange needed to support the
import of manufactured consumer goods from Europe and the United
States, which fed urban trade for the high-income sectors, completing
the mercantile pattern of capital accumulation, primary exporter and
secondary importer.
This agricultural or mining production was carried out through
pre-capitalist forms of production, exacerbated by the export boom.
One form was semi-servile through the acute exploitation and oppres-
sion of the peonage that was castled and parked in the large latifundia
haciendas, nourished to a great extent by the indigenous population in
the regions where it was abundant. Another was slavery, now in clear
decline or in disguise, especially in mining. Finally, the minifundia, or
small property, that produced basically for peasant subsistence and those
who worked for the large landowners. In both mining and agriculture,
foreign capital, especially American capital, was present in large enclave
exploitations, the paradigmatic examples of which were the banana re-
publics of Central America and the Caribbean, and the mines in Chile
and Bolivia, closely allied with the ruling and politically dominant civil
or military oligarchy (Cueva [1977] 2009; Kalmanóvitz 1983, chap. II).
The coincidence of this Latin American mercantile growth with the
long depressive wave of the European economy between 1873 and 1893
(Mandel [1980] 1986, 95) drove two correlated processes. First was the
arrival of idle European and North American capital – overaccumulated
and not valorizable in their places of origin – towards the construction
of railroads, 2 the navigation to fluvial steam,3 or coastal cabotage and
other scopes of capital accumulation in Latin America, like agriculture
or export mining. This happened especially in larger countries, which
promoted the expansion of the agrarian frontier and territorial integra-
tion, as well as the foundation of countless towns on the railways and
large waterways – stations or ports – many of which served above all to
move primary goods for export, and manufactured and imported goods.
From Rural Villages to Large Metropolises 29
Second was the massive migration of unemployed and impoverished Eu-
ropean workers to Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela and
other countries4 in search of employment, with well-known educational
levels, labour qualifications and trade union tradition, which would play
a significant role in the workers’ struggles of the early twentieth century
(Hardoy 1972, 89; Sánchez 1973, chap. 5; Deler 2008; Pradilla 2009,
31–33).
This period, as well as the first two decades of the twentieth century,
also saw the beginning of a basic industrialization in Argentina, Uru-
guay, Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Peru, carried out mainly by foreign cap-
ital or the local commercial oligarchy (Kalmanóvitz 1983; Cueva [1977]
2009; Meisel 2009, 120–126). The expansion of import-export trade
and primary industrialization led, as we will see later, to the overflow of
the colonial boundaries of the capitals and ports (Romero 1976, 119 ff.)
being frozen for a long time.
This momentum of capitalist economic development was slowed
down by the long world crisis that followed. In the case of Mexico, the
slowdown was caused by the great democratic revolution that began in
1910, putting an end to the liberal oligarchic dictatorship of General
Porfirio Diaz and the expansion of large agrarian properties on the basis
of violent dispossession of the lands of peasants in the north, and the
communal properties of indigenous people in the south (Gilly [1971]
2008). The period of 1914–1945 was one of military conflict, social
crisis, economic recession, and territorial losses for world capitalism. It
saw the two world wars between imperialist powers that resulted in the
enormous destruction of human and material productive forces: the tri-
umph of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the emergence of
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) at the end of the former;
the establishment of socialism in the countries of Eastern Europe at the
end of the latter; and the Great Economic Depression of 1929–1930.
These events, disastrous for capitalism, marked a clear retreat from the
ongoing globalization of capital, and a severe crisis of workers’ repro-
duction in the European countries in conflict, invaded in the second war
(Pradilla 2009: chapter VIII).
During the First World War (1914–1919), the Great Depression
(1929–1931) and the Second World War (1939–1945), Latin American
export and import trade had its interests affected by the closure of the
European and North American markets for primary products, as well as
the provision of capital goods for industrialization and consumer man-
ufactures, which meant the paralysis of the money accumulation of the
latifundia and regional traders, leading to deep economic recessions, al-
though gross domestic product (GDP) growth was positive in the inter-
mediate periods.
After the Second World War, driven by the political and social changes
that took place, 5 the region resumed its process of industrialization by
Graph 1.1 Latin America: annual growth rate of gross domestic product in real
terms (percentage).
Sorce: CEPAL Dimensionar los efectos del COVID 19 para pensar en la reactivación.
Informe especial, núm.2, COVID 19, 21 de abril de 2020, CEPAL: Santiago de
Chile, pp. 20.
import substitution, supported and promoted by state intervention that

became widespread as a pattern of capital accumulation throughout the
capitalist world to carry out the task of European reconstruction, and
the reconversion of the world economy now under the hegemony of the
United States of America (USA). The process of industrialization was in-
tense in the region: the GDP of manufacturing rose to an annual average
of 6.5% between 1950 and 1980; gross fixed investment reached 22%
of the national GDP; and manufacturing employment grew at 3.3% per
year (more than 2.6% of the economy as a whole, of which industry
went from 19.4% in 1950 to 25.2% in 1980), figures comparable to
those recorded by Europe and the USA in similar periods (ECLAC 1988,
5). Taking a base 100 in the period of 1945–1949, the GDP of the manu-
facturing industry passed from an index of 58.3 in 1936–1940 to 182.9
between 1955 and 1960, the most intense period of industrialization
(ECLAC 1963, 26) (Table 1.1).
However, over these three decades (1950–1980), industrialization
was uneven across countries. Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Mexico
achieved a degree of industrialization of their economies greater than
24.9%; Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, and Peru reached levels greater than
20.8%, and the other countries reached much lower percentages that
indicated a weak process (ECLAC 1988, 11). Only Argentina, Brazil
and Mexico managed to have more than 10% of their industrial pro-
duction between 1960 and 1980 outside of capital goods (ECLAC
1988, 15).
Table 1.1 Evolution index of the sector product: annual averages by periods (1945–1949: 100)
Agriculture, Mining Manufacturing Construction Transportation and Trade and Government Other Total
livestock farming, and industry communications, finance services
hunting and quarrying electricity, gas and
fishing water
1936–1940 84.3 60.8 58.3 53.9 60.1 65.7 64.5 73.1 69.1
1941–1944 93.1 69.5 73.9 62.1 73.7 74.1 76.5 83.9 76.9
1945–1949 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
1950–1954 117 138.1 130.6 130.2 136.8 127.9 129.7 122.1 126
1955–1960 144.2 201.8 182.9 163.6 179.7 164.5 150.5 154.9 162.8
Source: Latin American Economic development during the Postwar (1963). New York: United Nations, 26.
The industrialization of the Latin American countries that actually
achieved this, about a quarter according to Cueva ([1977] 2009), was
late, truncated, transnationalized, unequal, and structurally contradic-
tory (Fajnzylver 1983; Kalmanóvitz 1983; Guillén 1984).
Late because it took place more than a century and a half after the
European industrial revolution, when its capital goods industry, as well
as the American one (on which the Latin American one depended for
its expansion), had achieved that its machines operated with a high
organic composition of capital, typical of its structures, and did not
require as much labour as the one that arrived to Latin American cit-
ies. It was truncated because it did not generate a capital goods pro-
ducing sector within the countries or the region, so the multiplying
and dynamic effect of its industrial expansion was transmitted to the
developed countries and did not benefit the local industry. This was
not the case in all the countries – leaving out above all the small ones,
which were less endowed with natural resources and a labour force,
and had played a secondary role in the two previous historical phases
(ECLAC 1988); it developed, especially in the first phase, basically in
the capital cities and one or two others in some cases, where the accu-
mulated money capital, the general conditions for production, and the
high-income consumers were concentrated. It was transnational, since
it was produced when capitalism had already reached its monopolistic
old age, so transnational companies dominated it and benefited from
protectionism and subsidies granted by governments. Structurally con-
tradictory as the growing industry required more and more foreign
exchange to acquire capital goods, which were not provided by the ag-
ricultural and mining export sector. This gave rise to a growing trade
balance deficit, which had to be covered by external indebtedness and
foreign direct investment, including from transnational corporations.
These characteristics would give rise to the particularities of industrial
capitalist development and its crisis in the 1980s.
Decomposition of the Peasant Productive Forms and

Accelerated Urbanization
Between 1850 and 1920, the growth of the cities, which went beyond
the limits inherited from the colony, was driven by the intensification of
foreign trade, the relative expansion of the domestic market and the first
phase of industrialization (Romero 1976, 250, and following). During
this period, the number of cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants rose
from 51 to 207, with more than 50,000 from 11 to 76, and with 100,000
or more from six to 30. The urbanization rate rose from 17% to 28%
between 1880 and 1930 (Deler 2008, 55), thus forming the basis of the
system of cities that would support the accelerated urbanization brought
about by the post-World War II industrialization.
The industrialization in the cities required several conditions: to have
a mass of free and low-cost city workers; to incorporate them into pro-
duction when it was necessary by the exhaustion of the limited mass of
proletarianizable urban craftsmen; to release in the field a growing sur-
plus of agricultural raw materials of good quality to produce goods of
immediate consumption as well as to feed the increasing urban popula-
tion; and to have access to general conditions of production like electric-
ity, potable water, transport for raw materials and manufactured goods
and to develop a domestic market for this production as well.
With the exception of Mexico, where the 1910 revolution had opted
for the ejidal-communal (similar to the farmer) route of agrarian devel-
opment, the rest of the Latin American countries followed the junker
or large landowner route (Pradilla 1981). This included those that had
failed to carry out other agrarian democratic revolutions such as El
Salvador (1932), Guatemala during the government of Jacobo Arbenz
(1951–1954), and the Bolivian Revolution (1952–1964). The dominant
actors in this process were the owners of large estates, who consolidated
and expanded their extension through violent or market-based dispos-
session of the peasantry or the expulsion of sharecroppers who subsisted
in the misery of rural areas, the real or apparent proletarianization of
a small number of these workers, and the replacement of production
and techniques to carry it out, in which the so-called “green revolution”
played a substantial role.
The great mass of rural population, liberated by this process of de-
composition of the pre-capitalist peasant forms of production, had no
other option than to migrate to the cities, where they constituted most of
the demographic growth (Hauser 1962), since there they had the hope of
finding a job in the expanding industry or in the commerce and services it
brought with it (Singer [1973] 1975; Pradilla 1981; 2009, chap. VI). The
relative decline in the rural population and the increase in agricultural
productivity released the production needed to feed both manufacturing
and the urban population. However, the mass of population expelled
from the countryside was not absorbed by industry, nor by trade and
services integrated to capitalist accumulation given the characteristics of
its development indicated above,6 but it fulfilled with excess its function
of reserve industrial labour force, and gave rise to a structural economic
fact in the history of capitalism in Latin America that holds even today:
by permanently saturating the labour market, it has maintained very
low wages, compared to the levels prevailing in the dominant countries
(Pradilla 1984, chap. V).
The internal market for manufacturing goods had several growth vec-
tors: the accelerated urbanization that placed a growing mass of people
as buyers, even if limited, of its products; the access to wages by part
of the urbanized population linked to the economy and to public ser-
vice; the demand of the public sector to attend to the creation of general
conditions for production itself, and of services linked to the reproduc-
tion of the labour force; and the dynamics of industrial production it-
self, in its value chains (ECLAC 1963, 14–16). The general conditions of
social reproduction (Pradilla 1984, chap. II), unevenly according to the
pace of industrialization and urbanization of each country and its state
capacity, were responding to the demand of expanding industry and the
workforce required by it, thanks to direct intervention by the State, but
without ever meeting the real demand of the urbanized population, even
the part of it directly linked to industrial capitalist enterprises and other
branches of urban economic activity (Pradilla 2009, chap. III).
The process of urbanization was driven, on the one hand, by the de-
composition of pre-capitalist forms of production derived from the pen-
etration of capitalism into the countryside by the large landowner route
to adapt it to the needs of industrialization; and on the other, by the
needs of low-cost labour of industrialization in the cities, was intense
in the postwar period (Singer [1973] 1975; Schteingart 1973; Pradilla
1981; Pradilla 2009, chap. VI). While the total population continued to
grow at average annual rates that have always been positive until now
(rising until the 1960–1965 period and falling since then), the country-
side gradually lost part of its share, until it became negative in relative
terms from the 1995–2000 period.
The paradox is that despite the great intensity of rural-urban migra-
tion in the region throughout the period, the total population of the
Latin American countryside continued to grow in absolute terms until
1990, and is even greater today than in 1950; without having basically
changed their structural living conditions despite capitalist development
in the countryside, the added 26 million peasants have accentuated rural
poverty (Tables 1.2 and 1.3).
In 1880, the rural population was 83% of the Latin American total,
in 1930 it was 72% (Deler 2008, 55), in 1950 it was 58% of the regional
total, and the urban population – taking the dominant census definition
in each country of 1,500 or 2,500 inhabitants or more – was 42% that
year; this ratio has been radically modified so that in 2020 the rural
population will be 19% and the urban population 81%, with the 1960s
being the decade of the curve’s inflection (Table 1.4). However, if we
take the urban population from a concentration of 20,000 inhabitants,
used by UNESCO in those years (in our opinion, closer to an objec-
tive characterization), the percentage of this decreases in 1950 to 25%
(Hauser 1962, 95).
In any case, we can affirm that the process of urbanization in Latin
America is almost at an end, and that the urban population is the domi-
nant one in all the countries, although their degrees of urbanization are
very unequal, and the main cities of each one, generally their capitals,
present very different population figures, densities and degrees of eco-
nomic development as we will see later on.
Table 1.2 Population by urban and rural areas (thousands of people, mid-year)
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020
Latin 162,630 186,367 213,740 245,189 279,563 316,662 355,218 395,422 435,628 474,325 512,246 548,095 584,884 619,264 650,883
America
Urban 68,561 85,214 105,301 129,884 158,414 193,261 232,009 269,299 308,385 347,165 387,421 423,335 460,600 496,434 530,302
Rural 94,069 101,153 108,439 115,345 121,150 123,400 123,209 126,123 127,244 127,159 124,826 124,760 124,284 122,830 120,580
Source: CEPAL-CEPALSTAT. Database and statistical publications. Retrieved from https://estadisticas.cepal.org/cepalstat/Portada.html.
Table 1.3 Total population growth rate, national and by urban and rural areas (average annual rates, per 100 inhabitants)
1945– 1950– 1955– 1960– 1965– 1970– 1975– 1980– 1985– 1990– 1995– 2000– 2005– 2010– 2015–
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020
Latin 2.5 2.7 2.73 2.74 2.58 2.41 2.28 2.17 1.96 1.76 1.57 1.34 1.2 1.09 0.97
America
Urban 3.9 4.34 4.23 4.19 3.98 4 3.66 2.95 2.72 2.35 2.2 1.92 1.7 1.5 1.32
Rural 1.6 1.45 1.39 1.24 0.98 0.36 −0.04 0.53 0.18 0.06 −0.38 −0.55 −0.06 −0.24 −0.37
Source: CEPAL-CEPALSTAT. Database and statistical publications. Retrieved from https://estadisticas.cepal.org/cepalstat/Portada.html.

Table 1.4 Latin America: participation of urban and rural population in the total (1950–2000)
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020
Latin 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
America
Urban 42 46 49 53 57 61 65 68 71 73 76 77 79 80 81
Rural 58 54 51 47 43 39 35 32 29 27 24 23 21 20 29
Source: CEPAL-CEPALSTAT. Database and statistical publications. Retrieved from https://estadisticas.

cepal.org/cepalstat/Portada.html.
The Transformation of Cities

From the compact grid inherited from the Iberian colonization, Latin
American cities grew and were transformed economically, socially and
physically with notorious inequalities of place, rhythm and magnitude, in
two different moments: from the mid-nineteenth century until the Great
Depression of the world economy in 1929–1930; and, above all, during
the period of accelerated urbanization, determined by import-substituting
industrialization and agricultural development by the large landowner
route from the 1930s and more so, in the second postwar period until
1980. In both moments, the changes in the physical structure were the
result of the unequal combination and articulation of five processes: the
expansion of commercial activities and public and private management
over the central areas; the implantation of industries in lands peripheral
to the central areas; the departure of the high-income sectors that located
their new homes in peripheral residential subdivisions instead of the tra-
ditional central area; the occupation of significant parts of the old colo-
nial houses, or of the buildings constructed for that purpose, by popular
sectors in the form of collective housing; and by popular urbanization.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, after the consolidation
of the independent republics, as well as the difficult constitution of the
oligarchic state in the midst of continuous armed conflicts and military
dictatorships, and the implantation of the pattern of mercantile capital-
ist accumulation (primary exporter and secondary importer), when the
national capitals and the ports that concentrated the flows of export and
import goods in each country had a very important increase in popu-
lation, they expanded physically and modified their physical structure.
Many other cities or towns maintained their traditional size and social
and physical structure (Romero 1976; Cueva [1977] 2009).
It was necessary to occupy old buildings or to build new supports
for the nascent public and private administration in the central or port
areas, imitating the Neoclassical or Art Nouveau style design. Large
boulevards were built following the precepts of Baron de Haussmann’s
Parisian urbanism, breaking up the central areas or their outskirts,
which were decorated with monuments to the heroes of independence,
following the English or French European trends in these processes.
The expansion of the urban mercantile activities, derived from the new
pattern of growth, was translated in the occupation of other areas and
buildings of the traditional centre. The expansion of the activities and
port areas gave a different intensity to the urban daily life.
In the expanding cities, the Creole aristocracy inherited the changing
state bureaucracy, the new commercial bourgeoisie and the large urban-
ized landowners from the colony. They also abandoned their old pala-
tial residences in the centre and moved to well-located peripheries, “less
unhealthy” according to the publicity of the time, adjacent to the newly
built boulevards, leaving their homes in the central place to commerce
– both public and private offices – or subdividing them to house the pop-
ular sectors in the resulting neighbourhoods.7 A new urban actor made
its appearance: the fractionator or urbanizer, ancestor of the current real
estate developer, whose function was to subdivide the land, equip it with
services with the help of the local authorities and sell it to the upper or
middle classes of the population who fled from the central areas. The
laws for the confiscation of community property, passed by the liberal
governments in several countries, expropriated urban or peripheral land
in the hands of the Church or indigenous communities,8 to sell it to the
highest bidder, to feed the public coffers with the funds obtained, to
provide the private subdividers or landlords with the expropriated real
estate and, above all, to allow the ongoing urban expansion.
The great transformation of Latin American cities took place in the
period of import-substitution industrialization and accelerated urban-
ization, slowly since the 1930s and especially after the Second World
War, in which these processes of change are combined in a complex
way; and the national and local states accentuated their role as creators
of general conditions of social reproduction (infrastructures and public
services) to attend to economic activity or to alleviate the needs of the
labour force linked to the public sector and large companies, using the
legitimacy granted to them by the pattern of capital accumulation with
state intervention (Keynesian) imposed after the long crisis of world cap-
italism (Pradilla 1984, chaps. 1 and 2).
Economic growth was then driven by the rapidly growing industrial
sector in the national capitals and, in some cases, other secondary cit-
ies. The usual location of the factories was on existing communication
routes or in the successive peripheries of the cities, to whose proximity
the establishment of popular housing was naturally attracted. At the
same time, when these vectors made the cities grow peripherally, the tra-
ditional centrality expanded on their edges, polarly according to the
social sector served, by the occupation for trade or public and private
management, of old buildings or the construction of new ones, respond-
ing now to the trends in vogue of modern architecture – in particular,
functionalism.
The accelerated urbanization in the decades of industrialization im-
plied the continuous arrival of poor peasants to the biggest cities (na-
tional capital, provincial or state capitals, important ports), in search of
employment and income. We have also pointed out that the particular
characteristics of industrialization implied a very limited labour supply
for a market saturated with applicants, with low salaries, and the con-
sequent presence of a very large relative overpopulation that manifested
itself in underemployment rates (14 countries) of 46.1% of the economi-
cally active population in 1960, and 20 years later, it remained at 38.3%
(ECLAC 1988, 5). This situation of massive unemployment and very low
income of salaried and underemployed workers made it impossible for
them to acquire adequate or acceptable housing in the market, and that
produced by the weak state agencies was only accessible to a minority of
state workers or of the most important companies with strong unions.
The solution for this mass of new urban population was either to be
crowded into small rooms in the vicinity of the central areas resulting
from the subdivision of the old mansions abandoned by their users or
built for this purpose by speculators, which were saturated and increas-
ingly expensive; or the irregular occupation or illegal invasion of public
or private land of little profitability for the owners (wetlands, flood ar-
eas, road blockages, intestate land, steep slopes, etc.) peripheral to the
historic city, resistance to eviction by the forces of law and order and/
or their owners, self-construction of housing over long periods of time,
demands for regularization of tenure and provision of infrastructure and
services to local authorities through the development of urban popular
movements for defence and vindication, to the point of consolidating
large areas of precarious, overcrowded, incomplete housing, without
infrastructure or services, known by different names in different coun-
tries9 (Pradilla 1987).
Following this pattern of occupation and form of production – pointed
out as a paradigm, a specificity of urbanization in the Latin American
continent (Connolly 2013) – more than half of the new housing was built
and most of the population that arrived in the cities in this period was
housed. In almost all the large cities of the region we know of enormous
areas of popular housing10 resulting from these conflictive processes be-
tween urban popular movements and the state in their own name or as
representatives of private landowners.
For their part, the middle and upper classes, including the new indus-
trial and commercial bourgeoisie that emerged in those decades, sought
to establish their homes in residential neighbourhoods well located on
the new roads, equipped with all the services, promoted by new real
estate entrepreneurs, as distant as possible from the industrial zones and
popular neighbourhoods, in available areas advertised with all the ideo-
logical resources at their disposal. The urban growth generated by these
two vectors of diverse social classes led to the lengthening of distances
and routes, and the necessary emergence of new commercial and service
locations, sub-centralities located in the areas of expansion; which initi-
ated the loss of urban weight of the expanded centrality of the beginning
of the period.
Emilio Duhau analysed the growth process of the Metropolitan Area
of the Valley of Mexico (ZMVM) and observed an upward and down-
ward cyclical movement of population density, which expressed another
underlying cyclical type of expansion – consolidation – territorial ex-
pansion (Duhau 1998, 131, 281; Duhau, and Giglia 2006, 116). Surely
during the period 1940–1980, we will be able to observe in the great
cities of the continent this same fluctuation in time: cycles of expansion
and then of physical consolidation by occupation of the interstitial lands
between the initial compact area and those occupied during the expan-
sion period, without the density per hectare of all the city increases in
the middle of the accelerated metropolization and the capitalist modern-
ization of that half century. Thus, at the end of the period (1980), we
can affirm that the Latin American urban system was constituted in its
fundamental components.
Crisis, Neoliberalism and Urban Restructuring

The deceleration of the world capitalist economy in the 1970s, which
marked the decline of the interventionist (Keynesian) pattern of capital
accumulation in the dominant countries, opened the door to criticisms
from the business community, particularly in Europe, of the “high”
worker’s wage, the “excessive” political and economic participation of
the trade unions, the “high” costs of companies and public services paid
for by taxes, and the indebtedness of the state to cover its deficits (Offe
[1988] 1991), to which the governments of Margaret Thatcher in En-
gland and Ronald Reagan in the United States were receptive, in order
to change the nature of the accumulation pattern, imposing on their
states, and on the whole world through the multilateral organisms that
control the powers (International Monetary Fund, World Bank), a new
version of classic liberalism that, despite its openly conservative essence,
has been called neoliberalism ever since (Guillén 1997).
The decline of state interventionism led to the great world crisis of
1982, which also dragged Latin America down despite the fact that it
had maintained its previous high rate of economic growth until 1980
(Graph 1.1). Under pressure from the governments of the hegemonic
powers, with their adjustment programmes previously imposed by mul-
tilateral organizations to cover the large foreign debt, whose crisis also
acted in 1982, Latin American governments – several of them military
dictatorships (Chile with Augusto Pinochet, Argentina with Reynaldo
Bignone, Joao Figueiredo in Brazil, a military junta in Bolivia, Gregorio
Álvarez in Uruguay, Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, as well as others in
Central America) or conservative authoritarian civilian regimes – were
led to the widespread application, although uneven in time and depth,
of neoliberal policies.
Already in the neoliberal pattern of accumulation, the deep crisis of
1982 was periodically followed by others in Latin America as a whole:
four recessions, in 1989,1999, 2009 and 2015–2016, and two deep de-
celerations, in 1995 and 2001–2002, characterizing the period as a long
wave of recession (Mandel [1980] 1986) – because in these 30 years of
ups and downs, the regional economy has grown only 2.73% annually,
which means, however, a low but not negligible capitalist accumulation
(see Graph 1.1). Today, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we still
do not know its serious economic and social impact and when the region
will overcome it, although the ECLAC forecast is for a fall of 5.3% in
2020, a figure that seems conservative.
In this context, the Latin American countries have suffered a noto-
rious absolute and/or relative deindustrialization, which was very ac-
centuated in the 1980–1990, when industrial GDP lost 0.74% per year.
Although it partially recovered between 1990 and 2000 when it grew by
0.98% per year, it never managed to recover the dynamism that charac-
terized it between 1950 and 1980, when it grew at an average of 6.5%
per year (ECLAC 1988, 11). The industry’s participation in the GDP of
Latin America, which reached a peak close to 21.0% in the mid-1970s,
then began to fall until 2011, with a percentage close to 11.0%, only
qualified by two partial recoveries between 1985–1990 and 2000–2008,
and remains there until today (Ocampo 2018; 2020).
The deindustrialization is mainly manifested in the large industrial
cities of the past (Mexico City and Monterrey, Bogota and Medellin,
Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires, among others), which
have lost their large manufacturing plants and industrial employment in
the interior areas and, in the periphery, and have been informally ter-
tiarized,11 decreasing their general economic dynamism, as well as job
creation, decreasing their productivity of new values and affecting their
trade balance (Márquez, and Pradilla 2008). As we will see, one of the
physical effects of this structural change of the urban economy has been
the liberation of great lands or, still, entire areas of old factories, that are
occupied and reused by the real estate-financial capital (Pradilla 2014).
The Production of the Neoliberal Metropolis

The neoliberal pattern of capital accumulation brought about substantive
changes in the ways of producing and re-producing12 the metropolises
inherited from state interventionism. As we pointed out above, dein-
dustrialization freed up large plots of abandoned factories strategically
located in the urban structure, which were joined by plots privatized
by the public sector or forcibly dispossessed by small, medium, or even
large owners, whose land use was changed to commercial and services,
corporate offices, luxury housing, recreational areas or mixed. This
was more profitable, as they are controlled and incorporated into the
reconstruction by the national-transnational real estate-financial capi-
tal whose merger was consolidated during the neoliberal period in the
framework of the financialization of economies (Parnreiter 2018, chap.
9), thanks to the total opening of the money capital flows in the world
free trade (Pradilla 2018), and being beneficiary in most of the countries
of the subsidiary and facilitator support of the local governments.
There, as in peripheral areas appropriated by the capital or high-
income sectors, real estate capital initiated, relaunched or continued in-
tensely, depending on the particularity of each metropolis, the action
of verticalization (high towers), the rise in land rents and the rise in
the cost of living (Jaramillo 2009). In this reproduction of the interior
city, the real estate-financial capital had the subsidiary facilitating action
of local or national governments in the regulations of urban planning,
the legal mechanisms of modification of the norm, and, in addition, the
production of new infrastructure to support the megaprojects. Paradig-
matic cases of this relationship between the State and real estate and
financial capital are the disincorporation, privatization and transforma-
tion of areas of old infrastructure and public services into quarries of
capitalist real estate accumulation, such as Puerto Maravilla in Rio de
Janeiro, Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires, Puerto Norte in Rosario, Santa
Fe, Paseo de la Reforma and Nuevo Polanco in Mexico City, among
other examples in Latin American cities, in which public-private part-
nership schemes have been widely used where common or public goods
or resources are associated with private companies in commercialized
projects such as highways or urban trains, electric or hydraulic infra-
structures, etc.
In some metropolises, these megaprojects of the real estate capital of
mixed uses including big shopping centres, hotels, recreation, offices,
etc. have been added to many other actions of the capital – large, me-
dium and even small – in the tertiary sector, to give rise to the formation
of urban tertiary corridors, which are interwoven in a more or less dense
network. This network now structures the great metropolises, leaving
aside the old centralities developed in the 1950s from the historical cen-
tres which are now the place of commerce and recreation of the popular
sectors and their informal merchants (Pradilla 2016, chap. 6).
At the same time, Latin American states abandoned interventionist
housing policies, always limited in resources and number of shares, re-
ducing their agencies to a kind of mortgage banking that grants credits
to their beneficiaries, so that they can acquire housing from specialized
private real estate companies (“vivienderas”), to which they give credit
as advanced working capital. These look for land far from the urban
periphery in order to achieve low prices suitable for so-called “social
interest” housing of poor construction quality, lacking in infrastructure
and public or private services and various urban satisfactions, some of
which cannot be sold or are abandoned by their buyers because of the
high costs of transport and services they have to pay. The Latin Ameri-
can metropolises have moved from the cycle of expansion- consolidation-
expansion indicated for decades of accelerated urbanization to one of
diffused or dispersed expansion that Duhau himself describes as insular
(Duhau, and Giglia 2008). This occurred as a result of the dispersed real
estate production of social interest housing and of luxury subdivisions
for middle- and high-income sectors. Peripheral dispersion and densifi-
cation in central areas is the combined pattern of urban growth that has
developed under neoliberalism.
Despite the production of popular habitat through self-construction
on peripheral or interstitial land, typical of the period of accelerated
urbanization, the popular sectors, faced with increasingly less tolerant
state policies, have in many cases opted for the densification and rela-
tive verticalization of their former neighbourhoods that are now conve-
niently inserted into the urban structure that grew up around them, as
we see in popular neighbourhoods in Mexico City and favelas in Sao
Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, or other Brazilian cities.
The great medium for mobility is the private car for the middle and
upper classes, for which large urban highways, road distributors or tun-
nels and underground roads have been designed and built, always in
the process of saturation due to the incessant growth of the car pool,
while the popular sectors are mobilized in BRT systems that proliferate
less common and not very extended metres, or traditional systems of
buses and microbuses – degraded, uncomfortable and slow, blocked by
the same saturation of traffic produced by the private car. Workers and
their families spend many hours a day and a significant part of their
income on the extensive journeys they make to get to their jobs, places
of education or social services, spending a lot of energy and productivity
on them.
Since 1990, Latin America has suffered a severe social crisis, the man-
ifestations of which have been constant open unemployment, or unem-
ployment hidden in reality and official statistics, which constitutes a
relative overpopulation of great magnitude, that survives by means of
subsistence activities. Other manifestations include perennial poverty in
the countryside and the city that increases or decreases according to the
situation; generalized urban violence; and the abysmal material living
conditions that are concentrated, making themselves visible in the large
cities (Pradilla 2014).
In the region, the accumulation of capital through industry due to
its particular characteristics already mentioned has always been accom-
panied by structural unemployment, which was already estimated at
46.1% of the Economically Active Population (EAP) in 1950 and which
decreased in 1980 to 38.3% (ECLAC 1988, 5), only to rise again in 2015
to 46.6% on average, ranging from 30.7% in Costa Rica to 73.6% in
Guatemala (Casabon 2017), now under the name of “informality”.13
This relative overpopulation with respect to the real economic structure,
finds subsistence in street activities of commerce and services, whose
presence in the streets, squares and places of concentration of passers-by
is one of the particularities of the cities, which counts as a market with
the mass of poor and overexploited workers. Although the official statis-
tics do not indicate it, in this world of informality, we must also include
the hitman, cannon fodder at the service of organized crime, who hides
in the popular colonies of the big cities or in the rural villages where
they are recruited by the mafias of drug trafficking, smuggling, human
trafficking, etc.
ECLAC14 points out that between 2002 and 2014, there was a signifi-
cant decrease in the percentage and number of poor and extremely poor
people in the subregion (from 45.4% and 12.2% in 2002, to 27.8% and
7 8% in 2014; from 230 and 62 million to 164 and 46 million people,
respectively). In that year, however, coinciding with the beginning of the
new slowdown and economic recession, it went up again to 30.8% and
11.5%, in 2018, 191 and 72 million (ECLAC 2019a, 97, chart 11.1 A
and B). Total poverty has reduced, but extreme poverty has increased in
the two decades of neoliberalism in the region, which is not proportional
to the enormous mass of resources invested by Latin American govern-
ments in the “fight against poverty”, consisting basically of monetary
support, following the formulas of the World Bank, which keep the poor
alive, but do not resolve their structural situation in the medium and
long term; a change of sign in the economy is enough for those who left
poverty to return to it. Today, analysts agree that the great recession
linked to the COVID-19 pandemic will cause a massive increase in pov-
erty in Latin America and the world.
The violence – whose genesis unevenly combines unemployment and
endemic poverty, poor living conditions in popular colonies, corruption
and impunity and the absence of the rule of law, the macho and violent
culture spread by the media, the demonstrative effect of consumerist
mercantilism, and the big money business represented by the activities of
crime chains – has made rural and urban territory in the region unsafe,
with notable national differences. In the cities, it has led to notorious
changes in daily life such as the decrease in displacement and night-time
activity, the multiplication of fractions or closed corporate complexes
watched over by electronic systems, the omnipresence of private guards,
the private control of mobility and the use of public space, the formation
of imaginary fear, and the constitution of what Caldeira calls “the city
of walls” referring to Sao Paulo, the largest Brazilian city, but which
would serve to designate many Latin American cities (Caldeira 2007;
Valenzuela 2016).
From Rural Villages to Large Metropolises and
Regional Cities
In nearly a century and a half, the Latin American territory has been
profoundly transformed. Today, cities dominate the countryside, and we
are approaching the end of the process where everything fundamental
to economic and social life will occur in the cities and the countryside
will only be the reservoir of raw materials and basic foodstuffs. Many
rural villages have been transformed into large metropolises or have
been swallowed up by the discontinuous expansion of city-regions. The
region’s cities of today are among the 100 most populous in the world,
including the three that were among the 50 largest in 1900, with popu-
lations far exceeding one million15 (Habitat 2001, 186) (Table 1.5).
In several cases, they are no longer cities in the traditional sense, not
even metropolises that have overcome their administrative limits and in-
tegrated other municipalities. They are now central nuclei and organizers
of large region cities – extensive urban areas that integrate in a dispersed
and discontinuous physical network, but with a high density of articulat-
ing infrastructures and intense daily flows of people, goods, information
and capital to several metropolises and hundreds of small and medium
cities or rural villages that were absorbed by the growth of the metropo-
lises and their dispersed expansion, whose economic and social existence
depends on the large cities of which they form part (Pradilla 2009, 263).
Paradigmatic examples of these region cities are the one that has formed
around Sao Paulo in Brazil, and the one in Central Mexico that is orga-
nized around the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico.
Cities, metropolises and region cities express the historical urban in-
equality that has always existed in Latin America, described by José Luis
Romero (Romero 1976) since the colonial period, which has acquired
Table 1.5 Population of urban agglomerations equal to or greater than 750,000

inhabitants by country, 1970–2020 (thousands of inhabitants)
Country Urban 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

agglomeration
Argentina Buenos Aires 8,105 9,422 10,513 11,847 13,074 13,606

Brazil Belo Horizonte 1,485 2,441 3,548 4,659 5,852 6,420
Rio de Janeiro 6,637 8,583 9,595 10,803 11,950 12,617
Sao Paulo 7,620 12,089 14,776 17,099 20,262 21,628
Chile Santiago 2,647 3,721 4,616 5,275 5,952 6,408
Colombia Bogota 2,383 3,525 4,740 6,356 8,500 10,129
Mexico Mexico City 8,769 13,010 15,312 18,022 19,460 20,476
Peru Lima 2,980 4,438 5,837 7,294 8,941 10,145
Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.
World Urbanization Prospects. Retrieved from http.//esa.un.org/unpd/wup/index.htm.
new morphologies with the passing of the current patterns of capital
accumulation (oligarchic mercantile, industrial with state or neoliberal
intervention). Today, this reaches polarized manifestations: between the
areas of “intelligent” high towers where large transnational companies
operate or inhabit the highest income sectors, closely guarded and with
modern means of mobility and communications or the hyper- commercial
establishments of omnipresent global chains, on one side of the scene;
or the housing units of social interest, overcrowded and degraded, or
the precarious, irregular and self-constructed popular colonies, lacking
infrastructure and quality public services, whose inhabitants lack the
right to live, on the other.
Polarization is also evident in the countryside and between the coun-
tryside and the city. In the countryside we find small islands of modern
agriculture, mechanized and cultivated by a sub-proletariat that is often
transhumant, and entire areas where a greater mass of peasants than
what was registered in 1850 survive in extreme poverty, far from the mo-
dernity of neoliberal urbanism, but very close to that of their compan-
ions in the relative urban overpopulation that subsists in the so-called
informality.
Since the beginning of 2020, these Latin American cities have become
the scene of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has highlighted its great
objective contradictions, among which are the narrowness of the self-
built popular housing or the minimalist lofts and apartments produced
by the financial real estate capital for the middle classes, to support the
isolation of months and the virtual activities that the state bureaucracy
wants to impose; the deficits in drinking water and drainage infrastruc-
ture that make it almost impossible to comply with sanitary measures;
the digital gap that isolates the urban poor from information and the
virtual ones imposed by the state apparatus to show that “not at all in
their kingdom”; the speed of contagion in areas of very high population
and activity density, especially the popular ones; the urgency of the busi-
nessmen and governments to accelerate the pace of relaunching capitalist
accumulation; and the impossibility of subsisting for half of our EAP
condemned to informality, since they earn their living and buy their sub-
sistence in the streets every day.
The city described by José Luis Romero decades ago has undergone
many changes, compared to the one we have described in other texts
(Romero 1976; Pradilla 2014). What remains, apparently without
many changes, is the great barrier between those who have access to
all the satisfactions of the contemporary city, and those who are ex-
cluded from them – from the right to appropriate them; the barriers
put up by some to isolate others, the conditions of appropriation of
the territory by some and of exclusion of others, make them more and
more fragmented.
Notes
1 Percentage of population living in settlements recognized as urban.
2 The largest railway networks were built in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, and
of lesser extension in other countries such as Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador or Co-
lombia, always playing a role of territorial articulator.
3 Rivers Amazonas, Paraná and La Plata, Orinoco, Sao Francisco, Paraguay,
Guayas and, Magdalena.
4 Between 1881 and 1930, 8 million 541 European and Asian immigrants
arrived in Latin America.
5 The Mexican Revolution (1910–1917), and its subsequent institutionaliza-
tion, especially during the government of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940);
the Brazilian Revolution and the Getulio Vargas regime (1930–1945 and
1951–1954), the government of Juan Domingo Perón (1946–1955) in Argen-
tina, the Bolivian Revolution and the government of Víctor Paz Estenssoro
(1952–1956), Alfonso López Pumarejo (1934–1938 and 1942–1945) in Co-
lombia. These processes have nationalism as their general line.
6 ECLAC estimates that underemployment -today we would speak of infor-
mal employment- reached 45.6% of the Economically Active Population
(EAP) in 1950, 43.8% in 1970, and 38.3% in 1980 (ECLAC 1988, 5).
7 Rooms organized around a common area (usually a courtyard), with com-
mon toilets, kitchens and laundry rooms, where one family lived in each.
They are called by different names in our countries: neighbourhoods, tene-
ments, tenements, alleys, lofts, corticos, etc.
8 Before these laws were passed, the Catholic Church and its communities
owned nearly half of the urban land and numerous rural peripheral proper-
ties; for their part, the indigenous communities had communal lands near
the large cities, especially where they were more numerous; in both cases,
the confiscated properties came to swell the private estates or to be divided
up for urban expansion.
9 Tugurios, villas miseria, favelas, barriadas, barrios marginales, villas, ci-
udades perdidas, pueblos jóvenes, cantegriles, callampas, barrios pro-
letarios, etc. (Slums, shantytowns, lost cities, young towns, proletarian
neighborhoods).
10 Nezahualcóyotl City and Chalco Valley in México DF; El Salvador Village,
San Martín de Porres and Huascar, in Lima; Rocinha, Pavao-Pavaozinho,
Cidade de Deus and many others in Rio de Janeiro, etc.
11 In the region, the tertiary sector is made up of a variable part of the activities
or jobs known as informal.
12 We are thus referring to the two differentiated processes that characterize
today’s cities, and which have also been present in other times: producing
new urban areas thanks to the construction of buildings and infrastructures
in the peripheral expansion; and re-producing the inner city through the
destruction of what exists in areas of old urbanization, and re-producing
buildings and infrastructures through new construction processes.
13 Domestic work, precarious personal services, street commerce, street crafts,
prostitution, drug trafficking and organized crime, etc.
14 Studies in Latin American academia have shown that the information pub-
lished by ECLAC, which comes from government sources, normally presents an
under-recording of data on social problems, i.e., it would present data that are
lower than the actual ones. This is the case, they point out, for poverty figures.
15 According to data from the last official census, which may be as much as a
decade old, there is a wealth of information and projections that far exceed
them, but they are not comparable in terms of the territory assumed and the
methodology of calculation.
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2 Youth and Mobilizations in
Latin America
20 Years of Persistence and
Prominence1
Pablo Vommaro
Introduction
In the last 20 years in Latin America, there have been numerous mobili-
zations that have energized social and political conflicts and have shaken
public agendas. In most of these mobilization processes, young people were
active protagonists, propelling organizations, collectives, and movements,
and occupying and resignifying public spaces of many main Latin Ameri-
can cities. In this article, we address the main characteristics of the youth
mobilization and organization processes of the last 20 years. The guiding
hypothesis of this text is that the most important features that delineate the
generational configurations of politics in the region are expressed there and
that considering the manners of youth participation is essential to under-
stand the characteristics, dynamics, and meanings of this process.
It is also framed in a more global phenomenon that allows us to iden-
tify that in the first decades of the twenty-first century, young people have
been the drivers of processes of social mobilization in various regions
of the world (North Africa, Latin America, Europe, North America).
Movements of a more socio-political nature such as the so-called Arab
Spring that contributed to the fall of different governments in North
Africa, the multiple groups grouped under the name of indignados in
Europe (particularly in Spain) and the United States, student organiza-
tions that fight for democratization and the improvement of the qual-
ity of a commodified and degraded education in Latin America (Chile,
Colombia, Mexico), and urban youth mobilized in Brazil, have been the
most visible, but they are not the only ones (Vommaro 2013).
There are also groups of black and indigenous people, precarious
workers, sexual diversities, migrants and farm laborers, and cultural cen-
ters, among many others, that are active protagonists of the conflicts and
mobilizations in their specific territories of action. Young people from
the popular sectors and the peripheries of many large cities have also
created collectives and associations that express their unique methods of
participation and commitment to the public and to the transformation
of the reality in which they inhabit, and that are also an emergence of
today’s urban conflicts.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-4
Youth and Mobilizations in Latin America 51
The growing importance of youth in today’s societies, particularly
concerning political processes, can be thought of based on five elements
that stand out: first, the organizational and mobilization capacity that
most youth groups demonstrate; second, the great public visibility of
their actions, staged in the public space and amplified by the media,
especially digital and electronic media; third, the expansion of public
youth policies, which for two decades have been part of the vast ma-
jority of government plans and occupy increasing spaces in state struc-
tures; fourth, the renewed methods of political participation and public
commitment that youth groups produce in their daily practices; and fi-
nally, the foregoing elements generated increasing media, political and
academic interest, which contributed to placing youths at the center of
public agendas.
Furthermore, the political, social, and cultural prominence of youth in
the contemporary world and the growing importance of youth in politi-
cal dynamics is part of a wider process that we can identify, along with
other authors, as youthization, which encompasses different spheres of
social life. That can be seen both in political aspects, as well as in the
cultural dimensions, in the consumption patterns, modes and lifestyles,
in the workforce, and other areas such as sexuality or migration.
The other side of the increasing importance that young people have
gained in today’s societies are the processes of inequalities and segrega-
tions that young people are experiencing (Vommaro 2015a).
According to various reports, situations such as unemployment or pov-
erty double or triple among young people. They do not only experience
material inequalities but also ethnic, sexual, gender-based, territorial,
cultural, political, and religious inequalities, among others. So, diversity
and inequality are two of the main features that can characterize youth
today.
We could historicize what has been said so far by addressing the pro-
cess by which the youth acquire the aforementioned prominence, at the
same time that the term “youth” takes on a positive, mobilizing, and
attractive significance that produces attachment and sympathy. If we
assume that the consideration of youth as a subject or social actor is
a product of capitalism and modernity, we can say that young people
(as a term that defines a moment or stage of life) existed centuries ago
with diverse resignifications, but that youth (as an expression of those
young people as a social group with more or less unique characteristics)
is something more contemporary, typical of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The school apparatus, in its double dimension as a container for chil-
dren and young people and a propaedeutic instance for the world of
work and citizen politics, became the space built for young people by
the system of domination (Balardini 2000). Although, as mentioned ear-
lier, its genealogical study would lead us back to earlier times, it was
from the second postwar period that youth began to be considered in
52 Pablo Vommaro
Western countries as a specific and differentiated moment of life, with
unique styles and ways. Thus, to analyze the relations between youth
and politics in the present, it is important to trace the characteristics of
youth prominence since the 60s and 70s, emphasizing youth expressions
of the 80s and 90s. Undoubtedly, the so-called youth revolts of the 60s
imposed the analysis of youth prominence as part of the interpretations
of the political and social process of that time.
The deployment of youth practices, which no longer only struggled
for a place in the world dominated by adults but also marked the course
of events, led to talk about the outbreak of youth at the beginning of
the 1990s, based on the growing diversities that characterized youth at
that time. The expanding space occupied by young people in the social,
economic, political, and cultural life of many countries generated re-
newed interest in the scientific and academic world, as well as in public
policies promoted by countries and also different international organi-
zations. Thus, different conceptualizations emerged to try to understand
and interpret youth dynamics, moving away from the biological or de-
mographic approaches that had predominated in previous decades. The
idea of generation reappeared, which authors such as Mannheim and
Ortega y Gasset had worked on in the 1920s and 1930s.
At the same time that the transformations that occurred worldwide
(especially in the West) after the second postwar period, and more mark-
edly after the 1960s and 1970s, led to diversification and expansion
of the place of youth in society, politics also underwent changes. The
main one is the process of expanding its reach; its field of action was ex-
tended to areas that previously could not have been considered political.
In other words, politics unfolds in other dimensions such as the social
and the reproductive, linked to private and intimate spaces. We call this
process of expanding the borders of politics (which can also lead us to
discuss the distinctions between politics and the political that we have
analyzed in other works) politicization, to highlight the dynamic and
socio-historical-cultural conception of this notion. In turn, this polit-
icization of social and cultural life generates a transformation in the
relations between politics and the space in which it is produced. Thus,
the socially produced space, conceived as a network of social relations,
becomes territory. Politics and space, then, establish a reciprocal link
by which politics can be interpreted as a territorial production and the
territory, as a political production. In other words, a process of territori-
alization of politics and politicization of the territory.
The organizational capacity, public visibility, and renewed interest in
political participation and commitment to public issues of many young
people in the region created a scenario that Ernesto Rodríguez describes
as the “new Latin American youth movements”, with more proactive
than reactive characteristics (Rodríguez 2012).
According to Rodríguez, this new wave of youth movements presents
itself in at least two ways. First, groups that seek alternative methods of
participation. They create other types of practices that are expressed in
spaces relatively apart from the known institutional pathways of pol-
itics and that enter the realm of everyday life. Those movements are
built from autonomy and from methods of organization that discuss hi-
erarchies and verticalism and that do not feel addressed by the political
system and the instruments of representative democracy (especially del-
egation through suffrage).
Second, some organizations are formed by or in fluid dialogue with
the state; they find fertile spaces for action on and development of their
proposals within the public policies of certain Latin American govern-
ments (which they consider progressive or popular). Those are groups
that are in some cases linked to political-party youth wings and that
present themselves as a support base of the governments in whose poli-
cies or institutions they participate.
In some countries, both types of youth movements coexist and in oth-
ers, one of the two modalities prevails over the other. In this article, we
will analyze situations in which the two forms of youth mobilization
coexist, with different emphases depending on the case. In any case, be-
yond these singularities, it is an increasingly evident reality that the var-
ious forms of youth association have become a fundamental element to
understand the social, political, and cultural dynamics in Latin America
and have crossed sectoral or generational limits to become an expression
of wider social conflicts (Vommaro 2015b).
In this work, we will address some of the most significant experi-
ences that have taken place in four Latin American countries in which
important processes of youth mobilization and organization have taken
place in the last 20 years: Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico. We will
do it through a review of the existing bibliography on those processes,
through a synthesis of the author’s previous research (Vommaro 2014a,
2014b, 2015a, and 2015b), as well as a survey of documents and testi-
monies produced by the youth groups studied.
Youth and Politics: Extension and Development of

Two Notions in Motion
The diversity that characterizes youth today has led to the pluralization
of the term, youths, both in research and in public discourse in general.
Thus, from our perspective, when studying the forms assumed by polit-
ical participation among young people, we should be able to recognize
the distinctive characteristics that “youth” acquires in each of the his-
torical stages or moments, considering them in their specific situation,
without linear or stereotyped comparisons.
54 Pablo Vommaro
Following various authors, we understand youth not as a homoge-
neous and universal category, but rather a diversity of symbolic and sig-
nificant practices, behaviors and universes that converge in it, affected in
turn by variables such as class, gender, ethnicity, culture, region, socio-
historical context, among others (Bourdieu 1993; Pérez Islas 2000; Re-
guillo 2000). Thus, it is not possible to speak of “youth” in the singular
(Braslavsky 1986), since there is no one way of being young. That is why
we speak of youths, pluralizing the term. In that way, our perspective
seeks to confront the idea that young people, as such, have a greater
predisposition either to action and participation or to disenchantment
with politics and withdrawal from public commitments. According to
Marcelo Urresti, to understand young people, it is necessary to do
more than asking or judging them for what they do or do not do in

relation to the young people in previous generations, to understand
them in relation to the historical and social situation that they have
to live in.
(2000, 178)
Moving forward with our proposal, and understanding the idea of youth
as a category built in relation with time and space, i.e., as a category
framed in the social world (Chaves 2009, we can analyze the modalities
in which “youth is produced” (Martín Criado 1998) according to differ-
ent vital, social and historical experiences and commitments, that serve
to demonstrate the limitations of any classification with only biological
age or a homogenizing conception of youth at its core. In the same sense,
Alvarado, Martínez, and Muñoz Gaviria (2009) propose, going back to
Bajtin (1981), to understand the “young subject” as a chronotope. With
that term, those authors seek to highlight “young people’s capacity to
build vital spaces” as well as that “space and time do not exist separately;
there is no time without space and no space without time” (Alvarado et al.
2009, 98). This “inseparability of time and space” that places time “as the
fourth dimension of space” (Bajtin 1981, 84, 85) is especially expressed in
the youth subject considered from their political and social productions.
From the understanding of youth as a socio-historical, cultural, lo-
cated, and relational production, we arrive at the notion of generation,
which is very useful to explore the practices and productions of young
people. From the generational approach, we propose a perspective of
youths and young people, that is, the idea of youths and youth subjects
as socio-historical constructions. Located, since each generation, each
production, each way of presenting, appearing, existing and being of
young people cannot be separated from the situation where it occurs.
That is to say, it belongs to a certain time and space that marks singu-
larities that configure specific modalities, with distinctive characteristics
but also shared features with other productions.
Thus, when speaking of generation, we move away from the concepts
linked to the biological, to the demographic, present in the most tradi-
tional approaches. We move away from the approaches that view young
people only as an age group defined by biological criteria and conceive
of youth as a moratorium, as a moment in life that is a moment of wait-
ing, of preparation, an interval that places more emphasis on what is not
or on training for the future, rather than on what is and what is being
produced in the present.
Following the pioneering work of Karl Mannheim (1993 [1928]), the
reformulations of Pierre Bourdieu (1993), and the proposals by the Ar-
gentine author Ignacio Lewkowicz (2004), we introduce the generational
idea as a way of approaching youth productions and practices, especially
in its political dimension. We also use it as a way of conceiving youth
participation methods as processes of collective subjectivation and rec-
ognition. Likewise, the idea of generation allows us not only to think
about the succession of generations and intergenerational relationships,
but also to investigate the intragenerational links and the dynamics of
overlapping or generational simultaneity.
In the same vein, we think that it is fruitful to complement the notion
of generation with that of political generation, which allows us to ap-
proach the forms of political subjectivation and production of political
subjectivities from a generational perspective (Alvarado et al. 2009).
If we assume that youths have become pluralized and transformed in
recent years, we also have to account for the changes that politics has
undergone and which have expanded its scope. Indeed, if we look at the
world of politics and the political, we can identify a process of border ex-
pansion both in Latin America and in the world (Vommaro 2010). This
widening of the political spaces in social life can be explained by the
notion of politicization. Thus, the politicization of relationships and ev-
eryday spaces diluted borders between the private and the public, creat-
ing an advance of the public as production of the common and territory
of politics. From that perspective, politics is a relational and dynamic
production in process, and young people are fundamental protagonists
of those transformations of the forms of politics, with their innovations
and continuities concerning previous modalities (Vommaro 2013).
Going deeper into the notion of politicization, we maintain that some
youth cultural practices – even when they have not been conceived as
political by the actors who carry them out – can be read as ways of
expressing politicity, as “ways of replying to the status quo and ways to
insert oneself socially” (Reguillo 2003), or to intervene in the common
space (Nuñez 2013). Thus, practices that can be considered expressive
or cultural have become political in light of their public, conflictive, col-
lective, and organized nature.
We enter, then, in the relevance of the process of culturalization
of politics or politicization of culture, as analyzed by several authors
56 Pablo Vommaro
(Reguillo 2003; Borelli 2012). In that process, the social prominence
and subjective production of young people also constitute a particular
aesthetic that is both youthful and alternative. The intersection of the
aesthetic productions with the political and subjective dimensions cre-
ated a countercultural and alternative youthful aesthetic expression that
becomes, in some situations, a conflicted young ethic that escapes the
trends leading to the domination and commodification of life.
This process of culturalization and aestheticization of politics, which
also implies that affections and corporalities occupy a different place in
political productions, meets another recent manifestation: territory as
political production and politics as territorial production. Thus, the pro-
cess of territorialization of politics – that transforms location into a po-
litical production, into a collective and relational construction – places
us in the community dimension, where the common and the public are
not limited to the state sphere only (Vommaro 2010). A “wild politics”
emerges, one not framed within the hegemonic political system, some-
thing which Luis Tapia (2008) invites us to consider.
Taking into consideration Rodríguez’s work (2012), presented at the
beginning of this article, we think that not only is it not verifiable that
the youths (in the cases that we study in this work) are affected by apa-
thy, disinterest or unconcern regarding political practices; rather, those
characterizations could express a lack of legitimacy and commitment
among young people towards certain forms of politics, which does not
mean the rejection of politics as such, i.e., as discourse and practice
related to the social construction of the common (Sidicaro, and Tenti
Fanfani 1998). So, the apparent disinterest or apathy does not have to
translate into the idea that the new generations do not value public is-
sues or that they are depoliticized generations. On the contrary, it could
account for how young people are distancing themselves from the insti-
tutions and practices of politics, understood only in representative and
institutional terms; i.e., a decrease in participation in political practices
that we can call traditional, as well as the distance and mistrust towards
conventional institutions and involvement in the public sphere. That
can be seen, for example, in the case of Chile, with a constant decrease
in youth participation in elections, despite the growing mobilization of
youth groups on the streets. As we will explain shortly, that process
is not without contradictions. There is a retraction of youth participa-
tion in elections in Chile but, at the same time, leaders such as Camila
Vallejo, former president of the Federación de Estudiantes de la Univer-
sidad de Chile [FECH, University of Chile’s Student Federation]; her
successor, Gabriel Boric; former vice president of the FECH, Francisco
Figueroa; former president of the Federación de Estudiantes de la Uni-
versidad Católica de Chile [FEUC, Federation of Students of the Catho-
lic University], Giorgio Jackson; former president of the students of the
Universidad de Concepción (UdeC), Karol Cariola; former president of
the students of the Universidad Central, Daniela López; and Sebastián
Farfán, leader of the Universidad de Valparaíso, were all candidates
in the parliamentary elections held on November 17, 2013. Of them,
Camila Vallejo, Karol Cariola, Gabriel Boric, and Giorgio Jackson ob-
tained favorable results that allowed them to become national deputies
to the Chilean Parliament. Along with those student leaders, other social
referents were also nominated, such as the president of the organization
of subcontracted workers in copper mining, Cristián Cuevas; and the
main leader of the uprising in defense of natural resources and the envi-
ronment in the Aysén region, Iván Fuentes. That speaks of the sinuous
and dynamic relationships between social organizations, mobilizations,
movements, and the political system in today’s Chile (Aguilera 2016).
Thus, we can analyze how politicization occurs through other types
of practices or through other channels that are relatively separated
from the known institutional pathways of politics and occur in alter-
native spaces at the territorial level. However, in recent years, in light
of the current processes of reconfiguration of some states, and changes
of government in Latin America, it is possible to identify a second dis-
placement in which young people consider the state again as terrain of
dispute and tool of social change, re-centering youth political partici-
pation in the field of public policy execution and support for a certain
government. That movement, however, does not replicate the traditional
state- centered and liberal political forms, but maintains, as we will see,
the territorial dimension as the basis of legitimacy and sustenance of
its practice. Of course, that is more visible in some countries, such as
Argentina, than in others; but evidence of that trajectory can also be
found in Chile and Brazil.
Taking a panoramic tour through the main experiences of youth po-
liticization that are unfolding in Latin America today, we observe that
those organizations produce mobilizations expressing political possibil-
ities for establishing intergenerational relations while building bridges
between the mobilizations of young people and those of other more or
less organized collective movements and social expressions. Thus, we see
how those mobilizations widely exceed sectoral (and also generational)
limits to become processes that energize various broader social struggles
and express challenges to the dominant system that go beyond appar-
ently corporate issues.
On the other hand, youth mobilizations of recent years have acquired
great visibility in the public space, occupying it, resignifying it and rec-
reating it. In the 1970s, Sennett postulated that the twentieth century
was the era of the deterioration of the public and identified its process
of decline and decadence (Sennett 1978). We can affirm that the first
years of the twenty-first century are a moment of a new expansion of the
public, in a dynamic not without tensions and disputes, both material
and symbolic.
58 Pablo Vommaro
Brazil: Youths on the Streets
The demonstrations that took place in Brazil during the months of June
and July 2013 signified a break regarding the methods of protest and
popular mobilization in the country’s recent history. Some features of
those street mobilizations could be traced back to the Diretas Já move-
ment (from 1984 to 1985, marking the end of the military dictatorship
in Brazil) or to the protests by Fora Collor (which pushed for impeach-
ment and the resignation of President Fernando Collor de Mello), and
also to some large mobilizations of rural organizations such as the Mov-
imento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra [Landless Rural Workers’
Movement] (MST). What happened in the last months took disruptive
forms presenting various innovative elements.
Thus, between June and July 2013, tens of thousands of young people
mobilized in Brazil, occupying streets, squares, and public buildings for
several days to express the limitations of the political and social advances
that the country had experienced in recent years. In those mobilizations,
which could not be appropriated by political parties or hegemonic cor-
porations such as the mass media, both the meaning and the production
of the public were put into play, as well as the use of state money, collu-
sion with private companies, the use and appropriation of urban space
and methods of political participation, among other issues.
Beyond the surprise that those mobilizations may have caused in
some sectors and analyses, if we focus on what was happening among
Brazilian youth groups in recent years, several elements emerge to help
us understand the phenomenon. Thus, rather than shock in what seemed
an unthinkable irruption, impossible to imagine a few weeks before the
events, what we discover is a process of increasing conflict and organi-
zation of urban youth in the main cities, which, without subtracting the
elements of rupture and unpredictability that characterized the mobi-
lizations, allow us to understand their characteristics, dynamics, and
meanings with a mid-term perspective.
In this article, we will focus on the mobilizations of the city of San
Pablo, one of the epicenters of the demonstrations. We recognize that the
process adopted unique forms in each of the more than three hundred
cities in which it manifested, but we attempt to find in the São Paulo
experience some common elements that contribute to a more general
characterization. In particular, we will focus on the dynamics of ur-
ban organizations such as the Movimento pelo Passe Livre [Free Pass
Movement] (MPL), the Movimento Tarifa Zero [Zero Tariff Movement]
(MTZ), which emerged from the MPL, and the Comitês Populares da
Copa [Popular Cup Committees] (CPC). Those three organizations
brought together the majority of the middle sectors. We will also con-
sider the processes that took place in the poor peripheries and the inter-
sections between both geographic and social spaces.
The Movimento pelo Passe Livre emerged in the city of Porto Alegre
in 2005. Before 2013, it had carried out numerous demonstrations and
protest actions in cities such as Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Salvador de
Bahía, in addition to establishing relations with the MST and carry out
joint training initiatives (Tarifazero 2013 and Zibechi 2013). The orga-
nization is made up of urban young people, mainly university students
and professionals, and defines itself as an “autonomous, non-partisan,
horizontal, and independent social movement that fights for true public
transport, free for the whole population and free from private initia-
tives” (Tarifazero 2013). When describing their way of organization, the
group emphasizes that they are based on autonomy and independence,
non-partisanship but not anti-partisanship, and horizontality. Their
manner of connecting with the state and the political system can be
summarized in the idea that they seek to influence public transport pol-
icies at government level, but they maintain a political practice based on
the conviction that “there is politics beyond voting” (Tarifazero 2013).
As Raúl Zibechi (2013) points out, the MPL began by requesting the
exemption of the urban transport fare for some sectors (students) and
expanded its proposal to fight for free public transport for all, consid-
ering it an essential right that everybody should be able to access and
not a commodity available according to the economic capacity of the
consumer. Not only the price or gratuitousness of public transport is dis-
cussed, but the very concept of universal law and especially of the right
to inhabit and transit the city without exclusion or segregation. Thus,
between 2005 and 2011, the MPL went from being a sectoral movement
to expressing a more general and comprehensive conflict around the city,
its uses, appropriations, and territorial and political productions.
In early June 2013, the MPL began to demonstrate against a new
increase in the price of transportation in São Paulo, with a dynamic
already known in the organization. One of these street mobilizations
was repressed by the police with a balance of hundreds of wounded and
two hundred and thirty detainees (El Territorio). Far from dissipating
the protest, the repression multiplied the protests and extended them to
other cities in Brazil. Thus, in a few days, there were mobilizations in
more than 353 urban centers, with almost two million people partici-
pating, according to different sources (Braga 2013, 53; Zibechi 2013,
16). In June, the CPCs also demonstrated in Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia and
other cities against real estate speculation and the large budget dedicated
to the construction of stadiums, instead of the construction of houses
and other public infrastructure. During the FIFA Confederations Cup
in June 2013, the Comitês Populares da Copa organized street mobi-
lizations and occupation of public spaces to present a small sample of
what could happen if the works for the 2014 World Cup continued un-
changed, ignoring the growing social demands.
60 Pablo Vommaro
The mobilizations became more widespread, and although within a
few days of the beginning of the cycle of protests the tariff increase had
been canceled, the process of popular organization continued and ex-
panded to numerous sectors that overwhelmed the organizations that
promoted the first marches (MPL, some partisan youth wings, the CPCs,
among others), as well as the urban middle sectors that carried them out.
One of the events that shows the massification and deepening of the
demonstrations was the general strike of July 11, 2013 (Antunes 2013).
The strike was called jointly and coordinated by the six trade unions
that exist in Brazil (Central Única dos Trabalhadores, CUT [Single
Workers’ Center], close to the then ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores
[Workers’ Party]; Força Sindical [Trade Union Force], Confederação
Operária Brasileira [Brazilian Labor Confederation], Central Geral dos
Trabalhadores do Brasil [Central Geral dos Trabalhadores do Brasil],
Nova Central [New Central], and Central Sindical e Popular Conlu-
tas [Central Sindical and Popular Conlutas]) with the support of the
MST and the União Nacional dos Estudantes (UNE) [National Union
of Students].
It was the first strike that took place in Brazil in 22 years, the second
since the democratic restoration in 1985 and according to several ana-
lysts and protagonists, the most important labor mobilization since the
campaign by las Diretas Já. Furthermore, as a result of the strike, the
workers of the transport union and the MPL started to become closer
(Braga 2013, 59).
We can say that the mobilizations in São Paulo were the trigger for a
wave of demonstrations that spread through the main cities of Brazil,
incorporating local issues and more general demands that went beyond
transportation to include issues related to the use of public budgets, cor-
ruption, real estate businesses, the right to housing and to live in the city,
and the methods of political participation, among others.
Several elements can explain the relative dilution of the mobilizations
in the following months. Although we will not deal with this issue here
for reasons of length, we can say that the irruption of some groups that
carried out direct actions of open confrontation with the police and de-
struction of buildings and public goods (generally identified with an-
archism) and the appearance of right-wing sectors that supported the
demonstrations with the sole opportunistic objective of undermining
the federal government or local governments of the Partido dos Tra-
balhadores and its allies, were two of possible elements that contributed
to the dilution.
However, several months after the beginning of the protests, the mo-
bilizations continued. For example, on October 15 and 16, 2013, there
were major demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In the first
city, the protestors were mainly teachers demanding a salary increase
and better working conditions. In the second city, the protest was carried
out by university students fighting for an improvement in the quality of
higher education, democratization in the system of election of school au-
thorities, and the right to education for all. Although the police repres-
sion of the mobilizations continued, with each attempt at intimidation,
public solidarity with the protest movement grew.
On the other hand, the movement known as rolezinhos is another
phenomenon of urban youth mobilization and organization but with dif-
ferent characteristics from the one we just described. The name is used to
refer to appearances of young people from the São Paulo peripheries in
shopping malls that are overwhelmed by the massive presence of people
who are not their usual shoppers.2 Young people communicate through
social networks such as Facebook and then film their appearances,
which usually go viral. The objective is to show that these public spaces
dedicated to consumerism and free time that are in theory open to any-
one that accepts the logic of commercialized leisure are in reality banned
for certain social groups that do not conform to hegemonic standards.
Those public appearances of youth from the periphery stress several
important elements. On the one hand, they highlight the limitations
and contradictions of the notions of consumers and citizens that ad-
dress youth today. The promise of consumption as a symbol of comfort
and social advancement and the slogans that speak of citizenship as a
means of inclusion are rendered powerless in the face of the appearance
of young people from the suburbs; all they do is be themselves in areas
which they do not circulate through on a daily basis, no longer confined
to their spaces and neighborhoods. It seems that there is no problem as
long as the youth remains on the periphery. The conflict begins when
they dare to circulate and cross symbolic limits, which are very real and
effective, although not very visible. As if the increase in transportation
rates and other forms of urban segregation were not enough, open re-
pression is necessary when young people from popular sectors express
themselves and occupy different spaces.
We agree with Brazilian anthropologist Silvia Borelli who says that
“we are seeing different methods of mobilization that combine culture,
consumption, pleasure, and new ways of doing politics” (Infobae 2014).
What is at stake is the very concept of public space. Young people add
tension and show its limitations while occupying, appropriating and re-
configuring it. The modalities of access, use, and right to the city are
discussed, as well as and the appropriations and legitimate ways of in-
habiting the urban space. Likewise, both expressions of youth mobiliza-
tion make visible a more general questioning that exposes the limitations
of the accumulation model and the political system of Brazil. Despite
changes in recent years, Brazil continues to have high social, ethnic, gen-
der, territorial, and generational inequalities, with serious issues in pub-
lic health and education and with ejective and segregated cities. Indeed,
in the two moments of mobilization, there was an interesting though
62 Pablo Vommaro
brief process of confluence – not without tensions and contradictions –
between the middle sectors and the poor peripheries of large cities such
as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Young university students, profession-
als, and residents of residential neighborhoods met on the streets with
youth groups from the peripheries and established initial relationships
in some cases, and strengthened the ties generated by communal and
territorial work in others.3 For a few days or weeks, youth from the
peripheries were able to live with some legitimacy in the center of cit-
ies, overcoming prejudice and segregation. Many young people from the
middle sectors who might have supported the creation of the Unidades
de Policía Pacificadora (UPP) [Peacekeeper Police Units] to control and
repress the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and guarantee the security of the
residential neighborhoods found themselves in the same place as young
people who were likely the subjects of that repression. Those confluences
and that coexistence may have unexpected effects that cannot yet be ap-
preciated due to the short time that has elapsed since the events.
We can highlight two characteristic features, in the mid-term, of the
youth mobilization process that we have described. On the one hand,
those mobilizations far exceed sectoral demands to address broader is-
sues and question the urban dynamics of Brazil today, especially the
real estate market and housing issues, and the right to move freely and
without restrictions through the city, breaking the spatial segregation
that limits the possibilities of appropriation by large sectors of the pop-
ulation, young people from the peripheries in particular. Likewise, the
participating groups and organizations expressed other ways of inhabit-
ing the city and ways of using, appropriating and producing the public,
not only at a specific spatial level but also by addressing issues of trans-
portation and the conditions that enable free urban mobility, the right to
leisure; and including aesthetic and artistic ways of intervening the city
with murals, graffiti or pixaçãos.4
On the other hand, the process also created alternative methods of
political production and practice, different from the dominant ones. The
process not only questioned the state’s ability to execute public policies
for common good and not to the benefit of a few, it also showed the lim-
itations of party organization to carry out disruptive and massive social
mobilization processes. The internal organization of the collectives and
the articulation between collectives was based on the discussion of hi-
erarchies and direct participation – not delegated or mediated – both in
deliberation and in decision-making and execution. In future works, we
will deepen the study of those elements.
Chile: The Penguins Keep Marching

Between 2006 and 2012, there were a series of mobilizations in Chile led
by high school and university student organizations, which had a great
social and political impact with effects that exceeded sectoral issues. In
addition to resignifying the public space with street actions and schools’
takeovers (high schools and universities), student mobilizations shocked
the social and political climate of a society characterized by many au-
thors as numbed, demobilized and apathetic by the democratic transition
process, with young people uninterested in social issues (Aguilera 2012).
The student mobilizations, led by high school students (called
pingüinos, penguins, for their school uniforms) began in mid-2006 and
peaked in 2011 and 2012, this time driven by university students. In
those six years, the mobilizations – not without fluctuations – spread
to other social sectors, such as workers (especially the precarious and
subcontracted), consumer associations, organizations linked to housing
problems (residents, mortgage debtors), sexual minority groups, envi-
ronmental groups, and the already mobilized Mapuche communities in
the south of the country. The confluence of various mobilized groups
concentrated in a few years and with visible street actions can be an-
alyzed as the constitution of a cycle of protest (Tarrow 1997), which
shocked many of the bases that Chilean society seemed to have agreed
upon in the democratic transition, opened disruptive political opportu-
nities and forced to look for alternative solutions.
The main manifest motivations of the high school and university stu-
dent mobilizations in Chile were connected to the end of profit in educa-
tion (a criticism of the excessive commercialization of education and the
idea of education as a business driven by profit-making); the reversal of
the municipalization of schools begun during the Augusto Pinochet dic-
tatorship; the increase in the educational budget, especially for univer-
sities; the democratization of the university government, incorporating
student representation with voice and vote; and the improvement of the
quality of education received by all social sectors. However, as we said
and in agreement with Oscar Aguilera (2012), student mobilizations far
exceeded the educational dimension and became social, political, and
cultural events that impacted Chilean society as a whole and constituted
“new repertoires” of collective action (Aguilera 2012, 105)5, character-
ized by at least three elements: first, a “location and singularity” of the
conflict spaces and their objectives that can explain the multiplication of
the movement and the consolidation of the organization without resort-
ing to images of fragmentation and atomization that sometimes make
understanding difficult; second, the “diversification and located inno-
vation of mobilization strategies”, which is related to the expressive and
aesthetic dimensions of the actions expressed both in the practices that
can be characterized as carnivals or festivals, and in the singular forms
that the takeovers of schools as public spaces adopt once they are recon-
figured by collective occupation; and third, appears in Aguilera (2012,
105) mentioned as “multi-relationships at the origin of the conflict” and
we can connect it with the relationships between the state-institutional
64 Pablo Vommaro
sphere and the movement characterized by direct dialogue, with little or
no mediation, where often the most important thing is the dialogue itself
than the immediate achievement of the students’ goals.
Following the same author, the “new repertoire” thus characterized
constitutes a “rhizomatic and molecular” movement capable of diver-
sifying spaces, multiplying conflicts, and challenging multiple subjects
(Aguilera 2012, 105). Although the immediate goal of the 2006 move-
ment was to achieve the discussion of a new Ley Orgánica Constitucio-
nal de Educación (LOCE) [Constitutional Organic Law on Education],6
the dynamics of the actions carried out quickly expanded horizons and
initiated a cycle of mobilizations that is still open.
As for its organizational modalities, the Chilean student movement
produced participatory methods, with elements of direct democracy,
and disputed hierarchies and verticalism. The different high school or-
ganizations came together in the Asamblea Nacional de Estudiantes
[National Student Assembly], the highest body for deliberation and
decision-making. In this form of direct democracy, there were also re-
vocable and rotating spokespersons, voceros, for the movement, who
had to consult with the Asamblea each decision and every step in the
negotiation with the government. The latter often puzzled state negoti-
ators, who found it difficult to identify a single and permanent interloc-
utor, which sometimes gave the movement a chaotic and disorganized
image. With the resurgence of the secondary student movement in 2011,
the Coordinadora Nacional de Estudiantes Secundarios (CONES) [Na-
tional Coordinating Committee of High School Students] was created,
which groups the main student organizations by high schools. As for
university students, the mobilizations were promoted by the Confeder-
ación de Estudiantes de Chile (CONFECH) [Chilean Student Confed-
eration], born in the early 2000s, which groups students from the main
Chilean universities, organized into federations by university, whether
public or private.
We are interested in highlighting three elements that appear in differ-
ent studies on Chilean student mobilizations and that we were able to
verify in our study. On the one hand, the multiple relations between the
processes of student politicization and the ethical dimensions of the mo-
bilizations, expressed in the experiences of the fight for the environmen-
tal and natural resources, public education for all and sexual diversity,
among other issues. On the other, the deployment of politics in everyday
life, based on relations of reciprocity, cooperation, affection, and friend-
ship. It is this politicization of the day-to-day that allows the movement
to multiply and consolidate. Thirdly, a process of “re-enchantment with
the public” (Aguilera 2011, 23) that expresses other methods of political
commitment that constitute alternative ways of constructing the com-
mon and reconfiguring the public from a community perspective, not
restricting it only to the state. As our last point, we can add that that
re-enchantment with the public and political participation also impacted
the engagement of youth with electoral and state-centered forms. That
is expressed in the participation of at least seven prominent leaders of
the recent student mobilizations in the general elections of November
2013, four of them obtained legislative positions. Although the electoral
participation in parties of the Chilean left or independent was highly
criticized by various organizations and movements, the considerable
electoral success of those referents opens a question mark and a space
for possible interaction between state politics and social organizations
in the future.
Colombia: Hand in Hand with MANE7

The Mesa Amplia Nacional Estudiantil (MANE) [National Student
Round Table] was born in mid-2011, calling for a national student strike
in rejection of the educational policy implemented by the Colombian
government. An attempt to reform the Ley 30 (Law 30, which has ruled
higher education in Colombia since 1992) triggered the protest. The
changes in the law sought to deepen the privatization and commodifica-
tion of higher education in that country.
Soon, MANE managed to mobilize the vast majority of university
students in Colombia and stopped the legislative reform. In the words
of some of its members, since that great student strike in 2011, MANE
“has started a movement to build an alternative model of higher educa-
tion, where the criterion is not the Colombians’ capacity to pay but uni-
versality, quality, and free higher education” (MANE’s Facebook page).
The student organization expanded to most universities, establishing
local bureaus in each of them and links with teachers, workers, and
other social organizations. Its large numbers, the media coverage, and
the social consensus achieved by MANE mobilizations forced the gov-
ernment to withdraw the reform project of the Ley 30 from the Par-
liament. The government was also forced to recognize them as valid
and legitimate interlocutors and work with them on another educational
reform that would consider student proposals. MANE had very critical
views regarding the political-party system of Colombia, so its partici-
pation in the debates with the government generated conflict within the
organization. The position that prevailed, not without tensions and con-
tradictions, was the one that accepted to participate in the discussions
but without mediation, in direct dialogue with the government.
MANE had two main lines of work, that arise from a method-
ology designed to achieve their objectives of improvement and de-
commodification of higher education and from the desire to build a
broad social consensus to strengthen the movement and at the same time
protect it from the strong state and parastatal repression that has been
going on in Colombia for years.
66 Pablo Vommaro
Regarding the creation of an alternative proposal for the Colombian
higher education, the movement maintains the need to “consider educa-
tion as a fundamental right and not as a commodity” and achieve “an
alternative higher education Law that must be democratic and qualified
and created with the agreement of all democratic sectors in the country”
(MANE Colombia’s Blogspot page).
Those proposals were introduced during the first meeting with the
Colombian government, held in May 2012, and attended by the Min-
ister of Education, María Fernanda Campo and the Vice Minister of
higher education, Javier Botero. The National Spokespersons committee
participated on MANE’s side; it had received a mandate from the ple-
nary of the organization, held in December 2011. It is important to note
that MANE is organized according to the practices of direct democracy
(based on participation over delegation, assemblies being the most im-
portant decision-making spaces) and the discussion of hierarchies and
verticalism (with rotating delegates or spokespersons, who present them-
selves as spokespersons and not as leaders). Likewise, the mobilizations
are based on direct action and include an artistic and aesthetic aspect
that often configures the practices that take place in public spaces which
are appropriated and produced collectively.
According to MANE, the methodology with which they have been
working on the creation of a new higher education law, an alternative
to both current Ley 30 and the reform that the government intended to
impose, is democratic and participatory. We highlight here two features
of that methodology. On the one hand, direct and unmediated dialogue
with the decision-making state bodies. It is a new take on the practices
of traditional politics based on representation and delegation of the ne-
gotiations in mediators that act between the state and the movement. On
the other hand, MANE invited different social sectors to be part of the
discussions and the resulting proposals.
Thus, the Mesa established links with other organizations such as
the Federación Nacional de Profesores Universitarios (FENALPROU)
[National Federation of University Professors], Asociación Sindical de
Profesores Universitarios (ASPU) [Trade Union Association of Univer-
sity Professors], Congreso de los Pueblos [People’s Congress], Minga
de Resistencia Social y Comunitaria [Minga of Social and Community
Resistance], Marcha Patriótica [Patriotic March], Polo Democrático
Alternativo [Alternative Democratic Pole], Sindicato de Trabajadores
de Universidades Nacionales (SINTRAUNAL) [National University
Workers’ Union], Sindicato de Trabajadores de las Universidades de
Colombia (SINTRAUNICOL) [Union of Workers of the Universities
of Colombia], Asociación Colombiana de Universidades (ASCUN) [Co-
lombian Association of Universities], and other student representatives
from Colombian higher education institutions (MANE Colombia’s
Blogspot page).
Going over the aforementioned organizations, we find unions, com-
munity, neighborhood, and territorial movements, as well as left-leaning
political groups. The broad spectrum of groups and sectors with which
MANE has created ties deepens the repercussions of its actions and pro-
posals, beyond the educational sphere and into an integral criticism of
the dominant system. As a result of MANE’s social prominence, many
of its members suffered repression by the state. The repression is ongoing
and even included the military occupation of the Universidad de Antio-
quia (Medellín), one of the main public universities in Colombia.
The consensus achieved and the overcoming of the sectoral demands
is clear in MANE’s main proposals:
to build education as a right without profit as motivation, with ad-

equate state financing and moving towards gratuitous education,
respectful of university autonomy, democratic freedoms and human
rights [...] fulfill the political and academic guarantees for the de-
velopment of mobilization and program building from the student
movement, among them, the urgency to clear up public university
system’s deficit and the necessary withdrawal of the public force
from university campuses [...] demand that the national government
does not carry out a reform of higher education in Colombia until
the time defined by MANE’s methodology and supported by the
sectors with which we work has been exhausted.
(MANE Colombia’s Blogspot page)
Likewise, in its first Minimum Program approved in August 2011, the

Mesa called for “a political and discussed solution to the internal armed
conflict that the country is experiencing” (MANE Colombia’s Blogspot
page).
In addition to recovering national experiences and traditions, MANE
expressly refers to the Chilean case to support its action. It occurs in
at least two ways. On the one hand, due to the many similarities that
Colombia and Chile share in terms of their economic policies, their
educational systems, the monitoring of the plans of international finan-
cial organizations and the OECD, and their relations with the United
States, among other things. The Colombian government recognized
that the reforms that Ley 30 promoted were inspired by the Chilean
university system, which had already demonstrated its exhaustion on a
national scale.
On the other hand, the experience of the mobilizations by high school
and university students in Chile since at least 2006 has become the driver
of the fight in Colombia. Those relationships were materialized, among
other things, in meetings that were held on a regional and continental
scale where Colombian, Chilean and Mexican students, among others,
converged.
68 Pablo Vommaro
During 2013 and 2014, MANE’s actions continue to receive popu-
lar support; their proposals go beyond sectoral issues and deal with the
peace process started in Colombia or the Paro Campesino that argues
the social implications of free trade agreements with the United States,
for example. At the same time, MANE discusses the mercantile and
elitist foundations that sustain the reforms that the government seeks
to impose. Thus, the main slogan prepared to lead the mobilizations on
March 20 and 21, 2013, later replicated in other public actions, stated:
“Because free with quality is possible”.
Mexico: About the One Hundred Thirty-Two and the

Forty-Three
In May 2012, when Enrique Peña Nieto and a group of politicians from
the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) [Institutional Revolu-
tionary Party] rejected the protest staged by a group of students from
the Universidad Iberoamericana during their visit to that institution, ac-
cusing the students of not being students or of being manipulated, they
surely did not imagine that they were witnessing the birth of the move-
ment that would be known as #YoSoy132 (#IAm132). In fact, the or-
ganization came about from the statement of 131 students from the
Universidad Iberoamericana, in Mexico City, who filmed a video show-
ing their university credentials to verify that they were not just a handful
of students, that they were students who had staged a genuine protest
amidst the electoral campaign prior to the presidential elections, and
that they had not been manipulated. The video of the 131 Iberoameri-
cana students was uploaded to YouTube; it reached tens of thousands of
views in just a few hours. The students who sought to show solidarity
with the 131 accused after protesting against Peña Nieto began to use
the phrase “Yo soy el 132”. The growth of the movement on social me-
dia, especially on Twitter, led to the adoption of the pound sign as their
emblem.
Although #YoSoy132 is a movement made up mostly of students – and
emerged as a student initiative – it does not focus only on educational
issues, but rather seeks changes on broader issues such as mass media
and the political system.
Mexico is a country in which the student movement has a long tradi-
tion of struggles and mobilizations8 but #YoSoy132 appears more as a
student-led citizen movement than as a student only movement. In other
words, it is a collective that expresses broad social needs embodied by
young students. Their eight guiding principles account for that. Accord-
ing to their own statements, #YoSoy132 is a movement: non-partisan
(without organic links to political parties); pacifist (their demonstrations,
protests or actions reject any type of violence as a resource to achieve
their goals9); inclusive and plural (they seek the inclusion of anybody
that agrees with their propositions, even if they are members of another
organization, always respecting diversity and autonomy); political and
social (they embark on actions related to political and public affairs in
Mexico); autonomous and responsible (autonomy through the commis-
sions and committees that make up #YoSoy132, respecting the decisions
they make through dialogue, as part of the free and democratic expres-
sion of each one of them), that respects freedom of expression (horizon-
tal circulation and transparency of information); committed to building
the country and transforming society (actively participating in favor of
society and public life); and rejecting false democracy and impositions
(they seek to counter those political actions that corrupt democracy and
citizenship) (#YoSoy123’s page).
Based on those principles, #YoSoy132 considers joining forces with
different organized sectors of Mexican society to “build ties of solidarity
and respect with citizens through which it is possible to create an ac-
tion plan for transformation” (#YoSoy123’s page). This plural, diverse,
broad citizen style generated a decentralized and strongly reticular form
of organization. Indeed, the movement is formed by various committees
and nodes that operate with relative autonomy from each other. There
are #YoSoy132 general assemblies, but the composition of the different
committees is dynamic and flexible. Likewise, the movement’s spokes-
persons rotate and function as circumstantial spokespersons or referents
for the media.
As we mentioned, mass media and social media issues are fundamen-
tal concerns for the movement. On the one hand, since the beginning,
media democratization, denouncing concentration, censorship, and
media manipulation have been central issues. On the other hand, the
movement created the #YoSoy132 media group: it initially dealt with
mass media issues to then became one of the most important, visible,
and active nodes. Third, social media occupies a fundamental role in
the movement, not only for external visibility and viralization of their
actions, but also for internal communication and exchanges, and espe-
cially in the organization of their actions. In other words, visibility on
social media is not a subsequent effect of the practices of this group, but
rather constitutes an element that shapes it from the start.
Although the results of the July 2012 presidential elections did not
at first glance express a triumph of #YoSoy132’s proposals, it kept its
social legitimacy and its actions continued to exceed student spaces and
generated broad consensus and adherence, particularly marked among
other youth organizations that work at the cultural, artistic, expressive,
and territorial levels.
On September 26, 2014, the dynamics of mobilization and social con-
flict in Mexico were marked by another event. Local police, supported
by apparent paramilitary groups, in Ayotzinapa (Iguala, State of Guer-
rero) repressed a demonstration against the municipal authorities. Six
70 Pablo Vommaro
people died and 43 went missing. Four of the six dead and all of the
disappeared were students from the Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro
Burgos (known as the Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa, Rural Nor-
mal School of Ayotzinapa).10
In a political situation already convulsed with conflict linked to
drug-related gangs and by the aforementioned mobilizations initiated by
#YoSoy132, the repression of the Ayotzinapa protests and the death toll
and disappearances triggered protests in the main Mexican cities. It also
accentuated the cycle of mobilizations and contributed to strengthen-
ing and rebuilding networks between various mobilized groups that had
weakened in recent years. University students from upper and middle
classes that gave birth to #YoSoy132 in Mexico City, members of the
Zapatista groups in the south of the country, students from low-income
areas and workers who study in Escuelas Normales Rurales [Rural Nor-
mal Schools],11 urban middle sectors, intellectuals, teachers and various
youth groups, came together in street protests and mobilizations that
occupied public spaces in several Mexican cities.
It is clear from what we have described before that those youth pro-
tests have started and/or energized broader mobilization cycles involving
other social sectors and building or recomposing networks with propos-
als that go beyond the generational to question the Mexican political
system and its hegemonic logic. Those cycles have discontinuities and
acquire various modalities that require a more exhaustive study. What
we can advance here is that this variable dynamic of collectives that
mobilize and make themselves visible in a more diffused or more central-
ized way is based on more permanent modes of organization that unfold
in the everyday territories of youth.
Final Words
Having identified their singularities, the four experiences we have de-
scribed have common features with other youth organizations. They
give shape to what we call the generational methods of politics in Latin
America today. In other words, modes of political production, which
although not belonging exclusively to the youths, are shaped by the gen-
erational dimension. We highlight some key features below:
• The construction of links with the state based on direct dialogue,

without mediation. The dialogue between the movements’ spokes-
persons and the state happens directly, without the intermediation
of political parties, unions, and also without the appointment of
permanent representatives. This different relationship expresses
another way of understanding and practicing politics in which the
organizational modalities and the construction of social ties are
as important as the achievement of immediate objectives and the
exhibition of absolute achievements. The relationship is symmetrical
and not speculative, one that intends to bring the state to the terrain
of the movement rather than adapt the organization to the negotia-
tion modalities imposed by existing institutions. The methods of di-
rect democracy – that stimulate participation rather than delegation
or representation – that movements deploy are connected with these
modes of linkage.
• These movements are part of the process of gradual expansion of
rights and increasing consideration of social diversity that has oc-
curred in Latin America in recent years. It especially involved young
people, who were often the main beneficiaries of these new rights
and also who fought to achieve them. The third-generation human
rights expanded in the region to incorporate the rights of diverse
minorities (ethnic and sexual among the main ones) and introducing
notions such as “good living”, food sovereignty, and land rights in
terms of extractivism and exploitation of natural resources. Thus,
issues related to large social groups were excluded for years, as were
those related to the environment and land, and other issues such as
the right to leisure or free time and the right to the city, became ob-
jects of law and public policies. The new rights agenda that shaped
the region was also nourished by recent discussions about the right
to education, especially concerning higher education. Thus, the
expansion of rights pushed by the movements, the recognition of
diversity as constitutive of contemporary youths, and politics that
becomes ethical shape many of the features of the organizations that
we study here.
• The methods and technologies of communication and information
– particularly social media – are not only a fundamental channel of
expression and visibility of the movements but also constitute a rel-
evant component to understand the constitution and consolidation
of the organizations. Thus, those networks become a territory of
political action similar to others: there is a dispute over their control,
methods of internal communication and incorporation of new mem-
bers and supporters are deployed. They also become informational
alternatives to the hegemonic and corporate media.
• The institution of alternative forms of the public, not only in terms
of their use or appropriation, but also in the production of non-
state and non-commercial public spaces based on community logic.
A conception of the public as the common, a possibility of together-
ness different from (and that sometimes escapes) the hegemonic dy-
namics that promote segregation and competition. This idea of the
public understood as not only just the state is linked to occupation
as social form12 – a concept taken from Manzano and Triguboff
(2009, 7) – as a particular mode of use, appropriation, and produc-
tion of public space and community dynamics. We are witnessing a
72 Pablo Vommaro
process of growth and expansion of the public that could be reori-
enting the decline that Sennett described for the twentieth century
(Sennett 1978).
• Youth becomes a public cause that generates support and politi-
cal mobilization. This question was addressed by Melina Vázquez
(2012) and we find it extremely stimulating to study the movements
with which we have worked here. In many experiences, it is com-
plemented by an appeal to youth that is used to connote novelty,
i.e., as a symbol of a form of politics that is recognized as novel. In
this way, many political conflicts are expressed in terms of genera-
tional dispute, contrasting young militants with the political struc-
tures defined as traditional, often identified with political parties or
state institutions. Being young thus becomes a political value that
symbolizes a tension – sometimes opposite or contradictory – with
the previous ways of doing politics that are considered exhausted
or powerless at the juncture in which the movement unfolds its ac-
tion (Vázquez, and Vommaro 2012). The questioning of the political
system then does not translate into a withdrawal from politics by
the organized youth, but rather a move into collective initiatives of
alternative political production, in tension with the dominant ones.
For reasons of space, we have not been able to address here the youth
mobilizations and organizations that have occurred in recent years
in Central America and the Caribbean. For example, student groups
and the campaign for Fuera JOH in Honduras (Sosa 2013; Vommaro,
and Briceño 2018); the mobilizations that made government cor-
ruption and the misuse of public funds visible in Guatemala; student
marches and strikes in Costa Rica and Panama; and protests denouncing
bad government in Puerto Rico. Neither have we been able to account
for the organizations and mobilizations of black, indigenous and rural
youths, who have also been prominent in conflicts and protests in the
last 20 years in various countries of the region.
The diversities of the youth experiences studied here are multiple. Per-
haps their main common characteristics are the persistent desire of youth
organizations and collectives to implement innovative alternatives, their
ability to express general characteristics of their societies, their resig-
nification of streets and public spaces, and their power to continue to
be protagonists of the most dynamic social processes of mobilization,
conflict, and change in Latin America.
Notes
1 This article is the result of the author’s work in different research projects
and institutional spaces. Among them, the following stand out: CLACSO
Working Group “Youth and childhood”; PICT 201-0078 “Youth activism
in democracy. A comparative study of political activism in the democratic
recovery (1982–1987) and in the immediate past (2008–2015)”; PICT
2017-0661 “Youth, Politics, and State: A study on socialization, subjec-
tivation and political youth practices, in connection with the socio-state
processes of youth production in Argentina (2011–2019)”; and UBACyT
20020170200124BA “Figures of youth militancy. Emergencies, re emer-
gences, and disputes (1969–2015)”.
2 In some rolezinhos, more than 6,000 young people gathered; for example,
those that occurred in various São Paulo shopping centers between Decem-
ber 2013 and February 2014.
3 This took place both during the 2013 mobilizations and in the marches to
reject the repression against the rolezinhos in São Paulo in early 2014.
4 Pixaçao is a practice similar to graffiti in which pixadores make street in-
scriptions with unique and distinctive print, generally clandestine or hidden.
There are dozens of youth groups of pixadores in São Paulo that display
their aesthetic proposals on the city walls.
5 Aguilera takes the notion of “repertoire” from Tilly (2002).
6 The LOCE in force in Chile in 2006 was sanctioned by Pinochet a few days
before leaving office. In 2009, this law was replaced by the current Ley Gen-
eral de Educación, which did not bring significant changes regarding Pino-
chet’s LOCE and did not include the main student demands.
7 Translator’s note: The original Spanish section title, Colombia: de la mano
de la MANE, is a play on words with “mano” (hand) and MANE, which
sounds similar to “mano”.
8 Some of the experiences of the tradition of the Mexican university student
movement: the events of Tlatelolco in 1968 (a student mobilization in Mexico
City, within a framework of a broader popular protest which was repressed
leaving hundreds dead) and, more recently, the 1999 and 2000 battles of
students at UNAM (and other universities) against neoliberal policies.
9 This brings the Mexican experience closer to the Colombian one but distin-
guishes it from the Chilean case since the student movement there does not
reject the appeal to violence as a form of resistance.
10 This school has a tradition of organization and resistance and its students
have been protagonists of other conflicts. For example, in December 2011
other student protests were repressed, leaving two dead, in an episode
known as “el conflicto de Ayotzinapa”.
11 Translator’s note: Rural Normal Schools are rural teacher-training colleges.
12 In Vommaro (2010) we analyze the social form of occupation as an expres-
sion of a network of organizational social networks, rather than through a
form of dialogue with state institutions.
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3 Between Past and Future
Exile, Cuban Literature and
Identity (1959–2003)
Michèle Guicharnaud-Tollis
Considering the successive waves of emigration since the Cuban Revo-

lution of 1959, it appears that a new mental universe is emerging among
exiled Cuban immigrants. These massive departures immediately led to
the loss of the main reference points that guaranteed the integration
and rooting of every human being in his or her native environment. The
weight of spatio-temporal coordinates on the psychological and social
balance of the individual shows that, desired or constrained, any trans-
plantation causes more or less significant uprooting. In return, “exile
reinforces the powers of imagination, as a double capacity to remember
the past and to desire the future; it makes possible mythical discourses,
different from the myths and rituals to which anthropology has tradi-
tionally devoted itself” (Appadurai 1996, 32). According to an original
dynamic, the reconstruction of a new mental universe thus results in a
loss, but also in a recomposition or transculturation that is constantly
enriched, nuanced and evolving over time.
The specific characteristics of this restructuring of the imagination
due to a change in the relationship with space will be analysed here,
based on a corpus of texts written by exiled Cuban writers located in
different capitals or large metropolitan areas of the Old or New World:
some are internationally renowned, such as the novelist Guillermo
Cabrera Infante based in London, Severo Sarduy in Paris, the poet
Gastón Baquero in Madrid, Reinaldo Arenas first in Miami then in New
York, and the essayist and novelist Gustavo Pérez Firmat, who moved to
Miami then Chapel Hill and currently in New York; others less known
in Europe; and finally, others still active in the Cuban-American intel-
lectual community. Based on their testimonies and their own speeches
or autobiographies, we will first approach their experiences as exiles.
We will therefore study how, far from their homeland, they manage to
recreate a new mental and literary universe: the “mythical discourses”
they reconstruct, both for themselves and for others; the intimate dia-
lectic between reality and imagination that they establish between the
present and the past, because their place of writing has changed; the
discursive strategies they deploy to express this new imaginary space in
their writing.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-5
78 Michèle Guicharnaud-Tollis
The exile of Latin American writers has been a great constant in
the tumultuous history of twentieth-century Latin America. The most
prestigious names in Latin American literature (Julio Cortázar, Carlos
Fuentes, Pablo Neruda, Fernando del Paso, Mario Benedetti, and many
others) who had the painful experience of exile expressed the acuity of
their suffering caused by the trauma of the distance from the native land
and the indelible stain forever engraved in their memory, flesh and soul.
The Cuban writers who left the island during the Revolution did not
escape this painful reality. Yet, Cuba was a land of exile long before the
revolution and the Castro period.
The Tradition of Exile from Cuba: Search for Freedom

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, as the island continued to
live under an ever-increasing colonial yoke and as the broad emancipa-
tion movement began to affect the American empire, many intellectuals
chose freedom, forced to leave the Most Faithful Island. These exiles
took place in the vast trend of transatlantic migration and displacement
from the nineteenth century and were mostly explained by political rea-
sons in the long history of Cuban separatism: so some great tutelary
figures of island political life emerge, such as the reformer José Antonio
Saco, but also a whole line of writers whose lyrical verve could only be
known from the land of exile. With José María Heredia (1803–1839),
Miguel Teurbe Tolón (1820–1857), José Agustín Quintero (1829–1885),
Pedro Santacilia (1826–1910), Pedro Ángel Castellón (1820–1856), Juan
Clemente Zenea (1832–1871), Leopoldo Turla (1818–1877), the list of
poets is long; who, fleeing persecution by the Spanish authorities, gave
in to the call of the independence sirens and went into exile in the United
States. In that country, these poets discovered a “true sanctuary against
tyranny” (Montes Huidobro 1995, XV). From the nineteenth century
onwards, this patriotic poetry sings of the love of the homeland, exalts
the beauty of the island landscapes, attaches itself to the identity sym-
bols of the palm tree and the ceiba and takes up the challenge of colonial
oppression.
The list of exiled poets is still growing with the names of José For-
naris (1827–1890), Juan Lorenzo Luaces (1826–1867), and Juan Jacinto
Milanés (1814–1863), but also the great novelist Cirilo Villaverde (1812–
1894), and the emblematic figure of the distinguished patriot and writer
José Martí (1853–1895), who in Flores del destierro [Flowers of exile]
expresses the deep pain of the exiled poet suffering the same fate as He-
redia, despite the many years that separate them.
I am the shell of myself, who in a foreign land /

turns, at the will of the sullen wind, /
empty, without fruit, torn, broken.
Between Past and Future 79
[…]I am no longer alive:
nor was I when the fatal ship lifted the anchors /
when they tore me from my land!
(Martí 2001, 253)1
For Matías Montes Huidobro, this poetry of exile, written or published

from the outside, marks the first steps of a tradition that is at the very
heart of the literature of exile, particularly the Cuban-American one:
“To leave, to leave, to escape slavery or suffocation, is among Cuban
writers a tradition with a genetic history” (Montes Huidobro 1995,
VIII). 2 Cintio Vitier even notes that the first impulses of Cuban lyrical
poetry were born in exile, where literary creation emerged and unified
with patriotism and the desire for freedom, where poets wanted to build
a powerful rampart against tyranny. Like him, Reinaldo Arenas insists
on the repetitions of history and on a true continuum at the origin of
a tradition firmly rooted in Cuban and more broadly Latin American
history strongly marked by the Hispanic heritage and political authority:
Yes, we have always been victims of the dictator […] that is part
not only of the Cuban tradition, but also of the Latin American
tradition, that is to say, of the Hispanic heritage that we have had
to suffer. […]. Those attitudes have been repeated throughout time:
General Tacón against Heredia, Martínez Campos against José
Martí, Fidel Castro against Lezama Lima or Virgilio Piñera; always
the same speeches, always the military roar suffocating the rhythm
of poetry or life.
(Arenas 1996, 116)3
Under Fidel Castro’s Revolution, the exile of intellectuals, writers and

artists was in response to this same envy of freedom. While the exile
or exodus of Cubans during the Cuban Revolution – particularly to the
United States – began in 1959, it evolved substantially over the following
decades. The successive flows of exiles have marked real generations.
As Ruth Behar points out, in 1979, 100,000 Cuban migrants returned
to the island to see their families. In 1980, she added, 125,000 Cubans
left the island again; these were the events of Mariel: the flow of mari-
elitos alone constitutes a new and true generation of exiles, proscribed,
whether or not they are homosexual. The most moving and representa-
tive example of these intellectuals exiled to the United States because of
the so-called “deviance” sexual and hostility to power is undoubtedly
that of Reinaldo Arenas. Writer, novelist, short story writer, and poet
born on 16 July 1943 in Holguín, Reinaldo Arenas grew up in a poor
peasant family, his father having abandoned him, and his mother hav-
ing taken refuge with his parents. After the revolution, he studied at
the University of Havana and then worked for the José Martí National
Library. He then dreamed of embracing a career as a writer. His first
novel Celestino antes del alba [Songs from the Well] distinguished itself
in a national writing competition.
The government sought to take control of the Cubans. The Cultural
Revolution took on a harder facet: writers must censor their writings,
homosexuals – which he was – were considered deviant. Arenas suf-
fered persecution from the Castro regime, but he continued to write
and live his sexuality as he saw fit. Although he was no longer able to
publish his works on the island, he managed to send them abroad ille-
gally. The Cuban painter Jorge Camacho, exiled in France, helped him
publish his books in the rest of the world. For his homosexuality and
criticism of power, he went to prison and rehabilitation through labour
camps. He finally left Cuba for the United States in 1980, as did thou-
sands of “segments of society” expelled by the Cuban regime. Arenas
told his painful story in his biography Antes que anochezca [Before
nightfall] (1992),4 which the New York painter and filmmaker Julian
Schnabel adapted in the film Before Night Falls. After learning that he
had AIDS in 1987, R. Arenas committed suicide and died on December
7, 1990 in New York.
Among exiled intellectuals, several generations are most commonly
distinguished. The first generation of exiles is in fact those who left the
island as children; considering the writers and intellectuals, the gener-
ation of Cristina Garcia and Roberto Gonzalez is the most representa-
tive. Jorge Duany considers that, compared to the next one (with Oscar
Hijuelos for example) the first generation shows the authentic mentality
of the exile. “For this first generation, Cuba represented nostalgia, a
lost paradise with sweet dreams of youth, of transformation that were
collapsing. We had burned the return bridge and were no longer to look
back, except to return to salt pillars” (Behar 2015, 6). On the contrary,
those of the second generation, who have left as adults, wanted to see
the island with their own eyes, rather than through their parents’ filter.
“We didn’t want to fight the same battle as their parents and yet they
were still trapped in the patterns, fears, and silences of their generation”
(Ibid.). To evoke the complex and shifting way in which the Cuban of
this second generation was able to “negotiate” his identity, Flavio Risech
introduced an interesting metaphor: the game of transvestism dear to
Severo Sarduy and more generally to neo-baroque writers. “For many
second-generation Cubans, this border is not only the political boundary
between two countries, but a kind of identity border between various
images of themselves, as Cubans and semi-Americans” (Risech, in Behar
2015, 57, 58). Finally, the third generation emerges, that of intellectuals
and writers, sons and daughters of Cubans exiled in the 1960s, strongly
acculturated even if they are not completely assimilated by/in the dom-
inant culture, who resolutely turn their eyes towards the future of their
host country.
Through his personal case, Pérez Firmat has focused on “the 1.5 gen-
eration”, an expression of the sociologist Rubén Rumbaut, which he has
taken up again in Vidas en vilo. It refers to those who were born there
on the island (allá/there), but who were raised here in the United States
(aquí/here) and who, by not really integrating into either country or cul-
ture, feel foreign everywhere and in all situations. According to him,
this generation, which remained without descendants, is that of the in-
between, plural and divided, paradoxical and split, on horseback and
torn between one country and another.
For people like me, divided and multiplied at the same time, the truth
always has paradoxes; that our exile is over but our exile will never
end; that there is no exile that lasts a hundred years; and that there is
no exile that gets away with it. Sometimes I take pride in this duplicity,
sometimes it tires me, but I am like this: me and you and you and you
and two. Cuba is my homeland but the United States is my country. […]
So that if our homeland sends us back to the past, our country places
us in the present. […] Instead of melting Cuba and the United States, I
constantly oscillate between one and the other. My life is not a synthesis
but a coming and going (Pérez Firmat 2000, 199, 201).5
Exile and Writers in the Revolution

On the many reasons that led some writers to exile, we find below some
clarifications based on personal experiences that their autobiographical
narratives carry: so, we hear the cry of pain, the tearing and anger until
the revolt of the one who rebels against all forms of infringement of his
freedom. The purpose of this book is too the question of writing exile.
One of the most emblematic representatives of this Mariel Generation,
Reinaldo Arenas expresses with the greatest vehemence in his autobiog-
raphy Antes que anochezca his impetuous instinct for life – evidenced by
the vitality of his erotic life – and a violent hostility to any authoritarian
regime which he describes as dictatorship censoring any manifestation
of life. The hunt for homosexuals raged and Castro’s speeches, animated
by all the stereotypes attached to manhood, went so far as to advocate
the way young men should dress and stigmatized those who wore long
hair or walked in the street scraping their guitars…
In the 1970s, R. Arenas had already tried to leave. He refers to the
persecutions against clandestine meetings of writers – at Olga Andreu’s
house and at Lezama Lima’s – some of whom had become informants
for the State Security (he quotes Miguel Barniz, Pablo Armando Fernán-
dez, César López): “The most dangerous for the regime was the large
number of young people who followed these dissident writers and that
is why they had to be demoralized” (Arenas 1996, 161). Arenas refers
his despair to the point of suicide, his imprisonment in the Castillo del
Morro as a homosexual and counter-revolutionary dissident, and above
all, his desperate escape helped by one of his black lovers to leave the
country – of all means, through the Guantánamo naval base. Finally,
Arenas left on May 4, 1980 on the boat San Lázaro as a homosexual and
not as a dissident writer (Arenas 1996, 302–305).
After the Revolution, Lydia Cabrera was also forced to go into exile
in Miami with her partner the palaeontologist, María Teresa de Rojas.
This “tropical sister of the Grimm”, author of philosophical tales that
reveal the popular wisdom and humour of the “old Negroes” as in Entre
Ayapá, cuentos de Jicotea [Between Ayapá, stories from Jicotea] (1971),
or Cuentos para adultos, niños y retrasados mentales [Stories for adults,
children and the mentally retarded] (1983), expressed the lost illusions,
the nostalgia of a past that is by no means idealized, and also engage
in satire, which targets Cuban slavers of yesteryear, lazy and macho
Negroes or Americans who, in “earning their living, lose it”, said Liliane
Hasson. Hence Lydia Cabrera's determination to restore from Miami
in her masterpiece El Monte [The Hill] the richness and exuberance
of Cuban flora with all the vital force that in the Cuban imagination is
inevitably associated with it.
More objectively, because the famous formula “Dentro de la Revolu-
ción todo; contra la Revolución nada” (“Within the Revolution every-
thing; against the Revolution nothing”) (Castro Ruz 1961) has caused
much ink to flow and triggered heated controversy, no doubt the famous
speech of June 1961 delivered by Fidel Castro “Palabras a los intelec-
tuales” [Words to the intellectuals] points out a certain conception of
culture within the Revolution and the role assigned to the intellectual in
this context. In fact, as J. Lamore said: “The only problem that can […]
arise […] is to know what the narrowness or latitude of the “within”
will be, a space of variable geometry according to the circumstances”
(Lamore 2008, 81). The real question was there, in this degree of lati-
tude given to artistic creation within the revolution with regard to the
legitimate place claimed for the artist’s freedom and his own vision of
the world. The real difficulty also lay in the intellectual’s relationship
to the revolution. El Che often deplored that Cuban intellectuals were
intellectuals but not revolutionaries.
The Padilla Case (1971)

The Padilla Case marked a definitive turning point in the history of rela-
tions between Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government and the writers’
and artists’ community: a breaking point that triggered multiple reac-
tions both within and outside the island.
As the poet Padilla finished his novel En mi jardín pastan los héroes
[In my garden graze the heroes], he was arrested on 20 March 1970 on
the grounds that his book Fuera del juego [Out of the game] was critical
of the revolution, and that his contacts with foreign intellectuals and
his friendship with the Chilean writer Jorge Edwards seemed suspect.
His arrest caused so much indignation, including among the strongest
supporters of the Cuban revolution, that the poet’s release had to be seen
as the accused’s obligation to work on his own merits (17 April 1971),
that Padilla was forced to accuse himself of counter-revolutionary acts
and censored his own book (Fuera del juego) during his trial. Castro
strongly protested against the intellectuals who had condemned Padilla’s
arrest by calling them “pseudo-left-wingers, hypocrites and dishcloth
authors”. This release coincided with the first National Congress of
Education and Culture in Havana. It was, however, fraught with conse-
quences and marked a radical rupture within the intellectual community
between those who subordinated culture to revolution and those who
wished to retain the margin of freedom they considered inherent in all
artistic creation. The spontaneous enthusiasm of the French philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre for the Cuban revolution in the 1960s also died out in
the Padilla affair. It lasted ten years until 1971 when, in Le Monde on
May 22nd, Sartre and some 60 intellectuals signed a letter to Fidel to
express “their shame and anger” in support of the Cuban poet Heberto
Padilla, who was forced into public self-criticism for having criticised the
Havana regime.
With the Padilla Case (1971), the decade of the grey quinquenio and
the frustration caused by the failure of the ten million Zafra, the era of
“errors” recognized by Fidel Castro himself had truly begun.
The “Mariel Generation” and the Writers around the

review of the Exile: Mariel (New York, 1983–1985)
The “Mariel generation” has brought together in exile a group of pres-
tigious writers from the island, unjustly forgotten or censored, who
have managed to publish their writings abroad with publishers such as
Playor in Madrid, or Sibi in Miami: Reinaldo Arenas, García Ramos,
Roberto Valero, Miguel Correa, Emilio Ballagas, Carlos Victoria, and
Carlos Diez were among those who set out in search of freedom in exile.
From 1983 onwards, the magazine Mariel helped to create cohesion in
the literature of exile by welcoming many of these exiled authors: Lydia
Cabrera, Lino Novás Calvo, Eugenio Florit, Gastón Baquero, Rafael
Esténger…
The declaration of Cuban intellectuals (“Declaración de Intelectuales
Cubanos”, 1991) or the letter of the 10 and intellectuals exiled in France
and Spain
No Latin American regime may have shown any more openness to de-
bate or a desire to see the number of intellectuals increase, but the time
has come for breaks with the regime with the events of May to June 1991
and the letter of the 10, when María Elena Varela Cruz, expelled from
UNEAC, and a group of intellectuals launched the famous “Declaration
of Cuban intellectuals” demanding free elections, an unrestricted na-
tional debate on the situation on the island, an amnesty for the last pris-
oners of conscience and United Nations assistance to resolve the lack of
food and medicine affecting the island. On June 15, Granma published
an article accusing the signatories of CIA manipulation and providing
evidence of their contact with the Cuban Democratic Platform led from
Madrid by Carlos Alberto Montaner. To these intellectuals who define
themselves as opponents (and not as dissidents) are added those who
were in contact with the North American interests’ section in Havana
and opponents from outside.
Here is an excerpt from Manuel Diaz Martinez referring to the exile
of the signatories of the “Letter of the Ten”:
Of the first ten signatories of the Charter, only one, Raúl Rivero,
remains on the island (Against all risks he practices the profession,
illegal there, of independent journalist). The rest of us emigrate:
María Elena Cruz Varela is in Spain, the novelist Manuel Grana-
dos lives in France, the novelist José Lorenzo Fuentes, Bernardo
Marqués Ravelo, Nancy Estrada, Víctor Manuel Serpa and Roberto
Luque Escalona are in the United States, I grow old in Las Palmas
de Gran Canaria (my spare island, according to my Chilean friend
Hernán Loyola). Some knew the ergastulas of Castro -Cruz Varela,
Jorge Pomar, Fernando Velázquez, Luque Escalona and the film-
makers Jorge Crespo Díaz and Marco Antonio Abad, much more
numerous than the hotel beds in all of Cuba.
(Manuel Díaz Martínez, February 26, 1996)6
After Manuel Díaz Martínez wrote these lines (7 April 1996), the inter-
national response was not long in coming and the poet and essayist Raúl
Rivero, who was first imprisoned and then released, would follow the
same fate as the other writers and settle in Madrid. The fear of exile was
felt in Raúl Rivero, who had great difficulty leaving his country because
of his fear of nostalgia and bitterness – as it was for many of his intel-
lectual friends, many of whom lived in Miami. “Unconsciously, I have
always refused to leave because of that, because of the fear of bitterness,
of having to invent hatred, of all that” (Raúl Rivero 2004).
Encuentro de la cultura cubana (Madrid, 1996) and the

Colony of Cuban Writers in Madrid
The colony of Cuban writers and artists exiled in Europe,7 probably
less well known and certainly less visible than in the United States, suc-
ceeded in creating a real network, of which the Encuentro de la cultura
cubana [Meeting of Cuban culture] magazine is a strong example. Cre-
ated in 1996 by Jesús Díaz, Encuentro de la cultura cubana, which had
no affiliation with any party, sought to bring together intellectuals from
the exile and the interior of the island. We know that the debate was
long open between what seemed absolutely necessary in the eyes of some
intellectuals: to build a bridge between the inside and the outside and in
particular intellectuals from the outside and the inside. Even far from his
native island, Baquero felt strongly Cuban. His very broad conception
of Cubanity made him consider that any Cuban exile was Cuban in the
same way as any Insular from inside the Island. In this way he joined
many other writers from the same diaspora, such as Antonio Benítez
Rojo and many others wherever they reside, who called for the union of
all Cubans around the poetry of the world.
Dedication […] To the boys and girls born with passion for poetry
anywhere in the plural geography of Cuba, the one inside the Island
and the one outside it. The common pride in our poetry of yester-
year, written in or far from Cuba, is nourished every day, at least in
me, by the poetry you do today – and will continue to do tomorrow
and always! – those who live in Cuba as well as those who live out-
side of it. There are marvellous young people on both shores. Bless
you! Nothing can dry the tree of poetry.
(Baquero 1998, 246).8
Following the Black Spring (March 2003) and the political repression
against dissidents (75 dissidents were arrested, accused of being agents
of the United States), those events highlight too the differences of opin-
ion between the intellectuals, some of whom demonstrated their support
and unfailing loyalty to the Revolution. Another letter from Cuban in-
tellectuals was issued on 19 April 2003 to oppose attacks perpetrated
against the Revolution and to support the regime:
Today, April 19, 2003, forty-two years after the Girón Beach defeat
of the mercenary invasion, we are not addressing those who have
made the issue of Cuba a business or an obsession, but rather friends
who in good faith may be confused and who have so many times
offered us their solidarity Granma.
(Granma April 20, 2003)9
The signatories of this document were: Alicia Alonso, Roberto Fernán-

dez Retamar, Miguel Barnet, Julio García Espinosa, Leo Brouwer, Fina
García Marruz, Abelardo Estorino, Harold Gramatges, Roberto Fabelo,
Alfredo Guevara, Pablo Armando Fernández, Eusebio Leal, Octavio
Cortázar, José Loyola, Carlos Martí, Raquel Revuelta, Nancy More-
jón, Silvio Rodríguez, Senel Paz, Humberto Solás, Amaury Pérez, Marta
Valdés, Graziella Pogolotti, Chucho Valdés, César Portillo de la Luz,
Cintio Vitier, and Omara Portuondo.
The Territory of the Imagination: An Act of Resistance,
Between Memories and Refoundation
The thought of the “trace” dear to Edouard Glissant should finally help
us to understand how the geographical loss of a place is not the loss of
its identity. Reading the presentation that Amir Valle residing in Berlin
makes of himself – even on his website – it is clear that exile has often
exacerbated the love of the native country: far from the island, the love
of the island and the imaginary power dominate the writer here. Cuba
is everywhere: Cuba travels everywhere in the world. Whether in Berlin,
London, Moscow, Paris, Madrid, Mexico or Miami!
I don’t live in Cuba: Cuba lived in me. And I love my island with the
same rage with which I suffer. I love its diversity and I suffer from
its blindness. I love Benny Moré and Celia Cruz, Fernando Ortiz
and Moreno Fraginals, Lezama Lima and Eugenio Florit, Carpen-
tier and Cabrera Infante, Enrique Arredondo and Guillermo Álvarez
Guédez; Wifredo Lam and Cundo Bermúdez, and I suffer the absurd
reasons that try to deny them what they are: the heritage of all Cu-
bans, above creeds, filiations, intolerances and extremisms (Valle,
blog, https:///amirvalle.com/es).10
As Amir Valle, every exiled writer sang his love for Cuba and for the is-
land. As Severo Sarduy said: “Nothing preoccupies nor afflicts me more
than Cuba. Nothing is in my mind more than Cuba” (Sarduy 1999, II,
1837). Yet, the writing and the words betray. Behind the words and lan-
guage, behind the convolutions of the thought, the power of imagination
and the interstices of language, we note the emergence of an elsewhere
difficult to define. As Amin Maalouf pointed out: “Writing during all
the life has taught me to be wary of words. Those who appear to be the
clearest are often the most treacherous”. One of these false friends is
precisely “identity” (Maalouf 1998, 15). Even if it reconnects with the
past, childhood, the native land and the homeland, this literature of exile
is inevitably part of a more or less long-term break with the country of
origin, as soon as return is no longer reasonably conceivable. In a kind
of compensatory justification, posteriori, writing then challenges the
identity foundations undermined by exile. Wishing to restore meaning,
it emancipates itself from the initial roots, takes inspiration from new
models and sets out to conquer unknown spaces, to discover unexplored
trails.
Nostalgic Look and Memories of the Past

At first, these exiled voices share a common vision of Cuba: an often
nostalgic look at the island, combined with an effort to remember and
recreate the lost Paradise in all its geo-affective and cultural dimensions.
Their homesick eyes are often those of women and men born between
1935 and 1945. In the poem “Contrastes” [Contrasts], Rita Geada
(1934–) fights against the nostalgia that invades her and only manages
to live her relationship with the island in the suffering caused by the
distance, the memory of a happy childhood and the lost Eden (Burunat
García 1988, 30).
For all those writers who are spokespersons for the literature of Cuban-
American exile, such as Lourdes Casal (1938–1981), Alina Hernández
Castro (1956–) and many others, exile is synonymous with the irreduc-
ible loss of home, with the uprooting from the patio where they played
as children, and finally with lack (“la extrañeza”). Thus, L. Casal con-
fides her feeling of having irreparably lost his house and country so that
she always was living on the edge. Memories of childhood and adoles-
cence reappear and take shape in images, flavours, smells and sensations
linked to palm trees, ceibas, but even more to the sea, the vital source of
all Islanders and more generally of all Caribbean people.
Their discourse then tends to metaphorize the spaces that saw them
born and nourished them, both physically and spiritually. E. Rivero
(1942-) recalls the poem “Frente al mar” [In front of the sea] by Ana
Rosa Núñez (1926–1999): in this hymn to the sea, the Morro lighthouse,
“Tropical Polyphemum”, symbol of light, illuminates the entrance to
the port of Havana, but also pierces the darkness that surrounds the
lost memories of the exile in search of a light that gives them meaning.
Under the pressure of anxiety and loneliness, Maya Islas (1940–) consid-
ers herself an “orphan”, without ties, without a name, without identity.
Gradually, as nostalgia fades, a change will take place in these writers as
soon as the awareness of otherness emerges – the awareness of belonging
to an ethnic group different from the dominant majority group – and the
discourse is coupled with either a feminist claim:
We (I count myself among them) began to be conscious of our being

different from the dominant groups in the seventies, and internal-
ized this difference as a first step in becoming members of one of the
largest ethnic minorities in America. In the seventies, some of these
women also began to write as feminists; that is the case of Robles,
Islas and myself.
(Rivero 1990, 167)
With its biculturalism – Cuban and American – this new generation,

called “ethnic”, is sensitive to the twofold difference that separates it
from the dominant group of Anglo-Americans and the male commu-
nity. Today, among Cuban-American women, these writers make their
feminist voices heard in an environment that tends to lock them in the
periphery, where they are forced to maintain themselves. For G. Pérez
Firmat and E. Rivero, these new arrivals feel shared, fragmented and
condemned to exist in two cultural and linguistic environments. Critical
and observant like their male counterparts, they constitute this “bridge”
or “passerelle” generation, very inclined to dialogue with the Cubans
of the island, that of artists who emigrated early, children or teenagers,
and recognize themselves as bicultural, but also bilingual beings. “Their
nostalgia fades as it dominated the production of their ancestors” writes
Rivero. Isabel Álvarez Borland, too, contrasts the nostalgia of the first
exiles with the Cuban-American teenagers (Álvarez-Borland 1998, 49),
who were less turned towards their past. From the 1970s, with time,
playing on this duality, they had to assume this permanent process of
deconstruction and reconstruction of their being: turn their backs on
nostalgia and constantly affirm or reaffirm themselves as new beings, in
their triple dimension of gender, class and status:
a writer who, whether woman or man, is not only continually aware

of her or his own hybrid self, but at the same time obliged to be con-
stantly constructing this bicultural self - deconstructing the original
Cuba one and reconstructing a new American one, only to reverse
the process according to circumstances and to situations arising in
the family or ethnic community, or in the public sphere of work and
mainstream encounters.
(Rivero 1990, 174)
However, identity reconstruction is not always very easy. With the same
aim of returning to the lost paradise that led the exiles in Miami to build
“La Pequeña Habana” [Little Havana], after his stay in this city, Pérez
Firmat tried to reconstruct his original world in Chapel Hill: posters
with Cuban motifs, photographs of Havana colonial houses, tinajones of
Camagüey, reproduction of the Obispo street in Old Havana: “I wanted
my house to be a little piece of Cuba - or Miami - in Chapel Hill. [...] My
house was a corner of Havana, a museum of cubanity, a greenhouse for
transplanted habaneros” (Perez Firmat 1997, 178).11
In the same way, in her poetic-anthropological work El Monte, Lydia
Cabrera certainly reconstructs the richness of the Afro-Cuban world
that she discovered in her youth. Especially in exile, Lydia Cabrera never
stopped thinking about Cuba, her childhood and the loved ones she had
lost, and in the first issue of the magazine Mariel, published in 1983 in
Miami under the patronage of Reinaldo Arenas, she wrote: “If I had
not learned then what blessed communism was, perhaps I would have
fallen, like most Cubans, into the castrist trap” (Lançon 2003).12 Hav-
ing become a discreet but imposing figure of exile, as the years go by,
she deepens her knowledge of a world she has never left: the house of her
childhood in Quinta San José, and the mixture of black and white cul-
ture that she wore within her delighted her. In the same issue of Mariel
magazine, she adds: “Those we have loved and who have died accom-
pany us, invisible (Ibid.). A few minutes before her death, her heiress
heard her whisper”: “Havana… Havana…”. She blows at her: “Lydia,
do you think of Havana?” The old lady smiled and replied: “I am there”
(Ibid.).
Likewise, Dolores Prida is part of this generation of Cuban exiles who
left Cuba for the United States relatively early (1961) and who espe-
cially feel the lack of their family and home. Her passion for the Cuban
cultural heritage, music, popular songs – the bolero – is obvious. The
separation of identity is the central theme of Coser y cantar [Sewing and
singing]. In the image of the aquarium and the window that separates at
the airport those who remain in Cuba from those who remain, all this
identity issue is at stake. How long will the hearts of immigrants remain
attached to their native land? When will reconciliation and inner peace
take place? As Dolores Prida herself said in an interview in 2003, “Can-
tar y coser is my most personal piece”. The drama of these two women
which is also that of Dolores Prida is only really resolved when Ella
speaks English and She in Spanish, when their search becomes shared
and common.
For each of these writers, it is always a question of finding what has
never really been lost, these intimate treasures that have remained in the
darkest depths of memory, and of recreating a buried world, sometimes
unavowable, that only writing and memory can resurrect and save.
Distance and Avoidance Strategies: Translation / Betrayal

When the exile becomes internal (insilio), each Cuban exile converts into
a nomadic island, a raft stranded somewhere in the world. As Efraín Ro-
dríguez Santana explains, this island emigration has always been marked
by nostalgia, but also by the need for external enrichment, which has
resulted in a complex relationship between the island and the diaspora.
When José María Heredia and Martí deplored their distance from their
homeland, they gave new contours to their reinvented homeland island
placing a myriad of symbols around it. In the transnational landscape,
creation thus challenges stereotypes, old nationalist concepts of home-
land and border, and pushes back the limits of a developed thinking
on the rigid distinction between the “outside” and the “inside”. Other
modes of expression and other types of writing are emerging, which
disperse and even dissolve Cuban culture.
From postmodern and neo-Baroque perspectives, poets such as
Lorenzo García Vega (1926–2012) and José Kozer (1940–) reject the
canons of a Cubanity which has slowly become meaningless on the is-
land. Iván de la Nuez spoke of the deterritorialization and transterri-
toriality of imaginary universes, Efraín Rodríguez Santana played on
the many faces of an island now multiplied throughout the world, and
Antonio José Ponte highlighted the existence of a new “Cuban tradi-
tion of no”, which has gone to war against sacred myths and clichés of
national culture. Most dissident authors use metaphor to demystify the
hero of the Revolution, Fidel Castro.
That is the case of Abilio Estévez who deploys an extremely negative
imagination around the Cuban Revolution: the cyclone – the central fig-
ure of the novel – becomes a metaphor to show Fidel Castro’s devastating
power. This propensity to reject, far from always being loud, can on the
contrary be discreet, almost invisible, as with Dulce María Loynaz or
Eugenio Florit. In this Cubanity that the Cubans inside would have said
“false”, the exiled writer then finds his intimacy, enjoyment and serenity.
However, the search for new horizons or parameters may appear to
be a betrayal and writing differently sometimes leads to the adoption of
avoidance strategies, both for oneself and others. In order to reclaim a
new homeland, it is then a question of surreptitiously resorting to fic-
tion, and even more so to the masks of discourse: far from meaning-
less founding texts, it is for everyone the mean to recover their identity.
Gaston Baquero, for example, admits to wearing multiple masks and
not stopping disguising himself. Among them, the poem “Los lunes me
llamaba Nicanor” [On Mondays, my name was Nicanor] manifests the
unbridled search for an identity that keeps slipping away and the poet’s
fierce struggle – doomed to failure – against death.
Traduttore, Traditore: “Tradittore”

Among the authors mentioned, several are passionate about translation
and very concerned about linguistic problems: the well-known paron-
omy of the Italian Tradittore: traduttore, traditore finds its place here.
Cabrera Infante constantly plays a balancing act that makes him oscil-
late between translation and betrayal. In Tres Tristes Tigres [Three Sad
Tigers], the formula used in the plural by Silvestre “Tradittori” (exotic
fusion of traduttori and traditori) at the end of chapter XXII (Bachata),
actually summarizes the whole novel. Indeed, the host of the Tropicana
expresses himself alternately in the two languages and creates a hybrid
speech based on the transposition of lexical but also grammatical sys-
tems; and in the chapter La muerte de Trotsky referida por varios escri-
tores cubanos [Trotsky’s death as referred to by several Cuban writers],
each parody illustrates in a particular style (those of José Martí, Alejo
Carpentier, José Lezama Lima) the treason of Trotsky by J. Mornard;
finally, the characters in Cabrera Infante’s novel criticize these latter
authors, who reproach them for a betrayal of a national nature. This
culpable alteration of the native language is obviously not unrelated to
the identity fluctuation of these characters, torn between artifice and
authenticity. Moreover, even treated in a playful way, this obsession with
betrayal persecutes the author until the end: “Who is going to betray his
homeland (patria) or his homeland (matria) (sumatria is the homeland
of the humalayans) in order to keep a friend […] Cubanity is love?”
(Cabrera Infante 1967, 330).13
Considering Vidas en vilo [Lives on the edge], Pérez Firmat imme-
diately emphasizes that it is a translation of Life on the Hyphen: The
Cuban-American Way, a translation in which he also sees the vocation
which characterizes Cuban-American culture: “One of the rectrices ideas
of Vidas en vilo, precisely, is that the Cuban-American culture arises from
a translational impetus, from a vocation of translation” (Perez Firmat
2000, 14).14 In fact, the whole book is a reflection on “the coupling of
tradition and translation in Cuban-American culture, a set of achieve-
ments and practices based on the tradition of translation no less than on
the translation of tradition” (Ibid., 17).15 Pérez Firmat shows in it how
Cuban-American culture is truly a translation, a transfer, a better search
for balance in this transition from one world to another carried out by this
1.5 generation of which he is one of the representatives, a desirable and
successful balance between what has been lost and what has been won.
If the risk of betrayal in the translation remains a major concern, the
play on words (retruécano), the use of the portmanteau word, the verbal
proliferation provides as many subterfuges intended, for fear of empti-
ness to escape depth, authenticity and truth. The aesthetics of enumer-
ation and accumulation observed in other Cuban exiles – Kozer calls
himself a “quantitative poet” – should be included in this same line.
Will it be said that so much obliquity masks the truth once again? This
is at least what Pérez Firmat suggests, for whom Cabrera Infante’s most
intimate, authentic and moving book, despite its impersonality, is Vista
del amanecer en el Trópico; it is also the only one, he notes, that does
not include a pun.
Fun, Parody and Neo-Baroque Game

Similarly, the parodic discourse of authors such as Cabrera Infante and
Severo Sarduy from exile shows their profound disagreement with the
questionable paths taken by the Castro Revolution. The “excentricity”
of their writing actually reveals the gap, the off-centre vision out of the
standardized system and the imposed model that these authors disap-
prove, despise and ultimately reject above all. “The parodic text is an
intertextual screen behind which a vision of the alternative world is
sketched, which cannot be expressed head-on” (Eichel-Lojkine, 37).16
In this sense, with its parodic games and the masks it installs, Cabrera
Infante’s playfulness is no longer to be discovered. In a novel like Tres
Tristes Tigres it becomes a strategy of avoidance, even rupture, which al-
lows it either to avoid personal effusion or more formally, to go against the
current of known and recognized stylistic figures, to break completely with
the literary tradition and criticism that had inspired and promoted them.
Moreover, in an interview he himself stated that, in his opinion, lit-
erature was a game, a social game to which he wanted to invite and
involve his reader. In an author known for his taste and art of prov-
ocation, anagrams, palindromes, paradoxes, word or number games,
spanglish, pastiches, (false) typographical errors, optical illusions, and
white pages, all these processes can appear as deviations, as betrayals
(traditore). In Tres Tristes Tigres, the fluctuating game that navigates
between appearances and reality, images and reflections, models and
copies, truth and illusion, the neo-baroque strategies in place such as
specularity, metamorphosis and illusionism all end up revealing at least
as much as concealing. The foundation of Cubanity seems to have been
shaken somewhat, even if, by returning to the sources of the most pop-
ular island identity – folklore, song, music in general – the recurrent
presence of music is there to underline the frantic and desperate quest for
authentic love, but doomed to failure. By proposing the parody of seven
eminent Cuban writers whose national tradition had made them idols,
or the facets of Bustrophedon, this novel illustrates perfectly the author’s
desire to overthrow them, and to turn former heroes into salt statues,
with the heroic images on which this national tradition is based. As the
creator of its own myths, the discourse becomes transgressive and tries
to hide an existential void that a saturated neo-baroque prose fills with
humour and verbal artifice. In order to emphasize, in Cabrera Infante,
on his verbal power turned towards the future and new artistic worlds,
Carlos Fuentes said that his novel “allows us to make the transition from
the past to the future”.
Like Cabrera Infante, Severo Sarduy engages in the same parodic pro-
cesses of carnival that critics have often studied. “For novelists in ex-
ile, the birth of a new writing modality often requires the death of the
old one” (Moulin Civil 1995, 848).17 Conspired, stoned by criticism and
transgressive fiction, the heroic revolutionary discourse is damaged: the
novel of exile thus began the long ideological process of decolonization
that was still on going. In De donde son los cantantes [Where the singers
are from], the architecture of the text offers a deliberately heterogeneous
fragmented vision of the Cuban identity that parody multiplies to infinity.
Sarduy is engaged in a permanent parody that passes through the text
and its reading at all levels of language. Skilled at creating new and un-
predictable meanings, Severo Sarduy creates a polysemic text that is each
time new and whose “salamander effect” dear to Milagros Ezquerro
(Ezquerro 1997, 58) is no longer in doubt. If for alchemists, the salaman-
der is a symbol of fire, an essential element in the transmutation of lead
into gold and more generally in the metamorphosis, it is also the emblem
of the French King Francis I whose motto was “I feed and extinguish”.
Severo Sarduy’s text turns on and off, builds and destroys, invokes and
challenges at the same time: in the service of this double game, parody
becomes the centre of this salamander process, at the very heart of the
functioning of this “indefinite lamination” (Ezquerro 1997, 59), which
generates the text built in a clever palimpsest.
Between tradition and rupture, Severo Sarduy never stops using the
choteo [kidding], anchored in the history and idiosyncrasy of the island
people, to better denigrate and indulge in the unbridled celebration of
words and language. To cite a few examples, in the section devoted to
Dolores Rondon, the two protagonists are entirely from the literary tra-
dition of the nineteenth century: the mulatto is in the tradition of Cecilia
Valdés, like the Gallego, the Spanish of the Hispanic colonial tradition,
which appears in the costumbristas [traditional] paintings. Alongside
Cuban sayings, popular expressions and jargon, the choteo, which Jorge
Mañach has given a personal definition of, accompanies the parody. It
is the parody of San Juan de la Cruz in his mystical quest that we wit-
ness through the frantic search of Auxilio-Socorro, to the extent of that
of Mortal (F. Castro) who metamorphoses into Christ. This mysticism
(or search for an identity or even metaphysical sense of identity that
torments Severo Sarduy to the highest degree) is constantly parodied,
devalued, despised, and despiritualized: “They want to give up. To be
others. They searched, yes, they searched, they bribed, they begged for
door-to-door warnings” (Sarduy 1993, 191).18 Very quickly the quest
for the soul – spiritual, existential or identity – is transformed into the
enjoyment of the body to the point that the atmosphere of religiosity
proper to Spanish Baroque is immediately devitalized by the presence of
the Cristo Fans: faith becomes fanaticism, disrespect, borders on blas-
phemy, the religious procession melts into the mould of a profane festi-
val. Christ becomes more and more human, until he transforms himself
into a grotesque puppet that the crowd welcomes in a kind of relajo
criollo [relaxing Creole]. The whole crowd, they’re the ones helping to
kill him until his body decomposed in the snow – what a mockery in
the tropics! – and a new space opens up to the sound of Yoruba drums
and under the protection of new gods, whether they are called Changó,
Yemayá, Sakiamuni, or Maitreya. A space that finally comes to life some
20 years later when this Christ – perhaps an alter ego of the author –
reappears in El Cristo de la rue Jacob [The Christ of rue Jacob] (1987)
and which, at the end, leads to emptiness, if we judge by his last writings
Epitafios [Epitaphs] (1993) written as close as possible to death, domi-
nated by bitter disappointments and especially emptied of any humorous
or parodic meaning. Finally, the neo-baroque game that fills the empti-
ness (or nothingness) plays at its height but also shows its limitations.
Incessant Travellers and Borderless Literary World

The abundant world of exiled poets such as G. Baquero, Raúl Rivero or
Manuel Granados is a perfect illustration of the power of imagination
and its strong hold on solitude or nostalgia. Baquero’s imagination is
also recomposed in the renegotiation of his abused and almost destroyed
identity. Of very modest, mixed (mulato) and homosexual origin, he
had to suffer humiliations traditionally linked to class, race and sex. In
any case, his entire Madrid production resembles a compensatory at-
tempt to recover his identity. His voice is no less rich, no less ambiguous
than Cabrera Infante’s: as in the latter, Cuban “motifs” immerse the
reader in a poetic whirlwind of literary and artistic references that echo
each other. Based on elements from various cultural worlds – Cuban,
of course, but also Caribbean, African, North American, Asian and
European – his poetics conceived as symbiotic and “transcultural” is
truly transformative. Baquero introduces us into a complex labyrinth
of intertextual references, a world without borders to bring together all
creators wishing to reach the world of the stars, Cubans from inside and
outside, and beyond, the whole world. Read “Isla de Verdeoro: Eugenio
Florit habla del autor. A, ante, con, para, según, sobre Gastón Baquero”
[Verdeoro Island: Eugenio Florit talks about the author (To, before,
with, for, according to, about Gastón Baquero)] (1991), the poem that
Florit dedicated to him from his exile in Miami, to understand to what
extent Baquero’s poetry is unanchored. For him, the journey is perma-
nent and the geography, as much as the history, is dislocated.
To become aware of this poetry, all you have to do is read plays such
as “Himno y escena del poeta en las calles de La Habana” [Hymn and
scene of the poet in the streets of Havana], which, with its strong rhyth-
mic potential, immerses the Andalusian protagonist, García Lorca, in
the stunning and even bewitching atmosphere of the popular Havana
streets, which he actually visited : drums, music, the cries of street ven-
dors, an introduction to the rites of health confusedly mixed with the
predictions of an Andalusian gypsy, all these mixed elements plunge
the reader into an unreal world made of the interpenetration of two
places and two imaginary, Andalusian and Cuban. A sort of vox populi,
the fictional voice subjugates the Andalusian poet and even pretends to
bring him to his senses by breaking his desire to return to Spain (“no te
vayas de La Habana”) synonymous with death: another way of evoking
the exile’s announced non-return.
“An incessant traveller on the road, carried and brought by the steed
of the imagination, is what I am, what we are” (Baquero 1998, 394).19
Baquero, an untiring migrant, takes us towards infinity, into imaginary
spheres of multiple correspondences, undoubtedly inspired by the imag-
inary eras and orphism of Lezama Lima; he leads us across unusual
geo-historical borders, under latitudes where letters and arts, especially
music, respond to each other and blend together in harmony. The beauty
of his poems lies in these constant migrations and mutations that gener-
ate a new poetics where, by successive associations, shifts or resonances,
light multiplies infinitely until it disperses. It is then that a magic of
transmutation with very “originist” accents operates, which Baquero
defined as the art of crossing, through imagination, the superficial layer
of things and ideas, of stripping or revealing what is hidden, of seeing
beyond reality (to say it, crossing was one of his favourite verbs) and,
within the limits of invention, of transfiguring it: “That’s all: Transfig-
ured reality, as far as the imagination can reach” (Baquero 1998, ibid.). 20
Thus, the search for stars leads Baquero to merge into the universal: in
his dedication to the “Invisible Poems” (1991) where he quotes Borges,
we see him opening the very current debate on the deterritorialization of
literature: “I haven’t regained your closeness, my homeland, but I already
have your stars” (Baquero 1998, 246). The richness of his poetry, tran-
scendent and saturated, comes from the cultural world with its abyssal
depths, which is at the very foundation of its creative power: he multiplies,
enchains and superimposes ad libitum cultural references of all kinds.
Conclusion
This literature of exile thus highlights the power of the imagination in
the formation of a new Cuban culture and identity. Very different from
island and host country literature, it seeks new paradigms and draws its
strength from a creative dynamic in which memory plays a decisive role
in regaining self-conquest and overcoming isolation. Distinct between
past and present, mutatis mutandis engages in the narrow path of par-
adox, in “transculturation” or, in Pérez Firmat’s own words, in “bicul-
turation”: “Only by becoming double, one can become whole; only by
being two, one can become one” (Perez Firmat 2013).
Without denying his past, but without really integrating the totality
of the present, quite often without hope or a desire to return, wherever
he lives, the Cuban writer of exile finds in this creative force the means
to overcome cultural rupture and disruption. By lifting the anchor for a
new beginning, this termless literature expresses well its uncertain an-
choring, the reality of its atopy, which prevents the exile from being
assigned an arrival point. Without a home port, without hope of return,
without ceaseless migration, always itinerant, it simply takes off… These
elements of reflection may perhaps help to better understand the ques-
tion of Cuban identity considered from the outside, especially its lability
and the multiplicity of its faces.
Notes
1 “Cáscara soy de mí, que en tierra ajena /gira, a la voluntad del viento hu-
raño,/ vacía, sin fruta, desgarrada, rota/. […]Ya no soy vivo: ¡ni lo era /
cuando el barco fatal levó las anclas /que me arrancaron de la tierra mía!”.
All the quotations from the texts of Exile Writers in French or in Spanish has
been translated into English by M.Guicharnaud-Tollis.
2 “Partir, irse, escapar de la esclavitud o la asfixia, es entre los escritores cu-
banos una tradición con una genética histórica”.
3 “Sí, siempre hemos sido víctimas del dictador de turno, eso forma parte no
sólo de la tradición cubana, sino también de la tradición latinoamericana,
es decir, de la herencia hispánica que nos ha tocado padecer. […]. Esas acti-
tudes se han repetido a lo largo del tiempo: el general Tacón contra Heredia,
Martínez Campos contra José Martí, Fidel Castro contra Lezama Lima o
Virgilio Piñera; siempre la misma retórica, siempre los mismos discursos,
siempre el estruendo militar asfixiando el ritmo de la poesía o de la vida”.
4 Before Night Falls. A memoir. Trad. Dolores M. Koch, Viking Press, 1993.
5 Para gente como yo, dividida y multiplicada a la vez, la verdad siempre se
reviste de paradojas; que nuestro exilio ya ha terminado, y que nuestro exilio
nunca terminará; que no hay exilio que dure cien años, y que no hay exilado
que lo resista. A veces me jacto de esta duplicidad, otras veces me harto
de ella, pero así soy: yo y you y tú y two. Cuba es mi patria, pero Estados
Unidos es mi país […]. De modo que si nuestra patria nos vuelca hacia el
pasado, nuestro país nos coloca en el presente. […] En lugar de fundir Cuba
y Estados Unidos, oscilo sin casar entre el uno y el otro. Mi vida no es una
síntesis sino vaivén.
6 “De los diez primeros firmantes de la Carta, sólo uno, Raúl Rivero, perman-
ece en la isla (Contra todo riesgo ejerce la profesión, ilegal allí, de periodista
independiente). Los demás emigramos: María Elena Cruz Varela está en Es-
paña, el novelista Manuel Granados vive en Francia, el también novelista
José Lorenzo Fuentes, Bernardo Marqués Ravelo, Nancy Estrada, Víctor
Manuel Serpa y Roberto Luque Escalona están en Estados Unidos, y yo en-
vejezco en Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (mi isla de repuesto, según mi amigo
chileno Hernán Loyola). Algunos conocieron las ergástulas de Castro –Cruz
Varela, Jorge Pomar, Fernando Velázquez, Luque Escalona y los cineastas
Jorge Crespo Díaz y Marco Antonio Abad, mucho más numerosas que las
plazas hoteleras de toda Cuba”.
7 For example, Gastón Baquero and Raúl Rivero in Madrid; Abilio Estévez
in Barcelona; Severo Sarduy, Manuel Granados, Zoé Valdés in Paris, Amir
Valle in Berlin.
8 “Dedicatoria: […] A los muchachos y muchachas nacidos con pasión por
la poesía en cualquier sitio de la plural geografía de Cuba, la de dentro
de la Isla y la de fuera de ella. El orgullo común por la poesía nuestra de
antaño, escrita en o lejos de Cuba, se alimenta cada día, al menos en mí,
por la poesía que hacen hoy – ¡ y seguirán haciendo mañana y siempre
! – los que viven en Cuba como los que viven fuera de ella. Hay en ambas
riberas jóvenes maravillosos. ¡Benditos sean! Nada puede secar el árbol de
la poesía”.
9 “Hoy, 19 de abril de 2003, a cuarenta y dos años de la derrota en Playa
Girón de la invasión mercenaria, no nos estamos dirigiendo a los que han
hecho del tema de Cuba un negocio o una obsesión, sino a amigos que de
buena fe puedan estar confundidos y que tantas veces nos han brindado
su solidaridad” (“Mensaje desde La Habana para amigos que están lejos”,
Granma, La Habana 20 de abril de 2003,7/110). Retrieved from http://
www.granma.cu/granmad/2003/04/20/cultura/articulo04.html.
10 “No habito Cuba: Cuba me habita. Y amo mi isla con la misma rabia en
que la padezco. Amo su diversidad y padezco sus cegueras. Amo a Benny
Moré y a Celia Cruz, a Fernando Ortiz y Moreno Fraginals, a Lezama Lima
y Eugenio Florit, a Carpentier y Cabrera Infante, a Enrique Arredondo y
Guillermo Álvarez Guédez; a Wifredo Lam y Cundo Bermúdez, y padezco
las razones absurdas que intentan negarle lo que son: patrimonio de todos
los cubanos, por encima de credos, filiaciones, intolerancias y extremismos”.
Valle. Retrieved from http://amirvalle.com/es/.
11 “Yo quería que mi casa fuera un pedacito de Cuba – o de Miami – en Chapel
Hill. […] Mi casa era una esquinita habanera, un museo de cubanidad, un
invernadero para habaneros trasplantados”.
12 “Si je n'avais pas appris alors ce qu'était le bienheureux communisme,
peut-être serais-je tombée, comme la majorité des Cubains, dans le piège
fidéliste”.
13 “¿Quién va a traicionar a su patria o a su matria (sumatria es la patria de no-
sotros los humalayos) para conservar un amigo [...] la cubanidad es amor?”.
14 “Una de las ideas rectrices de Vidas en vilo, precisamente, es que la cul-
tura cubanoamericana surge de un ímpetu traslaticio, de una vocación de
traducción”.
15 “[...] el acoplamiento de la tradición y la traducción en la cultura cubano-
americana, un conjunto de logros y prácticas basado en la tradición de la
traducción no menos que en la traslación de la tradición”.
16 “Le texte parodique est un écran intertextuel derrière lequel s’esquisse une
vision du monde alternative, qui ne saurait s’exprimer de front”.
17 “Pour les romanciers cubains de l’exil, la naissance d’une nouvelle modalité
d’écriture passe forcément par la mise à mort de l’ancienne”.
18 “Quieren desistir. Ser otras. Buscaron, sí, indagaron, sobornaron, rogaron
avisos de puerta en puerta.
19 “Viajero incesante en el camino, llevado y traído por el corcel de la imag-
inación, es lo que soy, lo que somos Baquero Gastón”.
20 “Eso es todo: la realidad transfigurada, hasta donde alcanza la imaginación”.
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——— (1993 [1967]). De donde son los cantantes [Where the singers are from].
Madrid: Cátedra, Letras Hispánicas.
——— (1999). Obra completa [Complete works]. Allca: Unesco.
Valle Amir. Official Website. Retrieved from http://amirvalle.com/es/
Weiss, J. (ed.) (1991). Beautiful Senoritas and Other Plays. Houston, TX: Arte
Público Press.
4 The Revolution as an Inherent
Part of Cuban Society
A Polish Perspective
Katarzyna Dembicz
Introduction
When thinking of Cuba in the context of its revolutionary experience, it
is the year 1959 that immediately springs to mind. This statement finds
confirmation not only in multiple years of my observations, but also in a
brief search through library and on-line sources. It seldom happens that
a Polish reader – or a scholar – indicates to a different historical event
related to this socio-political process, even though the body of Polish sci-
entific and popular science literature on Cuba is quite substantial. Texts
that analyse Cuban revolutionary processes from Polish perspective in-
clude such publications as: the 1978 Rewolucja 1933 roku na Kubie
(Cuban Revolution of 1933) (Kula 1991); Kuba i rewolucja w Ameryce
Łacińskiej (Cuba and Revolution in Latin America) (Chmara, Gawrycki
2004). All those books represent a discipline-oriented approach. It is
difficult, however, to find papers or analyses that would apply a com-
bined methodology of history and sociology, or sociology and political
sciences. Nor do Polish studies seem to recognise the fact that the revo-
lution has become a part of Cuban society self-descriptions, and thus an
inherent element of the Cuban national identity.
Meanwhile, such recognition is the fundamental premise of this ar-
ticle. The objective of this chapter is to analyse twentieth-century rev-
olutionary events in Cuba, and their social implications in the context
of modern political discourse on the island, as well as Cubans’ individ-
ual and collective representations of their homeland. To achieve that, I
shall discard the usual facts-and-chronology-based model of a scientific
paper, and instead use the tools offered by historical sociology in my
analysis. As Marcin Kula (2017) puts it, the essence of this approach is
that the problems – considered in the context of longue durée, and with
simultaneous recognition of their prevalence across a variety of areas –
become a focal point for a reflection. Therefore, we should pose the
following questions: what issues are relevant to the history of Cuba and
its inhabitants? Which of those stand out as particularly prominent and
may be deemed worthy of an analysis? The answers will most certainly
include the revolutionary processes.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-6
Revolution as an Inherent Part 103
When using an interdisciplinary approach that intertwines the hu-
manities with social sciences, comparative studies on social change and
social conflict in historical contexts gain particular significance. Hence,
the time and space – the latter interpreted as a social construct – become
crucial for analysing the dynamics of social change. This means that it
is justified to study the mutual dependencies between the past and the
present. In this chapter, I shall present the result of such efforts.
Firstly, I shall describe historical events of revolutionary nature, and
the ensuing social changes that took place in Cuba throughout the last
century. Then, using selected examples, I shall present both the current
and the historical political discourse and identify references to revolu-
tionary ideas. I shall also refer to selected materials from the arts and
non-fiction literature (in a broader sense) in an attempt to prove that, in
the case of Cuba, the revolution has become an inextricable and always-
present element of its reality. By Cuban reality, I also mean its national
identity which, based on the proposal put forward by Benedict Ander-
son, may be interpreted as a cultural artefact, whereby the nation is a sui
generis imagined political community whose image is cherished in the
minds of its members (Anderson 1991).
Cuban Revolutions
At the root of Cuban revolutions lies the sense of being dominated by
other states (first Spain, then the U.S.) and by a social class that acts
exclusively in its own or foreign interest. Simultaneously, the initiators
and the participants of the revolutions were motived by the will to intro-
duce social change for the sake of the future of their nation. With this
in mind, we can distinguish three revolutionary episodes that took place
in Cuba in the twentieth century. First, there was the 1895–1898 Cuban
War of Independence (La Guerra de la Independencia). Since the fallout
of that conflict only became apparent in the early twentieth century, it is
included in this analysis. The next episode was the Revolution of 1933,
which left a profound mark on the Cubans’ political awareness, propel-
ling the country towards building a liberal democracy and securing a
pluralistic political system. The third act was the 1959 Revolution that
broke with the established political, economic, and social order in the
country, and redefined its external and internal relations.
The 1895–1898 Cuban War of Independence concluded a chain of
insurgencies and armed conflict that had continued in Cuba since 1868.
Their goal was to topple the Spanish rule, bring down the colony, and
gain political independence. Given the time frame of the analysis, we
shall focus solely on the last stage of that struggle.
As a result of an insurgency, which became part of a brief yet pivotal
war between the U.S. and Spain, Cuba gained independence in 1902 af-
ter a four-year military occupation by the U.S. Máximo Gómez, Calixto
104 Katarzyna Dembicz
García, Antonio Maceo, and José Martí, the heroes of that revolution,
have since become the icons of freedom for contemporary Cuba and
Latin America, as well as symbols of valour, which Cuban revolutionary
movements would henceforth invoke.
The transformation period that followed the long years of armed con-
flict certainly helped to introduce order into the devasted administrative,
social, and economic reality of the country. The War of Independence
practically reduced Cuba to rubble. Between 1894 and 1898, its popula-
tion shrank from 1.85 to 1.689 million. 90% of sugar cane plantations
were wiped off, and the 1898 harvest was almost 75% lower than three
years before. 90% of cattle population was lost. The tobacco industry
virtually ceased to exist. On the one hand, the post-war transition led to
improved living conditions of the population and afforded broader civil
liberties, while on the other hand, it swung the Cuban economy and
politics to depend heavily on the U.S. (Dembicz 2013).
In their activities in the social and demographic spheres, the Amer-
icans focused on hygiene in daily life, and launched campaigns for
improving sanitary conditions of individuals and collectives alike, espe-
cially in towns and cities. For instance, in 1901 they carried out intense
spraying aimed at decreasing the population of the Aedes aegypti mos-
quito, a major contributor to yellow fever morbidity (Toledo Curibelo
2000). Additionally, the Americans established special funds for both
rebuilding and developing economic infrastructure such as waterworks,
sewerage systems, etc.
It was also the period when numerous protestant churches rose to
prominence among the Cuban society. At the same time, the Americans
were consistently driving down the presence and the significance of the
so-called mambises guerrilla units. This led to the dissolution of the
latter in 1899, with each demobilised soldier receiving a small compen-
sation (Dembicz 2013).
One of the key objectives of the occupying force was to ensure the
rise of an efficient administration, which in turn required a comprehen-
sive overhaul of electoral law. Voting rights were granted to 21-year-old
males who met any of the following conditions: literacy, ownership of
assets amounting to at least USD 250, or being a veteran of the insurgent
army (Bethell 1992). Thus, women and a majority of the people of co-
lour found themselves excluded. Notwithstanding those restrictions, the
enthusiasm of the society remained immense. First, the self-government
elections were held in 1900. The outcome saw a victory of the nation-
alists from the Cuban National Party (Partido Nacional Cubano). The
pressure from the public opinion, both on the island and in the U.S.,
led to the establishment of the Constitutional Assembly that drew up
the new supreme law (modelled after the Constitution of the U.S,). It
had, however, very limited impact on the shape of the American-Cuban
relations, with all the say de facto vested with the American side. The
Congress and the House of Representatives passed the Platt Amendment,
which – albeit reluctantly – was voted in as an amendment to the Cuban
Constitution by the Cuban Constitutional Assembly. For the following
four decades the Platt Amendment governed the political and economic
relations between Cuba and the U.S., set the rules for American inter-
ventions on the island, and regulated the leasing of strategic areas of
military importance to the U.S., including the base in Guantánamo.
Despite vehement opposition to the Americans’ actions voiced by
some factions of the Constitutional Assembly and the Cuban society,
the prevailing opinion on the island was that – to paraphrase Man-
uel Sanguil1 – “a protected republic was better than none” (mejor una
república protegida o ninguna). Eventually, the acceptance of the neces-
sary evil in the form of the Platt Amendment, and the ensuing formal
dependence on the U.S., facilitated Cuba’s modernisation, which José
Martí had dreamt of and deemed a much needed element of the revolu-
tionary changes in the young state (Mora 2006). While in emigration,
Martí founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party (El Partido Revolucio-
nario Cubano or PRC) in 1892. PRC’s goal was to create a new society
with intricate structures that would prevent any form of servitude or
injustice, and would be founded upon collective work (Martí 1978). He
wrote of a cultural revolution that Cuba and Latin America were to
undergo, which would coincide with the European modernisation, while
preserving its own distinct nature and the capability to create its own
quality based on local values. The society would remain racially diverse
and would eventually produce a “natural person” – el hombre natural.
Exhausted by the senseless struggle between the book and the lance,
between reason and the processional candle, between the city and the
country, weary of the impossible rule by rival urban cliques over the
natural nation tempestuous or inert by turns, we being almost uncon-
sciously to try love. Nations stand up and greet one another. "What
are we?" is the mutual question, and little by little they furnish an-
swers. When a problem arises in Cojímar, they do not seek its solution
in Danzig. The frockcoat are still French, but thought begins to be
American. The youth of America are rolling up their sleeves, digging
their hands in the dough, and making it rise with the sweat of their
brows. They realize that there is too much imitation, and that creation
holds the key to salvation. "Create" is the password of this genera-
tion. (...) The natural statesman arises, schooled in the direct study of
Nature. He reads to apply his knowledge, not to imitate. Economists
study the problems at their point of origin. Speakers begin a policy of
moderation. Playwrights bring native characters to the stage. Acade-
mies discuss practical subjects. Poetry shears off its Zorrilla-like locks
and hangs its red vest on the glorious tree. Selective and sparkling
prose is filled with ideas. In the Indian republics, the governors are
learning Indian (Martí 1891).
José Martí became an inspiration for the Cuban social and revolu-
tionary movements that followed. Future politicians, dictators, revolu-
tionaries, and common citizens would invoke Martí, and the banner of
their declarations would read revolución martiana – Martí’s revolution,
whose primary goal would be to build new social attitudes and relations,
create new values and a new Cuban, who would rebel against foreign
interventions, injustices, and exploitation. The use of the word “revolu-
tionary” in the name of the party that played a crucial role in regaining
independence has undeniably left a mark on the political discourse of the
generations to come.
The goal of the Revolution of 1933 was to break with the experiences
of the so-called República Mambisa, a period of predominantly author-
itarian and dictatorial regimes of presidents who originated from the
ranks of the former insurgent army (Ejército Mambí). The rule of Ge-
rardo Machado, the last president before the revolution, was no different.
The first three decades of the twentieth century brought the solidi-
fication of Cuba’s political system. While completely dependent on the
U.S., it became an arena for clashing liberal and conservative ideas. Yet,
in spite of great difficulties in overcoming the colonial traditions, the
creation of an open and tolerant society was progressing. Social and
political conflicts would manifest themselves as protests and rebellions,
such as the 1906 La guerrita de Agosto [The Little August War], which
prompted the U.S. to intervene and occupy Cuba, or the 1912 armed in-
surgency of the Afro-Cuban population under the banner of the Partido
Independiente de Color (the Independent Party of Colour). It was also a
period of mounting corruption, legalisation of gambling, and growing
prominence of the sugar oligarchy, who were building their fortunes on
sugar exports.
At the time, the developing sugar industry created a growing demand
for cheap labour and new land for sugar cane cultivation. Agricultural
use of new lands in central and eastern parts of Cuba saw to a con-
solidation of land ownership in the hands of the elites, leaving small
farmers without a chance for development. The labour force was also re-
cruited on the neighbouring islands of Haiti and Jamaica. The economic
prosperity of the 1920s drew settlers from Europe, especially from such
places as the Iberian Peninsula and the Canary Islands. They would set-
tle primarily in the cities, spurring a growth in services, crafts, and in-
dustrial processing. Such inflow of human and financial capital allowed
the cities, especially Havana, to flourish.
By the end of the 1920s, a new image of Cuba had emerged, in which
large swathes of land were covered by sugar cane plantations and the
sugar processing plants, the so-called centrales azucareros [sugar plants],
with their distinctive facilities and slender smokestacks becoming a fix-
ture in the landscape. Socially, however, disparities were growing and
becoming increasingly visible both in rural and urban areas. The gap
between the rich Cubans and Spaniards and the poor, i.e. mainly co-
loured population, was becoming ever more pronounced.
Cuba did not escape the 1929 global economic crisis. Additionally, so-
cial discontent was exacerbated by the president, who breached the rule
of law and suppressed any strikes or demonstrations with bloodshed.
Meanwhile, Gerardo Machado manifested his independence in domes-
tic affairs also in the international stage. He reduced Cuba’s economic
dependence on the U.S. – by 1930, it had dropped to 60%. Unfortu-
nately, in spite of creating jobs and organising public works, the scale of
poverty would not budge. It is estimated that in 1933, 60% of Cubans
lived below the poverty line, with annual income below USD 300, while
the earnings of another 30% would not exceed USD 600 (Bethell 1992).
The growing discontent eventually exploded in riots that engulfed the
entire country and caused a wide spectrum of forces to engage, i.e. from
political parties to labour unions, student associations to intellectuals,
and the army. Their goal was to change the existing political order. The
largest Cuban cities and plantations were in turmoil. The streets saw
acts of lynching. The rebellion also erupted within the Cuban army and
resulted in a secession. The sergeants from the Columbia Barracks sup-
ported the protesting students and the demands of the Directorio Estudi-
antil Universitario [University Student Directory]. The collaboration of
the army with intellectuals and students’ milieu was in fact a military-
civilian agreement, expressed on 4 September 1933 in the Proclama de
la Agrupación Revolucionaria de Cuba [Declaration of the Revolution-
ary Group of Cuba]. The document indicated that the purpose of the
revolution was to introduce a just social order and political indepen-
dence of the State, and create a strong national economy under a modern
democratic system. The new Cuba was to be a founded upon the rule of
law [Proclama al Pueblo de Cuba 1933].
As a consequence, a Revolutionary Junta was established, chaired by
Ramón Grau San Martín, a professor of medical sciences. On the 5th
of September, the interim revolutionary government proclaimed Cuba’s
sovereignty through the abolition of the Platt Amendment. Unfortu-
nately, due to the increasing sway of the military, the government sur-
vived for 100 days. In that period, however, the reforms of the interim
government asserted the administration’s determination to introduce
an idealised order of socialist nature, with “Cuba for Cubans” policy
standing out as its prominent feature.
Cuba set out on a road towards forming a liberal democracy, creat-
ing a brand of national socialism, and breaking with colonial practices,
along with the traditions of the leaders’ mambises background. Grau’s
government took decisions to:
Simultaneously, steps were taken to limit the activity of American com-

panies2 in the domestic economy and strengthen the position of labour
unions. The reforms were the brainchild of Antonio Guiteras Holmes,
the Minister of Internal Affairs in Grau’s government.
The new order did not, however, enjoy the support of the old political
establishment and army officers from the Machado’s regime. The U.S.
saw Grau San Martín’s government as extremely radical and communist.
In reality, stability in that period was brokered by the army, which saw
the rise of its commander, Fulgencio Batista. The military-civilian agree-
ment that paved the way for Grau’s revolutionary rule quickly fell apart
and lost its significance. In early 1934, the army withdrew its support
for the Revolutionary Junta and established a new government, presided
over by Carlos Mendieta. “After his downfall, Guiteras would write that
he was proud that the decrees he presented the president to sign attacked
Yankee imperialism in a most fervent manner” (Kula 1975, 123).
Unfortunately, the fall of Grau’s government ushered in a period of
social unrest, which erupted in the form of protests, strikes, and riots.
Once more, terror reigned over the streets of Cuban towns and cities.
It was not until the new Constitution was introduced in 1940 that the
situation became relatively stable again. Yet, with each new government,
corruption, economic dependency on the U.S., and above all else, the
intolerance for socialist ideas continued to grow.
The key achievement of the 1933 revolution was showing the Cubans
that successful grass-root movements for social justice were possible. It
also solidified the revolutionary myth of the Cuban fight against Amer-
ican imperialism, the fight for independence, the rule of law, and the
welfare state. This is best reflected in the social support for Fulgencio
Batista’s coup of 10 March 1952, and his speech in which he refers to the
revolutionary ideas of José Martí:
This time I address the Nation of Cuba from the Military City of Co-
lombia, to which I have been forced to return by the circumstances and
my love for the nation, to take once more the effort of re-establishing
peace. Hand in hand, we need to work for the spiritual harmony of the
great Cuban family and to feel – in this motherland that belongs to all, as
Martí wanted – as Cubans and as brothers; men and women united by a
single ideal, by the same hope, the same dreams of progress, democracy,
freedom, and justice (Batista 1952).3
The victorious Cuban Revolution of 1959 had begun six years earlier,
on 26 July 1953, with the attack on the Moncada Barracks. Although
the attempt was unsuccessful, it initiated the consolidation of the anti-
Batista movement. It revived the memories of the ideals of the 1933
Revolution and the figure of Tony (as friends would call him) Guiteras,
a guerrilla fighter whose exploits included the plan to attack the same
barracks 20 years earlier (Kula 1975). The transformation that Cuba
witnessed in the first half of the twentieth century coincided with the
global process of modernisation. It contributed to the formation of an
urban society, i.e. the cradle of the modern citizen, who is capable of
engaging public activity and expects his voice to be heard.
Twenty years on, after the historic events of 1933, a new revolutionary
awakening swept across Cuba. Guiteras once wrote in Bohemia, a pop-
ular Cuban journal, about Grau San Martín’ government – in which he
had been a minister – in the following words:
Such upright posture has shown the revolutionaries the way. That
phase of our history is the genesis of the revolution that is to come.
It will not be a political movement accompanied by a few gunshots,
but rather a profound transformation of our economic, political,
and social structures4 (Guiteras 1934).
He was right. The 1953 events triggered revolutionary activities that by

1957 had entered the next dynamic stage. They spread across a major
part of the island, but most importantly, gained the support of Cuba’s
both intellectual elites, and the rural population. The sectors of Cuban
society that identified themselves with the ideals of revolutionaries – and
the figures who lost their lives, such as José Martí, Julio Antonio Mella,
Antonio Guiteras, and Eduardo Chibás – as well as those who faced
marginalisation throughout the period of Cuban independence, i.e. the
majority of coloured population and landless peasants, formed a fertile
ground for the revolution.
The two final years of the struggle (1957–1959) were the defining mo-
ment for Cuba’s revolutionary path. That period saw ample mobilisation
of the society which, in spite of its high political diversity, displayed a
strong sense of patriotism. The movement was joined by La Sierra, (the
poor countryside), while Los Llanos (cities with well-developed infra-
structure and educated population) served as its hinterland. The political
elites mostly dwelled in urban areas. Although they would subscribe to
the need to fight Batista, their views varied greatly: from conservatives
and capitalists to social democrats, communists, and anarchists, while
the methods they opted for ranged from pacifism to terrorism.
What gave Cuban Revolution its strength was La Sierra – the moun-
tains. Still, in 1957 the two factions signed an agreement called the Sierra
Maestra Manifesto; whose main author was Fidel Castro. It called on all
Cubans to create a civilian revolutionary front to fight the dictatorship.
At this stage it is important to point to the existing spatial disparities
in the country. The inhabitants of the western part of Cuba, predomi-
nantly engaged in tobacco cultivation, were better educated, wealthier,
and had a higher share of persons of European descent, whose ancestors
came to the island at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Meanwhile, the central and eastern parts, dominated by large agricul-
tural holdings where agricultural efforts revolved around sugar cane and
coffee, were much poorer and inhabited by predominantly Afro-Cuban
population. The fact that the traditions of the fight for independence
originate from the eastern part of the island offers an explanation as
to why the movement succeeded, and why Sierra Maestra and Escam-
bray proved to be such favourable bases for guerrilla and revolutionary
activities.
1958 marked a turning point in the guerrilla war. The Revolution
scored increasingly spectacular victories, and in May, Batista’s largest
military offensive ended in a fiasco. The hostilities played out on four
fronts coordinated by Movimiento 26 de Julio [Movement 26th July].
Upon seizing control of a new territory, Movimiento would establish a
liberated zone with its own revolutionary administration. Independently,
there was one more active front, i.e. Segundo Frente Nacional de Escam-
bray [Second Escambray National Front] under the leadership of Eloy
Gutiérrez Menoyo. The combination of increasing power of the opposi-
tion, a weakening army, and a lack of hitherto U.S.-provided arms sup-
plies and support for the Cuban government forced Fulgencio Batista to
flee the island on the night of 31 December 1958. In the following days
the revolutionary forces marched into Havana and other Cuban cities,
thus setting the stage for the introduction of a new political, economic,
and social order. Same as his revolutionary predecessors, Fidel Castro
– surrounded by a multitude of supporters – declared the Revolution’s
victory at the Columbia Barracks. In his speech, he invoked the sense of
patriotism, revolutionary traditions, and previous attempts to introduce
the new order; he called on republican, civic, and anti-imperialist ideals,
as well as the integrity and transparency of the revolutionaries them-
selves. Particularly noteworthy is Castro’s conviction regarding the con-
tinuity of the revolutionary process, expressed in the speech delivered on
8 January 1959: “la Revolución tampoco se ganará en un día, ni se hará
todo lo que se va a hacer en un día” (One cannot win the Revolution in
a day, neither can they do, in a single day, all that shall be done) (Castro
Ruz 1959).
This single sentence from Castro’s first speech in Havana heralded
an initiation of lasting process of transformation that would alter all
aspects of life. The new revolutionary government was determined to
introduce a chain of reforms and laws that would profoundly reshape
Cuba’s institutional, political, economic, and financial structures, its
international relations, and ultimately – the society itself, including its
make-up.
What made that process unique was its ideological foundation. It
posted a clear message of breaking the capitalist system and the rule of
oligarchs, while building a new quality based on revolutionary ideas of
socialism and communism. Such an agenda, however, had already been
announced much earlier. In 1953, Fidel Castro presented a document ti-
tled “History Will Absolve Me” (La historia me absolverá), a speech for
the defence against the accusation of acting to the detriment of the state
after his attack on the Moncada Barracks. Below, I shall present those
excerpts from that document which reveal the intentions that directed
the actions of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution from the very begin-
ning, and especially in the case of Fidel Castro:
The five revolutionary laws that would have been proclaimed imme-
diately after the capture of the Moncada Barracks and would have been
broadcast to the nation by radio must be included in the indictment. (…)
The first revolutionary law would have returned power to the people
and proclaimed the 1940 Constitution the Supreme Law of the State
until such time as the people should decide to modify or change it. And
in order to effect its implementation and punish those who violated it -
there being no electoral organization to carry this out - the revolutionary
movement, as the circumstantial incarnation of this sovereignty, the only
source of legitimate power, would have assumed all the faculties inherent
therein, except that of modifying the Constitution itself: in other words,
it would have assumed the legislative, executive and judicial powers.
This attitude could not be clearer nor more free of vacillation and
sterile charlatanry. A government acclaimed by the mass of rebel peo-
ple would be vested with every power, everything necessary in order
to proceed with the effective implementation of popular will and real
justice. From that moment, the Judicial Power - which since March 10th
had placed itself against and outside the Constitution - would cease to
exist and we would proceed to its immediate and total reform before it
would once again assume the power granted it by the Supreme Law of
the Republic.
The second revolutionary law would give non-mortgageable and
non-transferable ownership of the land to all tenant and subtenant farm-
ers, lessees, share croppers and squatters who hold parcels of five cabal-
lerías of land or less, and the State would indemnify the former owners
on the basis of the rental which they would have received for these par-
cels over a period of ten years.
The third revolutionary law would have granted workers and em-
ployees the right to share 30% of the profits of all the large industrial,
mercantile and mining enterprises, including the sugar mills. The strictly
agricultural enterprises would be exempt in consideration of other agrar-
ian laws which would be put into effect.
The fourth revolutionary law would have granted all sugar planters
the right to share 55% of sugar production and a minimum quota of
forty thousand arrobas for all small tenant farmers who have been es-
tablished for three years or more.
The fifth revolutionary law would have ordered the confiscation of
all holdings and ill-gotten gains of those who had committed frauds
during previous regimes, as well as the holdings and ill-gotten gains of
all their legates and heirs. To implement this, special courts with full
powers would gain access to all records of all corporations registered
or operating in this country, in order to investigate concealed funds of
illegal origin, and to request that foreign governments extradite persons
and attach holdings rightfully belonging to the Cuban people. Half of
the property recovered would be used to subsidize retirement funds for
workers and the other half would be used for hospitals, asylums and
charitable organizations.
Furthermore, it was declared that the Cuban policy in the Americas
would be one of close solidarity with the democratic peoples of this con-
tinent, and that all those politically persecuted by bloody tyrannies op-
pressing our sister nations would find generous asylum, brotherhood and
bread in the land of Martí; not the persecution, hunger and treason they
find today. Cuba should be the bulwark of liberty and not a shameful
link in the chain of despotism.
These laws would have been proclaimed immediately. As soon as the
upheaval ended and prior to a detailed and far reaching study, they would
have been followed by another series of laws and fundamental measures,
such as the Agrarian Reform, the Integral Educational Reform, national-
ization of the electric power trust and the telephone trust, refund to the
people of the illegal and repressive rates these companies have charged,
and payment to the treasury of all taxes brazenly evaded in the past.
All these laws and others would be based on the exact compliance of
two essential articles of our Constitution: one of them orders the outlaw-
ing of large estates, indicating the maximum area of land any one person
or entity may own for each type of agricultural enterprise, by adopting
measures which would tend to revert the land to the Cubans. The other
categorically orders the State to use all means at its disposal to provide
employment to all those who lack it and to ensure a decent livelihood
to each manual or intellectual laborer. None of these laws can be called
unconstitutional. The first popularly elected government would have to
respect them, not only because of moral obligations to the nation, but
because when people achieve something they have yearned for through-
out generations, no force in the world is capable of taking it away again
(Castro Ruz 1975).
Numerous factors contributed to the success of the Cuban Revolu-
tion. Liberal economic development models used in the previous de-
cades affected the 1950s events. The ubiquity of American capital in
the economy, and among society, contributed to keeping the ideas of
emancipation and sovereignty alive, while administrative and political
structures of the state, succumbing to growing corruption, were losing
their grip.
At that time, the Cuban society was aspiring to become one of the
most modern in the region. In the second half of the 1950s, in economic
and social terms, Cuba was one of the best developed countries of Latin
America. It boasted the highest literacy rates while ranking lowest in
terms of poverty and mortality rates. It also had the highest number of
television sets, radios, telephones, and cars per 1,000 inhabitants. How-
ever, social disparity and the gaping chasm between rural and urban
areas prevailed and continued to grow. While literacy rate reached 90%
in the cities, in the countryside it was as little as 60%.
Still, Cuba would never abandon its aspirations, and they would keep
recurring in Fidel Castro's speeches, in which he envisioned the neces-
sary future changes (Castro Ruz 1959):
If we follow through with the programme to the extent we propose;

if all the projects that are being prepared are carried out; if no-
one throws a spanner in our works, I am certain that over the next
few years we will increase the standard of life of Cubans above the
level of the United States or Russia. These countries invest enormous
amounts of human effort into building aircrafts, bombs, missiles,
warships, and arms. If we, who do not have such problems, decide
to put our effort into the creation of wealth for the Cuban nation –
with the advantage of being a revolution that enjoys the support of
the majority of the country, of being a rich country where one can
sow all year long, with the advantage of being an intelligent and
enthusiastic nation, a nation that yearns for a better fate – we shall
reach a standard of living that no other country has reached. I be-
lieve we will make it happen. And, if this is but a dream, Martí once
said that the dreams of an idealist today are the law of tomorrow.5
Every Day and Each Year Brings a Revolution

Today’s Cuba only vaguely resembles the image that El Comandante
outlined and promised in his speeches. Nevertheless, since the entire pro-
cess of change was set to follow his vision of the state, it is appropriate
at this point to quote Fidel Castro’s own definition of the Revolution, so
as to better understand the idea of what it was meant to be. For Castro,
a revolution ought to cover all aspects of social life, including values, in-
dividual and collective behaviour, and attitudes towards nationality and
international relations. Above all else, it should be a process extended in
time and set to last:
Revolution is the sensing the historical moment; it is about changing

what needs to be changed; about full equality and freedom; about
treating others and being treated as human beings; about reaching
emancipation by ourselves and by our own effort; about challenging
the dominant powers both within and outside of social and national
contexts; about defending the values one believes in, sacrificing any-
thing it takes; it is about modesty, selflessness, altruism, solidarity,
and heroism; about never lying or violating the rules of ethics; it is
the deep faith that there is no such power in the word that can crush
the forces of the truth and the ideals. Revolution is unity and inde-
pendence. It is the fight for our dreams of justice for Cuba and for
the World. It is the bedrock of our patriotism, our socialism, and
our internationalism. (Castro 2000)6
If we use Braudel’s longue dureé perspective to approach this definition,

we shall see the primary focus on the goal itself, i.e. the realisation of a
longed-for vision, while the political events and measures applied in the
so-called “meantime” are irrelevant. These in turn were often drastic
and they certainly contributed to the polarisation of attitudes towards
the Cuban Revolution, both in the country and abroad.
The years that immediately followed the fall of Fulgencio Batista saw
the introduction of various decisions and laws aimed at drawing Cuba
closer to the ideals presented in the documents quoted earlier, while
breaking with the status quo ante. Among the most important ones were
the following:
Through granting free access to education, medical, and cultural ser-

vices, as well as the latest technological advances, the new post-1959
regime engaged the entire society in revolutionary and decision-making
processes. The changes went even further. Initially, the reforms and all
the decisions were accepted by open ballot (sufragios públicos) held
during the General National Assemblies of the Cuban People (Asam-
bleas Generales Nacionales del Pueblo de Cuba). The Assemblies took
the form of rallies with Castro delivering speeches – often several hours
long – which gathered thousands of citizens.
Another expression of the revolutionary process was the introduction
of a form of revolutionary calendar. In the calendar, every new year
would bear a particular name, thus heralding new fundamental actions
and reforms to be introduced by the revolutionary government. Hence-
forth, 1959 became the year of liberty (Año de la Libertad), 1960 was
the year of the Agrarian Reform (Año de la Reforma Agraria), while
1961 was dedicated to education (Año de la Educación). Other examples
include 1969, the year of decisive effort (Año del Esfuerzo Decisivo); and
1970, the year of 10 million tonnes of sugar cane harvest (Año de la
Zafra de los 10 Millones). Still, the majority of the years invoked 1959
and the beginning of the revolutionary transformation, and so 1989 was
31st year of the revolution, and 1990 was the 32nd.
Figure 4.1 Post stamp commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of The Revolu-
tion. Source: Author’s private collection.
This confirms the view that Cuban authorities did not perceive the revo-
lution as a date that would separate the periods of “before” and “after”.
Instead, they considered and continue to consider 1959 as merely a be-
ginning of a transformation towards a utopian vision, which has evolved
into a form of a perpetual motion machine (Díaz Infante 2014). This
utopianism marked Fidel Castro’s speech of 16 February 1959, quoted
earlier, in which he argued that the Revolution’s goals were like a dream
that had to be pursued. Fernando Birri, Argentinian film director and
the co-founder of the San Antonio de los Baños The International Film
and TV School (Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión), accurately
captured the links between utopia and perpetual motion. For him, uto-
pia was a driver of change that prevented (one) from settling down and
propelled (one) towards the goal instead. Paraphrasing him, utopia is
like the horizon, beautiful but moving away every time we want to get
closer to it. Therefore, according to Birri, the main role of the horizon is
to originate the path and the task (Mori s.f.)
Once we assume that the Cuban Revolution is an indefinite process,
if not an unfulfilled utopia – to describe it in José Martí and Fernando
Birri’s terms – it becomes clear that the political discourse in Cuba was
aimed at sustaining society’s will to participate in the revolution in spite
of mounting economic difficulties. Such was the purpose of mass gather-
ings and the en masse acceptance of the introduced reforms.
Law and Institutions

Cuban constitutions, both the 1976 one, and the supreme law currently
in force, are a testimony to the presence of revolutionary discourse also
in the legislation. The basic law of 1976 mentions the word “revolution”
no fewer than 16 times, in such contexts as revolutionary institutions,
revolutionary fight, revolutionary social and armed forces, revolutionary
ideas of José Martí and Fidel Castro, and the events of 1959. The current
constitution was adopted in a referendum held on 24 February 2019.
Even though its lexicon of communist ideals has been reduced (Dembicz
2019), it continues to be a vehicle for the revolutionary narrative. The
document mentions the word “revolution” on 12 occasions, 9 of which
are in the Preamble that speaks of how the Cuban nation:
• is inspired by the revolutionary ideas and movements of José Martí

that paved the way for the 1959 victory;
• follows the ideals of revolution and is determined to continue the
revolution that began with the attack on the Moncada Barracks; and
• identifies with the concept of revolution presented by Fidel Castro in
2000 (see the citation above).
Official institutions on the island, and possibly most of all the Com-
mittees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR), contribute to the per-
petuation of both the state and the narrative of revolution. Although
60 years have elapsed since their founding, the institutions continue to
shape the Cubans’ collective representations and to strengthen the con-
viction of the society about the need to persevere in the revolution and
to defend it. The Committees became an important component of the
local communities. Although today they carry out self-governmental
functions, initially – as the following quote from Fidel Castro (Juanes
Sánchez 2018) indicates – their purpose was to defend and consolidate
revolutionary communities:
We will establish a system of collective revolutionary watch. They

are toying with the people, yet they do not realise who the people is;
they are toying with the people yet they are unaware of the tremen-
dous revolutionary force that lies in the people.7
The Committees’ pyramid-like structure with district-level organisation

cells acting as neighbourhood cooperatives makes the word “revolution”
ever present in the public space – if only because of the “Revolución en
cada barrio” [Revolution in every neighbourhood] slogan which is part
of the Committees’ unofficial anthem. Thanks to the engagement of such
young-generation artists as Amaray, Haila, and Mayaco, the song be-
came a major hit in Cuba when its refreshed salsa version was released
to mark the 50th anniversary of the foundation of CDR.
Education and Arts

One of the aspirations of the Cuban Revolution was the pursuit of
shaping a hard-working, generous, and educated man, “the new man”
(el hombre nuevo) (Guevara 1978). That goal could only be reached
through proper organisation of an education process that was satu-
rated with the revolutionary narrative. Among other things, youth or-
ganisations such as the José Martí Pioneer Organisation (Organización
de Pioneros José Martí) played an important role in the process. Oblig-
atory membership facilitated patriotic education and revolutionary
indoctrination, and even today the daily ritual of raising the Cuban
flag onto the flagpole at the morning roll call, which ends with the
chant “Pioneros por el comunismo, seremos como el Che” [Pioneers
for communism, we will be like Che], continues to serve that purpose.
For many Cubans and Latin Americans, Ernesto Guevara is a symbol
of revolution, and a role model, and even more emblematic is the fact
that the unofficial anthem of the Cuban pioneers bears the title of Rev-
olución (Revolution).
Also, the media space was used to send the revolutionary message to
the general public. Many of the official mass media outlets have resisted
the passing of time and kept the words ‘revolution’ or “rebellion” in
their titles. Examples include Radio Rebelde (Rebel Radio), founded by
Ernesto Che Guevara, and the daily Juventud Rebelde (Rebel/Revolu-
tionary Youth), established in 1975, which grew to become today the
critical voice within the official political discourse.8
Revolutionary matters have permeated the domain of official and in-
dependent art, both by themselves and through governmental incentives.
This is natural, since the changes in Cuba had divided the society into
supporters and those against the revolution. Consequently, some artistic
productions were apologetic of the Cuban Revolution, its leaders and
the society, while others criticised it, pointing out its errors, and even
downright rejecting it. Carlos Puebla – whose prominent works include
such songs as the La Reforma Agraria (The Agrarian Reform), Para
nosotros siempre es 26 (For us it is Always the 26th), Hasta Siempre
(Until Forever), Y en eso llegó Fidel (And then came Fidel) – used his
artistic production to promote the Cuban Revolution, its values and to
keep alive its memory. Also, La nueva trova [The new trova], a music
genre in which the songs of Pablo Milanés and Silvio Rodríguez played
an important role, serves as an example of an artistic activity that pro-
moted the revolutionary ideas. Those two singers-songwriters defined
the shape of Latin American music of the 1970s and 1980s. In that con-
text, the song “Acto de Fe” [“Act of Faith”] by Pablo Milanés becomes
particularly symbolic, as an act of faith in the revolution (translation of
the Spanish original):
I believe in you
as I believe when it grows up
how much it feels and suffers
when looking around
(...)
I believe in you
because nothing is more humane
to hold your hand
and walk around believing in you
I believe in you
as I believe in God
that it’s you, that it’s me
in you, Revolution.
(Milanés 1980)
The over 20-year-long career of the Porno para Ricardo punk band situ-
ates it on the other end of the spectrum. Its leader, Gorki, who rejects the
idea of emigration, uses his attitude and artistic production to promote
revolutionary insubordination, if not counter-revolution. His works in-
clude the El Maleconazo, an album dedicated to the 1994 uprising in
Havana, and the song Como Joder a un Comunista (How to Fuck a
Communist).
The prolific Cuban literature offers numerous examples of revolu-
tionary and counter-revolutionary narratives. Among them are the
works of Herberto Padilla and his Fuera del juego [Out of the game] a
collection of poetry, and the novels La mala memoria [The bad mem-
ory] and En mi jardín pastan los héroes [In my garden graze the he-
roes]. The trajectory of Herberto Padilla’s perception of the Revolution
was similar to that of many Cuban intellectuals, evolving from the ini-
tial enthusiasm, if not fascination, through gradual detachment until
culminating in wholesale rejection of revolutionary ideas and emigra-
tion. Reinaldo Arenas, Carlos Franqui, and Manuel Moreno Fraginals
shared similar fate.
The artistic narrative, especially the highly politicised literature which
addressed matters related to the revolution, has played a prominent role
in assuring prominence of the revolution in social awareness. Due to the
volume constraints of this article, we shall not investigate this aspect any
further, but it should be noted that there is a wealth of scientific papers
dedicated to the tropes of the Cuban Revolution in poetry and novel.
Cuba–U.S. Relations
The international situation, and especially the U.S. foreign policy to-
wards Cuba, contributed to the perpetuation of the state of permanent
revolution. Had it not been for the U.S. embargo imposed in 1962 the
revolutionary narrative would have been less powerful, if not marginal.
Such a statement may be substantiated by the changes that took place
during Barack Obama’s presidency, which brought leniency, as well as
a political and economic thaw between the two countries. That period
saw changes in the Cuban political rhetoric: to offset the earlier messages
of the struggle against American imperialism and the defence against
counter-revolution, arguments in favour of mutual understanding and
amicable relations appeared. Examples include the 2015 speech of Raúl
Castro at the Summits of the Americas in Panama, as well as the sym-
bolism of the new narrative that dominated public spaces in Cuba during
the visit of the U.S. president:
We have publicly expressed to President Obama, who himself was

born under the policy of blockade against Cuba, our recognition of
his bold decision to take part in a debate with the Congress of his
country on to putting an end to the blockade. This and other ele-
ments should be considered as part of the process of future normal-
isation of our bilateral relations. On our side, we shall continue our
efforts to modernise the Cuban economic model with the objective
of refining our socialism and progressing towards the development
and consolidation of the achievements of the Revolution that is ded-
icated to “conquering all justice” for our people. Our future steps
are part of the project that has been adopted by the Congress of
the Party in 2011. During the next year Congress, we shall further
extend them. We shall review what has been done thus far and the
multitude of issues that still lie ahead of us on the way towards our
goal. (Castro 2015)9
Raúl Castro’s outfit was another manifestation of a conciliatory – rather

than revolutionary –discourse. In that period, he would publicly appear
dressed in civilian clothes, wearing both a popular Cuban guayabera
shirt and a formal suit. Yet, Donald Trump’s presidential term resulted
in a shift back to the old, revolutionary narrative. I have had the oppor-
tunity to experience it first-hand when visiting a cinema to see the film
José Martí: el ojo del canario [José Martí: the eye of the canary]. The
spontaneous reactions of the viewers during the screening indicated that
the revolutionary process was still very much alive among the Cuban
society.
Conclusion
The history of Cuba in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as im-
parted in the process of education, certainly favours the strengthening
of the view shared by generation after generation of Cubans, that rev-
olution is a desirable – if not the only – way of securing independence
and social justice. Of course, the revolutionary government, at the helm
since 1959, nurtures this conviction using Cuban Revolutionary Armed
Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias – FAR) as one of its tools.
In the light of the analysis above and the cited documents, it is justi-
fied to consider the revolution a fixture in the life of Cuban society, who
chose it as a method of seeking independence and sovereignty through
the twentieth century. The ideals of independence that bloomed and pre-
vailed across the Americas at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries reached the Antilles’ largest island, too. However, due to its
geographical location, the island was the part of territory that Spain was
perhaps the most determined to keep. For both, the European powers
and the U.S., Cuba – sitting between the New and the Old World, be-
tween North and South America – has always been a strategic foothold,
not only for establishing and developing economic relations, but also for
building political position. Aware of its geopolitical value and with a
dynamically crystallising cultural and political identity, nineteenth- and
twentieth-century Cuba focused on struggle for political sovereignty
while slipping into profound economic dependence. The attempts to
break away from Spain and the U.S., although peaceful at times, on
most occasions took the shape of armed uprisings, insurgencies, and
wars, thus creating a state of permanent revolution, under which the
Cuban society solidified.
In Europe, the notion of revolution often has negative associations
and evokes images of bloodshed. Meanwhile, numerous Latin American
societies, Cubans among them, perceive revolution as a positive phe-
nomenon, which quite often is the only viable way of achieving a given
objective. Revolution was what Carlos Manuel de Céspedes spoke of
when calling arms against the Spanish in 1868. To him, the fight for
Cuban independence, which José Martí called for, was a political, eco-
nomic, and social revolution. Once Cuba gained independence in 1902,
all the subsequent armed uprisings, i.e. in 1933, 1952, and 1959, were
perceived as revolutions, and Cuban politicians such as Ramón Grau
San Martín, Fulgencio Batista, or Fidel and Raúl Castro both considered
themselves, and were perceived as, revolutionaries.
This chapter presents the complexity of the analysed phenomenon and
the diversity of the factors that affect it. It may well be that if one of them
is modified, the level of revolutionary sentiments among the Cuban soci-
ety will change. Hence, continued observation is justified.
Notes
1 A liberal politician and a veteran of wars of independence. A supporter of
profound reforms, including the agricultural reform. He opposed selling
land to foreigners (U.S. and Spanish citizens) and demanded more privileges
for war veterans, such as granting land or financial compensations.
2 During the 100 days of Grau’s government, the state took control of Com-
panía Cubana de Electricidad, an American electricity company and two
sugar plants owned by Cuban-American Sugar Company.
3 Own translation, based on a transcription of an audiovisual material: “Hablo
al pueblo de Cuba desde la ciudad militar, esta vez. Donde he tenido que re-
gresar forzado por las circunstancias y llevado por mi amor al pueblo para
reanaudar una nueva gestión de paz. Hombro con hombro debemos trabajar
por la armonía espiritual de la gran familia cubana y sentirnos todos en esta
patria que es de todos como la quiso Martí. Cubanos y hermanos, hombres
y mujeres, unidos en el mismo ideal, en la misma esperanza, en las mismas
ilusiones para el progreso y la democracia, la libertad y la justicia”.
4 Original citation: “Esa posición erguida mostró a los revolucionarios
el camino. Esa fase de nuestra historia es la génesis de la revolución que
se prepara -que no constituirá un movimiento político con más o menos
disparos de cañón, sino una profunda transformación de nuestra estructura
económica-político-social”.
5 Original citation: Si llevamos adelante el programa en toda la extensión como
nos proponemos, si todos los proyectos que están en este momento preparán-
dose se llevan adelante, si no nos ponen zancadillas, tengo la seguridad de
que en el curso de breves años elevaremos el estándar de vida del cubano por
encima del de Estados Unidos y del de Rusia, porque esos países invierten un
porcentaje enorme del esfuerzo humano en hacer aviones, bombas, cohetes,
barcos de guerra y armamento en general. Si nosotros, que no tenemos esos
problemas, nos dedicamos a invertir nuestro esfuerzo en crear riquezas para la
nación cubana, con la ventaja de ser una revolución respaldada por la mayoría
del país, con la ventaja de contar con un país rico, donde se puede sembrar
todo el tiempo en el año, un pueblo inteligente y un pueblo entusiasta, un
pueblo ansioso de alcanzar un destino mejor, lograremos un estándar de vida
mayor que ningún otro país en el mundo. Creo que lo lograremos. Mas si es un
sueño, Martí dijo que los sueños de hoy del idealista, son la ley del mañana.
6 Original citation: Revolución es sentido del momento histórico; Es cambiar
todo lo que debe ser cambiado; Es igualdad y libertad plena; Es ser tratado y
tratar los demás como seres humanos; Es emanciparnos por nosotros mismos
y con nuestros propios esfuerzos; Es desafiar poderosas fuerzas dominantes
dentro y fuera del ámbito social y nacional; Es defender valores en los que
se cree al precio de cualquier sacrificio; Es modestia, desinterés, altruismo,
solidaridad y heroísmo; Es no mentir jamás, ni violar principios éticos; Es
convicción profunda de que no existe fuerza en el mundo capaz de aplastar
las fuerzas de la verdad y las ideas. Revolución es unidad, es independencia, es
luchar por nuestros sueños de justicia para Cuba y para el Mundo. Es la base
de nuestro patriotismo, nuestro socialismo y nuestro internacionalismo.
7 Original citation: Vamos a establecer un sistema de vigilancia revolucionaria
colectiva. Están jugando con el pueblo y no saben todavía quién es el pueblo;
están jugando con el pueblo y no saben la tremenda fuerza revolucionaria
que hay en el pueblo.
8 Unfortunately, this was not the case of the Revolución weekly, published in
the years 1959–1961.
9 Hemos expresado públicamente al Presidente Obama, quien también nació
bajo la política del bloqueo a Cuba, nuestro reconocimiento por su valiente
decisión de involucrarse en un debate con el Congreso de su país para ponerle
fin. Este y otros elementos deberán ser resueltos en el proceso hacia la fu-
tura normalización de las relaciones bilaterales. Por nuestra parte, contin-
uaremos enfrascados en el proceso de actualización del modelo económico
cubano con el objetivo de perfeccionar nuestro socialismo, avanzar hacia el
desarrollo y consolidar los logros de una Revolución que se ha propuesto
“conquistar toda la justicia” para nuestro pueblo. Lo que haremos está en
un programa desde el año 2011, aprobado en el Congreso del Partido. En el
próximo Congreso, que es el año que viene, lo ampliaremos, revisaremos lo
que hemos hecho y lo mucho que nos falta todavía para cumplir el reto.
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5 Recent Trends in Higher
Education – Latin America
and Europe
The Cases of Peru, Mexico,
and Spain
Pablo A. Baisotti and José Antonio
Pineda-Alfonso
Introduction
During the 1990s, there was a process of diversification in Latin Ameri-
can higher education institutions. This, together with the 19991 Bologna
process, created a common framework for higher education at all levels
(bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees). As a part of this transfor-
mation process, the countries involved were substantially modifying the
structure of their education system, in addition to other related objec-
tives such as the mobility of researchers and the inclusion of joint de-
grees, among other things. These reforms led to a structural increase in
graduation rates (OECD 2008, 79). By the end of the twentieth century,
according to the World Education Indicators in most OECD countries,
nearly all young people had access to basic education for at least 11
years. Secondary graduation rates ranged from less than 4% in China
and Malaysia to around 10% in Brazil, Chile and Jordan (OECD 1998,
29; UNESCO 2015).
The World Bank’s 2003 document, “Higher Education: Lessons
Learned from Experience”, proposed a five-year, then seven-year fi-
nancing of the Higher Education Improvement Programme aimed at
strengthening the legal framework for higher education by introduc-
ing incentives for efficiency, equity and quality improvement. In Latin
America, public policies were promoted to encourage university studies
and create new institutions on one hand; on the other hand, the re-
sources used for this purpose were scarce, as were those used to pro-
mote the insertion of students from the neediest social sectors. Even in
the 1990s, 12 laws on education in societies with market-centred dy-
namics were enacted in Latin America (Krotsch, and Suasnábar 2002;
López 2015). 2 During the 2000s, new and more inclusive laws were
enacted in almost half of the region’s countries – Argentina, Bolivia,
Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, Honduras, and Ecuador. This was reflected
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-7
Recent Trends in Higher Education 127
in the expansion, diversification and privatization of the university sys-
tem, with a different pace, in an attempt to respond to the needs and de-
mands of society (World Bank 2012). However, the internationalization
of higher education does not seem to have reached an important level
on the Latin American political agenda (Holm-Nielsen et al. 2005, 41,
66), 3 although it has become one of the most researched arguments in
the continent – not only from an educational, but also from a political,
social and economic point of view. To this end, CRESALC-UNESCO
(Regional Centre for Higher Education, now known as the Interna-
tional Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Carib-
bean, IESALC); UDUAL (Unión de Universidades de América Latina);
and the Grupo Universitario Latinoamericano para la Reforma y el Per-
feccionamiento de la Educación (Latin American University Union) that
produced and disseminated the research, publication and organization
of events in Latin America and the Caribbean (Krotsch, and Suasnábar
2002) were of fundamental importance. UNESCO’s Regional Bureau
for Education has published periodical bulletins, books and compar-
ative works since the 1960s, whether with a national or regional pro-
file, and also participated in regional projects with other international
organizations, in particular ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin
America and the Caribbean). The OAS has been publishing for decades
its Inter-American Journal of Educational Development “Education”
and other comparative work (Dono Rubio et al. 2005). The OEI (Orga-
nization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture),
the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Reconstruction
and Development Bank (World Bank) carry out comparative work. In
recent years, the PREAL (Programa de Promoción de la Reforma Edu-
cativa en América Latina) has made it possible to have a series of studies
and works on reformist programmes carried out in recent years by var-
ious Latin American countries.
It should be noted that in recent decades in Latin America, there have
been constitutional reforms, legislative innovations and public policies
aimed at giving greater importance to education at all levels. University
institutional capacity for knowledge production (whether in terms of
programmes, centres or institutes) has been deficient in Latin America
(Dono Rubio et al. 2005; Rama 2006, 141, 142; Moreno-Brid, and Ruiz-
Nápoles 2009; Brunner 2011; Lemaitre, and Zenteno 2012; Balarin
2013; UNESCO/Orealc 2013; Cueto 2016).
This research will comparatively study the evolution of higher edu-
cation in Peru and Mexico based on the analysis of three variables: the
types of universities (public and private); their impact on the education
system; and the rankings and prestige of universities. This will answer
the following question: what is the general perception of higher educa-
tion systems in Peru and Mexico and their universities?
128 Pablo A. Baisotti and José Antonio Pineda-Alfonso
Political Evolution of Peruvian and Mexican Education
In the 1960s, the Peruvian military government had intervened in uni-
versities by eliminating student co-government, academic freedom and
student organizations. In 1972, decree law 17.437 was repealed and the
General Education Law (decree law 19.326) was enacted to restore uni-
versity autonomy. The law was rendered ineffective by the failure to enact
a statute to normalize it. Over the course of that decade, the debate on
higher education became a strategy of identity cohesion in Peruvian soci-
ety, pushing for greater subsidies (Ríos Burga 2009; Vargas 2015, 27). In
this process, private universities were not affected by the national educa-
tion policy, allowing them to maintain better educational standards. In
contrast, public universities began to be more precarious. In 1983, during
the government of Fernando Belaunde Terry (1980–1985), university law
23.733 was enacted, leaving aside policies of educational quality and
the promotion of research. Public universities became synonymous with
chaos and misgovernment (Burga 2008; Cuenca 2013; Vargas 2015, 28).
The early 1990s marked the beginning of a fundamental transformation:
in 1992, President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) broke with democratic
structures and began the path towards a neoliberal state (Cuenca, and
Reátegui 2016, 4). Thus, four years later, the education market was liber-
alized by Legislative Decree 882: “Law for the Promotion of Investment
in Education”. This weakened regulation and especially educational
quality by also enabling the expansion of higher education institutions
(World Bank 2012). The General Education Law 28.044 of 2003 was
drafted within the framework of political and economic changes that,
from 2001 onwards, were expressed in a sustained economic growth
and the commitment of the different political, religious, civil society and
government forces through a National Agreement (2002). It aimed to
achieve four fundamental objectives: consolidating democracy and the
rule of law; promoting equity and social justice; improving the country’s
competitiveness; and achieving an efficient, transparent and decentral-
ized State (UNESCO 2010, 8; World Bank 2012, and 2016). To this
end, the National System for Assessment, Accreditation and Certifica-
tion of Educational Quality (Sineace, created by art. 14 of the General
Education Act, 2003) was created, which established a framework for
a quality assurance system at all levels. In 2011, the Superior Council
of the National System of Evaluation, Accreditation and Certification
of Educational Quality (Cosusineace4) was created with the purpose of
directing, developing and supervising the Sineace.
The issue of university reform was included in the consultation process
on the National Education Project (2005–2006) in which three outcomes
were proposed for 2021 (CNE 2006; Minedu 2006; CEPLAN 2011): re-
newing the higher education system; producing knowledge relevant to
development and the fight against poverty; and training professionals
(Beltrán, and Seinfeld 2012; Benavides et al. 2015). The Plan, currently
under way, is compatible with the five priority areas of cooperation pro-
posed by the United Nations Development Assistance (UNDAF) which
worked jointly with the Peruvian Agency for International Cooperation
(APCI5) (Ministry of Education 2008; United Nations 2011, 16; World
Bank 2012; Benavides et al. 2016, 161–163).
In 2009, a law for colleges and universities was passed and during
the second half of 2013, a project for a new university law began to be
discussed, finally passed in 2014 with the number 30.220. It replaced the
1983 law and pointed out, with special emphasis, that the State should
assume the leadership of education policies at all educational levels and
regulate quality through the creation of the National Superintendence of
University Education (Sunedu). The law also required the reorganization
of the Sineace in order to adjust accreditation processes (CNE 2015, 67,
82; Cuenca 2015, 13–15; World Bank 2016). In 2015, decree 016–2015
approved a quality assurance policy for higher education, the first of its
kind in Peru’s history. The overall objective of this policy was to ensure
quality education underpinned by government policies.
With regard to the evolution of Higher Education in Mexico, it should
be noted that, in 1985, a National Higher Education Program was ap-
proved, which acted as an extraordinary financing mechanism supported
by the Subsecretariat of Higher Education and Scientific Research for
state universities and, together with the National System of Research-
ers, was established to support the demand for funds for research. This
programme lasted a little more than a year and was replaced by the
Comprehensive Programme for the Development of Higher Education
(1986–1988) whose main purpose was to support the development and
planning of Higher Education; impelled during the governments of Car-
los Salinas de Gortari (1988–1994) and Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León
(1994–2000).
By the late 1980s, education was devastated: the percentage of stu-
dents had not grown; public funding for education had fallen by 40%
from 1982; and bureaucratization had been exacerbated by decentral-
ization. Another proposal in those years was the programme for Edu-
cational Modernization (1989–1994) which emphasized the objectives
of improving the quality of higher education meeting demand and
linking higher education to the needs of national development. To this
end, a series of strategies were used, such as decentralization and re-
gionalization, simplification and streamlining of public administration
procedures with regard to higher education, and ongoing evaluation of
the achievements and processes of higher education, among others (SEP
1989). In 1990, the National Association of Universities and Institutions
of Higher Education presented a proposal to evaluate higher education.
This document expressed, as one of the main objectives, the need to
qualitatively transform the higher education system, the self-knowledge
of each of the institutions and the system as a whole, and the allocation
of extraordinary resources for academic projects.
The national economic crisis in 1995 further affected Mexican higher
education, and in those years the OECD issued two documents: “Na-
tional Science and Technology Policies in Mexico” (1994) and “Ex-
aminations on Higher Education Policies” (1997) which postulated
financing of education, educational equity, and linkages with economic
and social sectors (Alarcón Pérez 2007, 24–26). President Vicente Fox
(2000–2006) convened prominent educational researchers to form a
transition team that worked on the issue of education. This team pre-
sented a document for the elaboration of a new education policy for the
period 2001–2006 called: “Bases for the Sector Programme of Educa-
tion 2001–2006”, pointing out two fundamental challenges: equity and
quality (Acosta Silva 2002; Didriksson et al. 2004; Anuies 2007; Tuirán
2012; Acosta 2014).
Types of University in Peru and Mexico

In general terms, it can be said that public universities have fragmented
educational and academic systems in Latin America. The lack of con-
solidation of academic communities, the weakness of research, and the
strong partisan-political profile of the university discussion hindered its
development. These tensions are manifested between the government
and the university as insufficient intra-university communication and
lack of institutional and governmental stimuli (Krotsch, and Suasnábar
2002).
In the specific case of Peru, its education system is organized at three
levels: central, regional and local. The central level is occupied by the
Ministry of Education, with a technical-policy and policy function that
defines education policy in accordance with state and regional policy
(UNESCO 2010, 8; World Data 2010/2011). Higher Education is made
up of university institutions; technological institutes; pedagogical in-
stitutes; art, military, and police schools; and the diplomatic academy
(Rodríguez 2008, 26).
With Law 882 of 1996, the education market was liberalized, and
three types of universities began to coexist: public, private non-profit, and
so-called university-enterprises. The latter institutionalized a university
business system that was progressively privatized and commercialized
(Burga Díaz 2005; Vargas 2015, 29). For this reason, the number of uni-
versities also varied. In 1960, there were nine universities in operation
(four in Lima and five in the provinces), of which only one was private;
in 2000 there were 25 universities in Lima and 47 regional ones, with
private universities constituting a majority (Vargas 2015, 32). In 2012,
there were 35 public universities with 55% of total university enrolment,
and 65 private universities with 45% of total enrolment; in addition to
more than 1,000 non-university higher education institutions, 53% of
which were public. The number continued to grow in a very short pe-
riod of time, reaching 140 universities by 2015, of which 51 were public
and 89 were private. Within the group of private universities, those with
profit motives were the predominant ones, going from four in 1997 to 50
in 2015 (Díaz 2008; Cuenca, and Reátegui 2016, 7, 8).
In Mexico, there are only two types of universities: public and private.
However, public institutions can be managed by the government or they
can be autonomous. The former is called state-owned public universi-
ties, while the autonomous universities are decentralized organizations,
with their own decisions and budget management (Villaseñor García
2004; Labra Manjarrez 2006; Vega-Tato 2009).
Most public universities are autonomous and by law, have a respon-
sibility to govern themselves. Within this subsystem, more than 50% of
the research is carried out in Mexico, and around 52% of undergraduate
students and 48% of graduate students are in Mexico. Private institu-
tions are composed of 598 bodies, excluding regular schools, and are
classified by their official name into five groups: universities (168); in-
stitutes (171); and centres, schools and other institutions (259).6 Higher
education has had an important growth, from 11% in 1975 to 27.6%
in 1999 and postgraduate studies went from 20.3% in 1985 to 36.5%
in 1999 (Alarcón Pérez 2007, 16, 17). In 1980, the supply of bachelor’s
degree programmes amounted to 2,243. This number almost doubled
in the next decade, so that by the 1990s the number of programmes at
this level had reached 6,188. In the case of postgraduate programmes
(specialization, master’s degree and doctorate): between 1980 and 1990,
the growth in the number of programmes was 92% (from 879 to 1,686
programmes) (Anuies 2000; Mendoza Rojas 2003; Alarcón Pérez 2007,
18–22; Ibarra Colado 2009).
Prestige and Rankings

The quality of higher education in Peru during the decade of 2000 was
overshadowed by the main public concern about the university: gov-
ernance and transparency of the public university (Minedu 2006, 35;
Cinda 2009); the need for control in private universities, particularly
those with profit motives; and the lack of relevance to social development
tasks (Minedu 2006, 11). This was demonstrated by the low standards
reflected in various international indicators (Rodríguez 2008; Castro,
and Yamada 2013).
For example, the Global Competitiveness Index of the World Eco-
nomic Forum ranked Peruvian higher education at 77 (2011–2012);
80 (2012–2013) and 86 (2013–2014) (CNE 2015, 76). At the regional
level, the Forum also ranked (2014/2015) Peru 65th, behind the U.S. (3);
Chile (33); Brazil (57); and Mexico (61) – only ahead of Colombia (66)
and Argentina (104). It is interesting to appreciate the data presented in
this ranking. Among the evaluation components is higher education, in
which Peru showed an even worse performance in relation to the overall
ranking (83), being the last but one ahead of Mexico. Even Colombia
and Argentina, countries with worse performance than Peru in the gen-
eral ranking, have better performance in higher education and training
(Castro, and Yamada, 2013).
China’s Jiao Tong University annually produces worldwide university
rankings. In 2014, of the first 500 universities, 203 were European, 168
were North American, 115 were from the Asian and South Pacific re-
gion, 10 were from Latin America (of which six were Brazilian) and
4 from Africa. The first 20, on the other hand, were North American
(CNE 2015, 74).
In order to place the first Peruvian university in the world ranking
of Webometris, updated in January 2018, it is necessary to go down to
1,060th place. The first university is the Pontificia Universidad Católica
del Perú, private and traditional, followed by another traditional but
public university, the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (540
positions away), while the rest are more than 1,600 positions from the
first. Of note in this ranking is the position of excellence of Peruvian
universities. The leader of the ranking is in position 1,772. By way of
comparison, the University of the U.S. with a similar position of excel-
lence (1,783) ranks 315th in the U.S. and 1,620th in the world ranking
(South Dakota School of Mines and Technology). In the U.K., a similar
position (1,750) should be searched in the national number 94 and 1,194
worldwide (Napier University, Edinburgh).
Another updated ranking is presented by América Economía mag-
azine in October 2017. The first Peruvian universities are listed here,
taking into account several factors, such as: teaching quality by 25%
(composition of full-time professors; academic degree and prestige of
the academic degree among the top ten professors); research and inno-
vation by 25% (scientific production): papers produced; productivity;
bankruptcy funds for research; research budget; number of researchers;
industrial patents); employability 15%; accreditation 10% (national and
international achieved by careers); internationalization 10%; infrastruc-
ture 5%; academic selectivity 5%; and inclusion 5%.
The 2017 ranking, like that of Webometrics, shows the Pontificia
Universidad Católica del Perú in first place, but places the Universidad
Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in fourth place. The second and third
are occupied by private universities: Universidad Cayetano Heredia and
Universidad del Pacífico. In addition, this ranking shows several factors
that influenced the position of universities, such as research and innova-
tion, employability, internationalization and selectivity. The quality in-
dex positions the universities as follows: Pontificia Universidad Católica
del Perú: 87.7; Universidad Cayetano Heredia: 79.3; Universidad del
Pacífico: 77.4; Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos: 76.2; and
Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería: 75.7. It is important to underline
that the difference between the first and fourth place, or the first private
university and the first public university in the ranking, is 11.5 points.
In the case of Mexico, the situation is significantly higher than in the
Peruvian case. The same ranking of Webometrics places the Universi-
dad Nacional Autónoma de México in 128th place, 932 places ahead of
the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, the leader of the ranking
of Peruvian universities. This difference is further widened by compar-
ing the two universities in terms of the excellence of the position. Here,
the Mexican university surpasses by no less than 1,434 places. At the
national level, this ranking gives a notable distance in the world rank-
ing between the first and second Mexican universities, or between the
National Autonomous University of Mexico and the IPN’s Center for
Research and Advanced Studies (487 positions) and a distance of 248
positions in the position of excellence, a figure that is greatly increased
if the National Autonomous University of Mexico is compared with the
rest of the list.
The America Economía survey in 2012 also affirmed the undisputed
leadership of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, with a
great distance from the rest of the country’s other universities and higher
education institutions. In particular: public funding, the number of en-
rolments and teachers, and research excellence. In this last point, the
difference is indicated between the leading university and the remaining
universities: almost 75 points difference with the second and almost 70
with the fourth. The difference in enrolment between the Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México and the rest is also noteworthy. In all
cases it doubles its number and in other cases it quintuples or even more.
A new América Economía study on Mexican universities carried out
in the 2016–2017 period included new variables such as inclusion and
diversity to learn about the participation of minorities and marginalized
groups in universities. Another aspect he considered was the analysis of
internationalization, the number of teachers, the annual production of
papers, and specialization programmes, among others. The first place is
taken again by the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the
second place by the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de
Monterrey.7
According to the Shanghai ranking, the Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México maintained, with preminence, a quality standard
among the positions 150–200 (2003–2013; 2016). In the last evaluation
the position dropped to 201–300.
The QS World University Ranking ranked the Universidad Nacio-
nal Autónoma de México in third place in Latin America, behind the
Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Universidad de São Paulo. It also
gave it the 128th position in the world ranking (2017), while placing the
Universidad de Buenos Aires in the 85th place and the Universidad de São
Paulo in the 120th place. In 2018, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de México climbed to the 122nd place, the Universidad de Buenos Aires
to the 75th place, and the Universidad de São Paulo to the 121st place.
Perception
In the previous section, data and information were presented on the pre-
smise that Peruvian and Mexican universities possess (or not) prestige
at the international level, measured through international and national
rankings. This section, on the other hand, will analyse the perceptions
of potential enrolment as well as that of potential employers.
The consultancy firm Ipsos conducted interviews in 2016 with 510
people (410 postulants and 100 non-applicants in Metropolitan Lima)
and the results showed that the choice of university surpasses the in-
stitutes (seven out of ten). The most selected universities were the Uni-
versidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos with 55%, also considered as
the institution with the most recognized professors and for their high
academic demands, followed by the National University of Engineering
and the Federico Villareal National University. With regard to private
universities, the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú stands out,
followed by the Universidad César Vallejo. Likewise, the Universidad
Nacional de Ingeniería, the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and
the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos are among the three
best options to work in companies.
Four out of ten applicants to universities have already defined their
careers: systems engineering is the most desired. This differs from those
found in 2010, where the main choice was medicine with 88.9%, fol-
lowed by pedagogy with 87.3% and law with 85.4% (Jaramillo, and
Silva-Jáuregui 2011, 104).
Another survey by the consulting firm Ipsos (2013) called “Percep-
ción del egresado universitario en las empresas 2013” (Perception of the
university graduate in business 2013) indicated that the Pontificia Uni-
versidad Católica del Perú, the University of Lima and the Universidad
Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas turned out to be the first three elections
among private institutions. The Universidad Nacional de San Marcos
was chosen the first among the public study houses. The perception of
Peruvian universities among the main thousand companies in Peru were:
the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, the Universidad de Lima
and the Universidad de Ciencias Aplicadas. The survey also considered
the responses from the 3,500 most important Peruvian companies, of
which 61% said that they had graduated from the Pontificia Universi-
dad Católica del Perú, 52% from the University of Lima and 32% from
the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas. In relation to public
universities, the survey ranked the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San
Marcos first with 84% of positive responses, second place to the Univer-
sidad Nacional de Ingeniería (66%).
This demonstrates a complete mastery of the Universidad Nacional
Mayor de San Marcos among the public universities and the Pontificia
Universidad Católica del Perú among the private ones (Cuenca 2014;
OECD 2016).8
In Mexico, according to the survey of América Economía (2012), the
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México has a perfect score among
employers, closely followed by the Monterrey Institute of Technology
with 96.2%.9 This shows the prestige of the public institution, despite
the financial difficulties it has experienced in recent years. Five years
later, the same consultant carried out another survey and practically the
results did not vary at all in relation to the prestige of the first univer-
sities. The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México again obtained
100% acceptance and prestige, and the Monterrey Technological Insti-
tute obtained 97.5%.10
According to the data provided by the QS ranking, the employability
of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 2018 is among the
121–130 positions, at this time, the second Mexican university.
The first place is occupied by the Monterrey Technological Institute in
position 62, twice the employability compared to the first public univer-
sity. The reputation of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
among employers is 76.4% and students 80.1%, while that of the Mon-
terrey Technological Institute is 71.4% among employers and 93.9%
among students, with an employability rate among graduates at 97.5%.
Neoliberal University Modernization in Europe. The

Spanish Case
The Spanish university system was regulated by late-Francoist legislation
as one more part of the general education system (LGE 1970). Later, the
University Reform Law (LRU 1983) and the Organic Law of Universities
(LOU 2001) endowed the institution with broad autonomy to approve its
curricula and select and promote its teaching and research staff. Finally,
in 2007, the LOMLOU (2007) attempted to incorporate the guidelines
and teachings of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) frame-
work into Spanish regulations (Jiménez Sánchez 2017).
This process began in 1998 with the Sorbonne Declaration, and was
ratified in 1999 with the Bologna Declaration, which culminated in
2010. The Bologna process has meant a boost in the updating of the ed-
ucational offer and teaching methodologies of Spanish universities (Ion,
and Cano 2012). In terms of the educational offer, it has meant greater
flexibility and a real reformulation of the curriculum, through the Eu-
ropean Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS). The aim was
to promote student-centred training models, aimed at the acquisition
of competencies and self-learning. In addition, this reform called for a
change in the roles of teachers and students, tending towards a relearn-
ing of teaching on the part of teachers and the development of learning
to learn competence on the part of students. All this has led to a new
conception of education as lifelong learning for the knowledge society
(Ion, and Cano 2012).
Within the framework of university autonomy, study plans are drawn
up, in which the objectives, contents and resources foreseen are con-
templated. Degrees, whether bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral, undergo
a process of prior quality assessment and are subject to an evaluation
every six years (MECES 2011). Once they have been positively evaluated
by the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (AN-
ECA), an autonomous body attached to the Ministry of Science, Innova-
tion and Universities, the Council of Universities must verify the plans.
As for the doctorate, the EHEA, the European Research Area (ERA)
and Royal Decree 99/2011 of January 28 are the fundamental regula-
tory pillars. The importance of improving Research, Development and
Innovation (R+D+i) and university teaching in the training of future re-
searchers is emphasized. The collaboration of the University with other
organizations, both national and international, and both public and pri-
vate, is also considered important (Pétriz, and Rubiralta 2017).
One of the most notable characteristics of the university professor is
his or her double task of teaching and research (PDI). In Spain, more
than 115,000 university professors teach 1.5 million students. Most of
them are professors at one of the 50 public universities; specifically, nine
out of every ten professors teach and do research at the a Spanish public
university, and one out of every ten does so at one of the 33 private uni-
versities that have proliferated in recent years. This indicates a path of
privatization and commercialization of higher education that coincides
with the same trend in our neighbouring countries (Jiménez Sánchez
2017).
Together with teaching and research, the third mission that the reg-
ulations grant to the university is social responsibility (Pétriz, and Ru-
biralta 2017). This has been highlighted by both European and Spanish
institutions and by international organizations. In this sense, UNESCO
has pointed out the importance of access, equity and quality of univer-
sity education, as well as its regionalization, internationalization and
globalization.
Now, university social responsibility has given rise to different inter-
pretations: from the point of view of entrepreneurship, it is understood
as the transfer of knowledge and innovation, with a utilitarian and eco-
nomicist sense (Pétriz and Rubiralta 2017). In different European direc-
tives (REC 2013, 2017; EACEA/Eurydice 2015; OEE. 2020), education
is considered a strategic asset and insists on a technocratic conception
of education based on the development of competences to achieve better
socioeconomic results (CCPE 2012). Thus, EHEA documents frequently
refer to the acquisition and measurement of knowledge, but hardly refer
to more ambitious educational goals and purposes, such as the promo-
tion of the values of democratic coexistence or integral personal devel-
opment (Huber 2008).
However, the Spanish University Strategy 2015 establishes that uni-
versity social responsibility, as a public good, is the mission of govern-
ments and should be understood in a broad sense as the contribution to
regional socioeconomic development and social, economic and environ-
mental sustainability. Previously, the World Conference on Higher Ed-
ucation (2009) stated that global higher education programmes should,
among other objectives, aim to eradicate poverty through research and
sustainable development; the public good nature of university education
places governments with the responsibility to support it as a way of con-
tributing to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and
Education for All.
Research on University Teacher Training

Given that one of the peculiarities of university teaching, not only in
Spain but also in the rest of Europe, is the absence of any pedagogical
training, the incorporation into the EHEA has not only meant its in-
sertion into a regulatory framework with new study plans, but has also
opened up an opportunity for innovation and improvement in university
teaching. However, although the discourse of modernization and inter-
nationalization, which has come hand in hand with the Bologna Plan,
has insisted on the teaching role of the university professor, it has been
underestimated in practice in favour of the research role, since teaching
dedication is not usually valued and hardly represents a merit in the
teaching career and in the accreditation for the body (Jiménez Sánchez
2017), which is evaluated merely by seniority in the teaching institution.
All in all, European directives have insisted on improving the teach-
ing training of university faculty and on the necessary methodological
change (GANUE 2013; REC 2017). In the Spanish University, teaching
is still mostly based on the master class and on the approach based on the
teaching of contents with a memoristic character. So, in order to comply
with these directives, training programmes have proliferated with the
aim of overcoming the teaching profile based on the simple transmission
of knowledge and to update the methodologies and teaching strategies
of university teachers.
Thus, since the entry into force of the EHEA, Spanish public universi-
ties have implemented training plans for university teachers. In parallel,
research on training needs has been promoted to identify the compe-
tency profiles that enable the professional development of teachers (Jato
et al. 2014). Although what has traditionally characterized university
teachers has been their mastery of their own discipline, in recent years,
the idea that this is not enough and it is therefore necessary to improve
pedagogical skills has gained ground (Postareff et al. 2007).
Within the studies on university teacher education, a series of con-
ceptualizations have been reported that help to guide the competency
profile of the good professional. Among others, collaborative studies,
the search for congruence between the results of teaching research and
practice, the importance of the mission that the university has in teach-
ing, research and public service to society, and finally, the concept of
educational models that informs and directs professional change have
been highlighted.
Attention has also been paid to what teachers think good teaching is,
as well as to their conceptions of what content deserves to be taught and
the criteria for selecting it. These studies have concluded by identifying
two models of teaching in higher education: one centred on the teacher
and the teaching of the contents of his or her discipline; and the other
centred on the student and his or her learning (Parpala, and Lindblom-
Ylänne 2007).
Another line of research that has been explored is that which tries to
define the competency profile of teachers, i.e., what it means to be a good
teacher, or what we mean when we talk about excellence of university
teachers. In this field, it is worth highlighting the research coordinated
by Bain, which identifies a series of characteristics that define the best
university professors, such as the conceptions they have about learning
and teaching, how they relate to students and how they promote re-
search and the professional advancement of their students (Monereo, and
Domínguez 2014). The concept of professional competence is perhaps
the prevalent element in the current context of teacher training, along
with good practices and their transfer. Thus, training programmes have
been oriented towards training in competencies (Yániz 2008), among
which those related to the use of pedagogical and educational technol-
ogy, teaching and learning, and competencies in professional learning
stand out (Uerz et al. 2018).
The study of identifying good teaching practices in terms of “what
good teachers do” has become one of the main focuses of research, even
UNESCO and the Bureau International d'Education (BIE) echo this idea
as a way to promote professional change based on innovation (Zabalza
2012). This has involved comparing stated practices with observed prac-
tices, as often even the “good practices” observed fall within the tradi-
tional approach to teaching (Espinosa 2014).
Training Strategies
With the growing awareness of the importance of teacher quality for
student learning, the EHEA has raised the need to promote university
teacher training, both in the initial training of new teachers and in con-
tinuing education. This has led to a veritable explosion of training pro-
grammes, although some authors have pointed out that the problem now
is not the absence of innovations, but rather the presence of too many
isolated, eventual and excessively fragmented projects (Fullan 2002, 31).
In initial training some formative programmes have proposed as an
objective to contribute to the construction of a professional identity of
the novice teacher, since the emotional dimension seems to deeply mark
the professional becoming of the university teacher (Lincove et al. 2015).
The didactic strategies for the training of university teachers imple-
mented by the different courses and programmes developed by Spanish
universities cover a wide range of possibilities. The formation of teaching
teams and shared planning has proven to be effective in generating spaces
for the analysis of the problems of each context. This is intended to improve
teaching and therefore student learning and to be a factor in changing the
professional culture of university teaching (Martínez, and Viader 2008).
Collaborative work among teaching teams seems to contribute to the
professional development of university teachers (Zabalza 2012). In some
training programmes, together with the introduction of improvements
in the teaching performance itself, the exchange of experiences among
participants is encouraged (Almajano, and Valero-García 2000). This
implies that good practices connect planning and collaboration with
innovation, establishing shared procedures, collaborative work and
dialogue between teachers and students (Álvarez et al. 2012). In this
context, within the framework of the Institutes of Educational Sciences
(ICE), collaborative networks dependent on universities have been cre-
ated in order to share experiences (Albert, and Madrid 2007).
Mentoring and expert accompaniment has also been revealed as an
effective training strategy for new teachers, integrated into a broader
training proposal (Sánchez et al. 2015). The positive impact on peda-
gogical training of the use of the portfolio, as well as training courses
and video-analysis, has also been highlighted. In the latter case, work-
shops have been developed in which the classes of teachers in training
are recorded to be analysed in a shared learning community. The aim
would be to identify the elements of classroom situations and connect
them with the theoretical principles of teaching and learning (Johannes
et al. 2012). As far as the portfolio is concerned, different experiences
have reported positive results in terms of an improved vision of one’s
own teaching, a better reflection on practice and on teaching contents, a
rethinking of one’s own educational skills and an updating of teaching
materials and resources (De Rijdt et al. 2006).
Another training practice that has been receiving interest in recent
years is service-learning, as it connects with one of the most neglected
missions of the university institution, community social responsibility
(Álvarez et al. 2017). Successful experiences have also been reported for
teaching professional development related to the use of collaborative
learning using resources such as the edu-blog, which favours the active
participation of students in the collaborative construction of the curric-
ulum (Martín, and Montilla 2016).
In this line, one of the most frequent teacher training strategies has
been those related to the use of new technologies. In fact, the European
Convergence in Higher Education has insisted on this strategy as a way
of improving professional teaching practice and achieving more effective
student learning (Nieto, and Rodríguez Conde 2007). Within the field
of the application of new information and communication technologies
to teaching, there has also been a proliferation of programmes that pro-
mote the use of web tools such as Wikis (Mancho et al. 2009).
In order to evaluate the impact of these training programmes on the
quality of university teaching, the Program to Support the Evaluation of
the Teaching Activity of University Teaching Staff (DOCENTIA), devel-
oped by ANECA and the various regional evaluation agencies, has been
implemented in Spain. Competency-based assessment is one of the chal-
lenges that the Bologna Declaration poses for Spanish university teach-
ing staff. This change in teaching methodologies requires a permanent
training activity on the part of the teaching staff (Ion, and Cano 2012).
For the evaluation of good teaching practices, the National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards is still a reference document, which,
although originally published in 1989, has been updated in a document
entitled “What teachers should know and be able to do”. This text lists
five key issues for teaching that all teachers at any level should be aware
of in order to achieve learning gains for their students (Shulman 2016).
In this concern to evaluate good practices and guide and define forma-
tive programmes, research on what the best university teachers do has
proliferated. Although most of the quality assessment programmes that
are being carried out in universities do so from the perspective of teach-
ing competencies as a substantial element (Villa, and García 2014) from
more critical and less technological visions a genuine reformulation of
the culture of teachers is proposed that goes beyond the mere psycho-
pedagogical issue and addresses the work of university teachers from a
relational and human dimension; a dimension that, as is to be expected,
also has an impact on student learning and development (Bara 2013).
This critical approach to the technocratic model conceives the mis-
sion of the university in terms of training citizens capable of facing the
problems of their time (Morín 1998, 27). From this alternative vision,
teaching activity is not conceived as a mechanical routine, but as a space
for reflection and creation that facilitates professional development. In
this conception, planning plays a fundamental role, since development
is achieved fundamentally through the investigation of problematic sit-
uations of the teaching practice itself and the planning of interventions
for their solution.
Conclusions
The perception of education systems in Peru and Mexico was largely
governed by political and, above all, economic issues. In view of the
economic losses suffered by Peru and Mexico, some of which were sig-
nificant, public higher education was one of the sectors with the most
budget cuts. Private universities have grown over the past 30 years,
thanks to political impetus and their self-financing and immunity to na-
tional economic crises. This growth in enrolment, infrastructure and
courses allowed them to position themselves as front-runners in some
careers such as economics, technology and finance. Many of these ca-
reers evolved according to the need of the market, or the modernity that
required an update with the changes that took place in the world.
On the other hand, and especially in the Peruvian case, university-
enterprises often favoured profit over the quality of teaching or research.
In Mexico, on the other hand, this is given much more lightly since pri-
vate universities are mostly traditional and autonomous public univer-
sities are those that stand out for their prestige, such as the Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México, and for their volume of research, which
is not the case in Peru with universities-enterprises. In this country, the
largest amount of research is carried out by public universities, particu-
larly the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and the Pontificia
Universidad Católica Peruana, as noted: private.
With regard to the social perceptions of universities, the above-
mentioned Peruvian universities enjoy greater social prestige, as well as
the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. From this, is deduced
that the positive social perception was built over the years and despite
the deficiencies they may suffer (economic, education, research). In both
countries, the quality of education was threatened – and still is – by
political and transparency issues. This is one of the great dangers for
Higher Education in Latin America, and there is no country that does
not have this risk. In particular, Peru has experienced more political ups
and downs that have affected the quality of education; this is reflected in
international rankings, in which the position of its best universities is far
behind the best Mexican ones. Finally, two pairs of universities in each
country stand out from the rest. Both pairs have a public and a private
institution. The Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and the
Pontificia Universidad Católica Peruana; and the Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México and the Monterrey Technological Institute. Both
groups account for more than 50% of the research carried out in their
respective countries and this is reflected in the positive image of employ-
ers, society and rankings (in the case of Peru, nationals’ rankings).
With regard to the Spanish university, in the face of the neoliberal trend,
marked by a series of discourses that revolve around quality and compet-
itiveness, and which coexist with a de-skilling and precarization of the
teaching staff, a current has emerged that claims the university’s mission
to be not only teaching and research, but also social commitment, citi-
zenship and the contribution to sustainable socioeconomic development
(Jiménez Sánchez 2017). This alternative discourse can even be traced in
official European and Spanish documents, which speak of the fact that,
together with professional fulfilment and employability, sustainable de-
velopment and democratic values, social cohesion, active citizenship and
intercultural dialogue should be promoted (OEE. 2020 2011).
In these critical positions, the main concern is the restructuring of
higher education institutions being operated by the market, with the
complacency and inaction of public decision-makers (Gregorutti 2007).
Faced with this discourse, one of the lines of action proposed is the train-
ing of reflective professionals who contribute to the social commitment
of the university in the sense of solving social, political, cultural and
scientific problems, and who work in the integral formation of citizens
from a humanistic approach (Gómez Bayona 2009). In this line, the use
of collaborative strategies versus competitive ones is also highlighted,
together with the development of reflective skills.
Some authors have postulated that the ability to reflect is a precondi-
tion for teachers' professional development (Karm 2010), since reflec-
tive professionals help students to learn (Welkener 2008). Therefore, the
university’s commitment to the training of reflective professionals is an
alternative to the neoliberal discourse and a condition of possibility for
the maintenance of higher education institutions at the service of the
construction of a new society (Gómez Bayona 2009).
Notes
1 See the declaration of Bologna: http://eees.umh.es/contenidos/Documentos/
DeclaracionBolonia.pdf
2 At present, the region has a number of recently enacted laws that coexist
with others that are more than 50 years old. The oldest is that of Costa Rica,
from 1957 (with two modifications throughout the 1990s).
3 Among the positive consequences: increased mobility of students and teach-
ers; collaboration in teaching and learning (key is technology and distance
education); improved academic standards. Conversely, among the negative
consequences: brain drain and lack of financial support at the institutional
and structural level.
4 It includes the Instituto Peruano de Evaluación, Acreditación y Certificación
de la Calidad de la Educación Básica (Ipeba), the Consejo de Evaluación,
Acreditación y Certificación de la Educación Superior No Universitaria
(Coneaces) and the Consejo de Evaluación, Acreditación y Certificación de
la Calidad de la Educación Superior Universitaria (Coneau).
5 The Apci places cooperation, as expressed in Undaf, on the following stra-
tegic axes: (a) human security, (b) human development, (c) institutionalism,
(d) care for the environment and (e) sustainable competitiveness.
6 See: La Educación Superior en el siglo XXI, Asociación Nacional de Univer-
sidades e Instituciones de Educación Superior, México.
7 See:ht tps: //rankings.americaeconomia.com /universidades-mexico-
2017/tabla; http://noticias.universia.net.mx/educacion/noticia/2017/04/
25/1151818/ranking-mejores-universidades-mexico-2017.html
8 See: https://gestion.pe/tendencias/universidades-prefieren-empresas-peruanas-
contratar-egresados-55123
9 See: https://rankings.americaeconomia.com/2012/ranking-universidades-
mexico/ranking.php
10 See: https://rankings.americaeconomia.com/universidades-mexico-2017/tabla
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Section II
Political
6 Constructions of “The
National” in Latin America
Jussi Pakkasvirta
The Colonial Legacy

To understand the nations’ historical problems in Latin America, we
must look far away, which does not mean that we have to start with
pre-Columbian history analysis. However, it is indispensable to reflect
on the European conquest and the centuries of colonialism, which built
the foundations of the societies, the population, and the continent’s racial
structures.1 This colonial and continental formation has been the histor-
ical foundation of long duration in Latin American societies – history
repeatedly narrated, but inevitable in studies such as the present (a “clas-
sic” analysis of the legacy of colonialism is that of Stein, and Stein 1970).
First, the European invasion meant a catastrophe for America’s indig-
enous population with the complete disappearance of pre-Columbian
empires and hundreds of ethnic groups. It reshaped the “imagined com-
munities” of the indigenous peoples, which never later came to regain
their role in the colonies or the republics. Second, the invasion of Euro-
peans in the “New World” profoundly transformed the pre-Columbian
mode of production and, at the same time, began the process of environ-
mental deterioration in the Americas. Third, the Europeans created “the
white America” and implanted “the black America” when they began to
import slaves from Africa. 2
Gradually, “the mestizo America” was formed, the transcultural and
indulgent Latin America’s idealized image. The myth repeatedly told,
which emphasizes racial equality born with the continent’s ethnocul-
tural mix, is easy to dismantle (See Mörner 1960). Despite certain syn-
cretic elements of American societies, mestizo America has unilaterally
meant most of the population, which has been assimilated – or better yet,
assimilated – into the dominant European and white culture. The other
Eurocentric category, which was born with the European conquests, had
reached the Americas in its concrete form: it was impossible to be dif-
ferent and equal at the same time.3 Otherness (“otredad”) became, also
after Independence, a fundamental problem of Latin American states
because homogenizing ideas, which aspired to national unity, worked
poorly in societies that were multiethnic and multicultural.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-9
152 Jussi Pakkasvirta
The different “Americas” were organized in a very hierarchical way.
Power remained, almost without exception, in the small European or
Creole elites’ hands. White America, and from time to time mestizo and
acculturated, directed, in theory, and practice, the continent’s racial,
ethnic and linguistic path. America is, for example, the only continent
(besides Australia) where the languages of the conquerors almost wholly
replaced the indigenous languages – also later in the independent nation-
states.4 It can be said that the new order, which came to the American
continent with the European conquest and colonialism, acted at both
the cultural and mental level and the political and economic level (on the
impact of the conquest and the different approaches and discourses of
the “Quinto Centenario”, see Pakkasvirta, and Teivainen 1997, 7–14).
This study’s framework only briefly concludes that colonialism’s leg-
acy was an essential element for the American continent’s structural
transformation. It was a beginning for the process in which the Euro-
pean powers began to unify and globalize, i.e., “westernize” the world.
Most of the countries that today are called Latin American drew a pe-
ripheral raffle in the ruthless game of imperialism and colonialism.5
From the “continentalist” point of view, the colonial era’s importance
consisted of the fact that, because of Iberian centralism, all the disparate
Latin American regions were incorporated into a network of function-
ally interrelated units. In Latin America, there was more contact and
exchange between the American provinces of the Spanish empire during
the colonial era than between the region’s independent states during the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Stavenhagen 1988, 26).
As in the case of colonialism, here we only briefly review the history
of state Independence in Latin America, and we will look, at a general
level, at some basic features of the national processes of the nineteenth
century. For this, however, we will use more space because the general
and historical framework of this research – the dilemma of Latin Amer-
ican nationalisms of the 1920s – is not well understood without a brief
historical excursion into the past century.
States of Creoles and Caudillos

As a result of its hierarchical structure and centralism, Iberian colonial-
ism had left a slow and ineffective governmental tradition in the Ameri-
cas (On Hispanic centralism, see Véliz 1980). With a little exaggeration,
we can say that Latin America, as a peripheral region of the world-
system, was doubly marginalized in the early nineteenth century. When
the states in the dynamic centers of European capitalism – like France,
England, Holland, and Belgium – were strongly oriented towards a more
aggressive and “efficient” colonial system, the empires of Portugal and
Spain, despite the Bourbon reforms, still functioned with a very bu-
reaucratic and mercantilist order. After the Independence struggles, the
Constructions in Latin America 153
previous Iberian viceroyalties had to break a double blockade: first, with
the chains of colonialism; second, with the internal systems that had
their origin in the rigid administrative tradition. Next, the republics had
to find their space in the emerging and agitated capitalist competition.
We can see that the historical task of the “liberators”, such as Simón
Bolívar, José de San Martín, Antonio José de Sucre, and others, was not
at all easy.
Luis Navarro García, a Spanish historian, states that achieving In-
dependence “at the cost of everything else”, as Bolívar defined it, was
so precarious that it may not have deserved the name (Navarro García
1991, 7). With this, he refers to the problems that Bolívar himself knew.
In the new political order’s foundation, the perspectives of economic
development were doubly mortgaged that at the end of the eighteenth
century, any observer could have imagined for each of the colonies of
America. Free and unleashed from Iberian mercantilism – but in dis-
order and with the foreign debt of the struggles for Independence – the
Latin American republics now established a second dependence on for-
eign capital and markets, with the states that had just been born, resum-
ing their previous condition as producers and exporters of raw materials
and food products (Navarro García 1991, 7).
Nevertheless, despite the gigantic problems of Independence, it is his-
torically interesting that 16 independent states were born in Latin Amer-
ica during the first decades of the nineteenth century, which based their
constitutions on republicanism.6 This republican boom in the Americas
coincided with when Europe’s center of world power was the monar-
chies’ continent.7
One of the main problems of the new American republics was the for-
mation and organization of the political community. How could a new
government be established in each territory that would enjoy most citi-
zens’ respect and acceptance? What would be the exact borders of each
of the new states? What would be the appropriate administrative model
for these governmental units in formation? These problems were never
well resolved: “The colony continued to live in the republic” wrote José
Martí in 1891 (cit. by Lagos 1989, 81). The Creoles, in the direction of
Latin American Independence, never could, nor wanted to, perfect their
revolution on a structural level. For most of the new states’ population, it
was the same (or they did not care) if instead of the Crown and the King,
they now had to obey the State, the president, or a “republican” military
leader. Indeed, in many cases, the situation of marginalized sectors, such
as the status of the Indians, worsened when the tutelary mentality of the
Catholic Church and colonialist paternalism gradually became a faith of
order and progress, liberal or positivist (See Valtonen 1992).
Although Latin American republicanism in the nineteenth century
owed much to the Enlightenment and other European ideas, think-
ing in the political community was different in the Americas since
Independence. European nationalism also became Creole nationalism
when it crossed the Atlantic. In particular, Latin American states be-
came independent as republics – already before the prosperous era of
European nationalism that began in 1848 affected their political forma-
tion. Due to the colonial tradition and the Wars of Independence expe-
riences, the Patria Grande’s idea and the utopia of continental destiny
survived, at least in the Hispanic American countries.
Despite the sporadic praise for mestizaje, ethnic diversity an essential
aspect in constructing an integrated nation in Latin America was almost
forgotten in the state processes led by the criollos and caudillos, eth-
nically more or less white. Although economic and political problems
were fundamental in the neglect of “ethnic minorities” – who formed
majorities in many countries – white and male power elites also found
several intellectual arguments to justify the new republican order. It was
almost always the intellectuals who built the social models for a nation.
These models were adjusted to foreign forms and often directly copied
from Western Europe. Surprisingly, the intellectuals quickly and almost
carelessly forgot their societies’ ethnic realities and heterogeneity. It even
seems that the most significant concern of intellectuals in ethnic matters
was how to import more European immigrants into their countries, and
ensure progress and Western civilization in their nations.
One of these philosophers, or “Ibero-American Thinkers”, was the
writer and politician Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811–1888). Ac-
cording to him, within the subcontinent nations, there were two dif-
ferent societies: one was white, European, and civilized; and the other
was indigenous, American, and barbaric. The barbarism in Sarmiento’s
statements included the indigenous population and the descendants of
the African slaves in America (Sarmiento [1851] 1896, 34–36). For the
Argentine thinker, the Indians even had the brain more reduced than on
the Spanish peninsula. Sarmiento was also comparing American success
with the problems of Spanish America. He concluded that in the north,
society was constituted by a pure race because the Anglo-Saxons did
not absorb in their blood “a prehistoric and servile race”, as it had hap-
pened in the Spanish empire’s colonies (Stavenhagen 1988, 34). Another
Argentine thinker of the nineteenth century, Juan Bautista Alberdi, be-
lieved that in America all that was not European was a barbarity (Cit.
by Quesada 1992, 15). In Argentina, the “national strategy” for civili-
zation and Europeanization, in Sarmiento and Alberdi’s style, was quite
successful. By the end of the nineteenth century, millions of immigrants
from Europe had arrived in the country. The remains of the region’s
indigenous peoples were almost extinct. Although the civilization proj-
ect was not so successful in other Latin American countries, the ruling
classes usually agreed with the Argentinean laundering methods.
Therefore, the ties that were thought to have been cut between Eu-
rope and America in the Wars of Independence never really disappeared.
Despite this, the Creoles could not deny the fact that they were Amer-
icans, after all. Therefore, in intellectuals and Creoles, the fundamen-
tal question of national and continental identity was how to combine
the European with the American. The Liberator, Simón Bolívar, had
already raised this problem: “We are neither Indians nor Europeans, but
a middle species between the legitimate owners of the country and the
Spanish usurpers” (Letter of Jamaica, Sep. 6, 1815. Cit by Buela Lamas
1993, 261) and “The blood of our citizens is different, let us mix it to
unite it” (Angostura’s Speech, February 15, 1819. In Ideas en torno de
Latinoamerica 1986, 435).
Many of the Latin American “Thinkers” or “Builders” of the nine-
teenth century (See Solera Rodríguez 1962; Buela Lamas 1993) considered
the U.S. an appropriate and exemplary model to follow in the struggle for
the “second emancipation” (Stavenhagen 1988, 24) – the spiritual and
cultural liberation that had to be achieved after political Independence.
During the last century, there were two main strategies for this spiritual
conquest. The conservatives identified with the Hispanic tradition and
with the Catholic Church. Simultaneously, the liberals thought that this
peninsular tradition was feudal and undynamic. The liberals wanted to
strengthen Latin American culture with French Enlightenment, British
rationalism, and American empiricism and pragmatism.
However, by the end of the century, the United States’ growing influ-
ence, especially in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America, began
to concern many intellectuals, both liberal and conservative. American
political, economic, and military aggressiveness turned many admirers
of the “American dream” into northern materialism and pragmatism
critics.
The Mexican sociologist, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, has called this pro-
cess an inward-looking one (Stavenhagen 1988, 24). This look aimed to
seek cultural roots and identity, not in foreign models, but Latin Amer-
ican societies themselves, in their ethnic and historical composition. It
was a conscious tendency of intellectuals to build their own national
cultures – or a continental culture of their own.
The search for national and continental identity, with an inward look,
began in the mid-nineteenth century when new generations of “Latino”
intellectuals became more critical of the Anglo-American cultural model.
They began an intellectual work for the political, economic, and cultural
process, called the rather mechanic term of “national construction”. Ac-
cording to Stavenhagen, this process was based on a political choice that,
after the failure of the Bolivarian utopia of continental unity, was seen
as the only possibility to counteract the evident threat of U.S. hegemony.
The newly independent states had to develop the forms and contents
of their “authentic national cultures”. If these did not yet exist, as was
indeed the case in the Latin American republics in the first half of the
nineteenth century, they had to be invented (Stavenhagen 1988, 23–45).
Despite some attempts to reject the European models, the Eurocentric
core of the different Latin American national constructions never dis-
appeared. Even though new ideological currents emerged, in principle
emancipatory like indigenism, the intellectual elites never freed them-
selves from Hispanic paternalism. Most of the searchers for American
authenticities, such as the indigenous or costumbristas, acted as the Rus-
sian narodnikis: they searched for innocent people in the countryside
with idealism or a certain arrogance. Indigenism, for example, was an
intellectual project in which they tried to unite European civilization
and spiritual tradition with pre-Columbian metaphysics and cosmog-
ony. However, the search for something that
The “true American identity” (Stavenhagen 1988, 25) has been called
in a somewhat naïve way. In practice, it meant the rethinking of the Eu-
ropean models, imposed artificially, and elaborated on own “national”
or Latin American cultures.
Therefore, the inward look came to mean also the rejection of Amer-
ican admiration. Contrary to the ideas of the liberals or other admirers
of the U.S., like Sarmiento or Alberdi, many intellectuals of the end of
the nineteenth century began to emphasize that the America south of the
Rio Grande belonged to the old European civilization. Simultaneously,
in the north, the predominant culture was amoral or almost barbaric
with its materialism and pragmatism. Therefore, the elements of bar-
barism in the Americas no longer consisted only of Asian or African
influence, but also emerging American brutality.
Elaborations of National Cultures

The search for Latin American particularity also meant emphasizing
the national’s distinctiveness instead of other countries’ shared cultural
traits. The aspiration towards national and State consolidation had al-
ready begun in the civil wars and the wars between the republics that
followed Independence. Therefore, the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury marked Latin America’s history as an era of civil, State, and consti-
tutional chaos: an era of wars and caudillismo. The Creole elites, other
power groups, and the caciques of the different regions of the republics –
whether they were liberal or conservative – were fighting for the right to
condition national and local economies’ functioning to use social and
political control, and to define “national hegemony”. It was also a con-
scious construction of national cultures.
In his synthetic essay already cited, Rodolfo Stavenhagen has clas-
sified the construction and consolidation of national cultures in Latin
America – the Creoles’ task – into three categories. In the first place,
this task consisted of legitimizing political power. The leaders of the
various revolutionary factions of Independence, the military dicta-
tors, the regional caciques or caudillos -and from time to time also the
constitutionally elected civilian presidents – needed more than the ex-
ternal trappings of authority to leave their mark on history. Driven by
circumstances to play roles of national importance, it was the “false
self-appointed emperors” and representatives elected by a handful of
“notables” who controlled political processes for most of the nineteenth
century. They began to speak and act instead of the “homeland” on be-
half of the “nation” or “people” about abstract entities that did not yet
exist. The nation was a necessity
in whose name they could legitimize the power they had obtained,
in whose name they could treat other states as equals, and for whose
benefit and welfare they had been elected, appointed, anointed, or
called upon by the people to make their revolution.
(Stavenhagen 1988, 26)
Therefore, where there was a state, there had to be a nation, and where
a nation had been invented, there had to be a national culture. The intel-
lectual elites, linked to the circles of power, picked up the baton (Staven-
hagen 1988, 26).
Secondly, the nation’s invention was necessary because, after the
fall of the Iberian empires in the Americas, the new and still weak
republics were easy prey for the expansionist and imperialist ambi-
tions of Great Britain, France, Germany, or the U.S. Although after
the French “Maximilian” in Mexico in 1862, none of these powers
wanted to establish a formal and permanent dominion over the Latin
American republics, they found indirect strategies of political and eco-
nomic domination, which, moreover, were more efficient and cheaper
than direct colonial rule.8 On the other hand, the construction of na-
tional consciousness and culture also served as instruments against
the neighboring countries, which were very often hostile. This bellig-
erence between the Latin American republics – besides the threats of
the European powers and the U.S. – was, without a doubt, another
aspect with which the need to strengthen national culture could be
argued. As recent historiography shows, in the wars against neighbor-
ing countries or the most distant powers, symbols and national heroes
were necessary for national construction (On consciously building a
national hero, see, Palmer 1992). As a result of these wars, the Cre-
ole oligarchies also wanted to justify their nations’ borders in the for-
mation. They rejected the possibilities of larger political unions that
many times could have corresponded better to a “nation”, which in
each case was entirely artificial. The national fragmentation of some
administrative units formed during colonialism was also accelerated
by local elites, who understood that power and control were best left
in their hands in smaller nation-states (See Chamorro 1951; Townsend
Ezcurra 1973; Woodward 1976; Karnes 1982).9
Thirdly, nation-building required the formation of “official” nation-
alism; i.e., it was necessary to develop the public administration, State
and “national” institutions, the national economy, the educational sys-
tem, etc. According to Stavenhagen, here lies one of the fundamental
contradictions of Latin American societies: the contradiction between
national culture, as adopted by the intellectual and political elites, and
the stark reality of fragmented, disintegrated, and highly polarized so-
cial and economic structures. In almost all countries of the continent,
this problem has existed not only in economic and political conditions.
However, it has also been maintained according to the highly differ-
entiated ethnic composition of the population (Stavenhagen 1988, 27).
Stavenhagen does not go into much detail about the role of state ap-
paratuses or national institutions in this process, nor does he begin to
analyze a fundamental question, “Which came first, chicken or egg”, in
Latin American history and historiography: to emphasize the external
or internal foundations in explaining the continental history or national
histories?10
Historically, the search for the national foundations of each Latin
American republic began consciously in the mid-nineteenth century,
with the ethos of national romanticism, when the roots and justification
of the newly invented nation were sought. There was the first boom in
“national histories” to process the past according to the nation-state’s
needs. Official “historians were sent to European archives and libraries
to search for documents about the existence of a historic nation”.11 The
fruits of this work, “national histories”, were then taught to the first
genuinely nationalistic generations by the new educational systems, cop-
ied from Europe. National pride and consciousness were then based on
the long – almost eternal and primordial – history of the homeland.12
Likewise, they began to make dictionaries of “colombianisms”, “co-
starriqueños”, “Argentinians”, etc., to particularize the Spanish or the
“national” way of speaking of each country (in the case of Costa Rica,
see Quesada Soto 1986). These nationalist linguistic tendencies also en-
couraged popular language within texts and the use of national themes
or motifs. They emerged against the influence of peninsular or colonial
literature, defining it as academicist, purist, and Europeanizing.
On the other hand, the defenders of “academic Castilian” attacked
the nationalists, regionalists, or localists. There were two ways of de-
fining the language. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a Costa
Rican historian, diplomat and man of letters, Ricardo Fernández Guar-
dia, ridiculed the overly nationalistic linguistic tendency in the following
manner: “A nationalist, moreover, will leave aside the dictionary of the
Spanish Academy, which is good for the rest of us who vegetate in Latin
America, and will use only the Dictionary of Costa Rican Barbarisms
of Don Carlos Gagini” (Bolaños Varela, and Miranda Hevia 1984, 131.
They cit. Bonilla 1967, 110).13
In short, for the nationalists – who were philologists, historians, law-
yers, or politicians – the nation was like “Sleeping Beauty”, which only
had to be awakened by the nationalist kiss. Nationalism invented na-
tions in places where this imagined community did not yet exist (Gellner
1964, 169). A methodological starting point in historiography was Leo-
pold von Ranke’s new tradition of writing the past scientifically (“source
positivism”). Now, the history of the nation could be documented with
the exact rules and facts of political history.
Liberal Nations
As we have already tried to argue above, it is unquestionable that even
in the middle of the nineteenth century, the republics in Latin Amer-
ica were neither nations nor nation-states, in the modern sense of these
terms. They were rather dispersed administrative units without much
social integration. The common element within the different republics
was the agrarian economy, which is usually called semi-feudal (Keen and
Wasserman 1984, 164–167; compare with Wallerstein 1989, 191–256).
Therefore, the conflicts between the different local or regional elites
reflected the lack of an efficient central state and national hegemony
struggle. During the second half of the century, especially liberals in the
continent’s countries considered the nation’s idea as a perfect form of a
political community to fight for free trade, modernization, progress, and
more efficient regional and communal integration.
In many countries, the positivist motto of order and progress was the
dogma of the liberals entering the “national” scene with force. Auguste
Comte’s positivism, the social-Darwinist ideas about the right of the
most powerful or about the inferior races, presented by philosophers
like Herbert Spencer, were shared by both the “scientists” of Mexico
and the civilists of Peru or the “positivists” of Costa Rica. These liberals
saw in positivism a new saving philosophy against conservatism and the
doctrines of the Catholic Church.
Simultaneously, the chasm that already existed between the liberals,
the merchants, the landowners, or other wealthy citizens and the Indians
of the mountains or the blacks of the coasts was growing at an accel-
erated rate. So, liberals did not know precisely what they were doing to
their nations in the name of civilization, progress, and modernization.
From their positivism, they took only what served them to solve urgent
problems. They did not see that the liberal spirit, because of the efficient
“machine society”, was polarizing and fragmenting civil society, and not
the other way around, as they would have liked, integrating the nation.
The social class division that arose from the new agro-exporting econ-
omy corresponded significantly to the ethnic and cultural structure. In
principle, the ethnic groups that had been forcibly integrated into the
colonial economy received citizenship rights in the republics, different
regulations, and the unjust division of land and wealth guaranteed that
liberal democracy did not work in Latin America either.14 Therefore,
we can affirm that the creation of national unity in the continent – and
later also the reproduction of this unity – was, and is, carried out by a
strategy of “double oblivion” (Pakkasvirta, and Teivainen 1997, 12–14).
First, almost fictitious narratives are invented about the shared history,
in which the elements that question national unity are forgotten. Second,
state elites used to, and often do, emphasize national autonomy against
outside influence. This strategy was problematic when the two elements
of unity were not very original or “national”; they imitated European
models.
Thus, the liberal project was not as successful as the positivist utopi-
ans had imagined. The models of State and nation inherited from the
Creoles and caudillos were copies of their European forms. The liberals
did not much change the constitutions of the republics that resembled
the models of the U.S. or the French legal order of Napoleon I (Kaplan
1989, 69–77; González Casanova 1990). These models were adjusted to
an idea of the ethnically and culturally homogeneous nation. The liberal
elites in Latin America were not able to transform the European tradi-
tion to the needs of the “national” population. Despite mestizaje, which
soon became the basis of the new “popular” concept of nationality, it is
not correct to say that there was no racism.
The positivism of the liberals also functioned as an educational doc-
trine. Nationalist and “scientific” instruction was presented to many
liberals as the best instrument to form a new man, free of the defects
inherited by their homelands from the Colony and Catholic supersti-
tion (Zea 1985, 122–127; Stavenhagen 1988, 34). As the liberals identi-
fied themselves with Western civilization, they thought they represented
the “Extreme West” (Rouquié 1989, 17–28) branch of Latin America.
Moreover, because the West’s best culture did not come directly from
the Iberian Peninsula, it was too inefficient, hierarchical, and Catholic.
The liberals sought educational models from France and Germany – to
change the colonial ecclesiastical, educational system (Zea 1986, 239–
269; González Casanova 1989).15
Even though the liberals vigorously attacked the Catholic Church and
the conservative elements in their societies, daily life, or perhaps better –
the people’s culture at the bottom of society, did not change that much.
The majority of the population, the citizens of the “nations of liberals”,
continued to live on the new educational systems’ margins, according to
their traditions and speaking their languages and dialects in their way.
This fact did not bother the liberal elites much; instead, they seemed to
think that blacks, Indians, and the other “outcasts”, the “minorities”,
which in many countries were in the majority, were a barrier to pro-
gressive national development. Therefore, the existence of these “bar-
baric social elements” threatened the hegemonic project, with which the
liberals wanted to enter the world concert of civilized nations. More
clearly, this concern was represented by the thinking of liberals, such as
Sarmiento or Alberdi.
Furthermore, at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was evident
that the positivist ideas of the liberals also served to justify the struc-
tural changes that had affected Latin American societies. The birth of
the “modern” and “efficient” Latin American economic model, based
on the export of raw materials and mono-agricultural products, which
began during the second half of the last century, is still today a signifi-
cant problem of Latin American countries in the world economy, or in
the modern “world-system”. The structural adjustment to modernize
the agricultural sector, for example, was carried out by the positivist
strategy. It meant starting the massive use of new land or replacing the
land used for growing domestic plants, with livestock (in Argentina and
Uruguay), coffee cultivation (in Brazil, Colombia, and Central Amer-
ica), or banana plantations (in the islands and coasts of the Caribbean
and Ecuador). This process was also violent in a new and more effi-
cient way because the use of military expeditions in the “cleaning of
the land” for the new cattle ranchers and agricultural businessmen has
been a common practice of the national armies, the different paramili-
tary groups, and the large landowners or caudillos. Therefore, the new
landowners were often not very “new” – i.e., European immigrants, re-
quired to civilize the wilderness – but local landowners. The colonizing
model of small landowners that had worked more or less successfully in
the United States never worked on a large Latin American scale (Alba
1968, 4; Abellán 1972, 41–53).16 Instead, the old “land problem”, up-
dated again, affected indigenous populations in many countries more
than before. Later, the small mestizo owners were also proletarianized
and turned into pawns.
A U.S. historian E. Bradford Burns illustrates these Latin American
economies’ structural processes in a very descriptive historiographic
way. He directly quotes some texts from travelers, diplomats, and other
contemporaries, who tell of their experiences of the times before the era
of agro-export monoculture. For example, Mrs. Henry Grant Foote, the
wife of the first British diplomat in El Salvador, writes in her memoirs
that even in 1853, the large indigenous population of the small Central
American republic still owned part of its communal lands. Not only the
richest but also the humble people enjoyed access to the land. The land
near the country’s capital seemed almost Edenic in its prose:
The surroundings of the city are gorgeous, being a mass of exuber-

ant orange and mango trees, bending under their load of fruit, and
the huts of the poor people are extraordinarily clear and clean, each
one surrounded by its lush fruit trees.
(Foote, cit. by Bradford Burns 1989, 535)
According to this upper-class English woman, simple Salvadoran soci-
ety almost excluded the sharp distinctions between rich and poor. In
a somewhat naïve way, Mrs. Foote narrated an anecdote, “a peculiar
custom” that impressed her: “Everyone, including the president, man-
ages a store, without objecting to appear behind the counter and sell
one a spool of yarn, the wives and daughters performing in the same
way” (Foote, cit. by Bradford Burns 1989, 535). Mrs. Foote captured
something of the republican society close to Independence, although her
portrait is undoubtedly idealized and incomplete. Other travelers told
similar stories (Stephens 1982. See Bradford Burns 1989, note 6, 560).
Some 50 years later, these stories are already very different. For exam-
ple, in the cited Salvadoran case, a prominent national intellectual of the
time, Alberto Masferrer, describes the national situation in the 1920s as
follows:
El Salvador no longer has wild fruits and vegetables that everyone

could once harvest, even cultivated fruit trees that were once cheap.
Today there are coffee plantations, and only coffee is grown [...]
Where there are now voracious haciendas that consume hundreds
and hundreds of acres, there were once two hundred small farmers
whose land produced corn, rice, beans, fruits, and vegetables.
(Masferrer [1929], cit. by Bradford Burns 1989, 558)
The situation in other Central American countries was similar. In the

case of Costa Rica, see Gudmundson (1986), Hall (1991), and Molina
Jiménez (1991). The stories of the banana enclaves on the Caribbean
coast at the turn of the century are perhaps even sadder. In these sto-
ries, too, foreign interests are manifested in a previously unknown way
(Kepner, and Soothill 1935; Gaspar 1979; Ellis 1983; Bougois 1989.
Central American literature also includes impressive banana stories; see,
for example, Fallas [1941] 1986; Amaya Amador 1990).
These structural changes influenced all social and intellectual levels.
Although the liberal principles of progress and development continued
to form the basis for thinking about the national future of Latin Amer-
ican countries, many social groups, especially those most affected by
these changes, began to understand that national construction was not
possible without the participation of all social sectors, and this partici-
pation demanded more social rights. Moreover, the Mexican Revolution
experience had already taught that fundamental changes were possible
in republican Latin America, not to mention the new utopia born and
spread with Russia’s socialist revolution in 1917.
All this, with the aggressive foreign policy of the U.S. in the Carib-
bean and Central America, with the intensification of the world econ-
omy and with the effects of the Great War, had its influences both at
the level of the internal structures of the Latin American states and on a
continental scale. The world changes had also remodeled the old system,
which waltzed in the Eurocentric atmosphere of Vienna. The world of
traditional empires was becoming the world of modern nations. Instead
of international Eurocentric systems of colonial control, such as the
Congress of Berlin (1878), the League of Nations was formed, in which
non-European states could also participate.
In Latin America, the first three decades of the twentieth century
were when workers’ and trade union movements successfully formed
their disciplinary formation in almost all countries. Movements that had
fought for the eight-hour workday and other workers’ protest groups
reorganized and became modern political movements. This politiciza-
tion of the masses meant that the new social groups could participate in
social life – and more than before, as equal citizens of the nation.17 The
Latin American communist parties were born and strengthened mainly
in the 1920s. The student movements for university reform were radi-
calized simultaneously as the repression of State, and military power in-
creased and made their organization more efficient. In many countries of
the continent, university students approached the workers’ movements
at the concrete political struggle level. The “classical” Latin American
intellectuals and writers began to participate more than before in anti-
imperialist activities. The Bolivarian ideas of the indispensable unity of
the Latin American peoples were reborn once again – now as a reac-
tion against the U.S.’ increasingly strong economic and political influ-
ence. Also, some continental and anti-imperialist movements emerged,
in which intellectuals were directly involved. The “arielism” of José
Enrique Rodó was still alive. On the other hand, indigeneity – still very
paternalistic – was growing, more than anything else, in the thoughts of
Peruvian and Mexican intellectuals.
Moreover, because of the rapid spread of information, the world was
becoming “smaller” and, at the same time, more multidimensional and
complex; the Russian Revolution was a reality, Mahatma Gandhi was
fighting in India, Chiang Kai-chek in China, and Augusto César San-
dino in Nicaragua. Utopias were revived and spread. Especially in Latin
America, the 1920s was indeed a time of spiritual modernization, pri-
marily shaped by the media.
Notes
1 When we use the term continent here, we refer (in a geographically imprecise
way) to Latin America. Latin America here means that the north’s vast re-
gions begin from the Rio Grande and extend southward to Tierra del Fuego.
The Caribbean is also included in the term. On the difficulty of the concept
“Latin America”. See Pakkasvirta (1992, 23–25).
2 Likewise, we could talk about “Asian America”, which is not the same as
Indo America. For example, we refer to the arrival of hundreds of thousands
of Asian workers (most of them Chinese) during the nineteenth century.
3 By the term other we refer here to a category of people who “are different”
or “are outside” the dominant culture/society. During the last decades in
philosophy or critical anthropology, this concept has been used in feminist
history, studies on sexual minorities, etc. In the case of the Conquest of
America, see Todorov (1984). From the point of view of Latin American
philosophy, see Dussel (1990). Also Teivainen (1994). In short, for the con-
quistadors, the inhabitants and cultures of America were something new
and rare (“the Indians” were unknown and others). In the sixteenth century,
in Castile was seriously discussed whether the Indians were human beings.
For centuries, there had been contacting Africans and Asians. However, the
American “New World” was entering the European consciousness with dif-
ficulty. When the Spanish in 1537, after lengthy discussions, defined that the
American Indians were human beings, the Indians could not have their way
of life but had to become similar to Europeans. This justified the Christian-
ization and the conquest, which were the ideological basis of colonialism.
See Vuola (1992).
4 At least, the role of indigenous languages, until today, was never officially
accepted (only in Paraguay Guarani has it been recognized as an official
state language).
5 Here, it should be added that a general approach to Latin America quickly
forgets, in a Eurocentric way, the heterogeneity of the different regions and
states of the continent – not to mention the heterogeneity within the Ameri-
can states, which today are called nation-states.
6 Those republics were Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ec-
uador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Par-
aguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The five Central American countries’
case is problematic; they formed a federation until 1838. There were no
republican constitutions yet in the 1830s. Brazil was an Empire, and the
Dominican Republic gained its Independence only in 1844.
7 Therefore, Benedict Anderson (1991) states in his Imagined Communities
that the “era of nationalism” began in the Americas in the Creole and repub-
lican form: “European scholars, accustomed to the conceit that everything
important in the modern world originated in Europe, too easily took ‘second
generation’ ethnolinguistic nationalisms (Hungarian, Czech, Greek, Polish,
etc.) as their starting point in their modelling […] the crucial chapter on the
originating Americas was largely ignored”.
8 The lack of direct domination intentions was also due to the existing rival-
ries between these same powers.
9 The failure of the Central American Federation (1823–1840) is an example
of this type of fragmentation.
10 In particular, during the last ten years, historians and social scientists have
again found the inner aspects of continental history. One reason for this has
been that different approaches to “dependency theories” have encountered
the paradigm crisis. On the other hand, it may be that internal explanations
of “postmodern”, “deconstructive”, or “discursive” tendencies have been
sought. See, for example, Beverley, and Oviedo (1993).
11 In the case of Costa Rica, the diplomat and historian León Fernández wrote
in 1882 that “As soon as I arrived [in Europe] and without neglecting my
diplomatic obligations […] I set myself the task of collecting every docu-
ment that could be used in defense of my country. In Madrid, I visited the
National Library, the Royal Academy of History, that of San Isidro, the Hy-
draulic Directorate and the Ministry of War; in Seville, the General Archives
of the Indias; in Paris, the National Library and the Geographic Society; in
London, the British Museum and the Geographic Society”. Cit. by Quesada
(1998, 64). León Fernández edited the abovementioned documents. In 1848,
a Guatemalan, Felipe Molina, paid by the Costa Rican government, had
sought documents in Guatemala and the United States. His work, done to
legitimize Costa Rica's borders, came out in 1851.
12 In an ideal way, the historian Steven Palmer quotes the Costa Rican newspa-
per La Nación (February 10, 1988) that titles an article on an archaeological
find in the national territory: “Ticos de hace más de 50 mil años”.
13 The first edition of Gagini's Dictionary of Barbarisms and Provincialisms
of Costa Rica came out in 1892 and the Dictionary of costarriqueñismos by
the same author in 1918.
14 Not to mention the women who also in the Americas did not have the right
to vote.
15 More than anything, France, or better, Paris, was the “spiritual Mecca” of the
intellectuals, whether liberals, conservatives, anarchists, etc. The German sys-
tems of instruction and educational discipline reached Latin America through
countries like Chile and Argentina. See Monge Alfaro (1978, 18, 30–48).
16 Luis Abellán, has presented a mental idea of colonization. He uses the con-
cept of “Hispanic mentality” to interpret colonization differences in South
and North America. Mobility meant the extension of reputation and honor.
Like Don Quixote, eternally mobile, the conquerors without families had
traveled thousands of miles in a 100 years, conquered new lands, destroyed
Indian states, founded viceroyalties, reproduced with the continent's origi-
nal population, stole and spent incredible fortunes. The English Puritans,
pursued by James I, who started the European colonization of North Amer-
ica, arrived in their ship “Mayflower” to America in 1620. In 200 years,
they had reproduced mainly among themselves, had destroyed in an effi-
cient, Protestant, and agricultural way all tribes of Indians that they found –
and had advanced only 200 km into the continent.
17 Although it must be remembered that equality was still, for a long time, the
privilege of men and, in practice, of white or mixed-race men, there were
always factors that prevented in practice the participation and cleanliness
of the elections. Moreover, in many countries, even in the 1920s, half the
population did not have the right to vote. For example, in Central American
countries, women received this fundamental right only between 1949 and
1965. See García, and Gomáriz (1989, 62, 135, 216, 278, 356).
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7 Migration and Border
Control Policies in South
America (1900–1945)
Non-Admission,
Identification, and
Deportation1
Eduardo Domenech and Andrés Pereira
The historical development of migration and border control has been

studied mainly on a global scale from national experiences in the North
Atlantic and to a lesser extent, in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly
Australia. 2 To a large extent, Anglo-American literature has excluded
peripheral or semi-peripheral countries recipients of the “great migra-
tions” between the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth
centuries from the global history of migration and border control. Ar-
gentina and Brazil constituted national spaces occupying a preponderant
place in people’s international circulation with massive emigration from
Europe. South American states, even those that did not receive signifi-
cant immigration amounts, created both immigration agencies and laws,
implementing early on numerous measures aimed at recruiting and se-
lecting “desirable” immigration; however, also aimed at preventing and
repelling “undesirable” immigration. This chapter aims to understand
the emergence, development, and transformations of international mi-
gration control and surveillance in the South American context during
the first half of the twentieth century, particularly in the interwar pe-
riod. Contrary to what these events’ omission in specialized literature
suggests, this text maintains that South American states had active
participation in the early production stage, migration control experi-
mentation and that the South American regional space was not inter-
nationalization processes alien of the people’s movement control in the
contemporary world.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, within the framework of
the so-called immigration promotion policies, the desirable immigrant’s
official definitions were translated into restrictive formulations to iden-
tify “undesirable” immigrants and contain their arrival. Income control
involved modes of exclusion inspired by specific social and political no-
tions of the time’s conservative liberalism. With the measures of inad-
missibility and prohibition of entry, various “lists of undesirables” arose
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-10
170 Eduardo Domenech and Andrés Pereira
simultaneously as passports, identification cards, and registers became
a fundamental and constitutive tool of the processes to control entry
and deportation of foreigners. Selective policies were developed through
legislation, specialized bureaucracies, and administrative processes
that made it possible to identify individuals through passports, identity
cards, and records. As Torpey (2000) suggests, identification and regis-
tration practices and instruments were essential elements in construct-
ing statehood, entry bans enforcement, deportations, and movement
restrictions or freedom across national and internal borders. Passports,
identity cards, and various registers, along with the certificates usually
requested by each receiving State, provided the necessary information to
control agents such as consuls, immigration and police authorities car-
rying out routinary identification tasks, categorizing, and classifying the
immigrant population based on the characteristics set out in those docu-
ments, such as age, nationality, occupation, health state, criminal record
and begging lack, among others. These mechanisms were developed in
various ways and at different times in each of the South American coun-
tries. The circulation of ideas and the imitation of government measures,
the signing of agreements or conventions, and the participation in re-
gional and international spaces played an essential role in disseminating
these tools.
This chapter adopts a regional perspective to account for the devel-
opment and transformations of migration and border control in South
America. In this sense, the intention is to show that migration and bor-
der control policies and practices exceed the national framework. They
form part of a network of institutional schemes and strategies, intergov-
ernmental spaces, relations, and networks of actors whose daily deploy-
ments connect on national, regional, and international scales. However,
they are justified and implemented in a given national space and based
on national affiliation criteria. The literature that has explicitly dealt
with migration control or has provided some of its aspects an indirect
glimpse and dimensions through migration policies studies usually re-
fers to constructing and analyzing national cases, either from a single
national experience or a comparative study between countries.3 This
chapter proposes a cross-cutting investigation based on migration and
border control categories identified as relevant to account for the chang-
ing forms. It took a proliferation period of ideas and practices related to
the state power’s exercise over immigration. Thus, the text focuses on
the impediments and prohibitions to entry into the national territory,
the documents and records of the immigrant population’s identification,
and the deportation of foreigners. As an exhibition strategy, each section
deals with migration and border control at a regional level. Then appeals
to the Argentine national space showing some singularities adopted by
them, specifically spatial and temporal contexts. These analytical re-
constructions are based on documentary sources such as laws, decrees,
Migration and Border Control Policies 171
regulations, resolutions, reports, notes, and consular communications,
as well as international agreements and treaties.
Entry Control, Selectivity, and Exclusion: The

“Undesirable” Lists
In South America, state regulation of population movements in the
form of policies to “encourage” or “promote” immigration began to
take shape along with the process of formation of nation-states during
the period of independence. However, it only acquired a more recurring
character towards the end of the nineteenth century, with the consolida-
tion of the nation-states, their insertion in the world capitalist market,
and the arrival of large contingents of immigrants from overseas. The in-
stitutionalization of immigration promotion policies reached their peak
with the strengthening of administrative-bureaucratic bodies. The first
immigration and colonization laws, most of which emerged during the
second half of the nineteenth century, established the agencies respon-
sible for promoting and selecting immigration.4 The official definitions
of “immigrant” in these laws contributed to constructing the desirable
immigrant of that time. Generally, it was a manual working-age worker
from Europe who could account for the social behavior and the expected
labor skills or competences and had the will to remain in the country
that received him. With exceptions such as Argentina and Brazil, in most
South American countries, State attempts to encourage immigration and
intensify transatlantic, mainly European, immigration flows did not re-
sult in a massive influx of immigrants.
The policies to promote immigration developed during the “mass
immigration” era gradually established a regulatory scheme that con-
sisted of attracting and recruiting “good immigrants” and preventing
and rejecting “bad immigration”. The General Department of Immigra-
tion duties and powers created by the 1876 Argentine migration and
colonization law reflect this dual intention: “To protect immigration
that was honorable and laborious and to advise measures to contain
the flow of which was vicious or useless”.5 This institutional objective
was replicated at various times and in various national contexts. For
example, in early 1920s Colombian migration legislation, immigration
promotion was based on a selectivity that brought together elements of
the definition of the “desirable” immigrant and his qualities as an agent
of “civilization and progress” while establishing the need to avoid immi-
gration that would disturb the social order or make it difficult to achieve
“economic and intellectual development of the country” and the “im-
provement of ethnic conditions, both physical and moral”.6
At the beginning of the twentieth century, especially from the 1920s,
there was a substantial change in classifying and selecting immi-
grants. The various South American countries began to redefine entry
requirements and establish categories of individuals who would not be
admitted to the national territory. With the increase in administrative
requirements, national immigration legislation began to identify indi-
viduals or groups whose entry should be prevented. As opposed to the
official definition of the desirable “immigrant” embodied in the migra-
tion legislation of the second half of the nineteenth century, those who
did not respond or did not fit the image of the “good immigrant” came
to make up the heterogeneous universe of the “undesirable”. Thus, un-
der the development of policies to promote immigration, migration rules
implicitly contained a formula of exclusion: all foreigners were welcome,
except “exceptions”. “Undesirable” immigrants embodied those excep-
tions: they were those who escaped the official definition of the “good
immigrant”, those who did not fit the hegemonic parameters of nation
and race, the “deviants” or “abnormals”. Gradually, lists of individu-
als and social or ethnic groups whose entry into the national territory
was not seen as desirable according to the official parameters began to
emerge. The lists of excluded foreigners were an account of the anxieties
and social fears of the time. They were a virtual device in the construc-
tion of immigration and immigrants as a threat. “Undesirable” immi-
grants could constitute a threat to national identity, the health of the
population, public and moral order or the security of the State.
In the South American region, the prohibitions established for entry
into the national territory were intended to prevent the arrival of individ-
uals who were considered to be a social or moral risk. The immigration
laws established specific guidelines and criteria avoiding foreigners who
were not “fit for work”, who could become a “public charge” or were
suffering from diseases that could be detrimental to public health or
would not allow them to work. Under the influence of the hygienic and
eugenic ideas of the time, the diffused and broad formula of “vicious or
useless immigration” contained in the Argentine migratory regulations
summarized in good measure those affected by the measures of restric-
tion to the entrance. Various laws of the 1920s and 1930s indicated the
inadmissibility of foreigners who had no means of support or could not
exercise a profession or trade that allowed them to “earn a living”.7 On
the other hand, the lists of undesirables also included persons affected
by certain diseases, psychological conditions, or physical deficiencies. It
was typical for migration legislation not to allow foreigners with chronic
or infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, leprosy, trachoma, or any
other disease that could not be prevented by quarantine.8 These laws
also sought to prevent the entry of foreigners with “mental illness”. This
also included “drug addicts” and “alcoholics” or “customary drunks”.
Besides, some laws provided for subjects with physical characteristics did
not allow them to carry out a trade or occupation. For example, the first
rule that regulated Argentine immigration law in 1923 included “blind,
deaf, dumb, paralyzed, rickety, dwarf, one-legged or any other vice or
defect that prevents them from being considered fully fit for work”. In
some cases, the laws allowed admission to those who entered with fam-
ily members who were “healthy and useful persons”.9 Another group of
undesirables consisted of poor immigrants related to begging or whose
way of life did not conform to established moral rules. Thus, many of
the laws of these times referred to “bums”, “beggars”, “vagrants”, and
“thugs”.
On the other hand, the lists of “undesirables” included individuals
who were seen as a threat to “public order” and “national security” or
the State. The list included those who promoted actions against state
authority and private property. Several laws were intended to prevent
the entry of foreigners who taught, propagated, or proclaimed ignorance
of the law or sought to overthrow the government by violent means. Al-
though not explicitly listed, the ban on entry was primarily aimed at an-
archists and sometimes communists. At the beginning of the twentieth
century, in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, the respective residence laws
were the first to prevent entry into any foreigner’s national territory who
disturbed “public order” or compromised “national security” through
the use of political violence. In the interwar period, politically motivated
entry bans became widespread among the South American states. This
was determined by the migration laws of Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia,
Venezuela, and Brazil.10
In addition to regulating political crime, residence laws also prohib-
ited entry abroad that “had been convicted or prosecuted by foreign
courts for common crimes or offenses”. In the following decades, mi-
gration and foreigner regulations advanced more broadly on controlling
income of individuals that was associated with certain criminal or de-
linquent acts. In this sense, the 1920 Colombian and Peruvian laws, the
1937 Venezuelan law, and the 1938 Brazilian law prohibited the entry
or excluded individuals convicted of different common crimes, except
those who served their sentences. Likewise, 1932 Uruguayan law did
not admit those convicted of common crimes committed in the country
of residence or any other, even those possessing citizenship cards. Fur-
thermore, although sexual exploitation activities were generally not con-
sidered a crime in the national legislation of the time, some regulations
concerning immigration or foreigners treated pimps as moral offenders,
prohibiting their entry. The figure used was the “white slave trade” or
“trafficking with prostitution”. Those who traded drugs received the
same treatment. For example, Chile’s 1928 law provided a ban on entry
for foreigners engaged in “illicit trafficking that conflicts with good cus-
toms or public order”.
In some instances, the lists included those individuals who had trans-
gressed the requirements and conditions for legal entry into the na-
tional territory. In some countries, such as Argentina, as we will see
in detail below, failure to comply with the admission rules began to be
contemplated in the years following the end of World War I. However,
income control’s intensification occurred with the extension of the lists
of undesirables among various countries and expanding their scope in
the 1930s. The Uruguayan law of 1936 and the Brazilian regulations of
1938 prohibited entry to those who did not have the proper documen-
tation. In particular, both focused on having consular certificates or vi-
sas added to the documentation required for entry. The regulations also
specified the prohibition from entering for those who presented “flawed”
or “falsified” documentation. On the other hand, in the 1930s, migra-
tion legislation began to provide measures to contain the entry of “ex-
pellees”. Among these regulations, the 1932 Uruguayan law prohibited
the entry of those “expelled from any country”, and the Brazilian and
Bolivian laws of 1938 did not allow the re-entry of those previously
deported from the national territory. In Ecuador, the 1940 Alienage,
Extradition, and Naturalization Act and its 1941 regulations provided
a more expansive range: they excluded from entry those expelled from
other countries, removed from the country, rejected in other countries,
even as “mere suspects”.
Finally, in some South American countries, State measures expressly
aim to prevent or limit the arrival of specific quotas of foreigners accord-
ing to their national or ethnic origin. The groups most affected by the se-
lective policies were immigrants from Asian countries (especially China
and Japan), African and Middle Eastern countries, as well as those iden-
tified as “gypsies” (FitzGerald, and Cook-Martín 2015). This ethnic
selectivity basis in the entrance to the national territory, instrumented
through the criterion of nationality was the “improvement of the race”
as a requirement for the nation’s conformation. In Ecuador, both the
entry and the mobility of the “Chinese” were especially subject to state
control. After their entry into the national territory was prohibited at
the end of the nineteenth century, in 1909 the national executive forced
governors to conduct Chinese citizens’ censuses to control their growth
and restrict their mobility outside the places they registered (Carrillo
2012). Under the strong influence of the eugenics movement in the
Americas, some South American countries such as Colombia adopted a
quota system to control immigrants’ movement and selection. In 1931,
the Colombian government set by decree the number of immigrants and
the nationalities authorized to enter the country. This measure was a
response to eugenic ideas whose expansion occurred through the or-
ganized action of Latin American representatives of eugenics, in addi-
tion to the different effects on the region of the U.S. immigration law
of 1924, which established quotas according to national origins (Olaya
2018). Later, more critical requirements for entry were imposed on some
nationalities. During these years, in Ecuador and Bolivia, the so-called
“gypsies” or “nomads” were on the lists of those excluded from migra-
tion legislation.
The “Undesirables” under Control in Argentina
In Argentina, towards the end of the nineteenth century, especially since
the 1880s, following substantial changes within the State, the bureau-
cratic apparatus reached a relative consolidation, leaving behind pre-
vious decades’ precariousness characteristic. It was during this period
that one of the statehood’s fundamental attributes was acquired: the
emergence of “a functionally differentiated set of public institutions that
are relatively autonomous from civil society, with a certain degree of
professionalization of their officials and centralized control over their
activities” (Oszlak 2004, 157). Among the first specialized institutions
to consolidate their power over the territory and exercise control over
the population were the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of War
and the Navy, and the Ministry of Justice, Religion, and Public Instruc-
tion. In 1876, the General Department of Immigration was established
under the Ministry of the Interior, the principal State agency devoted to
regulating international migratory movements.
Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, foreigners’
political activism aroused severe fears and concerns among the ruling
elite’s sectors. The immigrant image began to change with Spaniards
and Italians’ participation in the formation of workers’ associations
and anarchist and socialist political movements. In this context, pub-
lic order and social defense notions became significant among ruling
groups (Zimmermann 1995), generalizing the positivist criminological
discourse at different levels of society and the State (Ruibal 1993). A
fraction of immigrants became associated with crime and marginality
and were seen as “dangerous classes”.11 In a growing social and political
upheaval context, marked by significant protests and massive strikes,
the 1902 Residence Law and the 1910 Social Defense Law enabled the
expulsion and banning of undesirable immigrants among mainly “an-
archists”, considered a threat to “public order” and “national security”.
On the other hand, during the first two decades of the twentieth cen-
tury, the lists of undesirables incorporated new prohibitions of entrance
for social and moral reasons. By 1907, in Argentina, as in other coun-
tries such as the United States and Brazil, diseases such as tuberculosis
and trachoma became grounds for banning immigrants’ entry and re-
entry (Di Liscia, and Fernández Marrón 2009). In the following decade,
a 1913 decree sought to strengthen controls on infectious diseases such
as tuberculosis, leprosy, and trachoma. Also, in 1916 two decrees were
established that defined the notion of undesirables based on the cate-
gories of “organic vice”, “insane”, and “beggars”, while making entry
to the country conditional on obtaining certificates of criminal record,
non-begging, and mental health. On the other hand, Argentina’s eco-
nomic and social consequences during World War I and the post-war
period led the Yrigoyen government to put these decrees into effect in
1919 (Devoto 2001). The expansion of administrative control over im-
migrants implied by these changes was strengthened by the immigra-
tion regulations of 1923. Through this new regulation, the migration
control agencies systematized various impediments to enter the country
and expanded the undesirables list. In general terms, the regulations es-
tablished restrictions based on the ideal definition of “immigrant”, as
given by the immigration and colonization law, and established new re-
quirements. One of the impediments was “being clandestine”, or having
an official permit to disembark in other countries, but “bringing the
Argentine Republic as a real destination”. The lack of requested docu-
mentation such as specific certificates and the visaed passport was also
incorporated into the exclusion reasons.
The economic crisis of 1930 gave a new impetus to the development
of measures aimed at hindering migratory movements (Devoto 2009).
Throughout the 1930s, the criteria and control mechanisms outlined
in previous decades to restrict or directly prevent foreigners’ entry into
the national territory were strengthened and expanded. Measures to
control the movement of “undesirable” immigrants were extended by
incorporating more critical requirements and creating new inspection
bodies (Devoto 2001). The General Immigration directorate, which was
renamed Migration General Directorate (DGM) in 1943, gradually ac-
quired more extraordinary powers to regulate migratory movements,
both overseas and cross-border. Argentine consulates abroad maintained
their role as migration control agents by participating in the selection
process in the countries of origin. During the so-called Infamous Decade
(1930–1943), which began with the military coup of 1930, successive
governments established a set of measures that empowered the DGM to
exercise police power, extending the powers conferred on it by the 1923
regulations (Quinteros 2008). In 1936, a decree held that the situation
at the time demanded: “extreme measures of control and surveillance of
the movement of passengers to the country” to prevent “infiltrations” of
“elements” that could be “a danger to the physical or moral health of our
population or conspire against the stability of the institutions created
by the National Constitution”.12 To this end, the Directorate of Immi-
gration was assisted by the National Maritime Prefecture, the Capital
Police, and the Directorate of Civil Aviation. These State agencies were
required to carry out the control “in a general and rigorous manner”,
regardless of the means of transport used and the class or passenger
category. It was also intended that this control could be carried out “per-
manently, even after entry into the country”. The process of verifying
the required documentation involved both the Police of the Capital, the
national territories, the Provinces, and consular offices abroad and ship
captains. In 1938, the national government preached the desirability
of encouraging13 immigration to rural destinations (Quinteros 2008),
the most significant attempt was made to reduce immigration through
administrative mechanisms, establishing the requirement of a landing
permit (Devoto 2001). The main objective was to suppress the entry of
foreigners with refugee status who arrived in Argentina from neighbor-
ing countries like Uruguay or Brazil by some unauthorized route (Bier-
nat 2007).
In this decade, the population exchange between Argentina and the
bordering countries began to receive specific attention from the Argen-
tine State mainly due to the unauthorized entry and transit – described
by government officials as “clandestine” – of those foreigners consid-
ered “undesirable” in the years of World War II as the Spanish Republi-
cans or the Central European Jews expelled from Europe, progressively
strengthening the surveillance of land and sea borders. This state con-
cern about “clandestine” entry and transit became evident in the var-
ious control measures implemented. During these years, as shown by
Quinteros (2008), conditions were established for passengers embar-
kation towards neighboring countries that crossed Argentina en route
to their destination, new migratory posts were created at the border,
a foreigners register, and transit agreements were signed between the
States that shared the border, such as the 1939 Immigration Agreement
between Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina Finance Ministers,
whose purpose was to control and keep the signatory countries informed
of the entry of foreigners considered “undesirable” (such as European
refugees) or the agreement signed with Paraguay in the same year. Later
on, Argentina also participated in some regional conferences. Its pres-
ence took place in the commissions referred to the transit of foreigners,
incredibly “clandestine” ones.14
In the Second World War, various norms emerged that aimed to
strengthen migration control (Quinteros 2008). In 1940, some measures
were implemented, such as prohibiting disembarkation of persons in
transit, requiring passage to the destination place, requiring consular
fees to be paid, and stating in the documentation that they were passen-
gers in transit. Likewise, in 1941, Congress approved the project to cre-
ate new border posts and a register of foreigners proposed by the DGM,
relying on the control of the documentation requirement (landing permit
and consular visa) and health inspection. A concrete manifestation of
the changes that were taking place in migration control policies in Ar-
gentina was the transfer of the DGM from the Ministry of Agriculture to
the Ministry of the Interior in 1943 (Devoto 2001; Biernat 2007; Quin-
teros 2008). During the first years of the 1940s, it was no longer only a
question of guarding the border, but also resolving the different situa-
tions that arose once the foreigner had entered the national territory. The
naming way and the interest in differentiating foreigners who entered
the country eluding immigration control from those who managed to do
so by circumventing it (through falsified documentation, for example) or
residing in violation of some immigration rule expressed the relevance
that the legal criterion for qualifying entry and residence was acquiring
at that time: for the DGM, according to the advice of its director, the
former had to be called “clandestine”, while the latter had to be called
“illegal residents” (Quinteros 2008). Finally, the government’s measures
also warned of the threat that a foreigner presence could pose to na-
tional security, providing certain sanctions for those who put it at risk: a
1945 decree stipulated penalties for those who attempted to undermine
the security of the State, determining for foreigners the punishments that
consisted of prison, loss of nationality and/or expulsion from the coun-
try.15 This rule provided that illegal acts included the unauthorized entry
of foreigners into the Argentine territory, the false declaration of the ad-
dress of residence, and the carrying out of actions favoring other coun-
tries against the Argentine State or allied countries (Quinteros 2008).
Passports, Registers and Identity Cards:

The Identification of Foreigners
In the construction and consolidation of South American nation-states,
the distinction between nationals and foreigners gradually emerged as a
transcendental fact for regulating individuals’ mobility across interna-
tional borders and within the territory. In the first decades of the twenti-
eth century, the selective and restrictive nature of migration policies was
reflected in using different administrative tools such as passports, identi-
fication cards, and population registers to prevent, facilitate, or monitor
individuals’ mobility, particularly those known as “immigrants”. Thus,
the development of these policies and administrative tools required for
creating new bureaucratic structures usually organized as departments,
municipalities, or directorates of immigration and colonization. Also,
it implied the provision of new competences to the consular representa-
tions that acquired control functions through the visa systems. In this
context, passports became increasingly important as a tool serving the
purposes of individual identification and distinguishing immigrants as
“subjects” or “citizens” of another State. On the other hand, population
records and identification cards were used to control and monitor for-
eigners’ mobility, who already had an authorized residence or arrived to
stay “definitive” or “permanently”.
In South America, the application for and use of passports was linked
to international population movement regulation through entry bans.
The adoption of the passport for immigration control shows a signif-
icant temporary dispersion among countries. While in Argentina, the
passport application was contemplated in its 1876 Immigration and Col-
onization Law. In other countries, passports were incorporated from the
first decade of the twentieth century. In Colombia, through a 1909 de-
cree, the General Department of Immigration had the power to require
the list of immigrants, their passports, certificates, knowledge, contracts,
and other reports that were considered necessary from contractors. This
statement was a textual copy of the Argentine law of 1876. On the other
hand, in Brazil, a 1911 decree empowered the immigration authority to
verify immigrants’ identity and requested “spontaneous immigrants” to
present their passports or personal identity cards to prove their identity.
These countries’ laws required the migration and consular authorities
to draw up lists and registers of immigrants. The necessary informa-
tion, such as name, sex, age, profession, origin, destination, religion,
and family composition must be included. Although the data requested
differed from case to case, no specific information was collected on the
destination’s address. No other records were requested once the entry
control passed.
The development of population registers and the issuance of identity
cards, usually referred to as cédulas, took place mainly in countries with
a strong interest in controlling the stay of “immigrants” or “foreign-
ers” with de facto or de jure authorized residence. Thus, the identifi-
cation and registration of foreigners in Ecuador was closely linked to
the definition of Chinese immigration as undesirable. Thus, from 1908,
in addition to introducing entry bans, a process of registration of the
Chinese population already in the country was carried out. Simultane-
ously, provincial governors were forced to carry out an annual census
that served the purpose of greater control of the population, restricting
their movement within the territory and confining these migrants to cer-
tain areas of tolerance (Carrillo 2012). On the other hand, the registra-
tion and identification of foreigners also responded to government elites’
concerns regarding political crime issues. In Chile, the 1918 Residence
Law, which was created especially for the control and surveillance of an-
archists, gave the administrative authority the power to force foreigners
to register in special registers run by police prefects and obtain identity
cards. In this sense, although this was a power granted to the adminis-
trative authorities, over time the registration and the identity card be-
came an obligation (Seguí González, and Rovira 1947).
On the other hand, during the interwar period, international institu-
tions such as the League of Nations struggled to have some social issues
such as human mobility addressed in a supranational manner (Parsa-
noglou, and Tsitselikis 2015). In this context, the first attempts at the
international and regional level to regulate passports’ use emerged. In
1920, the Passports and Customs Procedures Conference was held in
Paris under the auspices of the Provisional Committee on Communica-
tions and Transit of the League of Nations, whose aim was to standard-
ize passport rules and dismantle some of the controls erected mainly
in Europe during the First World War (Turack 1968). Likewise, during
the Fifth Pan-American Conference held in Santiago de Chile in 1923,
a resolution was adopted to unify passports (Acosta Arcarazo 2018).
The document sought to reduce requirements when granting consular
visas and abolishing passports and other restrictions that hindered free
communication among American nations. These documents show that,
in the early 1920s, the system of passports and consular visas had un-
dergone considerable development to control mobility between America
and Europe. This was also reflected in the fact that national regulations
no longer required a passport but detailed its features such as photo-
graphs, stamps, signatures, and the mandatory consular visa.
South American countries showed new and different developments
during the 1920s. Thus, in Bolivia, a 1924 law introduced a “health
passport” that prohibited foreigners with physical or mental illness or
disability from entering. It also stated that anyone entering without a
health passport was subject to the obligation to leave the country within
24 hours. On the other hand, Colombia was not an exception. A 1920
law reformulated the documentation and information requested from
foreigners (Gómez Matoma 2009). The new legislation established that
foreigners, except for “vivanderos” (referring to border transit), were
required to present a passport that would be issued by the consular au-
thorities with the prior delivery of a health certificate and a certificate of
conduct. In the following decade, new restrictive measures and controls
were imposed through passports and other documentation. With the
quota system implemented from 1932 onwards, the required documen-
tation, which was translated into Spanish, included a conduct certificate
from the previous ten years stating that the holder had not had any no-
table legal cases, which could not be issued for more than thirty days,
and another health certificate stating that the holder did not suffer from
any contagious diseases or show any dependence on alcohol or drugs.
The passport had to be accompanied by certificates of “good conduct”
and “good health”, both physical and mental, as well as a declaration of
marital status.
In Ecuador, during 1920, regulations were made regarding passports’
issuance to Chinese citizens (Carrillo 2012). Among them, the anthro-
pometric measurements of the person and front and profile photographs
were required, and the collection of as much information as possible so
that they could be identified upon their return to Ecuador. The verac-
ity of their passports was verified, as their command over the Spanish
language. On the other hand, as Ramírez (2012) explains, between the
1920s and 1940, different measures were deployed to regulate the use
of passports. Thus, through the Law on Foreigners, Extradition, and
Naturalization of 1921, it was established that foreigners should have
a passport with a visa when entering Ecuador, using the control at or-
igin as a preventive measure for undesired migration. Thus, while the
priorities of control over Chinese citizens remained intact, passports
were regulated in greater detail. The latest legislative amendment was
extended to foreigners in general. Towards the end of the following de-
cade, new measures and instruments were imposed to increase control
over foreigners’ entry in the context of the Second World War. Thus, a
law of 1938 provided that for a passport visa, the Ecuadorian consul
abroad must require, after investigation, a certificate on the conduct and
other personal conditions of the candidate. Subsequently, in 1941, it was
determined that a fixed amount of money would be paid for the grant-
ing of the visa, called “immigration stamp”. Employing a 1947 law and
requesting a visa in the passport, a typology of visas was implemented
(tourist, return, immigrant, transit, business, diplomatic, and courtesy
visas).
The more significant regulations concerning the entrance require-
ments, especially in the authorized permanence, were also reflected
in Bolivia’s and Paraguay’s legislation after the end of the Chaco War
between these countries (1932–1935). The enacted regulations also ad-
vanced in controlling all “foreigners” and detailed regulation in pass-
ports’ characteristics. A decree in early 1937 regulated the granting of
entry permits to Bolivia with the explicit purpose of controlling immi-
gration in such a way that it would be “advantageous for the ethnic im-
provement of the country”. In addition to certificates of baptism, good
health, and conduct, the regulation required an “international passport
with complete filiation, photographs, and fingerprints”. The decree also
required individuals to appear before the police and the Ministry of Im-
migration when they arrived at their destination. These agencies were
required to report the obligation to obtain an identity card for those who
settled permanently. Presumably, as a result of the war, the Paraguayan
government also took some similar measures. A 1937 Decree-Law estab-
lished that to register a foreigner with the police, it would be essential
to record the “temporary landing or stay permit” issued by the Depart-
ment of Lands and Colonies. Likewise, during the Second World War,
like other countries in the region, the Paraguayan government created,
through a Decree-Law of 1942, a “special regime for nationals of the
Axis States, ordering their re-registration because of the international
situation created by the war” (Seguí González, and Rovira, 1947, 36).
The development of increasingly broad and comprehensive legislation
regulating the entry and authorized stay of “immigrants” and “foreign-
ers” was also reflected in Brazil’s case. The selective and restrictive pol-
icies developed in previous decades continued during the Estado Novo
through a quota system that sought to limit immigrants’ “entry into the
national territory to ensure ethnic integration” (Sikora 2014, 59). Con-
cerning the control of the entry and authorized stay of “foreigners”, a
Decree-Law of 1938 incorporated an entire chapter entitled “Identifica-
tion and Registration”. Thus, in addition to incorporating the obligation
to present passports and consular cards for entry, it provided for a land-
ing process that no foreigner could complete without being identified
by the Immigration Department. It also allowed 30 days for these indi-
viduals to present themselves to complete a registration with the police
authorities at the destination. Additionally, it stated that any change of
work or home would require a new registration with the police authority
for four years after disembarkation in case of immigrants. The rule also
clarified that no “foreigner” could remain in the country for more than
six months without obtaining the police investigation records’ identifi-
cation card. Finally, it stated that the identification card could not be ac-
quired without passports endorsed by immigration authorities verifying
their legal stay in the country, under the terms of the legislation in force
at the time of entry. The Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil regulations show
essential changes in identification and registration, which were consoli-
dated towards the end of the 1930s. Thus, more data was collected, fin-
gerprinting was used, identification cards were imposed, and all resident
foreigners were registered. At the same time, the mobility of new arrivals
was monitored.
Passports and Identification Records in Argentina

In Argentina, the first national immigration law already provided for
the request of passports and other documents to immigrants arriving at
the port of Buenos Aires. Specifically, the Immigration and Coloniza-
tion Act of 1876 required ship captains to provide a list of passengers,
their passports, and other reports that could be useful for immigration
control. It also instructed the Department of Immigration to organize
a register which chronologically recorded the entry of each immigrant,
their data, national and religious affiliation, occupation, knowledge of
reading and writing, point of departure, and point of placement. Thus,
in a context of scarce regulation on foreigners’ mobility, the incipient
documentation requirements were only directed at a fraction of passen-
gers identified as “immigrants”. During the first decades of the twenti-
eth century, different decrees and resolutions specified, renewed, and
updated the characteristics of the passports and documents requested to
authorize entry. These selective and restrictive administrative measures
were first designed to control “immigrant” mobility only, then extended
to all foreigners arriving in the country.
In 1916, during World War I, the conservative government of Vic-
torino de la Plaza issued two decrees that regulated the characteristics
and type of certificates and passports requested from immigrants. Thus,
it became mandatory to present certificates of criminal records, health
and non-begging visas issued by consular authorities. One of the decrees
also regulated the characteristics that passports requested from second-
and third-class passengers should have to avoid the possibility of their
being falsified. This measure was because the passports did not have
sufficient security features to identify individuals unequivocally. Con-
sequently, the decree required that passports incorporate a photograph
stamped by the issuing authority or the Argentine consulate. Once the
war was over, the significant economic and social damage the country
had experienced, together with the fear generated in the elites by events
such as the Tragic Week towards the beginning of 1919, led the Yrigoyen
government to enforce the 1916 decrees (Devoto 2001).
In Argentina, the use of passports in immigration control during the
First World War and the post-war period shows some significant con-
trasts with their use in the North Atlantic countries directly affected
by the war. Those directly affected by the war adopted a quota policy.
While control in Argentina was based on a restrictive framework around
individual characteristics (Devoto 2001), the controls implemented by
the belligerent countries during the war and those developed by other
countries with quota policies in the post-war period established selec-
tivity in which national origin predominated over individual charac-
teristics. On the other hand, although passports were required of all
immigrants in Argentina, in formal terms, they were not always used to
select them according to their nationality, as was the case in the quota
systems. Although nationality could be a determining factor in the selec-
tion process, they were often used to identify individuals through their
name, surname, age, and portrait. They also made it possible to check
that the entry time certificates belonged to the passport holder.
Moreover, the passport requirement to have a stamped photograph
implied the adoption of a technique that had become widespread in the
context of war. After the First World War, as Torpey (2000) shows, coun-
tries such as France, England, Germany, and Italy began to impose the
use of passports and identity cards. The need for a photograph stamped
by the issuing authority or signed by its bearer became the common
denominator of passports. Also, communications from the Argentine
consular and diplomatic legations abroad with the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs show that other countries such as Russia,16 Austria-Hungary,
and Portugal also began to request a photograph stamped by the issu-
ing authorities, sometimes signed by the individual concerned. Consular
visas for passports and certificates also became a central issue during
the conflict. As can be seen from the decrees of the time and diplomatic
communications, the administrative processes for the issuance of pass-
ports and their security features became more critical. In a 1916 letter17
to the Argentine Foreign Ministry, the United Kingdom’s extraordinary
envoy in Buenos Aires noted the Army Council’s concern about the exis-
tence of forged passports in the hands of enemy subjects. The institution
assumed that consulates did not withdraw expired passports from Ar-
gentine citizens; such documents could be stolen or sold for forgery, and
it was suggested that Argentina implement measures to have the consul-
ates retain the passports. In its response, a few days later, the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs reported that, according to the regulations of the dis-
tribution, Argentine consular officials withdraw expired passports when
they issue new documents.
The 1923 immigration regulations, which recovered the regulations
formulated in the years of the First World War, established as an im-
pediment to entry the lack of a passport with a photograph which was
endorsed by the Argentine consular officer in the place of origin. Thus,
migration control was instituted in two different instances: in the coun-
tries of origin, through applying the various certificates that had to be
visaed by the Argentine consulates, and at the destination, through the
controls carried out by the board of visitors (Devoto 2001). The cap-
tain was also obliged to hand over the passengers’ lists and the medical
form where information on new developments in the passengers’ health
during the trip should be included, and the passport, certificates,18 and
the consular form.
Over time, in line with what happened in other countries in the region,
the controls carried out only on “immigrants” were extended to all pas-
sengers. In addition to the entry records, others of a mandatory nature
have been added to record authorized stay. In this regard, a 1936 decree
explicitly extended the controls to “all passengers by any means used to
reach the Republic, as well as the class or category of passage used”. The
most notable novelty of this decree was that the consulates, in addition
to the visas required for passports and certificates, had to extend “in all
cases and without exception, the individual file, in duplicate, and the
police fingerprint with all the data provided in the questionnaire, to all
passengers over fifteen years of age”. This requirement was accompanied
by a prohibition on the police in the capital and the national territories
from issuing identity cards “to foreigners without first obtaining from
the Directorate of Immigration a photographic copy of the correspond-
ing individual identity card issued at the time of entry into the country”.
This measure was due to the possibility that the migration controller
“can take effect even after entry into the country”. In this way, for the
first time in the migratory field regulations, the possibility of extending
the control that takes place in the port beyond the territorial limits was
explicitly proposed. Although there was a list of passengers on each ship
with data such as name, surname, age, sex, and occupation, the regula-
tions implied an extension of state registrations and identity cards. This
matter anticipated what would become a widespread phenomenon in the
coming decades.
Deportations: The Expulsion of the “Undesirables”

In South American countries, as in so many other national societies
marked by the great migration movements of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, the history of deportation is associated with
the development and expansion of the anarchist movement and work-
ers’ struggles. Although they did not explicitly name anarchists, the
so-called residence laws of the early twentieth century were specifically
designed to regulate in a punitive manner, the social conflict of the
time that had anarchists as its protagonists. In Argentina, independent
of some isolated episodes involving citizens of neighboring countries,
foreigners’ expulsion appeared intimately linked to Italian and Span-
ish immigrants’ presence identified with anarchism. As we shall see in
detail below, the anarchists constituted a specific fraction of the large
group of foreigners defined at that time as “undesirables”. The mea-
sures adopted by the Argentine State against anarchism had a signifi-
cant impact on the spread of ideas and practices aimed at combating it
in the region. As we have already pointed out, some neighboring States
such as Bolivia and Chile took the 1902 Residence Act as a model or
designed measures based on the Argentine experience. In Bolivia, the
Residence Act of 1911 provided for foreigners’ expulsion for the first
time under the same terms as the Argentinean law of the same name.
The Bolivian law is a textual transcription of the one passed nine years
earlier in Argentina. In Chile, the expulsion concept of foreigners was
also introduced to adopt the Residence Act of 1918. The ruling elites
were inspired by the government responses to anarchism that devel-
oped in Argentina. The fear of the dominant sectors caused by news of
events in Europe and Argentina, particularly murders and attacks, and
the social conflict that was developing in the country, helped consoli-
date the need to take “preventive” measures. The Residence Law was
considered essential to avoid both the permanence of “undesirable”
foreigners and prevent the arrival of deported anarchists (Plaza Armijo,
and Muñoz Cortés 2013).
Within the heterogeneous universe of undesirables, expulsion was
mainly aimed at individuals who were seen as a threat to public order
and State security. Expulsion thus became a tool of social and political
control through which the political and economic elites sought to avoid
the proliferation of anarchist ideas and methods of struggle that eroded
the established social order. Chile’s Residence Law included foreigners
who practiced or taught “the alteration of the social or political order
employing violence”, those who promoted “doctrines incompatible with
the unity or individuality of the Nation”, and those who produced “man-
ifestations contrary to the established order”. In Colombia, both the
1920 law and the 1927 law contemplated those foreigners who advised,
taught, or proclaimed “ignorance” of the laws and state authorities, the
overthrow of the government through force and violence or the “practice
of subversive doctrines of social public order” that attempt against the
property right. In Peru, according to the Exclusion and Expulsion Act of
1920, those who, because of “their illegal acts”, constituted “a manifest
danger to public tranquillity or the security of the State” were expella-
ble. In Ecuador, likewise, the 1921 Aliens, Extradition and Naturaliza-
tion Act provided for the “expulsion of aliens” in cases where they had
violated “public order”.
In these first decades of the twentieth century, the figure of expulsion
also began to be used as an instrument to dissuade or alienate foreign-
ers in general, and anarchists in particular, from political activism. The
activation of expelability through legal prescriptions was intended to
limit their actions and activities to disseminate their ideas and principles
on social life and their positions on local and international politics. In
this way, governments gradually imposed on foreigners the obligation
of political “neutrality”. This neutrality also aimed at avoiding diplo-
matic conflicts between nation-states. For example, Colombian law in
the 1920s made it illegal for foreigners to violate the neutrality to which
they were supposed to be bound: writing in newspapers about politi-
cal matters and making “speeches” about Colombian politics or joining
political societies were seen as interfering in Colombia’s “internal pol-
itics”. Venezuelan law of 1937 provided that any foreigner who broke
neutrality and violated any of the legal measures provided to annul the
adversarial nature of their political participation and any foreigner who
altered the course of “international relations” was subject to expulsion.
In the migration legislation of the early twentieth century, not every
alien was subject to expulsion. It fell mainly on those “undesirable”
aliens whose entry was sought to be prevented or prohibited. However,
not all were affected in the same way. While some laws provided for
the expulsion of those immigrants who could not ensure their economic
subsistence, were a “public charge” or were affected by certain diseases,
it was the foreigners involved in crimes considered common or serious
and which transgressed the dominant legal and moral rules that were of
the most significant concern. Those States that made early provision for
expulsion sought to particularly punish aliens who had been criminally
convicted and were “repeat offenders” or those linked to some criminal
activity associated with “trafficking” in women and drugs. Colombian
law of 1920 provided that those who manifested “incorrigible moral
depravity” due to “vicious habits or recidivism in crime” could be ex-
pelled. Peru’s 1920 law mentioned those who “trafficked in women” and
“recidivists convicted” in the country for crimes punishable by impris-
onment. These rules were instrumental in producing the link between
immigration and crime to the expulsion of foreigners.
From this relationship between immigration and crime, expulsion be-
came a punishment for imprisoned foreigners who showed no recovery
signs for social coexistence. This was expressed in an exemplary manner
in the Venezuelan law of 1937, which included criminally convicted for-
eigners who, once released, could not give “proof of moral regeneration”
among the expellable immigrants. During this period, in some countries
such as Uruguay, national legislation began to provide certain excep-
tions based on residence or nationality criteria for expellable aliens. A
law of 1932 established that aliens who had been resident for less than
three years and had been convicted of a crime committed outside the
country were liable to expulsion, even if they had a “national citizen-
ship card”. Simultaneously, an alien with the status of “legal citizen”,
married “to a naturalized woman” or having children born in the coun-
try, was exempted from expulsion. There was already a similar prece-
dent in the region: the Peruvian expulsion law of 1920 exempted those
who were “domiciled” and those who were married and lived with or
were widowed by a “Peruvian woman”. Among the exceptions, the Uru-
guayan law also established that expulsion would not apply if “a term
greater than half of that fixed for the prescription of the corresponding
penalty” had elapsed since the last crime committed (this term could not
be less than three years). If the offense was committed during the first
three years of residence, the judge had to decide on expulsion based on
the offense. The possibility of not applying expulsion was provided for
cases where the convicted person’s record offered “full guarantees of
non-recidivism”.
As migration and border controls became more specific, expulsion
began to appear to be connected with the violation of provisions re-
lating to entry to the national territory and personal identification and
documentation. Thus, in Peru, a 1920 law on exclusion and expulsion
provided that aliens who had entered the country fraudulently could be
expelled “individually”. In Colombia, during the same year, the govern-
ment established by law that those who had entered the country without
fulfilling the legally established conditions could be expelled. A later
law, passed in 1927, introduced a significant amendment by specifying
that the expulsion measure would cover all those who had entered the
country without a passport. During the 1930s in Venezuela, the 1937
law considered any foreigner who had settled in the country “evading,
defrauding, or generally violating the laws and regulations on admis-
sion” to be expellable. Also, expulsion was provided for all those who
could not or would not identify themselves to the State authority that re-
quired it and who used false or adulterated identity documents. In Uru-
guay, however, with the amendments made to the 1932 Act, expulsion
was extended to those foreigners who did not have a consular certificate
issued in their country of habitual residence. This new provision was re-
lated to the extraterritorial control function delegated to the consulates.
According to the 1936 rule, the consular certificate had to “expressly
state the disassociation of the bearers from all kinds of social or political
bodies which employing violence tend to destroy the fundamental bases
of nationality”.19
In general, while the bureaucratic procedure for expulsion showed
many similarities in the various South American countries, each na-
tional context presented significant singularities. The immigration or
aliens laws provided that the expulsion order must be a decree or a reso-
lution of somebody of the national government. For example, according
to the Peruvian law of 1920, the Council of Ministers must be issued
the order. It must specify the reasons, while Venezuelan law of 1937
required that the expulsion be carried out by presidential decree, en-
dorsed by the Minister of Interior Relations and published in the Official
Gazette. However, it was rather exceptional that the rules governing
deportation provided for an obligation to notify foreigners that they
were being expelled. In this regard, the 1932 Uruguayan law had the
particularity of establishing that notification must be made through the
presence of two witnesses and had to mention the possibility of judicial
appeals against the measure.
Some laws also provided for the possibility of the foreigner affected by
an expulsion order to make his claim in court, establishing formal dead-
lines for resolving the situation. The judicial intervention in expulsion
proceedings was a controversial issue that led to significant discussions
between legislators from different political forces. However, it was not
always reflected in the resulting laws. The Residence Law approved in
Chile in 1918 allowed for a legal claim to be made before the Supreme
Court within the first five days after the publication of the expulsion
decree in the Official Gazette. At the same time, the Supreme Court
had to rule on the claim within ten days. The rule also stipulated that
if five days passed without the alien or his representative lodging a judi-
cial appeal against the expulsion order or three days from the Supreme
Court’s decision rejecting it, the expulsion must be executed within than
24 hours. Furthermore, under Uruguayan law of 1932, a foreigner who
did not accept the expulsion order was allowed to remain in the national
territory – under house arrest – to claim before the highest authorities
of the courts of justice. This claim had to be made within three days of
notification, either orally or in writing. Some national laws expressly au-
thorized foreigners’ detention with an expulsion order and their submis-
sion to police officers’ surveillance until the expulsion was carried out.
So-called residence laws such as Argentina’s 1902 and Bolivia’s 1911
laws already provided for detention as a preventive measure of “public
security”. The mutually reinforcing relationship between expulsion and
detention was consolidated throughout the first decades of the twentieth
century. The Venezuelan law of 1937 established that the foreigner could
be detained or remain under surveillance while waiting for his departure
at the place where he was, during the transfer by land, or during his stay
onboard the ship.
In general, the regulations required aliens with deportation orders to
leave the country on their own. In non-compliance, the police were re-
sponsible for driving the foreigner to the land border or transferring
them to the embarkation port. Sometimes, the laws provided specific
deadlines for immigrants with an expulsion order to leave the country.
Thus, time began to play a significant role in the exercise of border con-
trol. The first expulsion laws, such as the Argentine law of 1902 and the
Bolivian law of 1911, forced those expelled to leave the national territory
within three days. Later on, these deadlines were extended. The Peru-
vian law of 1920 granted a period of three to 15 days. The Venezuelan
law of 1937 set one from three to 30 days. A unique aspect of the latter
law is that it considered an extension of the terms for foreigners who had
a commercial or industrial establishment, in addition to granting them
individual facilities so that they could “liquidate personally or through
representatives, the respective business”. It was also common for laws to
provide for penalties or sanctions for expelled foreigners who sought to
re-enter the national territory without government authorization. The
Chilean law of 1918 established a penalty of six months in prison and
expulsion at the end of the sentence. The Uruguayan law of 1932 pun-
ished re-entry with a prison sentence of six to twelve months at the first
opportunity and one to two years at the second, in addition to providing
for a new expulsion. Finally, another issue covered by these laws was the
possibility of the expulsion order being canceled, revoked, or suspended
by the government authorities. The last decision was delegated to the
president.
The Expulsion of Anarchists in Argentina

Towards the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, under profound transformations in the social, economic, political,
and cultural order linked to the development of world capitalism, the
political activism of foreigners in Argentina, in particular the claims and
protests of anarchists, affected the economic and political interests of
the ruling elites forcefully, as well as arousing considerable fears and ap-
prehensions in various social groups. Immigrants’ social representation
began to change with Spaniards’ and Italians’ participation in anarchist
and socialist workers associations and political movements. The immi-
grants’ positive image, which had been built up since the national orga-
nization’s origins, associated with “agents of civilization” and “labor
force”, had begun to deteriorate. The features of the “new alluvial soci-
ety” were already arousing specific concerns and fears (Bertoni 2001),
quickly becoming suspicious. Immigrants ceased to be “industrious”
and became potentially “dangerous”. The “invasion” idea that circu-
lated among the ruling class of the time expressed, on the one hand, the
fear of the social ascent of foreigners, whose participation and penetra-
tion in the activities and practices of the natives revealed an expansive
rather than passive presence, and on the other, the fear of the spread of
anarchist and socialist ideas through political and union activism that
some immigrant groups had begun to deploy in the world of urban work
(Tehran 2008). At the end of 1902, in a context of growing hostility
towards anarchists, the spread and deepening of a protest that turned
into a general strike created certain favorable conditions for the approval
of a law that completely changed the division between nationals and
foreigners. It was called the “Residence Law”, but it aimed to empower
the executive branch to expel, in an expeditious manner, “undesirable”
foreigners who at that time were represented mainly by anarchist immi-
grants. This law was the product of an epoch of crisis of capitalism in
which the national states, amid the formation and consolidation of their
administrative-bureaucratic apparatuses, and the elites that effectively
exercised political and economic power, saw their very existence threat-
ened by the emergence of workers’ organizations and movements and
the propagation of anarchist and socialist ideas.
The legislation of other States inspired the Residence Law that its au-
thor, Senator Miguel Cané, had studied and met during his stay as a
diplomat in Europe. Both he and his political opponents, who belonged
to the same ruling class that had supported or sustained the policy of
promoting European immigration, used the experience of the “Eu-
ropean nations” and the United States to legitimize and argue for or
against the expulsion law. During the following years, the persecution
and repression of anarchists continued. There were moments when state
violence became more acute: the tenants’ strike initiated in August 1907,
the events of “red week” in May 1909, and the assassination of police
chief Ramon Falcon in November of the same year. These events always
led to deportations. Later, in June 1910, as part of the Centennial cele-
brations of the May Revolution, with the explosion of a bomb placed in
the Colon Theatre, the Social Defense Law was approved, which rein-
forced the 1902 expulsion law. This legal norm extended the prohibition
of entry to those who had “suffered convictions” or were condemned
for common crimes that according to Argentine law deserved “corporal
punishment”, to “anarchists and other persons” who practiced or pro-
moted “the attack using force or violence against public officials or gov-
ernments in general or against the institutions of society” and to those
who had “been expelled from the Republic”, punishing employing a fine
or arrest those who introduced or attempted to introduce them into the
national territory.
The practices of persecution, detention, and expulsion of anarchists
were international in scope. In part, the official initiatives of a national
character established directly or indirectly against the anarchist move-
ment, in addition to responding to the specificities of each context, were
intertwined with events and strategic acts of the anarchists spread as
“propaganda by the deed” (for example, the attacks and assassinations
of political figures, assassinations). These events had a significant impact
on both sides of the Atlantic and, to some extent, served as the basis
for the creation of institutional spaces of a different nature, aimed at
defining strategies of connection and political guidelines to confront and
repress the “common enemy”, i.e., anarchism in all its variants. Policies
against anarchism involved joint actions or cooperative relations be-
tween States through the signing of intergovernmental agreements or the
holding of inter-institutional congresses or conferences such as police
conferences. The systematic persecution of anarchists gave rise to forced
itineraries and movements that were part of transnational geography
constituted around the deportation of foreigners considered subversive
(Wright 2013). One of the first governmental attempts of continental
scope to contain the advance of the anarchist movement was the organi-
zation of the Rome Conference for Social Defense against Anarchism in
1898, promoted by the Italian government following specific pressures
from neighboring States. In 1904, this event led to the signing of the St.
Petersburg Protocol, an anti-anarchist police agreement, by ten Euro-
pean countries. The Protocol specified, among other measures, how the
expulsion could be carried out.
In the Americas, the 1902 Treaty on Extradition and Protection against
Anarchism, promoted by the United States, was another milestone in
the history of persecution suffered by anarchists. Within the frame-
work of the United States policy of rapprochement to the Latin Amer-
ican States, known as “Pan-Americanism”, the Second Pan-American
Conference was held between December 1901 and January 1902. The
resulting treaty, signed by the United States and most Latin American
countries, including Argentina, was part of a cooperation initiative to
confront anarchism at the regional level. On the other hand, the agree-
ment between the police institutions of the region signed by Argentina,
Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay in the framework of
the South American International Police Conference (Galeano 2009) in
1920, which had anarchism among its main concerns, established which
individuals should be considered “dangerous persons”. This regional
police conference resulted in recommendations to governments such as
preventing “dangerous individuals” from moving between countries by
denying them passports or other travel documents; and establishing in
detail each country’s obligation to receive those expelled. A crucial ele-
ment of control and surveillance, such as exchanging information, was
also considered in the convention signed.
Some biographical or autobiographical accounts of anarchist immi-
grants show that deportation profoundly affected their life trajectory.
These reconstructions show the many disruptions to their life experi-
ences and projects and the bonds of solidarity they formed. The laws
passed and implemented against them generated various actions of re-
sistance and solidarity in the anarchist movement. A transcendental
initiative was the creation of the Committee for Social Prisoners and
Deportees in 1903. Bayer explains that this organization, supported by
the contribution of the anarchist workers, had the purpose of covering
the costs of lawyers and procedures for the defendants and their fami-
lies’ maintenance. Its “hidden mission” was to obtain the escape of the
prisoners, which required a significant amount of resources: “to make
trusted companions travel, to prowl the prisons sometimes for months
until they got to know the details, to rent houses, to have cars for escape
and, above all, to bribe the jailers, judicial employees and even court
secretaries to influence the sentences” (Bayer 1975, 27, 28).
The anarchist press, an essential medium for the anarchist movement’s
development and organization and disseminating its ideas, also shows
how the laws against the militants’ adoption and application were expe-
rienced. Beyond the differences within the movement, there was a shared
view among local anarchist organizations around specific issues such
as deportation. Constanzo (2009) points out that during those years,
the newspaper “La Protesta” sought to make known the acts of state
violence to which they were subjected: they published lists of detainees
in police stations, letters from deportees, notes on police activity, and
descriptions of the persecutions and threats to daily life, reconstructing
the facts and circumstances that took place under the control measures
aimed at anarchists. Through the narration of specific cases related to
the application of the Residence Law, they wanted the deportations to
come to light and, acquiring greater visibility, take on a public status, as
well as serving as a demonstration of the violence exercised by the capi-
talist system through this instrument of social control. The descriptions
of the “expulsions” referred to the violence in these processes of state co-
ercion and repression. For example, they denounced the “brutality” with
which the expulsion procedure was applied and repudiated that those
expelled were prevented from preparing for the trip and saying good-
bye to their relatives who remained in Argentina. They also questioned
whether they were treated as criminals or “bandits”, and whether they
were accused of committing a crime because they had participated in
“workers’ agitations” or had freely expressed their ideas. Furthermore,
under the prohibition of association and assembly, the police used the
figure of expulsion or more specifically “expelability” as a mechanism
of extortion to maintain “public order”. Those who attended the assem-
blies were “prevented” by the police. There was a possibility that they
would be shipped off to Europe.
Conclusions
The analysis carried out gives an account of the historical formation of
migration as an object of state control in the South American context
during the first half of the twentieth century. Many of the ideas and
practices that currently define migration policies and form part of the
routine controls on international mobility originated between the end
of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth cen-
tury. Immigration laws, mostly established during the second half of
the nineteenth century, already contained a notion of ethnic, racial, and
social selectivity that began to take on material form with the arrival
of large contingents of immigrants and the State’s increased capacity to
regulate population movements. Over the decades, this selectivity ac-
quired different modalities and foundations according to national sit-
uations and regional regularities, which meant the consecration of the
division between “desirable” immigration that should be protected and
“undesirable” immigration that needed to be contained. Under policies
to promote immigration, South American states introduced a formula
through migration regulations that had significant implications for mi-
gration and border controls, especially during the interwar period. The
dominant formula “all inhabitants of the world are welcome, with few
exceptions”, which adopted standard foundations, different temporal
sequences, and specific modalities according to each national reality,
mutated over the decades, and the exception became the rule. Another
of the outstanding features of this period of consolidation of State au-
thority and power over immigration was the introduction of time into
the exercise of migration and border control, particularly a specific type:
administrative and legal time limits.
The regional view of state classification and categorization processes
shows that during the first half of the twentieth century, there was a
process of individualization and universalization of the population con-
stituted as the object of migration and border control in the different
South American countries. The State’s measures of impediment and
prohibition of entry, and those of expulsion, which had already been
applied in the face of Chinese immigration by various South American
states during the nineteenth century, became the main instruments for
control of the movement and presence of immigrants. The lists of un-
desirables, which condensed a heterogeneous universe of categories of
individuals or groups considered a problem, threat, or risk by politi-
cal and economic elites, were among the most notorious expressions of
the relationship sought between immigration and national order. These
lists reflected numerous individual attributes that disqualified individu-
als from entering and remaining in the territory, in addition to exclud-
ing them from the set of foreigners who deserved the economic benefits
granted by the States to those who were considered part of the desirable
immigration. On the other hand, expulsion is a paradigmatic figure in
the universalization of migration and border control. At the outset, not
every alien was expellable because of that legal status. The practice of
deportation, legally instituted as a tool of control and discipline in the
face of the rise of the anarchist movement and workers’ struggles, was
gradually extended to other “undesirable” subjects. The use of expulsion
as a punishment for foreigners convicted of crimes or offenses of a differ-
ent nature and those who transgressed specific migration rules relating
to entry to the national territory constitutes one of the most significant
historical antecedents of this period for understanding the process of
construction of the figure of the immigrant or “illegal” migration during
the second half of the twentieth century.
The policies of containment of the movement and selection of immi-
gration were possible thanks to systems of identification and classifi-
cation, documentation and registration of immigrants and foreigners,
whose bureaucratic-administrative development also indicates the rel-
evance of these practices’ individualization universalization of control.
Firstly, there was a concern for identifying and registering individuals at
the points of departure and arrival in the consular, migratory, and pol-
icy spheres. This is produced by the majority participation of consular
agencies and those explicitly created for migration control. The registries
used to collect the information necessary to differentiate and select ad-
missible and inadmissible immigrants based on the criteria legally estab-
lished through entry impediments or prohibitions.
Over time, the controls required of the category of “immigrants” and
second- and third-class travelers were extended to all passengers seeking
entry. Secondly, the state interest in individuals settled in the territory be-
came more relevant, leading to the creation of authorized residence catego-
ries. While the identification and registration of individuals fell to the entry
points into the national territory, the specialization of migration control
later involved the mandatory use of national identity cards and the incorpo-
ration of new records of the foreign population established in the country.
In this way, the field of migration control, which is usually made up of con-
sular, migration, and police institutions, is broadened with the intervention
of other agencies specifically responsible for registering the national and for-
eign population. Towards the end of the period studied, the South American
states began to see the emergence of different agencies specializing in the
production and storage of data linked to immigrants and foreigners’ entry
and authorized residence. These initial developments laid the foundations
for the current means and methods of control and monitoring of mobility.
Notes
1 This article recovers some of the findings of the group project “Migraciones
y políticas de control en América del Sur: retorno, legalización y expulsión”
(SECyT-UNC 2012–2013), under the direction of Eduardo Domenech, and
Andrés Pereira's postdoctoral research project entitled “Inmigración, técni-
cas de identificación y seguridad en Argentina: la institucionalización de los
pasaportes en las primeras décadas del siglo XX” (CONICET 2017–2019).
Some parts of this article have been retrieved from previously published
texts by both authors (Domenech 2011, 2015; Pereira 2016).
2 There are several contributions on the history of migration and border con-
trols in countries of the North Atlantic area. See, for example, Lucassen
(1998), Torpey (2000), and Walters (2002), Rosenberg (2006), Schrover and
Moloney (2013) and Wright (2013), in addition to the works gathered in
Fahrmeir, Faron, and Weil (2003) or Andreas, and Snyder (2000).
3 Few works have dealt specifically with the development of migration and
border control or some of its aspects in South America. With the excep-
tion of some contributions such as Cook-Martín, and FitzGerald (2015),
FitzGerald, and Cook-Martín (2014) and Acosta (2018), most offer a cir-
cumscribed approach to a particular national experience and the treatment
of some relevant migration control measures through the lens of migration
policy. Among these works, we can highlight Gómez Matoma (2009), Car-
rillo (2012), Ramírez (2012), Devoto (2001), Facal Santiago (2002), Seyferth
(2002), Migliardi, and Thayer (2017) and Olaya (2018).
4 During this period, three laws were passed in Colombia: the first in 1847,
the second in 1871 and the third in 1892; in Chile, the Selective Immigration
Law in 1845; in Peru, the General Immigration Law dates from 1849; in
Argentina, the Immigration and Colonization Law was passed in 1876; the
1881 Immigration and Colonization Act in Paraguay; in Ecuador, the first
regulation to regulate immigration, called the Aliens Act, was passed in 1886,
and then another, before the end of the century, in 1892; in Uruguay, the Im-
migration Act dates from 1890. In Venezuela, a Decree was issued in 1874 on
immigration of own persons for agriculture, arts and domestic service.
5 Ley N° 817 of Immigration and Colonization, October 19, 1876, Argentina.
6 Ley N° 114 on immigration and agricultural colonies, December 30, 1922,
Colombia.
7 Ley N° 3.446, December 12, 1918, Chile; Law No. 9604, October 13, 1936,
Uruguay; Law on Foreigners, July 17, 1937, Venezuela; Decree No. 3010,
August 20, 1938, Brazil.
8 Law No. 3446, December 12, 1918, Chile; Law No. 48, November 3, 1920,
Colombia; Law No. 4145 Exclusion and Expulsion, September 22, 1920,
Peru; Law on Aliens, July 17, 1937, Venezuela; Decree No. 3010, August 20,
1938, Brazil.
9 Law No. 48, November 3, 1920, Colombia.
10 Law No. 48, November 3, 1920, Colombia; Law on Foreigners, Extradition
and Naturalization, February 21, 1938, Ecuador; Law on Foreigners, Extra-
dition and Naturalization, 1940, Ecuador; Supreme Decree of January 28,
1937, Bolivia; Law on Foreigners, July 17, 1937, Venezuela; Decree-Law No.
406, May 4, 1938, Brazil.
11 See Ruibal (1993) on the process and mechanisms of criminalization of im-
migrants as part of the dangerous classes in the period 1880–1920.
12 Decree of October 17, 1936, Argentina.
13 Decrees of July 25 and 28, 1938, Argentina.
14 Quinteros (2008) refers specifically to the conference held in September
1942 in Rivera, Uruguay.
15 Decree No. 536, January 29, 1945, Argentina.
16 Note of August 3, 1915 from the Argentine legation in Russia (AMERC,
DAC, box AH0013); note of April 15, 1915 the Argentine legation in
Austria-Hungary (AMERC, DAC, box AH05); note of April 10, 1916 from
the Argentine legation in Portugal (AMERC, DAC, box AH013).
17 Notes of September 21 and 30, 1916 (AMERCA, DAC, box AH09).
18 A novelty of the decree was the suppression of the no begging and health cer-
tificates because “it was judged that they were ineffective means of control;
it was preferable to reinforce the health control at the moment of arrival in
Buenos Aires” (Devoto 2001, 283).
19 Law No. 9604, October 13, 1936, Uruguay.
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8 An Overview of the
Immigration Process during
the Brazilian Monarchy
and Republic, Including
the Other Countries
from the La Plata Region
(1822–1945)
Maria Medianeira Padoin and
João Vitor Sausen
Introduction
The migratory, emigration and immigration processes are character-
istics of humanity. They drive individuals and communities which are
motivated by the desire to survive or to live in better conditions. Such
processes allow the “globe” to have specific cultural, demographic, so-
cial, economic and political characteristics that permeate peoples’ iden-
tities, alterities and also perceptions of power and borders according to
different periods in history.
In this sense, the configuration of medieval European states, their
restructuring and the development of modern nation-states with the
territorial expansion of colonial rule, as well as the development of
communication/transport technologies between the continents, made
the migration process also accentuate. In this process with spontaneous
and forced migrations, the panorama and characteristics of societies
changed.
Spontaneous migrations were motivated by the desire to expand bor-
ders, by enrichment, by better living conditions, by the escape from reli-
gious or political persecutions, by the escape from hunger, by the desire
for cultural-religious expansion, by the possibility of building a soci-
ety based on new political/social/religious ideals, among others. Along
with these, there was the migration of people linked to bureaucratic and
religious structures, the employees of states/kingdoms destined to ad-
ministrative, fiscal work, maintenance and expansion of borders and
representation of the power of the Crowns in the colonies. In these
groups, we have populations from different nations and cultures, in ad-
dition to those born in the colonizing empires. Until the nineteenth cen-
tury, forced migrations both internally (in the American continent itself)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-11
200 Maria Medianeira Padoin and João Vitor Sausen
and those imported into the African continent were motivated by the
use of people as slaves or people under servile labor without freedom.
We highlight the exploitation of native peoples especially those from the
African continent.
Becoming an “American continent”, this “New World” received sev-
eral peoples from different cultures and origins over the centuries. The
coexistence (spontaneous or forced) between them and with the original
cultures, with specificities from region to region, provided the formation
of diverse American societies from north to south, with notions of iden-
tity when it comes to work, religion, education and politics that were
formed linked to regional/local experiences.
This process led to the growing awareness of the meaning of “Poder
de los pueblos”, that is, the perception of a local/regional identity that
differentiated the rights and conditions in this “new” western world
from those belonging to the headquarters of the colonial metropolis with
the people who lived or were born in the colonized territory, mainly
manifested by the local elites, for instance. The structural difference,
the issue of participation/representation rights, the concepts of “social
contract”, power centralized in the metropolis, as well as the organi-
zation of local/regional power in the Americas and their economic and
social relations collaborated with the redefinition of spaces of power and
the new configuration of national states. This allowed the emergence
of the national states of/in the American continent since the end of the
eighteenth century.
In the reconfiguration and configuration of national states in the
world panorama, in which geographical and political boundaries have
been redefined at various times (also in the twentieth century), we have
again in the migratory process with a “national ethnic” profile a char-
acteristic that was part of the construction and consolidation policies of
these national states: both emigration and immigration.
It is in relation to this horizon of construction and consolidation of
national states and more especially the end of the nineteenth century and
the first half of the twentieth century that this text intends to present an
overview of the theme of immigration, in which we will highlight some
regions of South America, especially from La Plata region.
Nineteenth Century – Political Context, Consolidation of

the Nation-States and the Push of Immigration
The first half of the nineteenth century represented the formation and
consolidation of new experiences of nation-states for South America.
Several formats were experienced and only a few survived until the
present moment. Some experiences, such as the Empire of Brazil or the
United Provinces of River Plate, at first followed the policies of the co-
lonial period. The regions that represented the political limits between
Immigration Process in Brazil (1822–1945) 201
both were under the same disputes like when Portugal and Spain directly
governed such territories (Doratioto 2014).
In this context, guaranteeing the occupation of the territories was vi-
tal for the new states in formation. This way Brazil, Argentina,1 Uru-
guay, or Chile became the cradle of state policies for occupation and
territorial maintenance, economic development and the creation of a na-
tional identity, in which much was mirrored in the culture of “European
civilization”. On the other hand, expanding domestic markets and food
production were important issues in the government’s view. As a way of
solving both problems, immigration was a solution. Thus, immigrants
on behalf of the development of the new nation-states that welcomed
them would have guaranteed the possession of a territory at the same
time that they produced food and other goods to supply the internal
markets (Rambo 2003).
For the Brazilian case, efforts to bring immigrants started before in-
dependence. First with Azoreans to occupy territories guaranteed by
Treaties (Treaty of Madrid of 1750), and also with the promotion of the
arrival of foreign soldiers to act in border fights (Piassini 2017). Many
of these soldiers would remain in Brazil and would start to work in ag-
riculture as colonists. Such process was accentuated with the arrival of
the Portuguese royal family in 1808, in which the opening of harbors to
foreigners stimulated trade and the granting of land, both to guarantee
possession and expansion as well as its development. There is also the
registration of Swiss, German, Polish and Austrian entries, in addition
to Azoreans who kept coming.
Soon after Brazilian independence in 1822, the policy of encouraging
immigration was accentuated, and, in this sense, subsidies were guaran-
teed until 1831 for the occupation of some regions by non-Portuguese
Europeans (notably German-speaking), as it was the case from the
northeast, north, southeast, but mainly the south of Brazil. Due to this,
there was the arrival of German-speaking immigrants mainly from 1824
in colony regimes to the southern provinces of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa
Catarina and Paraná (Piassini 2017). Most of them started to work in
agriculture, but there were also those who settled in urban centers, such
as teachers, traders, industrialists, artisans, or journalists. Later they
also went to Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, besides being already in Rio
de Janeiro and São Paulo (Roche 1969).
In the second decade of the nineteenth century, with the construction
process of the United Provinces of River Plate, immigrants entered the
regions of Buenos Aires, and later, to the other provinces of the interior,
highlighting the coastal provinces of the rivers that form La Plata Ba-
sin. Initially, there was an incentive for European immigration led by
Bernardino Rivadavia, land and help for individuals or families from
all nations were promised for those who wanted to stay there. They en-
couraged the arrival of artists, scientists, farmers and artisans, in order
to affect the settlement and the construction of a “civilization” accord-
ing to European cultural standards (Padoin 1999, 2001). The immigra-
tion process was intensified over time, especially promoted by policies
that encouraged the activities of colonizing private companies. This way
there was an attraction of immigrant populations to work in agriculture
and in the construction of infrastructure (roads), as well as in the imple-
mentation of the industry or in the formation of a Europeanized culture
(Padoin 1999; Devoto 2003).
In the first half of the nineteenth century, immigration processes were
promoted by the policies of the new states and by the performance im-
provement of private colonizing companies, in addition to spontaneous
immigration. These facts were accentuated in the second half of the
nineteenth century.
Regarding spontaneous immigration in Brazilian provinces of Rio
Grande do Sul and Bahia between the 1930s and 1940s, it is important
to present the arrival of groups of Italians, most of whom were fleeing
political persecution in Europe, among these many Carbonari (Padoin
1999). Their coming to Brazil was made via both Uruguay and Buenos
Aires, as well as Rio de Janeiro. Many Carbonari were present in the
countries that constitute the La Plata region (including Brazil) and were
directly involved in conflicts and political projects, especially those who
supported federalism and liberalism (Padoin 2001).
In addition to these, the territorial region that covers the countries
from La Plata region, especially Uruguay and Argentina, received Italian
immigrants in the late 1940s and 1950s, who were non-Catholics, called
Waldensians and later some Methodists. Many of them were located in
the urban region as well as in the countryside in order to dedicate them-
selves to agricultural activities. Some of these non-Catholics crossed the
border from Uruguay to southern Brazil and went to Rio Grande do Sul
in the late 1950s, and they got settled in Bagé and Pelotas (Padoin et al.
2017). These examples demonstrate the transnational articulation of
the immigration process in which many groups went to these countries
even though they were not linked to official policies to benefit one or
another ethnic, culture or nation. In Brazil, the incentive for Italians to
come occurred in the 1970s, despite the fact that they were already here
with family or individually since the colonial period, just like Germans,
French, English and others.
Based on these issues, those who had the economic possibility of mi-
grating (paying the costs of departure and travel), either through their
own efforts or with external assistance, did so. Carlos Eduardo Piassini
(2017, 29) argues that “(…) migration is much more than the simple re-
flex of hunger and expulsion, since it can also be the result of economic
strategies and temporary refuge from persecution”. The author, whose
main object is German immigration, also points out that “(…) the main
motivations of the social changes of that period, the ones which boosted
migration, were related to population growth, the uneven distribution
of land and the beginning of the industrial process” (Piassini 2017, 29).
Even if the author refers to Germans, the reasons can be extended to
other groups because the rapid changes in the European context due to
political, economic and social transformations are at some point general
to the continent, even with their own variations and intensities for each
case.
Chile, in turn, conducted some policies and incentives for the arrival
of German immigrants2 in the 1940s. The main objective was to bring
rich individuals, as well as some people whose professions could fit the
economic project of the State formation. According to this, Germans of
the Catholic religion were preferred, but what they ended up receiving
was a majority of Protestants, who were directed to the region of Lake
Lhanguihue, in the south of the country (Rambo 2003). In the 1870s and
1880s, in the midst of several conflicts with the Araucans (Mapuches) in
the south, in the region known as “frontera”, the Chilean government
decided to give greater incentives to the occupation of the area by immi-
grants, precisely to guarantee their possession by the government. This
led to the arrival of 36,092 immigrants (2,041 were German) between
the years 1883 and 1898 (Rambo 2003, 113).
These are two examples of moments when there were greater incen-
tives on the part of the government. However, the immigration of Ger-
mans to Chile was continuous and significant throughout the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, so that “the Germans or their descendants oc-
cupied about 1.5 million hectares, importing in 7.5% of the usable land
from the whole country, according to Arthur Blásio Rambo in a report
from 1940” (2003, 114).
During the Second Reign with Dom Pedro II in Brazil there was the
creation of the Land Law in 1850, which did not only prohibit the do-
nation, but also started to demand the officialization/registration of the
possessions of the lands and, with that, their increase in value for sale,
especially “vacant land” (Gimeno 2014; Sponchiado et al. 2019). Such
context encouraged the interest of landowners, surveyors, traders and
colonizing companies to propose the creation of colonial regions (with
small properties) to receive immigrants. Furthermore, in this period
there was already a decline in the African slave import trade and the
creation of legislation that began to hinder the maintenance of this form
of human exploitation (Cervo 2008).
The expansion of coffee plantations made the Brazilian Empire en-
courage immigration, especially European, non-Portuguese, to be used
as labor in coffee plantations in the southeast (Cervo 2008). Over time
the experience with Germans and Swiss in these crops led to many
complaints and criticisms, in newspapers and in family correspon-
dence, saying that several coffee landowners were using this European
labor in conditions of slavery (Piassini 2017; Cunha 2006). There are
even records of Germanic groups of immigrants who migrated from
the territory of Brazilian southeastern to the region of Entre Ríos, on
the Argentine “coast”, to escape from this situation. They created their
own colony there in 1879, which today is known as “Aldea Brasilera”
(Figure 8.1).
In the context of the late 1960s, the Brazilian Empire began to encour-
age the arrival of immigrants from Italian territories, from the newly
unified Italy. For this reason, the emigration process benefited both the
new Italian state (as well as the Germanic one), as well as the Brazilian
Empire. In the European case, the great emigration collaborated in the
resolution of demographic problems with the high rate of poverty and
the lack of jobs, in addition to the contributions to the oceanic voyages
of these populations, among others (Sponchiado et al. 2019).
In the southern region of Brazil mostly from 1875 onwards, mainly
Rio Grande do Sul received Italian immigrants within a policy for land
occupation in small rural properties, development of polyculture, as well
as encouragement for the whitening and help to guarantee the southern
borders, which experienced constant conflicts.
Concerning Rio Grande do Sul four colonies were created by the
Empire between 1871 and 1878, from the mountain region to the
Figure 8.1 Sign in front of the Founders Memorial of the Brazilian Village (Ger-
mans of Catholic faith), next to the Church of São José, next to
the city of Paraná, in the Province of Entre Ríos, Argentina. Photo-
graph taken 2017 by Maria Medianeira Padoin. Authors’ personal
collection.
northwest of Porto Alegre: Dona Isabel (today Bento Gonçalves), Conde
D ‘Eu (Garibaldi), Campos dos Bugres (Caxias do Sul), and in the cen-
tral region of Rio Grande do Sul, in “Serra Geral”, the colony of Silveira
Martins (today it covers the territories of Santa Maria, Restinga Seca,
and Agudo districts, plus seven municipalities in their former nuclei:
Nova Palma, Pinhal Grande, Ivorá, São João do Polêsine, Silveira Mar-
tins, Dona Francisca, and Faxinal do Soturno). The first three colonies
were marked by development in polyculture, industry and commerce
becoming a regional hub. The fourth colony3 remained more rural with
family farming, livestock, and trade with neighboring locations, in ad-
dition to many immigrants working as labor force in the construction of
railways in this region (Sponchiado et al. 2019).
In short, throughout the nineteenth century Brazil received immi-
grants from various origins,4 including German-speaking ones, by State
policies or not, Portuguese, Italians or several other groups. In this pro-
cess, we can even remember an attempt to encourage Chinese migration
in the 1880s which failed due to the implantation of the republican state
in Brazil in 1889 (Cervo 2008).
Together with immigrant groups, foreign companies and religious
congregations arrived in Brazil since the beginning of the nineteenth
century and the beginning of the twentieth, as in other countries, such
as Argentina and Chile. The foreign companies came for the implemen-
tation of railways and slaughterhouses, while the religious congrega-
tions that came were both Catholic and Protestant, mainly from Italy,
Germany, France, where they worked in the area of education and health.
Thus, with the migration process and especially with the creation of
colonial regions, the Brazilian Empire allowed the formation of societies
that adapted and faced new geographical conditions. Moreover, they
tried to maintain their languages and certain traditions of their cultures
of origin. This situation started to change with the new political regime,
the Brazilian Republic, but the immigration process continued.
In the case of Argentina, we have already pointed out that there were
some initiatives at the beginning of the nineteenth century. However,
various conflicts over the construction and formatting of the future
Nation-State meant that only from the middle of the nineteenth century,
after the end of hostilities and the establishment of an Argentine Repub-
lic, there were strong state policies to attract immigrants beyond non-
Iberians. With this, there were strong migratory currents of Italians and
Germans until the 1940s. Regarding the neighboring country, Brazil,
the German group which was attracted was numerically smaller, but the
Italian group surpassed the Brazilian case (Rambo 2003).
According to Arthur Blásio Rambo (2003), the main regions where the
Germans went to were Patagonia, Chaco and Missiones. Bruno Aranha
(2014), in turn, indicates that these regions were the target of state pol-
icies of conquest after the establishment of the Argentine Republic and
the resolution of conflicts over the formatting of La Plata region states.
As examples of such policies the Desert Campaign, aimed at Patagonia,
the Chaco Campaign, or the Federalization of Misiones were performed.
In this sense, the encouragement for German migration to these spaces
suggests once again the idea of occupation to guarantee the possession
of the Nation-States, before the recent “conquest”.
In general, throughout the nineteenth century, the various countries
of the Southern Cone witnessed spontaneous or induced immigration
(either by force or by various incentives), which often ended up relating
to state or personal interests and were inserted in a process of organi-
zation and formatting of states. Sometimes, as seen before, the change
in political regimes has ensured that immigration issues have different
perspectives, either positive or negative. Several of these aspects were
transplanted by the reality of the twentieth century in which global pro-
cesses would have an impact on immigration even more extensively.
Twentieth Century – Golden Era and Decadence

The first five decades of the twentieth century were characterized by
strong immigration, especially from Europe and Asia, which only slowed
down, according to Asunción Merino Hernando (2013), in the period
after the Second World War (1939–1945), when Latin America was
transformed from an immigrant-receiving region to an emigrant genera-
tor. According to official data, 5 between 1884 and 1933, Brazil received
3,951,015 immigrants, among whom the most significant nationalities
were Italian (1,401,335 representatives), Portuguese (1,147,737), Span-
ish (577,264), German (238,602), and Japanese (142,457). Graph 8.1,
built by the authors, shows the distribution of cases in relation to the
total number:
Among the main groups, the Portuguese represented the migration
to a former colony, as well as a place where they would not need to
learn the local language. On the other hand, Italians have been a sym-
bol of the relative success of state policies of attraction since 1875.
Besides these, among the nationalities not represented in the graph
these are also significant: the Czechs (78,184), Poles (61,520), French
(54,006), Lithuanians (44,803), Romanians (38,048), Yugoslavs
(36,106), as well as other minority groups, which made up 11% of the
total immigrants.
In the 1930s, Brazil received immigrants who were leaving European
poverty conditions, as a result of the economic crises generated by World
War I and the 1929 New York Stock Exchange Crash. This way, nation-
alities such as Teutonic or Romanian (in many cases German-speaking),
arrived in Brazil and in several cases began to live in cities that were
already inhabited by descendants of Germans who migrated in the nine-
teenth century6 (Sausen 2019).
11%
4%
6% 35%
15%
29%
Italians Portuguese Spanish Germans Japanese Other nationalities
Graph 8.1 Immigration to Brazil (1884–1933).

Source: Own elaboration.
Argentine case is similar to the Brazilian one in relation to the end of the
nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, Fernando
Devoto (2003) reported that between 1881 and 1914 about 4,200,000
immigrants arrived in the country. Of these 2 million were Italians, as
well as 1,400,000 Spaniards, 170,000 French and 160,000 Russians. Ac-
cording to Isabel Manachino (2006), in the Argentine region of Córdoba
in 1869, Italians were only 0.3% of the total population (19.5% among
foreigners). In 1895, they became 4.9% of the total population of Cór-
doba and 44.1% among the group of foreigners. The total number of
Italian immigrants in Argentina between 1880 and 1930 was 2,325,005
(Cacopardo, and Moreno 2000). Of these, 53% were actually in the Ar-
gentine territory (about 1,375,807). Many migrated to other countries
and others returned to Europe. The other nationalities represented 11%
of the total as in the Brazilian case. In Graph 8.2, built by the authors, we
can see a list of the cases of each group with the estimated total number:
In both cases, the Italians represented the largest migration to the
countries. Another important issue is that the old metropolis also guar-
anteed, in both cases, the second most important group in the migration
11%
4%
4%
48%
33%
Italians Spanish French Russians Other nationalities
Graph 8.2 Immigration to Argentina (1881–1914).

Source: Own elaboration.
process. For the case of the Italians, Cacopardo, and Moreno (2000)
indicate that after World War I, 541,993 Italians immigrated to Argen-
tina, many of them to the southern portion of the territory. These num-
bers, added to the amount presented by Devoto (2003), as well as the
previously reported data from the Brazilian case, indicate that between
the 1880s and the pre-World War II period, about 4 million Italians
immigrated to both countries. This information, in turn, must be re-
lated to the data that Cacopardo, and Moreno (2000, 63) present for the
total of Italian emigrants in the period between 1880 and 1929, which
comprises 16,986,924 individuals, coming to Brazil, Argentina and the
United States. On that account, we can say that about 25% of Italian im-
migration in these five decades was directed to these three destinations.
Studies on emigration and immigration bring as one of the challenges
the access and crossing of sources as well as ethnic definition, especially
those dealing with the coming of peoples in a long period of redefini-
tion of territories, empires and the creation of new “national” states.
Then in the nineteenth century the process of unification of states like
Germany or Italy, the creation of countries like Belgium or Greece, the
division of Poland between Austria, Russia and Prussia, also the frag-
mentation of different nationalities such as Germans, Slavs, Hungarians,
Italians and Poles within Austria-Hungary (created in the 1860s), as well
as various migration processes within Europe, can be seen as reasons for
the difficulty in tracking ethnicities and/or nationalities (Scheer 2016;
Hobsbawm 2016a, 2016b). The next century was responsible for a new
round of redefinitions, migrations, and nationalization efforts that in-
cluded extermination (Conversi 2012), to generate new confusion in the
definitions of origin once more.
One of these cases of vagueness is one of the Poles. Still, in the eigh-
teenth century, Poland had been divided among Austrians, Prussians and
Russians. However, during the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon Bonaparte
created a kind of Polish state in the form of the “Duchy of Warsaw”,
which after the defeat of the French emperor was again divided among
neighboring states (Hobsbawm 2016a). For this reason, Poles represent
one of the main exponents of the tracking “confusion” during the immi-
gration process to America.
In this sense, Argentina received immigration of Poles mainly from
the second half of the nineteenth century, as well as the United States,
Canada, and southern Brazil. There was a mass emigration by the Poles
mainly between 1869 and 1939, for political and economic reasons, eth-
nic persecutions and expulsions. It is even considered by some authors
that this emigration process was a Polish diaspora, in accordance with
what Fabiana da Silva (2019) well presented in her thesis entitled “Polish
associations, union of the Kultura and Oswiata societies (Curitiba-PR) –
antagonisms and polonity (ies) in the diaspora (1890–1939)”. Regarding
records and studies, there is a challenge in this reconfiguration of em-
pires, new states and ethnic issues, as we will have records of Polish im-
migrants, Pomerans (often mistaken for Germans or Poles), Ukrainians,
Russians, Russian-Germans, Lithuanians, Austrians or Jews.
The first Poles who arrived in Argentina were soldiers who worked in
Napoleon’s army. They were defeated in an insurrection, were either sent
to Siberia or went into exile (Kojrowicz 2006). There are even records
that many of these participated in the creation of a Polish society in Bue-
nos Aires around 1890. There are also records that in 1897 the first Polish
farmers arrived in the Missiones region. According to Claudia Stefanetti
Kojrowicz (2006), these came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but
there were no specific records of their nationality. Only memories of a
priest, Father Federico Vogt, who made reference to Polish and Hungar-
ian immigrants during the celebration of twenty-five years anniversary
of the Colony of Apostles (Misiones) (Kojrowicz 2006). According to
the author, it is necessary to say that references to Poles, societies and
even the creation of newspapers, such as ‘Echo of Poland’, existed before
Poland regained its independence (after World War I). The Center for
Latin American Studies (CESLA) of the University of Warsaw, Poland,
at that time under the direction of Professor Andrez Dembicz, promoted
several types of research and studies that worked with the emigration of
Poles to America, especially to Argentina and the southern states of Bra-
zil. In Brazil, Poles were settled mainly in the states of Paraná, Rio Grande
do Sul and Santa Catarina. In addition to the south, there are records in
Mato Grosso do Sul, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rondonia, Espírito Santo,
among others, according to Fabiana da Silva (2019). Around 4% of for-
eigners who arrived in Brazil in the most massive period of immigration
were Poles. Most of them were dedicated to commerce, agriculture on
small properties, industry, liberal professions, among others.
In the 1980s, the publicity that in the southeastern region, especially in
São Paulo, the working conditions of immigrants was equal to or close to
one of slaves, meant that there was a lack of interest in working in these
coffee farms, leading to the reformulation of the proposed conditions.
The need for a labor force led to an attempt to bring Asians, Japanese for
instance, to work in coffee plantations. This way since 1880 negotiations
were made, so that in 1895, already in the Brazilian Republic period, a
treaty was signed between Brazil and Japan for greater approximation,
which included the possibility of receiving immigrants (Silva 2019). Im-
migration itself was the responsibility of private companies. This effort
also took place in countries like the United States, Canada, and Peru.
In 1908, the first group of Japanese immigrants arrived in Brazil, sup-
posed to work in the coffee plantations in São Paulo (Soares, and Gaud-
ioso 2013). The reality found by the families and the disappointment
with the real conditions of life and work, as it was also with the German
and Italian immigrants who no longer wanted to come to work in these
crops, caused many Japanese to abandon this region and look for other
ways of work. The failure to allocate immigrants as a paid labor force
on coffee farms led colonizing companies to purchase areas of land, with
virgin forests, to be sold to immigrants and thereby create Japanese co-
lonial zones (as it had already been done with other societies). These
immigrants became small producers of rice and cotton, and, later, of
tea, black pepper or flowers. Many of them became farmers, selling their
products. The first colony was the Monsoon Colony, founded in 1911 in
the interior of São Paulo.
The various Japanese colonies originated the cities of Aliança, Bastos,
Iguape, Registro, Suzano in São Paulo, as well as the cities of Assaí in
Paraná and Tomé-Açú in Pará besides having a great concentration in
São Paulo capital. Later, there was Japanese immigration to the north
of Brazil, especially to the Amazon. To the South, as in the Rio Grande
do Sul, immigration took place in the post-World War II period, mainly
from the 1950s (Soares, and Gaudioso 2013).
Nevertheless, policies to encourage immigration in general, for both
Argentina and Brazil, suffered a pause during World War I, they were
retaken after the end of hostilities. However, only Brazil took part in
the conflict, alongside Entente, with naval and medical assistance.7 The
war effort also forced internal measures against immigrants and their
descendants that were related to Germany or the other countries of the
Triple Alliance (Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire,
mostly). Clodoaldo Bueno (2008) informs that the measures included
the Law of War that allowed the government to decide about the future
of the assets belonging to German citizens. Still, Brazil was the only in-
dependent country in Latin America to take part in the conflict, which,
in this way, represents a unique experience in the period (Mros 2019).
In World War I, the Latin American countries Brazil and Cuba joined
the conflict. In the following conflict, both countries took part again
and Mexico joined them. Some others also declared war, but they did so
as a very late gesture, such as Argentina, which was reluctant to do so
(Bueno 2008). For immigrants and/or their relatives associated with the
Central Powers (World War I), or the Axis (World War II), the condition
of war meant persecution, imprisonment or hostilities because of their
citizenship, languages or simply an expression of cultural aspects related
to the enemy countries.
According to Günther Richter Mros (2019), both World Wars I and II
offered Brazil an opportunity to insert the country into a panorama of
transformation in the international system, in which Brazil was looking
for a more significant role. In the same process and in both wars, Mros
stated that Brazil faced Germany, a country that the author observes as
an “ideal enemy” due to the majority identity construction in the coun-
try during that period. So the participation in both wars offered ideal
conditions to reinforce internal cohesion, as well as an approach to Latin
identity based on an ethnic mix, in direct opposition to German identity
based on “purity” (2019).
In this same horizon, the Germans were seen as a danger in the first
half of the twentieth century (Gertz 1991), and such fact motivated state
policies to nationalize immigrants or descendants of such nationality
(Neumann 2003). As a way of building a nationalized population, the
Brazilian government saw immigration as a tool for its efforts. Since
then, the number of non-Portuguese speakers was drastically reduced,
as well as Portuguese immigrants were prioritized (Sausen 2019). None-
theless, by joining World War II, the immigration process was going to
have further transformations.
Brazilian foreign policy during the 1930s was directed at the United
States of America and Germany. When the global conflict started, the
country sought to maintain its neutrality, as well as trade relations with
both nations. However, a progressive approach to the North American
country, the strengthening of relations at the beginning of the war and
the Japanese attack on several Yankee possessions in the Pacific Ocean
made the Brazilian government, after careful political calculation, break
its diplomatic and political relations with the Axis countries in January
1942. What followed was German retaliation against Brazilian mer-
chant activities (with the sinking of several ships), a situation that culmi-
nated in strong popular pressure and, finally, the declaration of a state
of war to the Axis in August 1942 (Bueno 2008).
Long before Brazil joined the conflict, and the transformation of
tens of thousands of its inhabitants into enemies, due to relations8 with
the countries that formed the Axis (Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan,
Romania, among others), the Brazilian government had already con-
ducted nationalization policies for those parts of its population, such as
the aforementioned prioritization of Portuguese immigration. The main
objective was to reduce regional differences and also integrate into the
same national perspective groups that were seen as dissidents of that.
This way, and by taking part in the global conflict, the issue was
seen as urgent due to the large number of immigrants in the popula-
tion, and, in 1938, in a dictatorial context, policies of nationalization
of the “non-nationals” were put into action (Sausen 2019). Among the
main nationalization measures we can mention the encouragement of
patriotism, the prohibition of speaking non-Portuguese languages, the
curbing of cultural activities, forced migrations and political persecution
(Neumann 2003; Sausen 2019).
Yet, many families carried different national bonds, either by affilia-
tion, birth or marriage. In this sense, according to the article “Frontier
and nationalization: World War II in Porto Novo (Brazil, 1942–1943)”,
published by João Vitor Sausen in 2019, the nationalization measures
carried out by the Brazilian New State, in particular an induced forced
migration in February 1943 against foreigners (German or Romanian)
who lived in the border strip between Brazil and Argentina, sometimes
reached only a part of immigrant families, either because the nationality
of the parents and children differed, some children had already married
to Brazilians (a form of nationalization), or other possible causes. It is
thereby reported the case of a Romanian whose parents were Russian
(that is, not Brazilian enemies), the brothers were married to Brazilians,
or had been born in Brazil, and he would have been the only one forced
to emigrate from the border strip. There were others in which Germans
or Romanians had to migrate, but their children who were born in Brazil
could stay (Sausen 2019).
The author defends the idea of a “restricted nationalization” during
the global conflict because due to the observation of the measures of
construction and diffusion of a national identity conducted in his object
of study, the Porto Novo9 colony, he realizes that those were largely di-
rected at the Axis’ enemies and saved, on several occasions, those who
had a nationality that was not German or Romanian, such as the Amer-
icans, Russians or Swiss who lived there (Sausen 2019).
In addition to the various measures of cultural nationalization im-
posed by the Brazilian government, the country’s entry into World War
II and the reprisals against Germans (or descendants) and their endeav-
ors also made room to a complex set of interests from nationals. Caus-
ing damage to “foreign” competition gave space to the strengthening of
“Brazilian” businesses, as proved by Bruna Lima in her thesis entitled
“Borders between the regional and the transnational in Brazilian eco-
nomic development policy and the case of Cyrilla factory from Santa
Maria, RS, Brazil” (2019).
Similar to immigrants and German descendants (German-Brazilians),
Italians and their descendants (Italian-Brazilians) also experienced a
strong nationalization campaign a marked situation with the New State
(1937–1945) from the 1930s on. Among the main measures aimed at
this group, there were the prohibition of the Italian language or dialects,
the designation of cities, social clubs, and company names, among oth-
ers, besides the closing of Italian Consular agencies that were present
beyond capitals, in the interior, as in the city of Santa Maria, in Rio
Grande do Sul, which was created for the Italian Consular representa-
tionin 1914was closed in 1942 and reopened only in 1996.
The Brazilian participation in World War II made room and justi-
fied several initiatives that were already being built in the Vargas gov-
ernment, and that strengthened the processes of cultural and economic
nationalization, imposing, in turn, limitations or contradictions to the
historical processes of immigration to Brazil. But, shortly after World
War II, Brazil, Argentina, and other South American countries con-
tinued to receive immigrants, mainly Europeans (German Jews, Polish
Jews, Italians), as well as Asians, without returning the proportion they
had before the global conflict.
Twenty-First Century – Survival and Valuation of the

Remaining Culture
The reverse path of immigration from previous centuries began to occur
in greater quantity at the end of the second half of the twentieth century,
with the “return” of descendants of Germans, Italians, Spanish, Portu-
guese, Poles, among others, to very different countries (or totally new)
with respect to what their ancestors left. Furthermore, there was a grow-
ing migratory process within the regions of the countries themselves, es-
pecially from Brazil (migrations from the south to the center and north;
migrations from the northeast to the southeast) and Argentina, as well
as among countries in the American continent.
Currently, there is a picture of dual nationalities, circulations or con-
tacts, based largely on the processes that have occurred since the pre-
vious two centuries. The cultural groups that left Europe, for instance,
started from a very different context than the one that can be seen today.
Those who seek to accomplish the reverse process, in turn, carry with
them cultural traditions built for decades in the American continent.
South America, especially the La Plata region (Argentina, Brazil,
Paraguay and Uruguay), is strongly characterized by the immigration
process that it experienced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
and marked the ethnic, cultural and economic characterization of their
societies. If we look at the presidents of Argentina or Brazil, we can
see surnames from immigrants who made the process of leaving Europe
and coming to America. In the Argentine case, the previous president,
Maurício Macri, as his family name denounces, is the son of an Italian.
In Brazil, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, current president, has Italian ances-
tors, Michel Temer, previous president, is the son of Lebanese, as well as
Dilma Rousseff, who preceded Temer, was the daughter of a Bulgarian.
Thus, from this view that could be expanded with a larger study, we
realize that there was a strong insertion of immigrants in politics, since
the nineteenth century, which represents not an isolation, but an integra-
tion and interest in the new habitat or new homeland.
The construction of national cultures was mixed by the different
peoples in the course of the historical process of constitution and con-
solidation of the new states in the American continent. These national
cultures are linked to the territory/space to which their country belongs,
but they also carry history as individuals/social groups and the memory
of their ancestors in a process of spontaneous and forced, internal and
intercontinental migrations. The studies themselves (and their denomi-
nations/concerns) on themes such as Afro-descendants, native popula-
tions, Italian-Brazilians, German-Brazilians, Italian-Argentines, among
others, demonstrate these connections.
In this sense, according to the socio-political and economic reality that
societies and their groups experience, the concept of national identity
and/or citizenship is also linked to the possibilities that the globalized
world offers. But, it must be taken into consideration that the human
migratory process continues, especially motivated by escape from pre-
carious living conditions, war, persecutions, climatic disasters, as well
as in search of better living conditions.
With this, in many cases, such as in Brazil and Argentina, the im-
migrants’ descendants tried neither to forget the links with the places/
states of origin of their ancestors, nor their original culture. In this way,
the laws and possibilities of each country regarding dual citizenship, or
dual nationality, for example, are elements in which the vestige of the
immigration process to America are present.
Italy, for example, has the largest contingent of voters outside its ter-
ritory in Argentina, Brazil and the United States (Bevilaqua 2018). This
is due to the fact that a number of the Italian descendants who migrated
there today have citizenship (double or single), and, consequently, the
right to vote. Such a situation is often due to the search for European
passports, since, as mentioned above, America had been transformed, at
the end of World War II, from a country that received immigrants to a
generator of emigrants (Merino 2013).
Countries such as Italy, owing to the long and impactful migratory
process, started to give great attention to populations that are far beyond
their territorial limits, in a kind of “territory of nationals overseas”. In
this sense, in the 2018 Italian elections, the citizens of this country living
in South America could elect two senators and four congressmen to rep-
resent Italian nationals on that continent. Italy is the only country that
maintains a number of seats in its two parliaments for representatives
who live abroad, with a total of six senators and twelve congressmen. In
2018, Brazil had 85,000 Italian citizens (Bevilaqua 2018). Based on this
perspective, this is a case where the relationship beyond the determined
national territory exists and is politically exercised.
It can be mentioned, for the Spanish case, whose migration beyond the
colonial period had a great impact in the twentieth century, which made
them be concentrated in South America, according to data reported
by Asunción Merino Hernando (2013) and referring to the year 2012,
1,133,228 Spaniards, of whom 367,939 were in Argentina, that is, 25%
of the total Spaniards residing outside Spain. In other words, in spite
of representing an exit from their native lands, immigration to South
America did not represent a rupture in bonds. On the contrary, even af-
ter several generations, in many cases, with the elections, descendants of
Italians or Spaniards remained linked, and even politically represented
in the countries from which their ancestors left.
Thus, nation-states must also direct public policies capable of covering
a much larger space than their own determined territories, so that their
political reach finds many regions in South America where their citizens
are present. Likewise, this immigration process generated citizens from
two countries, politically interested in the contexts of two continents.
Beyond these political ties, there are many cases which even after
more than one hundred years of the immigration process, the descen-
dants of immigrants, not having, in most cases, dual citizenship or dual
nationality, maintain cultural practices related to the regions of origin
of their ancestors. These practices like dances, rites, folklore, songs, or
the speaking of languages, are evidence of continuities, syntheses or rup-
tures with the ancestors’ places of origin.
Many cultural practices have been influenced by both the environ-
ments where immigrants settled, and by the continuity of the migratory
process within America. Nowadays in Brazil, it can be observed, for in-
stance, languages such as Talian or Hünrisck, which despite the Italian
or German origin respectively, can be considered Brazilian languages
due to the centuries of cultural dynamics and transformations they un-
derwent in the country. In addition to the linguistic aspect, it is common,
in the most varied regions that received immigrants throughout the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries, the existence of cultural associations or
parties, which seek to recall traditions originated or built throughout the
process of living in the territories where their ancestors lived.
Currently in America, as a continent that always receives immigrants,
processes of internal migration are happening, such as Cubans, Boliv-
ians, Haitians, Hondurans or Venezuelans, or immigrants often from
countries in the Middle East or Central and West Africa. Thus, once
more the processes previously mentioned will have new characters and
new problems.
It is in this context of immigrants between two continents, internal
migrations, maximum representatives of national policies descended
from migrants, cultural associations, parties, languages, political prob-
lems, among several other issues, that motivated the quick look at the
immigration process to Brazil and Argentina, in this “America Platina”.
Notes
1 The independence of the Viceroyalty of La Plata River and the conforma-
tion of the countries as we know today had a process of regional disputes,
especially between the provinces of the interior and the capital of the for-
mer Viceroyalty – Buenos Aires until the mid-1950s. Thus, we will have the
dismemberment of Paraguay in 1811, the formation of the United Provinces
of the River Plate (territories of today Argentina, part Bolivia, Uruguay);
in 1820 we will have the conquest of the Eastern Band of Uruguay by Por-
tugal, which became the Cisplatine Province; in 1828 Cisplatine has its in-
dependence in the Eastern Republic of Uruguay. Argentina will have the
denomination and the current state configuration during the period of Miter
government and with the outcomes of the Paraguayan War in the 1960s.
2 The name “Germans” for those born before the creation of a country called
Germany (1871) comes from a historical way of referring those who spoke
some form of Teutonic language, which could often also unify different na-
tionalities under this name. Likewise, the absence, for a long period of time,
of an Italian or Polish nation-state, could also generate a name in the same
sense.
3 In the municipality of Nova Palma there is a rich preserved documentary
collection on Italian immigration to this region, created in 1984 by Fr. Luiz
Sponchiado – the Center for Genealogical Research (CPG). Collection that
enabled many researches end up making their theses, dissertations, arti-
cles in addition to documents found there to assist in the process of dual
citizenship.
4 The European political situation of that period means that some of the
places of origin of different immigrant groups no longer exist as countries,
kingdoms, duchies, principalities or other political units. Nation-states like
Germany, Italy or Poland, which generated a significant number of immi-
grants to America during the nineteenth century, did not exist until the sec-
ond half of the century, or until the end of World War I, as it is the case in
Poland.
5 BRAZIL. Decree No. 3010, August 20, 1938. It regulates decree-law no.
406, May 4, 1938, which establishes the entry of foreigners into national
territory. Federal Official Gazette, Executive Branch, Brasília, DF. Section 1.
Retrieved from https://www2.camara.leg.br/ividade-legislativa/legislacao.
6 An example of this migratory movement are the Germans or Romanians who
came from Weimar, Germany (1919–1933), or the early years of Nazi Ger-
many (1933–1945) who were directed to a colony called Porto Novo by an as-
sociation destined to help Germans outside Europe, Skt. Rafaelsverein. Porto
Novo was located in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina (in the south of the
territory), and it had been founded by Volksverein (União Popular), an entity
aimed at protecting and assisting German culture and German descendants
in 1926. At first the colony received mostly Brazilians of German language
and offspring, which probably meant, when the Europeans arrived (Germans
and Romanians), a cultural and national shock. See: Mayer (2016).
7 Clodoaldo Bueno (2008) argues that “(…) the immediate reason for entering
the war was the action of German submarines against Brazilian merchant
ships (…)” the declaration of the state of war against Germany occurred
after the torpedoing and arrest of the commander of the merchant steam
Macau, in October 1917. “It was the fourth Brazilian ship hit by the impe-
rial submarines” (208).
8 These ties could be either political or merely cultural. Many people were
citizens of some of these countries, and others simply descended from some
political unit that was later transformed into part of those countries (like
many “Germans” who immigrated before the formation of the first German
nation-state in 1871).
9 Currently, Porto Novo corresponds to the cities of Itapiranga, São João do
Oeste and Tunápolis, as well as a part of Iporã do Oeste, all of which are
located in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, near the border with the
Argentine Republic.
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9 Indigenous Movements in
South America
Culture, Politics, and
Territories in the Andean and
Amazon Regions
Menno Oostra
Introduction: The Colonial Shattering

Five centuries after the “Discovery of America” and subsequent inte-
gration into the emerging world system, the divide between the original
inhabitants and “national” societies is still a profound cleavage in each
and every country of the New World mainland.
The identities and ancestries of the Indigenous peoples, and their lan-
guages, do not fit neatly in the national borders. They are earlier and
deeper. Boundaries were imposed by power balances between modern-
izing States, basically following the colonial partitions of the sixteenth
century. Many of these lines were negotiated remotely by diplomatic
committees, drawn on uncertain maps of scarcely explored territories:
vast forests, plains and mountain ranges known only to their Indigenous
inhabitants.
Thus the extension of the Inca Empire now pertains to six different Re-
publics. The Aymara became shattered between Bolivia, Peru, Chile and
Argentina; Mapuche between the two last of these. There are Guarani in
Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentine and even in Uruguay; Yanomami in
Brazil and Venezuela; Ticuna in Peru, Colombia and Brazil; Wayuu and
Yukpa in Colombia and Venezuela, and so on. Political frontiers divide
ethnic territories, separating families, clans and peoples, and weakening
cultural cohesion, economic exchanges and ritual cycles.
Independence from European monarchies in the nineteenth century
did not bring emancipation for the Indigenous population – nor for the
African enslaved. On the contrary: under the new Republics, Indians
were either to be exterminated (“opening up new frontiers for civili-
zation”), disowned of the scarce lands the Spaniards had left them (in
name of freedom and Liberalism), exploited on plantations, or in the
best of cases reduced to mission settlements to be educated into “useful”,
subjugated and poor citizens, at the bottom of the social scales – cannon
fodder in the civil wars; housemaids, concubines, odd-job men. In the
Andes, as in the Chaco, in Guatemala and other settings, the Indigenous
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-12
Indigenous Movements in South America 221
were quasi-enslaved serving the haciendas, where the landowners owned
the people with the land, claimed half their work time just to let them
live there, maintained sexual “rights” over their women and ordered
their children around.
The Liberal idea of unitarian, European-inspired nationalities kept
seeing the Indigenous as a strange “other”, as an alien element incrusted
in the nation’s body, impeding and retarding civilization. Indeed, in-
tellectual debates in Caracas, Bogota, Lima or Buenos Aires rounding
1900 centred on the dilemma “Civilization or barbarism”, understood
as modern vs. primitive, and many countries actively promoted the in-
migration of “white” European settlers to “improve the race”, and then
gave them lands of the Indians. As happened in the North American
West, the bloody wars against the Mapuche by the Chilean and Argen-
tinean armies in the late nineteenth century, and against the Guarani in
Bolivia, were justified by defining them as “savages” first.
In the Andean Cordillera, the socio-political identity of the Indige-
nous rural populations has been the subject of long debates. They are
there, they resist oppression, but are they Indians or peasants, and what
is the difference? In the areas once dominated by the Inca State (mainly
Andean Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia), a sharp Indian identity remained
among the Quechua- and Aymara-speaking rural population, who at the
same time were identified as peasants. In the shadows of the hacienda
regime, they kept a collective socio-cultural identity, tolerated, despised
and little known by the European-oriented elites, as shown in the novel
Huasipungo of Jorge Icaza (Ecuador 1934) and those of Manuel Scorza
on the Peruvian Andes (1960s and 1970s). During most of the twentieth
century, political definitions followed mainly a class discourse. Some
authors, among them José Carlos Mariategui in Peru, developed a more
complex perspective on social change, trying to reconcile Marxist cate-
gories with Andean cultural principles.
In other places, such as Colombia, there occurred an extensive process
of “mestizaje”, Indigenous communities dissolving as such and their de-
scendants appearing as campesino smallholders or tenants.
The forests of the Amazon, the Orinoco plains, the south of Chile
and Argentina, and many other places were never fully conquered by
the Spanish, and initially left alone under the Republics. In the first de-
cades of the twentieth century, civilization caught up with the Amazon.
Mass industrial production of cars – Ford’s Model T and WW I tanks –
required rubber for their tyres, in huge amounts. Natural rubber existed
in the tropical rain forests, from Belize to Brazil, and could only be col-
lected by hand – the work of until then undisturbed Indigenous tribes,
who were enslaved and forced to produce with violence and cruelty that
in the Western Amazon scaled up to genocide, as happened in Leopold’s
Congo in the same period (cf. Taussig 1984) Rubber barons controlled
enormous forest areas, founding strategic trade posts along the rivers,
222 Menno Oostra
exploiting the Indians ruthlessly, and exterminating those who preferred
to flight. Rubber was concentrated into boom trade cities, following the
long rivers, and shipped over to Boston, Liverpool and Amsterdam. Vast
fortunes were amassed and dilapidated in the Amazon boomtowns. En-
rico Caruso sang in the Opera of Manaos, then the second in the world
after the Scala of Milan, and Gustave Eiffel built a unique hotel in Iqui-
tos, using the steel technology of his Paris Tower. Wars were fought for
control over the rubber forests; the Acre territory separated from Bolivia
and joined Brazil; Colombia and Peru clashed over the Putumayo basin
and Leticia. Then, the emergence of plantation rubber in Asia and later
synthetic rubber in Germany abruptly collapsed prices, leaving the Am-
azon rubber empires to dissolve in thin air. This tragic paradox would
repeat itself many times since with the modernization of production
methods, new technology, and apparent progress of civilization in the
North, generating extreme and senseless atrocity in faraway jungles and
mountains. The rubber period can well be seen as the nadir of the Indig-
enous peoples of America.
The Indigenous Movement

Of course, Indigenous resistance to being displaced, enslaved and ex-
ploited is as old as the Conquest itself. The current Indigenous social
movement in the Andes and the Amazon originated in the 1960s and
1970s. Indian peoples gradually became political actors of themselves,
ultimately forcing open the national political systems to recognize their
existence, their rights to lands and self-government, cultural diversity,
languages and religious practices. This happened along different paths
and with different outcomes in each country but was all the same a com-
mon process. In this transformation, traditional institutions (local chief-
tainships and councils, kinship alliances) evolved and articulated within
organized movements operating at local and national political stages.
Many of these movements started up from local village associations or
teacher’s unions with a limited scope. Initially, they often depended on
the advice of missionaries, anthropologists or leftist political movements.
But Indigenous movements have always been fiercely autonomous, and
sour discussions on representativity and authenticity between the vari-
ous Indigenous and their allies were common. In time, the movements
became more professional, more autonomous, and more confident, and
new generations of leaders arose within their ranks.
They also grew as international actors, through the United Nations,
NGO networks, activist campaigns, and among the migrants and refu-
gees scattered from Latin America around the world. The peoples of the
Andes and the Amazon, without intending to, found themselves placed
at the forefront of the worldwide social and environmental movements
which oppose unrestricted globalization and ecological destruction.
Since 1982, Indigenous delegations from over the world have met each
year in Geneva to testify and lobby before the UN Human Rights Sub-
committee on Indigenous Affairs. It took them 25 years, but in 2007
the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indige-
nous Peoples, the most comprehensive legal document yet on the issue,
and a standard for world governance. Earlier, one UN agency, the Inter-
national Labour Organization (ILO), already in 1989 issued the Con-
vention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (Convention 169), which was
signed by most Latin American countries and has been widely used as a
political instrument by the movements.
The origins and evolution, political environment and organization
strength of the Indigenous people’s movements vary strongly from one
country to another. In some countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, Ecua-
dor and to a lesser degree in Brazil, Venezuela, and Peru, to name a few,
they have now achieved (as a result of internal conflicts that claimed
so many lives) a firm recognition in national Constitutions and related
laws on Education, Justice, Environment, etc. From the late 1980s on-
wards, many countries reformed their Constitutions to recognize – in
varying degrees – the rights of Indigenous peoples, their territories, their
self-government and their cultural and economic rights. Some even ad-
mitted the multicultural or plurinational essence of the country as the
political norm. The enforcement of such rights on the local level has
been uneven, however, and de facto situations in the communities often
do not match with legal advances.
This article follows a country-case and a cultural-historic approach,
emphasizing the unique Latin American Indigenous peoples’ position
in the world system, as well as their contributions to universal thought.
Any comprehensive understanding of the region today requires to bring
in their voices and include attention to their specific perspectives.
The Indigenous as Social Movements

For anthropologists and sociologists, it has proven difficult to come to
terms with the Indigenous movements. In the major anthology “Social
Movements. An anthropological reader (Nash 2005)”, they are not dis-
cussed as such. In the conceptual framework, editor June Nash mentions
the Maya in Mexico but tends to throw them then in an eclectic cor-
nucopia with all kinds of protests worldwide, from Tiananmen Square
(China) to water rights in South Africa.
Among the multifacetious social and political conflicts in Latin Amer-
ica, the Indigenous have had to invent and open up their own place.
Many other social movements had numerous Indigenous members and
defended their claims in some form or another. Worker and peasant
unions, politically oriented to the left and fiercely repressed in almost
every country, were the strongest social organizations for many decades.
224 Menno Oostra
Mine workers speaking Quechua and Aymara were tenacious defenders
of the riches of the Andes. Their unions were the political vanguard of
the proletariat, fearlessly engaged in a class war with North American
corporations and the national military. Remember the (in)famous sites
of Cerro de Pasco (Peru), Siglo XX (Bolivia), or Chuquicamata (Chile).
In other ecosystems, strong farmer and peasant movements devel-
oped, with the incessant claim on the land to work and live on. Start-
ing in the 1920s and 1930s, these had a strong expansion in the 1960s
and 1970s, following the Continent-wide Agrarian Reform policy.
ANUC in Colombia, Hugo Blanco’s agrarian movement in Peru, even-
tually CSUTCB in Bolivia, operated under class logic within leftist,
revolutionary fronts.
In the last decades of the century – after the violent Neo-Liberal take-
overs in the 1970s and 1980s and the breakdown of the international
socialist block – the role of unions changed drastically, losing much of
their power. But social mobilization and the civil struggle continued in
new forms, fed by alliances of peasant movements, Indigenous, women’s
movements, students, LGTBI, human rights activists and environmental-
ists. In the new century, social protest is often framed as environmental:
Mother Earth is the one who will represent and defend her inhabitants.
A Space of Their Own

Indigenous organizations constitute an intermediate level, articulated
between local communities and the external powers. Their politics and
leadership are typically ambiguous since they are always at crossroads
between their local, cultural allegiances and national (and international)
political systems and bureaucracy. Many Indigenous leaders, at some
point in their career, have been appointed as Senators or as State offi-
cials, while others end up as consultants for development programmes,
entrepreneurs or politicians. And many elder leaders too, spend their
later years as counsellors and spiritual guides, modestly retired on the
countryside.
The newly acquired rights can trap Indian leaders into political
co-optation and corruption, or coerce them into accepting intrusion in
their territory. They are often ignored by local officials, companies and
landowners. Laws may be open and even State services may be well-
intended, but they are located far away in the capitals; the agencies never
have enough personnel and political leverage to attend all local con-
flicts. Juridical recognition also means access to support projects and
policies, which can generate divisions and rivalry over resources. On the
whole, these weaknesses have been temporary, and the process has led to
greater visibility of Indigenous, and other ethnic and cultural minorities,
and to foster a strong political legitimacy of plural, inclusive and diverse
multicultural societies.
Organizations have known times of weakness and divisions, not sel-
dom motivated by the workings of external financial or intellectual re-
sources, be it from government, NGOs, or political parties, national or
international. Such stories abound, but in the end, they have not been
decisive in the advances of the movements and the outcomes of Indige-
nous struggles.
Despite the variation in trajectories, the underlying cultural/ideolog-
ical contents of Latin American Indigenous resistance movements are
notoriously consistent through time and over places. Important common
grounds are:
• First of all, they do not seek to revoke the existing political maps
and create their own independent States. They are not separatists.
Instead, they demand, and exercise full participation in a political
arena defined as Pluri-National States, based on multiculturalism,
cultural freedom and respect for difference, and with a special
status or realm for the Indigenous, with territorial autonomy, self-
government, and own educational, linguistic, and juridical spheres.
• They accept to exist and work within the law system of each coun-
try, and indeed many of them are involved in long juridical battles
over land deeds and titles, sometimes going back to Spanish colonial
times.
• They are not armed movements, are typically non-violent; only on
rare occasions have resorted to force. Their relations with the armed
revolutionary guerrilla forces have been distant. But instead, they
claim their own rules and justice methods, which can be drastic.
And they certainly engage in specific forms of civil disobedience and
non-violent resistance.
• Importantly, the movements have succeeded in maintaining and de-
veloping cultural values, based on a spiritual relationship with na-
ture and territory, as well as egalitarian social roles and governance.
These values and styles from traditional culture have been trans-
posed into highly sophisticated political instruments and strategies.
• Revaluation of the cultural heritage, the language and traditional
beliefs, is one of the core claims and at the same time, a key strategy
to develop political strength around the rallying power of symbols
and holy places. This involves struggles against Catholic and Protes-
tant missions, who have imposed on them a Christian and Western-
ized world view as the only truth, and used to condemn traditions,
rituals, and languages as works of the devil. In many territories, the
missions have been by now expelled.
• They defend an ideology of life, humans being only a part of na-
ture, with the responsibility and the joy to care for it, but not its
owners (the Mother Earth concept). In the earlier decades of the
twenty-first century, this view became known as the “Living well”
226 Menno Oostra
philosophy and was formally applied in the development policies of
several countries.
• Indigenous movements are deeply linked with their territories.
Mountains and rivers are core elements in their identity, values and
political actions. It is a specific mountain itself, which infers power
and authority. Many Andean leadership rituals are held in sacred
places such as high mountain lakes and water sources.
• The direct-action forms of the Indigenous movements are straight-
forward, innovative, combine practices with theory (i.e., traditional
knowledge and lore), and manifest a special relationship with the
lands they live on. The most basic and almost elementary action land
recovery (recuperación). The physical occupation of land to live and
work on is at the same time the most effective, riskiest, and highly
symbolic form of protest. Lands with the fences of a hacienda, a State
agency, or an international consortium; lands that might be a heritage
from their ancestors, even recognized by colonial treaties, perpetual
privileges or Republican law. Natural landscapes are seen by others
as a reservoir of resources to extract, but are sacred for the Indige-
nous. The defence and celebration of sacred places is a constant theme
in the movements. This is also a form of action sure to attract sharp
reactions from the landowners, be they public or private, and often
brutal and violent encounters with guardsmen, cowboys, paramilitar-
ies and police forces, spiralling cases of human rights violations. Con-
sequently, fighting for Indigenous culture, land rights, environmental
protection, and human life, become one and the same thing.
• Roadblocks also are effective but dangerous places for confronta-
tion with the State. Assemblies and mobilizations concentrating
thousands of participants for weeks, marches crossing the country
and converging in major cities, occupying squares plazas central
parks and public buildings, are a major political manifestation of
the movements. All these forms of resistance have concrete spatial
territorial connotations, implying a deep connection between per-
sons, communities and their surrounding natural environment. This
intimate alliance with Nature is reasserted in rituals, myth and prac-
tical education which go along with the political activity.
In the following pages, some country-case stories will illuminate the di-
versity and the depth of the Indigenous movement throughout the con-
tinent. These are not exhaustive; many others are of equal interest and
relevance. All the great peoples of Abya Yala, the Americas, are standing
up to the twenty-first century.
Colombia
The north-western corner of South America, at the crossroads of the
Andean Cordillera, the Amazon, the Caribbean and Meso-America, is
the cradle of a high diversity of peoples and cultures, whose richnesses
in sophisticated gold ornaments attracted the Spanish conquerors and
inspired the legend of El Dorado. The Spanish subjugated the central
high plains, governing out of a network of main towns, ports, and min-
ing centres, surrounded by vast wildernesses inhabited by Indigenous
peoples, who were to be “reduced” into obedience.
Since colonial times Colombia saw a widely extended process of mes-
tizaje. The dense population of the Bogota plateau, descending from the
Muisca and Guane peoples, were steadily converted into smallholders
or landless labourers. They “acculturated” into Spanish-speaking “mes-
tizo” citizens, who seldom see themselves as “Indians”, which they now
perceive as an insult. The role of shame and cultural discrimination has
been strong in this transposition. Culture and language persist in the
toponymic and in countless uses, beliefs and localisms. In Colombia,
there is a neat distinction between “campesinos” and “indigenas”; the
latter compose only 1–2% of the national population.
In some areas like the Cauca and the Sierra Nevada, however, and in the
Pacific and Amazon lowlands, a dense Indigenous population conserves
until today an ethnic and linguistical identity. The Cauca Department in
the deep southern Andes is the home of the Nasa and Misak. It is also a
long-time stronghold of powerful Spanish-descendant landowner families.
Big haciendas concentrate the best land, the irrigated plains and fertile val-
leys, surrounded by Indian, black and peasant communities who provide
cheap labour and political clientele. Quasi-feudal serfdom (terraje, a per-
petual payment in labour or cash) continued into the late twentieth century.
In the eighteenth century, the great hero of Nasa history, Chief Juan
Tama, unified the various communities into one polity. Known as the
“Son of the Stars” and said to be born out of the mountain springs, he
negotiated for his people the recognition of all their lands by the Spanish
crown as the Resguardo Mayor de Tierra Adentro. Even so, the land
was structurally cheated out of the communities and appropriated by
the dominant groups; large parts of the big holdings were in fact Indig-
enous territory, and as elsewhere, the land problem continually fuelled
inequality and social unrest.
In the twentieth century, on the waves of political violence and so-
cial struggles in Colombia, the strongest Indian movement grew in the
Cauca. A great Nasa leader, Manuel Quintín Lame (1883–1967), pro-
moted resistance in the Andean region from 1914 onwards. He suffered
defeat and countless prison terms but kept on defending Indigenous land
rights through education, organization and juridical proceedings, in
the Cauca and Tolima. His Action Programme, of great significance for
the later Indigenous social mobilizations, included seven points, among
which the recovery and enlargement of resguardo lands; strengthening
the cabildos for local government; no payment of the hated terraje; en-
forcement of laws on Indigenous issues; defence of Indigenous history,
languages and customs; and formation of Indigenous teachers.
228 Menno Oostra
The 1960s were a period of social change. The Agrarian Reform Law
of 1961 initiated a cycle of rural mobilization and peasant resistance.
It created a national peasant movement, ANUC (Asociación Nacional
de Usuarios Campesinos), which rapidly radicalized, occupying unused
land of big proprietors and organizing strikes in banana and oil palm
plantations. At the same time, revolutionary guerrilla movements ap-
peared intending to overthrow the State altogether and replace it with a
socialist republic. For the first time, around 1970, the Indian’s oppres-
sion became an issue for national debate, spurred by notorious massacres
of nomadic Indians in the Eastern plains, and publications on cultural
“ethnocide” (Bonilla 1968 on Sibundoy, Jaulin 1970 on the Bari).
This context saw the birth of the “modern” Indigenous movement,
with its own political programme and a federated organization includ-
ing different ethnical groups. In February 1971, leaders of the Nasa, the
Misak, and the Yanacona Indians founded their Regional Indigenous
Council, CRIC (Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca). Initially, they
were incorporated as an Indigenous Secretariat within ANUC. But po-
litical strife abounded there between various revolutionary tendencies,
all with little sensitivity to Indigenous culture, and in 1974 the Indians
withdrew from the organization to work independently. In the following
years, CRIC developed a sophisticated structure including committees
on land, health, education, communication, governance, and spiritual-
ity. Their magazine, Unidad Indígena, circulates since 1975 and still is
the main printed medium of the Indigenous movement (cf. Sanchez, and
Molina 2010; Unidad Indígena).
Inspired and encouraged by CRIC, other regional councils were cre-
ated over the country. The first national Indigenous Conference was held
in Oct. 1980, in the hot hills of the Pijao people in Tolima. In the next
congress in 1982, nearby Bogota, 1,500 delegates from nine regional
federations founded the National Indigenous Organization of Colom-
bia, ONIC, which ever since has been the political voice of Colombia’s
Indigenous peoples. Of a confederate structure, its board in Bogota is
elected and more or less rotates among the regional councils, who retain
autonomy in local activities.
In the years to follow, many other peoples linked up in the movement,
especially those of the remote Amazon forests and Orinoco plains. Some
peoples, like the Misak in the southern Andes and the Kogi and Ica of
the northern Sierra Nevada, initially sceptical of interethnic political col-
laboration, concentrated instead on their spiritual values and traditional
law and authorities. For a while, they maintained an alternative national
coordination, Indigenous Authorities of Colombia (AICO). In the Sierra
Nevada, the main line of struggle was the spiritual control of the terri-
tory, which for them meant the end of the Catholic missionary domi-
nance and their deculturating school system. The Indians succeeded in
recovering control of the education of their children and the recognition
of communal lands, but many of their leaders were assassinated along
the way, among them their Governor Napoleón Torres.
During the growing political and drug-war violence in the 1980s, In-
digenous peoples found themselves in the crossfire. The location of their
lands, on far-off and strategic positions, with connecting corridors to
anywhere, attracted all combatant forces. Guerrillas, renegades, drug
traffickers and the military all came to meet in the Cauca mountains to
fight.
The Nasa even formed an armed self-defence movement, called
Quintín Lame, which operated as a local guard to protect communities
and activities but also allied with national guerrillas aiming at the po-
litical takeover of the country. This in turn weakened their legitimacy
and their trust link with traditional leaders. They dissolved in 1991,
along with several other guerrilla movements, preferring to participate
in the draft of the new Constitution. Three Indigenous leaders, Lorenzo
Muelas (Misak), Francisco Rojas Birry (Embera) and Alfonso Peña
(Nasa, of the demobilized Quintín Lame) participated actively as Mem-
bers of the National Constituent Assembly.
The Constitution of 1991 opened up the country’s political system,
and end the ravaging guerrilla war. It redefined the relations between the
Indigenous peoples and the State and established specific rights for them.
These included the recognition and protection of cultural diversity and,
importantly, of land rights. Indigenous communal territories (Resguar-
dos) are defined as inalienable and perpetual collective property. Tradi-
tional community authorities were recognized as a specific level within
the administrative regime of the country, with their own financial means
directly from the State budget for governance and local development.
So, effectively, the Indigenous gained recognition of their autonomous
self-government. Regarding natural resources and development projects,
the Constitution guaranteed meaningful consultation and informed con-
sent in case of investment plans. In the same year, Colombia also signed
the ILO Convention 169.
Since then, the movement developed into a new phase, having not only
to protest but also to take responsibility for economic and social matters
in their areas. They are now partners in large international cooperation
projects, manage investments of millions, certificate biological products,
organize eco-tourism and export coffee. However, Constitutional rights,
State bureaucracy and resources, and a better “official” public image
have not protected Indigenous peoples from violence and continual ha-
rassment. De facto situations in the territories remain characterized by
violence, persecutions, displacement, selective killings and more human
rights violations. The communities are left on their own to deal with
illegal miners, paramilitary squads, cocaine mafias, or guerrillas. Highly
suffering since 2000 have been the Awa and the Embera of the Pacific
coast, the Nasa and Misak of the Cauca, the Zenu of the North, the
230 Menno Oostra
Wayuu of the battered desert of Guajira, and the Nukak, the Tucano and
other Amazonian peoples. This adds to fierce violence suffered by the
Afro-Colombian communities, who are in a parallel condition.
The Indigenous have developed sophisticated mechanisms of human
rights protection, including the unarmed but very visible and disciplined
Indigenous Guard, an effective social mobilization resource for the
communities. They provide assistance in case of accidents or natural
disasters, are involved in the ethnic education programmes, celebrate
rituals, patrol the lands and steward protest marches and concentra-
tions. The Indigenous also have political representation in the Colom-
bian Parliament and have a wide contact network in official institutions,
non-governmental organizations, lawyers and press, including juridical
assistance and early-warning protection mechanisms.
However, this does not prevent them from being continually murdered
by mostly unknown hitmen. In 2008, for instance, a large march was
held from the Cauca mountains to Bogota, to claim justice after too
many impune killings and human rights violations across the region.
President Uribe, who didn’t like the idea, tried to deter them and met
the concentration in the former hacienda Piendamó, in the midst of
fierce mutual accusations and provocations. At that point, one marcher
had already been killed by police at a roadblock, and the meeting had
no result. The marchers went on, well received in the cities they came
through. They crossed the sugar cane plains and the high Andes wa-
ter sources where the biggest mining company in the world wished to
open the largest gold mine project, a controversial development if any.
After walking for a month, thousands of Indians arrived in Bogota and
camped in the National University. The next day, they flooded the city
centre and filled the historical Bolivar Plaza with their demands. The
march was a great political success in visibilising the cruel reality of a
country Uribe boasted of having pacified. The coordinator of the cam-
paign had been Aída Quilcué. Two months later, in December 2008, the
Nasa leader was to pay the price. Back in the Cauca mountains, her car
was ambushed at a police control point. Aída was not even in the car,
having a last-minute delay, but they were waiting for her and shot to kill.
Edgar Legarda, her husband, died on the spot. The perpetrators never
were found, but Aída continued fighting for justice and for the Earth in
the Cauca, in Colombia and internationally.
At the moment of writing, Indigenous peoples continue to be heav-
ily affected by terror and violence in many regions. In June 2020 yet
another march, the Marcha de la Dignidad, walked the same long way
to Bogota. After the much-expected Peace Agreement between the Co-
lombian State and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuer-
zas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) (FARC) in 2016, the largest
guerrilla organization of the country at the moment, it was hoped peace
would return to conflict-ridden areas. In fact, violence became worse:
instead of a somehow predictable, politically structured group, that im-
posed a certain social order in the regions it controlled, the areas now
were fiercely disputed between new kinds of drug-related warlords and
paramilitaries, and renegade guerrillas as well. Since the FARC demobi-
lized, vast natural areas were opened up to all kinds of speculators and
land grabbers, while environmental control by the State was as weak
as ever. In the Amazon frontier, the deforestation rate and forest fires
swelled up massively in the years after the “peace” settlement. As long as
the world keeps demanding gold, cocaine and oil, peace will not return
easily to Colombian Indian lands.
Ecuador
In pre-colonial times, the peoples of the Ecuadorian Andes were briefly
conquered by the Inca empire, who imposed on them their Quichua lan-
guage, their solar cult and their verticalized social organization. The last
Emperor, Atahualpa, was of Ecuadorian origin by the side of his mother,
a Cañari princess. Then they fell under the full weight of Spanish and
later Republican rule, which reduced the Andean Indians to serfdom on
the haciendas. The Amazonian peoples remained relatively isolated and
free of these successive regimes; they were seen as uncivilizable “sav-
ages” who neither the Incas nor the Christians could deal with. From
the 1930s on, however, oil exploitation started in their forests and has
perturbated their life forever since.
In the twentieth century, agrarian unrest spread on the highlands,
inspired by the Mexican and Russian revolutions. A historical leader
was “Taita” (Father) Ambrosio Laso, who led campaigns in the 1930s
and 1940s and marched from the Amazon to Quito to reclaim the land
deeds. He was eventually enchained and deported to the Galapagos
prison islands. Dolores Cacuango, another peasant and Indian rights
pioneer, was co-founder of the FEI (Federación Ecuatoriana de Indios,
Indian Federation of Ecuador) in 1944, and also initiated the first bilin-
gual primary school in the country. She was an icon of the left as well as
from the Ecuadorian women’s movement.
The FEI leaned to the Communist Party and had a more class – than
identity-oriented agenda. The land was the first and foremost problem.
In the 1960s and 1970s, FEI was a major actor in the context of increas-
ing peasant mobilization and Agrarian Reform laws in 1963 and 1972.
The process resulted in the expropriation of most large haciendas and
the creation of rural cooperatives to manage production.
Alongside these movements, others came up with a more cultural and
ethnic orientation. Many were supported by the Catholic Church which
was engaged in the Liberation Theology. Indigenous Unions and fed-
erations began gradually to replace the cooperatives. Ecuarunari, the
large federation of Sierra Quichua Indians, was founded in 1972. In
232 Menno Oostra
the Amazon, the Shuar Federation originated back in 1964, facilitated
by Catholic missionaries; the all-Amazon confederation, CONFENIAE,
dates from 1980, and in 1986 the national Indigenous confederation
CONAIE came into being.
On a local and provincial level, communities steadily advanced into
solid and complex organizations. The process is neatly described by Cer-
vone (2012) who as an ethnologist observed closely the social dynam-
ics in a particular district in Chimborazo province, the founding of a
federation of 22 communities, around 1990. Another national campes-
ino movement of the 1970s, National Federation of Peasant Organiza-
tions (Federación Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas) (FENOC),
evolved to explicitly include Indigenous and black communities and re-
shaped itself into the pluriethnic rural movement FENOCIN.
From 1990 onwards, a new cycle of social Indigenous mobilization be-
gan to play out, with high organizational levels and a powerful political
impact. The Indigenous movement became one of the key actors in the
political arena, as an identity-based and pluricultural sector. With stra-
tegic alliances, it demonstrated to have the muscle to act on a national
level: to create or either to stop legislation, to win their rights and even
to topple governments and pursue new Constitutions. A key action form
has been the Indigenous (and Peasant) Marches which start in faraway
rural areas and converge on the centre of political powers in Quito, the
old colonial capital in the mountains.
It was no coincidence that at the time, an international debate was
going on around the 500-year celebrations of Columbus’ first arrival
in the Caribbean in 1492 – the “Discovery of America” and the begin-
ning of the extermination and colonization. The commemorations were
mainly promoted by the Spanish government, media and Universities,
who framed it as an “encounter of two worlds”. Indigenous worldwide
protested and in many countries, among them Ecuador, the campaign
ignited organization and struggle. Instead of feasting the Conquest, In-
dians rallied to claim land rights and intercultural, bilingual education.
“1992” was a catalyst for both neo-indigenist and neo-colonial stands
(Espinosa 2000).
The Levantamiento (Uprising) of 1990 was the first national mobili-
zation, mostly involving the peoples of the Sierra. They demanded land
rights; the Agrarian Reform, initiated many years before, had stagnated.
The Andean provinces, named after their highest peaks (Chimborazo,
Cotopaxi, Imbabura) witnessed a wave of more than 100 hacienda oc-
cupations and land conflicts.
In 1992, the V Centennial year, it was the turn of the Amazonian
peoples – the Shuar, Achuar, Záparos, lowland Quichua – who marched
the long way from the forests to the capital. Over 4,000 camped down
in a central park and obtained from the government the property deeds
over more than a million hectares in the Pastaza basin. But oil and gas
exploitation rights remained with the State. Antonio Vargas, the Shuar
chief who led the march, emerged as a national leader. The Amazo-
nian March marked a milestone in the country’s political consciousness
(Whitten et al. 1997).
In 1994 CONAIE leads another large uprising in the Sierra, protesting
new agrarian laws which would give private investors the rights over
water resources. The political party Pachakutik (Quichua for “Trans-
formation” or “Revolution”), linked to CONAIE, has been elected into
Parliament since 1995. Indigenous mobilizations were key in the fall of
successive Presidents: Abdalá Bucaram (1997), Jamil Mahuad (2000),
Lucio Gutiérrez (2005). They led eventually to the new Constitutions of
1998 and 2008.
The Indian movement(s) aligned with other social forces, unions, par-
ties and ecological movements environmentalists, to resist “neo-Liberal”
policies and measures, especially those which target natural resources
and living standards of the poor. The movements demand the recogni-
tion of the Plurinational State in the Constitution, the self-determination
of Indian peoples in their territories, including natural resources, and
their own juridical system; “indigenous development”, food security;
and reinforcement of the Indigenous cultures (cf. Espinosa 2000).
In part aided by international funds, the Indigenous gained a share
in State bureaucracy through informal quota in new specialized institu-
tions and programmes: the bilingual education system, the local devel-
opment agency COPLADEIN/CODENPE, co-management of projects.
In the process, within the Indigenous organization structure, there grew
a whole generation of highly articulate leaders, who served in Congress,
as Majors of large and small cities, as public servants in State agencies, in
development projects, in political parties, and in international networks.
The Constitution of 1998 recognized broader political rights for the
Indigenous population, including collective land rights and the right to
full consultation in case of projects on their lands. However, in a small
and polarized country, macroeconomic policies did not tally with social
reforms. President Mahuad led the country into a controversial economic
experiment: dollarization. The economic overhaul (which deprived
Ecuador of an independent monetary policy) favoured economic growth
and stimulated exports, but was a harsh income shock for middle- class
and rural Ecuador.
In 1999–2000, great mobilizations forced the exit of “Crazy”
Mahuad. The movement of June 1999 was met with force and violence.
But in January 2000, the Indigenous leaders made a tacit understanding
with middle-level Army officials, to guarantee there would not be blood-
shed. They enter Quito peacefully, occupy the major parks and plazas,
then the Congress and the presidential palace, Carondelet. All “power
places” are in Indian hands. As a chronicle of the events is titled, on
that 21st of January, “Dawn found them in power”. But they were alone
234 Menno Oostra
and wandered through an empty Palace. Mahuad had fled to exile, only
a couple of guards remained. But political power was not there either;
the Palace was a trap. “Who must we call? Will they arrest us?” In the
morning, the leaders return to the parks where their people camped.
Meanwhile, the generals made their calls: Vice-president Noboa, of the
banana business, the richest man of Ecuador, was sworn in as the new
President (cf. Ponce 2000).
Political turmoil continued. As well as opposing “anti-popular” gov-
ernments, CONAIE has supported progressive Presidents, such as Lucio
and later Correa, only to withdraw their support soon. In 2008, Rafael
Correa presided over a new Constitution which not only gave more ex-
plicit attention to Indigenous peoples as ever but also guaranteed the
fundamental rights of Nature in itself. CONAIE supported him initially,
but the next year launched an Uprising against new legislation on water
resources. This time, however, the movement had little impact.
Between 2007 and 2017, Correa profoundly reformed Ecuadorian so-
ciety with the Citizen’s Revolution. Not an Indigenous himself, he tried
like Morales in Bolivia to implement the “Living Well” political phi-
losophy which originates from the Indigenous movements. He provided
economic stability with a strong social component and stabilized its po-
litical turbulence. Under his successor, Lenin Moreno, his social policies
weakened and social unrest grew again, and so did Indigenous mobili-
zation. In October 2019, the nation saw the greatest Levantamiento in
over a decade. IMF called for a sharp rise in domestic fuel prices, among
a package of other measures to develop the economy. After 12 years, the
Indians were once more at the forefront of the social coalition of work-
ers, teachers, unions, peasants and middle classes, resisting anti-popular
“reforms”.
Thousands of protesters came from all over the country to occupy
Quito. They fought with riot police for days, effectively taking civil con-
trol of the city. Large masses of disciplined marchers clashed with heav-
ily armed security forces, confronting intense tear gas and other police
violence. Small groups of hooded men built barricades and burned tyres
to block streets. The airport was blocked. The standoff halted Ecuador’s
oil production, blocked highways and caused hundreds of millions of
dollars in loss to industries from flower-growing to dairy farming and
tourism.
Moreno fled the capital to the port of Guayaquil, decreeing curfews
and martial law. In Quito, clashes continued; of course, some “politi-
cal extremists” joined in the action encouraging violent resistance. One
government building went up in flames, and maybe 10 people died in
confrontations: a high cost and a breach with Ecuador’s non-violent
tradition. After several days, Lenin decided to dialogue. He met the
movement in a Catholic mission school south of Quito. Leonidas Iza,
from Cotopaxi, led the delegation. The meeting started with a minute of
silence saluting the deceased. Then the President derogated the disputed
decrees, maintaining the fuel subsidies and policies the IMF wished to
dismantle. Once more, Ecuador’s Indigenous and rural peoples reas-
serted before the world their say in decisions on how the country is run.
Before leaving Quito, the delegations themselves cleaned up the streets
from the barricades, the debris of the riots and their campsites, the
burned tyres, and returned to their mountain towns and valleys.
Bolivia
The Bolivian highlands are mainly inhabited by Aymara and Quechua
communities; ancient peoples who created great civilizations even long
before the Inca, such as Tiwanaku. The Inca defeated the Aymara in
fierce battles and imposed their rule across the country they called Col-
lasuyo. From the 1530s on, they were replaced by the Spaniards, who
found in Alto Peru one of the prime sources of the gold and silver that
sustained their empire.
The Andean peoples were subjugated but kept resisting. Great Andean
insurrections shook the late colonial period, in 1780–1783, motivated by
the crown’s heavy taxes on all local production and trade, and by their
much-resented colonial political exclusion. In Peru, Tupac Amaru II and
his brothers revolted, expelled the Spaniards and besieged Cuzco, the old
imperial capital. In Bolivia, Tupac Katari, Bartolina Sisa and their com-
panions mobilized armies of thousands of Indians. They beleaguered La
Paz for six months, till the Spaniards were eating their last rats. Eventu-
ally, the movements were cruelly defeated by Spanish expeditions. Their
leaders were decapitated, dismembered and their limbs showed in towns
and cities publicly over the country. These are the leaders and events still
celebrated and remembered in present-day struggles.
Republican life did not bring social justice; while Liberals and Conser-
vatives fought their civil wars, the Indians remained virtually enslaved
on haciendas. In 1932–1935, the bloody Chaco War had a devastating,
and also mobilizing impact on Bolivian rural society, having raised up
armies of thousands of Indian foot soldiers – many of them Guarani – to
fight this proxy war for the world’s large oil companies. The conscripts
were never compensated for it, but they learned to fight and to know
their country.
The deep change came with the National Revolution of 1952, with its
three radical measures: nationalization of the tin mines, distribution of
the hacienda lands, and voting rights for the Indians. Since then, social
and political struggle coursed largely along class lines. For more than
30 years, the main political players were the Bolivian Workers' Central
(Central Obrera Boliviana) (COB) workers’ union, the National Rev-
olutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario) (MRN)
political party, and the military, in alternate periods of democracy and
236 Menno Oostra
dictatorship. In this power game, the military managed from 1963 to
control the rural movement and separate it from the radical miners’,
industrial and unions (the Military-Peasant Pact). It was in those years
that peasant and Indigenous communities gave surprisingly little sup-
port to the National Liberation guerrilla movement led by Ernesto Gue-
vara. COB union leader Federico Escobar, on the contrary, promoted
a revolutionary pact between the miners’ unions and the Che. He was
eventually assassinated because of this.
In this violent and highly politicized context, rural-urban migration
accelerated. The 1970s and 1980s saw the rising of a generation of urban
Aymara intellectuals, whose families had come down from the high-
lands to La Paz and created its parallel city, El Alto. They grew up,
studied and radicalized in the city, where they felt excluded and discrim-
inated against as Indians, while their original communities languished
in poverty and harsh living conditions. They re-invented Indianness (In-
dianidad), founded action research centres, political parties, develop-
ment foundations, periodicals, and student unions. They became known
as Kataristas, originated from the name of the great rebels of the past.
Several Aymara leaders were influential. The exiled theoretician
Fausto Reynaga wrote from Paris proposing an independent Indian
nation, expelling all Spanish elements and restoring Tawantinsuyo,
the Inca times (Reynaga 1970). The legendary rural organizer Genaro
Flores, refounded the national peasant union in 1978 and finalized a
pact with the military. Operating in clandestinely, the movement was
renamed CSUTCB and affiliated with COB. The Katarista Indigenous
movement dominated the union for a decade. In this constellation, Víc-
tor Hugo Cárdenas founded the small MRTK political party (Tupac
Katari Revolutionary Movement) and later became the first Indigenous
Vice-President of Bolivia, and chair of the UN Indigenous Fund (Rivera
Cusicanqui 1993). A generation later, Felipe Quispe preached Mariate-
gui, wanted to “Indianize Marxism”, and organized new Aymara-led
political parties.
But it was Evo Morales Ayma who ultimately led to a different kind of
Indigenous takeover of the country. Evo was from Aymara with Quec-
hua heritage, who learned Spanish only at seven at his village school in
Oruro. The son of a poor miner’s family whose fate it was to abandon
their native highlands in the 1980s when the tin mines closed – world
prices had fallen too low and the State mine ownership had failed to
modernize the works and factories in time. It was a social disaster for
tens of thousands of miners, which occurred just after democracy was
reestablished in Bolivia. Evo grew up in the Chapare, a hot frontier in
the Amazon region. Growing coca leaves for the drug mafia that the mil-
itary had left in place, or for the traditional domestic market, became the
only way to survive. The migrants brought with them their organization
tradition, and the cocalero unions became a strong rural movement, in
permanent mobilization against government drug policies. Evo started
as the football coach for a local youth section and climbed up to lead
the national union of coca peasants. He also entered political coalitions
with leftist and alternative parties, such As Izquierda Unida and later the
MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo, Moving towards Socialism).
In 2003 and 2005, Indigenous mobilizations ousted two Presidents
after sustained mass mobilizations and road blockades over the natural
gas policy. The “Gas War” reflected the deep resentment among Boliv-
ia’s population because of the plundering of gold, silver and tin since
colonial times. The Indigenous people claimed that the nation’s energy
wealth was again disappearing into the pockets of white, European-
descended elites. The poor majority should see more benefits. The Indig-
enous movement, as well as many political and social sectors, demanded
nationalization of Bolivia’s natural resources. Citizens of Cochabamba
and El Alto had mobilized for years against water privatization. In 2003,
accumulated tensions exploded in determined in La Paz and other cities,
met with hard Police violence.
President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, Evo’s worthy opponent, was
the richest man of Bolivia, owned the largest gold mine and was called
‘El gringo’ for his North American education and closeness to Washing-
ton (he speaks better English than Spanish). The two had competed for
the Presidency in 2002, narrowly winning Sanchez. Sanchez’ first term
of government, in the 1990s, had been heralded as one of the progres-
sive Liberal modernization reforms; he decentralized some State funding
to the rural – often Indian – municipalities, and he also privatized the
State oil company. But his second term was suffocated in bloodshed.
In October 2003, Sanchez had to flee the country after 56 people were
killed during the protests.
Vice-president Meza, a TV presenter with little political support,
failed to resolve the impasse and a second gas war had to occur 19
months later. In 2005, when Congress approved a new energy law, In-
digenous and social movements decided to mobilize once more. For a
month, tens of thousands of people protested in La Paz. Crowds para-
lyzed the city trying to lay siege to the Parliament building. Riot police
fired tear gas and made arrests. Protesters were accused of hurling sticks
of lit dynamite. The movements blockaded La Paz for more than two
weeks, leaving the capital suffering food and fuel shortages. In a way,
they re-enacted the siege of the city by the Katari rebels in 1780. Mesa
resigned in June 2005; in December, in elections supervised by the Su-
preme Court, the miner’s son and coca grower was elected President of
the country.
Evo was inaugurated thrice: in Tiwanaku, at the shores of Titicaca
Lake, before the shamans and ancestors of the Andes peoples; in Con-
gress, before Parliament, politicians and diplomats; and up on the Plaza
San Francisco in La Paz where the movement rallied, before tens of
238 Menno Oostra
thousands of followers, just like in the long months of struggles they had
shared the hard way.
There came fast changes, symbolic and very visible too. Salaries of the
President and his ministers were cut by half. Energy, oil and communi-
cation were nationalized or severely taxed and regulated (but all mul-
tinationals remained in the country). Social benefits and subsidies for
the elderly, the children, and many other distributive policies came into
force. And he presided over the new Constitution of Bolivia into a Pluri-
national republic, which guaranteed the rights of Mother Nature herself.
Internationally, Evo clashed with established consensus on matters like
drugs policy and climate change. He chewed “proscribed” coca leaves
when speaking to the UN drugs conference in Vienna, and Bolivia was
the only country voting against the (miserable) UN climate consensus in
Cancun. These stances derive directly from his Indigenous worldview
and agenda, which he kept showing off with his Aymara-styled clothing.
In his first years, Evo confronted hard opposition and violent sepa-
ratist moves from the Santa Cruz political economic block, which had
provided already many military rulers. In the eastern, non-Andean area
of the country, the Revolution of 1952 had not applied, and the economy
and ruling classes are based on large haciendas with cattle, sugar cane
and soy. There are deep cultural and ethnic cleavages between “the two
Bolivia’s”, and concepts as “indigenous” and “autonomy” have other
meanings in the mouth of rich German- or Croatian-descendant soy
farmers, more oriented to Brazil than to La Paz.
After his second re-election, in 2014, apparently, some understanding
was reached, at a time that blooming economic returns and a generous
spending State could ease away many obstacles. Bolivia lived a decade of
economic growth and at the same time welfare distribution and social de-
velopment, but its dependence on mineral resources did not change. New
gold, oil and gas sources were opened to feed the world markets, and also
lithium, which was found to lay abundantly below the pristine Salar de
Uyuni and is consumed in every cell phone and electric car of the world.
In later years, Evo came under increasing pressure from diverse sides.
After all, a Movement for Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo) (MAS)
government was not synonymous with an Indigenous government. In
2011, Evo clashed with large mobilizations of the Eastern lowlands peo-
ples, who protested against the penetration of the Isiboro-Sécure Indig-
enous and natural reserve, in the Beni forests. The conflict centred on
the construction of a highway, which in the Amazon context inevitably
means colonization, logging, nature degradation and wildlife extinction,
not to speak of the Indigenous inhabitants. They marched to La Paz, but
government forces received them halfway with unexpected force. They
accused Evo of benefitting the Quechua-speaking colonists coming in
from his Chapare stronghold. Eventually, they got to the capital, but
Morales’ image as the voice of all Indigenous was seriously damaged.
New tensions accumulated during the widespread Amazon forest fires
of 2019; Evo was accused of doing too little, too late, to save unique
natural reserves, and of giving too much of it away to the big landown-
ers in the years before. In October 2019, after months of struggle and a
rough electoral campaign, Evo was forced out of office by a coalition of
rightist politicians, regional leaders, rebelling police and entrepreneurs.
He just had won the election for his fourth term, a controversial and
polarizing issue in the months before. Accusing him of fraud, protesters
won the streets, attacking government agencies; the Indigenous mobi-
lized too and clashes became daily. Under growing intimidation, without
the support of the armed forces and fearing more violence, Evo and his
immediate followers abandoned the country. In the power vacuum, the
third Parliament vice-chair took charge; the military and the Embassies
promptly recognized her. “The Bible has returned”, she said when enter-
ing the presidential palace, and showed it. It was a bitter setback for the
Indigenous rights movement in Bolivia and in the hemisphere.
Whoever is in power, the structural contradictions of Bolivian society
remain explosive: always pinned between a profound Indigenous iden-
tity and an equally real mestizo national identity; between the Andes,
the Eastern departments, and the Pacific coast lost to Chile in 1879; and
no less, between the inexhaustible metal and mineral treasures below its
territories, and the limitless need and greed of the world markets.
Brazil
Many Indigenous peoples have lived throughout Brazil's vast territories,
often sparsely disturbed for centuries, but more often expelled and ex-
ploited.The first colonizers, the French, the Portugese and the Dutch,
traded with the coastal peoples such as the Tupinamba and involved
them in their wars. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Portu-
guese slave hunters/traders raided the hinterland: the middle and upper
Amazon tributaries, the Guarani lands in the South, capturing enslaved
Indians for the plantations downstream. The expeditions of the Bandei-
rantes desolated the Jesuit mission colonies in Paraguay. The Yukuna
of the upper Japurá still recall the Mirabara, the white cannibals who
came up from Manaus to capture them, trade them from enemy tribes,
concentrate them in corrals and ship them away to the plantations of the
lower Amazon (Oostra 1979).
The twentieth century brought the genocidal rubber period and then
the establishment of FUNAI – Fundacion Nacional do Indio – the na-
tional agency charged with the protection of Indigenous peoples. Which
ended up being of little effect, at best paternalistic, and often serving
cattle ranchers and logging interests to “pacify” and displace the com-
munities. After the military coups of the 1960s, Brazil embarked on a
fast economic growth path and ruthless development programmes in its
240 Menno Oostra
hinterlands, such as the Trans-Amazonian Highway, which opened up
vast tribal areas. The “Brazilian Miracle” had a dark side. In the 1960s,
while “Man went to the Moon”, Amazon forest developers threw na-
palm, poisoned food and measles-infected clothes to the scarcely known
populations, in order to “clear up” the territories for development. In
1969 the genocidal practices became internationally known through
shocking publications in the London press (Lewis 1969). An interna-
tional scandal exploded, prompting a still-ongoing publicity campaign
and the creation of a network of solidarity NGOs.
In 1973 Brazil adopted a new Indian Statute (Estatuto do Indio) which
addressed some of the worst criticism, but FUNAI kept failing. In the
pretext of the violent counter-insurgency war, the Brazilian military was
unleashing their force on their country, and even the Indigenous were
not spared.
However, organizing on their own, Brazil’s Indigenous peoples and
their political resistance have become a standard of social and envi-
ronmental struggle. The many Brazilian peoples are dispersed, remote
and not very numerous. However, they have managed to reach out and
become nationally and internationally famous for their high-profile
cultural defence, which coincides with the defence of the tropical rain
forests. The Kayapo have been in the forefront, just as the Yanomami
and the Guajajara, the Terena, the Kaiowa-Guarani, the Xucuru. In the
1980s they operate through the UNI, Union of Indigenous Nations.
In 1985 the long military dictatorship ended, and in 1988 a new Con-
stitution was proclaimed, recognizing a number of important rights of
the Indigenous people, particularly their communal lands. In the follow-
ing years, the practical and on-terrain demarcation of those lands, in
order to make close them for loggers and miners, was a major effort for
the Indigenous organizations and allied NGOs alike. In the following
years, there were great advances in demarcation, but there is still a long
way to go. Demarcation is a costly and juridically complex process. It
also has been hindered by changing political tides; president Temer in
2017 attempted to stop demarcation with a temporary limit in 1988.
Though he was outruled by the Supreme Court, he weakened the powers
and funding of FUNAI.
Round 2010, the national organization APIB (Articulación de los
Pueblos Indígenas do Brazil – Coordination of Indigenous Peoples of
Brazil) comprised six large regional federations, of all peoples of the
immense country: the Northeast, the Pantanal, the South and South-
east, the Guarani, the Amazonians. A national leader referred to three
phases in Brazil’s Indigenous movement: “We passed through the pre-
constitutional moment, where our leaders fought to guarantee Indige-
nous rights. Then, there was the time to fight for the implementation of
the rights we won. And now, we are fighting to preserve these rights”
(Sonia Guajajara in Amazon Watch 2014).
They fight against the economic growth strategy of the Brazilian State,
including the leftist governments of Lula and Dilma Roussef. It is a long
list of over 300 mega-projects: hydropower plants with their dams and
artificial lakes, ports, river deviations, bio-alcohol plants which demand
hundreds of thousands of hectares of land for sugar cane, motorways,
railways, and airstrips. Brazil adopted ILO Convention 169 in 2004,
as well as the UN Declaration a few years later. In practice, the legally
required “previous consultation” for investment projects often is not im-
plemented (APIB 2009).
Brazilian development discourse has not changed from the 1960s to
Bolsonaro in the 2020s, and still sees Indians as outsiders. A claim on
national sovereignty is raised every time Brazilian Indians defend their
forests, because they are portrayed as allies or instruments of foreign
powers who, under the mantle of environment and climate, want to ap-
propriate themselves of Brazilian natural resources. This pose delegiti-
mizes the Indians as strangers on their own land, legitimizing violence
against them. We are a long way from the 1960s, but assassinations still
keep going on: over 600 Indigenous people were killed between 2002
and 2014, the NGO CIMI reported. In later years, this number has only
increased. Some important conflict cases in the last decades have been:
• Kaiowa-Guarani lands in Mato Grosso do Sul, disowned and

threatened by large sugar plantations, cattle ranches and soja grow-
ers: immense export businesses directly linked to world trade and
the political elite.
• Yanomami, Makushi and other Amazon peoples attacked by gold
miners (garimpeiros) and timber loggers who invade their land.
• Protection of “uncontacted” Indian groups living in the far-off for-
est: the right “not to be in touch”.
The Brazilian Indians have indeed played a significant role on the in-
ternational, worldwide and specifically European and North American
stages in the debates on the rain forest. Like the tigers of India, they
also have been sometimes exploited and “hyper-iconized” by Northern
NGOs and publicity interests. But in time they have learned how to play
on the intercultural code languages, and how to articulate with the envi-
ronmental movements without losing their own agendas.
They exploit their “exotic” imagery and visibility to attract attention
to their fundamental rights, on chosen national and international stages,
and shy no opportunity to enter coalitions with Brazil’s cultural, intel-
lectual and political scene. Each year they build a solidarity camp (Terra
Livre, Free Land) in the capital, Brasilia, as a place of convergence of
many social and environmental causes. Some Amazonian leaders sport-
ing their feathers, drums and body paint designs have become widely
known in the world.
242 Menno Oostra
. Raoni Metuktire, chief of the Kaiapo of the Xingu river, was the sub-
ject of a French film of 1978 (also featuring Marlon Brando) on the defence
of the forest and its cultures. In the 1980s, he allied with the singer Sting to
undertake an international publicity tour. New worldwide support made
it possible for him to finish land demarcation and create a vast unified In-
digenous Area in the Xingu in 1993. He has spoken in the United Nations,
was received by two Presidents of France, is an Honorary Citizen of Paris,
and has campaigned against the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam. In 2019,
aged 89, he still speaks out in Congress admonishing president Bolsonaro
to resign for his bad management of the Amazon forest fires.
Davi Kopenawa, a leader, shaman and spokesman of the Yanomami
in the northern Amazon, has led the struggle for the protection of their
land. Davi has long been defending the Yanomami lands. With the sup-
port of international NGOs, the Yanomami fought for the demarcation
of their territory, after an invasion of thousands of illegal gold miners in
the 1980s decimated them. Since then, he has travelled abroad on many
occasions to raise awareness of the rainforest. He spoke at the United
Nations, received the Global 500 award and published the book “The
Falling Sky”, presented at Literary Festivals in Brazil and in London in
2014. For years, he has received death threats and intimidation from the
side of the gold diggers (garimpeiros) that enter the Amazon rivers with
heavy equipment, extracting all gold they can find and leaving a trail of
pollution, corruption and prostitution. They are illegal on Yanomami
land, but in practice, they are mostly tolerated by authorities and seen by
many as adventurous pioneers for a greater Brazil. And they hire armed
men, who intimidate the Indigenous associations and allied NGOs.
Sonia Guajajara: Coming from a Guajajara village in Maranhão, one
of the “disappearing” peoples in the Amazon, she has led the Amazo-
nian Indigenous federation COIAB for years, then became the national
coordinator of APIB. A tireless spokeswoman for the Indigenous move-
ment, she confronts Brazil’s agribusiness bloc, pushing back against
their manifold attacks on Indigenous rights. She also brings this struggle
to the world. In 2009 she spoke on the Climate Summit of Copenhague.
In 2014 she addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in
Geneva, and led public events in Paris, confronting French companies
profiteering from Amazon destruction. In 2017 she performed on stage
with singer Alicia Keys at the Rock in Rio Festival, with a vehement
speech for human and nature rights. “This is the mother of all struggles,
the struggle for Mother Earth!”. The next year, she was a candidate for
the Vice-Presidency of Brazil for the PSOL (Socialism and Liberty Party)
alongside activist Guilherme Boulos. Their ticket raised over 600,000
votes in the elections which ultimately were won by Jair Bolsonaro, a
notorious enemy of nature and Indigenous rights. In 2019, while she
was campaigning in Europe, violence struck her people again when their
forest guard Paulinho Guajajara was killed by timber employees.
International Articulation
Indigenous peoples and movements are firmly present in all Latin Ameri-
can countries, except maybe Uruguay (and the Caribbean islands). From
Surinam to Greenland, from Paraguay to Canada, in all diversity, they
participate from a common, ancient cultural substrate, older than the
national borders imposed on Abya Yala (the New World territories) in
Christian time.
Organized international alliances of American Indigenous peoples
started in the seventies. CISA, Consejo Indio Sur Americano, was
founded in Peru in 1980, and in 1983 it celebrated a great First Congress
in Tiwanaku, at Lake Titicaca, assisting hundreds of delegates of several
countries. The organization did not survive for long, due to a combina-
tion of political repression, divisions and financial problems.
COICA, the regional Amazonian alliance of Indigenous organiza-
tions, started up in 1983 with five members – national or subnational
Indigenous alliances of Colombia (ONIC), Ecuador (CONFENIAE),
Peru (AIDESEP), Bolivia (CIDOB) and Brazil (COIAB). In the following
years, Venezuela and the three Guianas adhered. COICA has lived times
of effective coordination work; in the 1990s, it led a strong lobby cam-
paign against biopiracy and theft of Indigenous intellectual property –
their knowledge of medicinal plants. In 2005, COICA was deeply
divided, with half of its members celebrating its Congress in Santa Cruz,
Bolivia, and the other half in French Guyana, each accusing the other
of illegitimacy. These situations are temporary and mostly depend on
leadership rivalries within the national federations, which jump over on
the international coordination offices. The more recent Andean regional
coordination CAOI (Coordinadora Andina de Organizaciones Indíge-
nas) reunites ONIC, CONAIE, CONACAMI (Peru), AIDESEP, CONA-
MAQ (Bolivia) and several Chilean and Argentinean organizations.
A steady cycle of international Indigenous encounters has been an im-
portant instrument to gauge the social force gained by the movement
across Latin America. The Indigenous had their parallel sessions of the
1992 UN Environment Summit of Rio, and often share stages with in-
ternational ecological and NGO conferences, under the banner “An-
other world is possible”. The II Summit of Indigenous Peoples of Abya
Yala, in Quito, 2004, attracted some 1,000 participants; in May 2009,
the V Summit in Puno, Peru, on the shore of Lake Titicaca, registered
over 6,000 delegates, from all American countries and peoples, from the
highlands to the plains and rainforests. It was a meeting with a high po-
litical profile, in the context of the struggle of Peruvian Amazon people
against oil and gas exploration. They had been blockading roads and oil
installations for months and confronted a stark discourse of the govern-
ment. President Alan Garcia compared the Indians with “the dog of the
farmer”: he doesn’t eat of the vegetables he’s guarding, but he neither
244 Menno Oostra
lets anyone else. Days after the Congress, where all major Amazonian
leaders spoke, the movement exploded in the massacre of Bagua, where
more than 35 fell dead, both Indigenous and policemen.
These regional and continental Congresses and Conferences go on as a
permanent roll-call of the Indian struggles in the various countries, and
a powerful educative instrument in itself. There the peoples unify around
cultural practices, joining in rituals of protection of Mother Earth, “the
world”, Pachamama or her other many names. And this unity is politi-
cally manifest when, fully operating with twenty-first- century technol-
ogy, their shamans, their political leaders and their women alike know
how to communicate across all boundaries and languages.
Conclusion
Indigenous movements are not merely “Social movements” comparable to
workers’, peasants’, women’s, environmental, human rights, anti-racist,
LGTBIX+ or animal rights movements. They are not made up of volun-
tary and self-chosen conscious citizens within an established legal order.
Instead, Latin American Indigenous persons are born into the situation of
a fundamental conflict that has existed unresolved since the European con-
quest and the establishment of colonial and national States in the Americas.
Latin American Indigenous peoples and movements constitute a dis-
tinctive, almost unique phenomenon in the world panorama, which
cannot be understood in terms of class nor of race alone. Are they a
cultural transition from the mythical to the political? Not exactly: tra-
ditional values, especially the relationship with Nature (Mother Earth)
keep guiding political stances and legitimacy. In a language now adapted
to international law discourse and organizations, they remain strongly
linked to traditional cosmology and ritual.
Do Indians retard “progress”? Rather, they challenge the idea of
progress or development as ever-growing technological and economical
power, with ever-increasing competition and inequality. In their holistic
view, “Living good” is the contrary of “Living better” than someone
else, which provides a strong perspective against the Western growth
myth. The Living Well philosophy and adjacent debates are a very rele-
vant contribution to the world’s thought on human development.
Changing political and economic environments, globalization forces,
progressive and reactionary currents, will continue to shape Latin Amer-
ica. But the Indigenous movements are not new: on the contrary, they are
the oldest of all. And they will always be there.
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10 Cultural Platforms during the
Transitions to Democracy in
the Southern Cone
New Magazines and
Institutions in Argentina, Chile
and Uruguay (1973–1990)
Sofía Mercader and Lucas Domínguez Rubio
Introduction
This chapter examines the strategies of public reinsertion set forth by
scholars and intellectuals in Southern Cone countries during the period
known as the “transition to democracy” (O’Donnell 1986, 6). An exam-
ination of the Argentine, Chilean, and Uruguayan cases will allow us to
identify similarities and differences between these processes, which, to
a great extent, defined and shaped the foundations of democracy in the
Southern Cone.
There are good reasons to study the dictatorial period in these three
countries insofar as the military regimes in Argentina (1976–1983),
Chile (1973–1990), and Uruguay (1973–1985) shared a number of
features. Inspired by the National Security doctrine originated in the
United States, these regimes mainly aimed at suppressing “subversion”,
the term euphemistically used by the military to refer to the rise of the
Latin American left –especially left-wing armed groups– in the global
context of the Cold World. Under these dictatorships, constitutional
guarantees were suspended and political parties were banned, tens of
thousands were forced into exile, and economic policies tended to favour
financial and foreign capital, leading to a reduction of the state. Transi-
tions to democracy in the aftermath of these dictatorships also shared a
set of features, such as the restoration of political participation and con-
stitutional guarantees, the massive return of exiles, the revalorisation of
democratic political practices and the broadening of the cultural sphere,
which was reflected in the emergence of new magazines, academic and
cultural institutions and research centres for the social sciences.
Nevertheless, there is a risk in considering these processes as follow-
ing identical patterns, for each country negotiated the transition from
the dictatorial regime into democracy differently. In the same vein, in
the aftermath of the repressive period, cultural expressions resurfaced
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-13
248 Sofía Mercader and Lucas Domínguez Rubio
through different means and intellectuals explored alternative ways of
re-integrating into public life.
Argentina underwent a transition by collapse or rupture, character-
ised by the defeat of the military regime and the emergence of a demo-
cratic government with relative freedom from restriction over the course
of the transition by the outgoing authoritarian rulers (Mainwaring 1989,
25). In effect, the Argentine military government started to show signs
of wearing down towards 1981, as it suffered an internal collapse. On
the one hand, the Process of National Reorganisation (as the regime
branded itself) exerted an unprecedented repression over Argentine cit-
izens: it is estimated that tens of thousands were imprisoned, tortured,
killed, or disappeared and that over 350,000 people fled the country
throughout the dictatorial period (Roniger et al. 2017, 101). In this con-
text, the denunciation of human rights violations became increasingly
visible thanks to the activism of organisations such as the Madres de
Plaza de Mayo [Mothers of Plaza de Mayo] and the Abuelas [Grand-
mothers of Plaza de Mayo], the Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos
Humanos [Permanent Assembly for Human Rights], and the Servicio de
Paz y Justicia Argentina [Peace and Justice Service Argentina], whose
founder, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980.1 On
the other hand, the Argentine economy was in a critical state: by 1982,
gross domestic product (GDP) had fallen by 9%, the inflation rate was
at a monthly 7% and the mounting public debt was leading the economy
to a severe crisis (Gerchunoff, and Llach 2007, 373).
In this context, the military government led at the time by General
Leopoldo Galtieri (1926–2003) embarked on an armed conflict against
the United Kingdom over the Malvinas/Falklands Islands in April 1982.
It was the military’s last attempt to gather the support of the population
by resorting to a historical claim amid the economic and moral crisis
Argentina was facing. Despite the manipulative character of the war, a
majority of Argentines supported the invasion, for the sovereignty claims
over the Islands were largely considered a national cause that was valid
beyond the motives behind the military offensive. Ill-equipped and ill-
experienced, the Argentine army was not, however, in a position to defeat
the British forces and the conflict ended in June 1982, when Argentina
surrendered to the United Kingdom. In parallel, the main political par-
ties created the Multipartidaria, a multiparty alliance that aimed to ex-
ert pressure on the military to leave power. Democratic elections were
finally celebrated on October 30th, 1983, where the majority of Argen-
tines cast their votes in favour of Raúl Alfonsín (1927–2009), a progres-
sive politician from the traditionally centrist Radical Party. Soon after,
the new government re-established the 1853 constitution, created the
Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas [ National Com-
mission on Disappearances of Persons (CONADEP)] in order to gather
all the information available on the victims of repression, implemented
Cultural Platforms in the Southern Cone 249
important legal reforms with a progressive orientation, and designed a
strategy to prosecute the military juntas for the human rights violations
committed under the dictatorship.
The trials against the juntas, which began in April 1985, were of para-
mount importance for the transition, for the military were held account-
able for the crimes committed only a few years earlier. The preparations
for the trials had started with the creation of CONADEP, which pub-
lished its final report in September 1984. This liminar document, which
served as a main source of information for the prosecutors and was pub-
lished as a book under the title Nunca Más, has remained the most
important account of the gruesome and cruel system of repression imple-
mented by the military. By the end of the trials, the main members of the
juntas (Orlando Agosti, Armando Lambruschini, Emilio Massera, Jorge
Rafael Videla) were sentenced to prison. The strategy of swiftly imple-
menting retroactive justice, however, suffered many setbacks in the years
that followed as impunity laws were passed in the 1990s under Carlos
Menem’s presidency and only in 2004, under Néstor Kirchner’s gov-
ernment (2003–2007) were the trials resumed. Nonetheless, the trials
against the juntas remain one of the key events of the transitional period
as they set the basis for a recovery of democratic values, both at a mate-
rial level with the imprisonment of the military juntas and at a symbolic
level, as the image of the military under trial was firmly imprinted in the
collective memory as a reminder that they were, now, subordinated to
civilian rule.
Chile, unlike Argentina, went through a pacted transition. In 1973,
the military regime that overthrew President Salvador Allende (1908–
1973) declared a state of siege, suspended the constitution, dissolved
Congress, banned political parties, and imposed severe restrictions on
the media. It also implemented a policy of human rights violations that
entailed the torture, kidnapping, disappearance, and killing of people
perceived by the regime as a threat, which lasted over ten years. In the
economic realm, Pinochet entrusted the economy to Chilean economists
who had completed postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago.
In fact, Milton Friedman (1912–2006) visited Chile two times, in 1975
and 1981. As their own supporters recognised, Pinochet’s economists
imposed the most extreme market-oriented economy in the region. Un-
der what is known as the “terrorist” period between 1973 and 1980, the
Chilean economy showed a sustained GDP growth, which led Friedman
to coin the term “Chilean miracle” to describe the success of his own
theories, a term that became widely used in the Chilean press of those
years.2
The dictatorship came to an end in 1990, but the transitional period
had begun much earlier. Compared to Argentina, the Chilean dictator-
ship enjoyed a greater institutional status and consensus among citizens,
which arguably explains why Pinochet managed to remain in power for
such a long period. In 1980, seven years after the coup, the military
succeeded in imposing a new constitution, which at the time was con-
sidered illegitimate by a large part of society. Nonetheless, the institu-
tional framework provided by the new patriotic text was progressively
accepted by the different political organisations. These political groups
would later participate in the 1988 plebiscite to decide the regime’s con-
tinuity, which had been foreseen by the 1980 constitution. The outcome
of this referendum denied Pinochet an extension of his mandate and he
was subsequently obliged to call for elections. In this negotiated transi-
tion, the military maintained a number of privileges, and political par-
ties had to abide by the agreements negotiated with the outgoing rulers.
The process, however, surprised the actors involved: Pinochet al-
lowed a transparent plebiscite in 1988, different political parties
grouped together under a broad coalition and, ultimately, the transi-
tion was conducted in a peaceful manner. In the plebiscite, the newly
created Concertation of Parties for the No [Concertación de Partidos
por el No] won with 55.99% of the votes. This coalition later became
the Concertation of Parties for Democracy [Concertación de Partidos
por la Democracia, Concertación] that won the first elections after the
transition and remained in office from March 1990 to March 2010.
Chile’s pacted transition entailed the acceptance of the armed forces
as a valid political actor within a democracy, granted Augusto Pino-
chet parliamentary immunity as lifetime senator, and prevented the
military to be held accountable thanks to the Amnesty law decreed by
the military regime.
Uruguay, like Chile, went through a negotiated transition. The mili-
tary dictatorship in Uruguay differed from their South American coun-
terparts in that the dictatorial period did not begin with a coup, but with
the so-called autogolpe (self-coup) of 1973, when President Juan María
Bordaberry (1928–2011) suspended the Congress and banned political
parties with the implicit support of the armed forces. This was regarded
as the culmination point of the rising military influence on the political
realm, which significantly undermined the democratic tradition that had
characterised Uruguayan politics throughout most of the twentieth cen-
tury (Gillespie 1991, 46–49).
In effect, Uruguay had not experienced military regimes (with the ex-
ception of Gabriel Terra’s de facto government in the 1930s) and it was
often regarded as a unique country in the region as democratic practices
were deeply rooted there. It was under the government of José Batlle y
Ordóñez (1856–1929) in the early twentieth century that Uruguay ad-
opted a model of consensual democracy, according to which conflicts
often found resolution in consensual practices (Roniger, and Sznajder
1998, 135). Moreover, polarisation between the two traditional parties,
Colorados and Blancos, was relatively soft in comparison with partisan
conflicts in neighbouring countries. However, the grounds on which the
1973 de facto government was implemented were rather similar than
those motivating the coups d’etat in Argentina and Chile, such as the
threat of left-wing subversion, the need to “restore order”, and the urge
to deactivate guerrilla groups (in Uruguay, Tupamaros was the main
armed left-wing group).
The combination of these circumstances and the weakening and frag-
mentation of political parties led the military to exert control over Pres-
ident Bordaberry. The Uruguayan military did not orchestrate a truly
systematic plan for the disappearance, torture, and assassination of mil-
itants. However, a number of deaths were reported, the per capita prison
population was the highest in South America during 1976, and between
250,000 and 300,000 people fled, a number that represented a 10%–
13% of the country’s total population (Gillespie 1991, 50; Roniger et al.
2017, 107). Among the exiles, Wilson Ferreira Aldunate (1918–1988) – a
progressive leader from the more traditional Blanco Party, particularly
seen as a main national threat by the military – played a key role in
the campaign against the dictatorship. The other leading political figure
to whom the military tried to repress was Líber Seregni (1916–2004),
founder and leader of the left-wing coalition Broad Front [Frente Amplio
(FA)], who was imprisoned in Uruguay for almost a decade.
Most historians consider the transition to democracy in Uruguay to
have properly begun in 1980 after the military failed to receive popular
support in a referendum on the continuation of their rule in the country.
After this defeat, the military established a series of negotiations with the
main political parties –with the exception of the FA, which remained il-
legal until 1985 – in order to celebrate party internal elections. Although
the military attempted to neutralise the centre-left factions within the
Blancos and the Colorados, these sectors prevailed (Gillespie 1991, 79,
80). In the 1982 party primaries, the progressive current within the Col-
orados, the Batllismo, and within the Blancos, the Wilsonismo, won
the elections, ultimately shattering the regime’s goal of steering parties
towards more conservative political leadership.
In 1984, a series of negotiations between all parties and the military
juntas (this time, the FA was included) resulted in the Naval Club Pact,
which dictated the steps to follow in order to restore democracy. The
constitution was reenacted, political prisoners were freed, and all polit-
ical parties were allowed to participate in the elections celebrated that
year. Julio María Sanguinetti (1936–), the Colorados’ candidate, won
the elections by 41% of the votes. Sanguinetti had stated that he was
not going to seek to try the military for the human rights violations
committed under the dictatorship and the Law of Expiration of criminal
responsibility, enacted in 1986, was passed in order to grant an amnesty
to the military. However discouraging this was for the left, the law was
confirmed by a popular referendum in 1989 and again in a plebiscite in
2009 (Roniger et al. 2017, 151).
In general terms, dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay
were similar. Military regimes held a persistent anti-communist stance
–which can be understood in the context of the so-called Cultural Cold
War– that justified, in their view, the prohibition of political parties, the
dissolution of Parliament, censorship, and the systematic violation of
basic human rights. But by the time that these military regimes ended,
the global context had significantly changed, especially with the end of
the Cold War in 1989. The anti-communist rhetoric and disputes over
socialism versus capitalism were over and the demise of military author-
itarianism paved the way for a widespread consensus regarding presi-
dential and parliamentary democracy, which came to be perceived as
the most desirable form of representation. Intellectuals and the cultural
platforms from which they made their voices heard significantly contrib-
uted to this consensus, in what has been analysed as the transformation
from the “revolutionary intellectual” of the 1970s to the “intellectual
citizen” of the 1980s. (Lesgart 2003; Farías 2013; Roniger et al. 2017).
In the following pages, we analyse the emergence of new cultural
platforms during the transition period in these countries. By cultural
platforms, we refer to the different devices through which intellectu-
als, writers, and scholars set forth new ideas and theories regarding the
politics of the transition. These kinds of devices mainly include cultural
organisations, research centres, and magazines, launched in the years
surrounding the transitional period. These platforms offered a space for
expression and innovation during a time of instability and uncertainty,
as they allowed intellectuals to advance their ideas and to participate
in the events of the transition, contributing to the reconfiguration of
culture and politics in the Southern Cone. As O’Donnell, Schmitter and
others have highlighted, thinkers and professionals played key roles in
revitalising the practices of civil society and, in a number of cases, even
assuming government management positions (O’Donnell, and Schmitter
1986; Puryear 1994).
Argentina: The Restoration of an Intellectual Field

From the democratic transition onwards, and after seven years of repres-
sion, the intellectual and cultural fields in Argentina entered a period of
dynamism. During the four years that followed the 1983 elections, film
and theatre productions, book publishing, and magazines significantly
grew in number, giving way to a sense of liberation and openness in the
cultural sphere. This cultural growth was also marked by the return
from exile of writers, journalists, scholars, and intellectuals. Moreover,
universities experienced important transformations, paving the way for
both exiles and insiles to return to their traditional workplace.3 How-
ever, this reconfiguration process had been slowly developing prior to
1983, and especially since 1981, when censorship in Argentina began
to decrease. The following pages will thus focus on the period before
and after the transition, as cultural life started to show signs of recovery
already during the dictatorship’s late years.
On the one hand, study groups, centres for research and private in-
stitutes allowed scholars and intellectuals to stay active throughout the
transitional period. Activities organised around these kinds of cultural
platforms gave birth to what was known at the time as the “catacombs
university” (Sabato 1996; Gerbaudo 2013). In the field of social sciences,
for instance, many scholars gathered around two important centres: the
Centro de Estudios de Sociedad y Estados [Centre for the Study of Soci-
ety and States (CEDES)], founded in 1975 by a number of well-known
academics4 and the Centro de Investigaciones Sociales sobre el Estado
y la Administración [Social Sciences Research Centre for the State and
the Administration (CISEA)], one of whose members was Dante Caputo
(1943–2018), a prominent sociologist who later served as foreign min-
ister under President Alfonsín. These centres remained open during the
dictatorship, providing a space for intellectual exchange, and facilitat-
ing a process of ideological and intellectual renovation. While CEDES
remained open during the transition and it is, until today, an important
research centre for social sciences, CISEA did not survive the transition
as many of its members moved to government positions (Roniget et al.
2017, 144).
Another branch of the catacombs university was the Sociedad Argen-
tina de Análisis Filosófico [Argentine Society of Philosophical Analysis
(SADAF)], founded in 1972 by a group of Argentine philosophers who
had studied at Oxford University and wanted to replicate the model of
the Oxford Philosophical Society upon their return to Argentina. While
SADAF was founded under a previous dictatorship, the so-called Argen-
tine Revolution that ruled the country between 1966 and 1973, it man-
aged to maintain its activities throughout the short democratic period of
1973–1976 and, later, during the 1976–1983 dictatorship. Philosopher
Diana Maffía, who attended SADAF’s activities as a student under the
regime, described this institution as “an island of sanity and rationality
in the midst of obscurity” (Maffía 2010). Her statement not only de-
scribes the grim situation in Argentina under the dictatorship but also
the positive appreciation of these semi-clandestine groups.
Although SADAF was mostly dedicated to the professionalisation of
philosophy in Argentina, three of its members – Carlos Santiago Nino,
Jaime Malamud Goti, and Martín Farrell – played a key role in politics
during the democratic transition. Nino (1943–1993), a political philos-
opher who returned to Argentina in 1982 after completing a PhD at the
University of Oxford, was appointed coordinator of the newly created
Consejo para la consolidación de la democracia (Council for the Consol-
idation of Democracy), a special committee for the study and design of
institutional reforms (Roniger et al. 2017, 147). Along with Farrell and
Malamud Goti, Nino became President Alfonsín’s personal advisor for
the design of the trials against the military juntas. In a book published
posthumously, Radical Evil on Trial (1996), he described how closely he
and his two colleagues worked with Alfonsín on the design of the CON-
ADEP and other strategies concerning the trials.
One of Nino’s main concerns was the implementation of retroactive
justice, namely the use of newly enacted criminal law to prosecute mem-
bers of the previous authoritarian regime accused of having committed
atrocities (Nino 1996, vii). In Nino’s view, the trials were not only im-
portant for holding the military accountable for their past actions, but
also for setting the basis of a stable democratic rule. Retroactive justice
was, in other words, the touchstone for the future democracy in Argen-
tina and, insofar as the trials were successfully conducted, they also be-
came an important case of transitional justice worldwide. Nonetheless,
signs of resistance and threats from the military came as early as 1987
with the so-called Semana Santa uprising of military men who opposed
the sentences, which ultimately led to the Due Obedience and Full Stop
laws (Acuña, and Smulovitz 1995).5 This newly enacted legislation sig-
nificantly limited the duration of trials before sentences. Despite these
setbacks, the collaboration between these philosophers and Alfonsín
arguably constitutes the most relevant and decisive episode of collab-
oration between intellectuals and the government in 1980s Argentina.
Cultural platforms such as periodicals also played an important role
in the context of the transition to democracy. Many magazines that
were published under the dictatorship and continued publication after
the transition constitute good examples of cultural resistance, as a num-
ber of periodicals challenged the government and denounced the crimes
committed by the military. A paradigmatic case was the weekly Hu-
mor registrado [Registered Humor] (1978–1999), a humorous magazine
characterised by its comics and strip cartoons, which parodied celeb-
rities, topical issues, politicians, and the military. Although the maga-
zine sustained a mocking and grotesque tone, each instalment included
a long interview, from which the humorous tone was usually absent. In
these interviews, writers, journalists, politicians or local cultural figures
expressed, in the majority of the cases, their opposition to the regime.
Although the magazine endured political pressure from the government,
it was so popular (by 1980 it sold 60,000 copies on average) that the mil-
itary did not dare to shut it down (Humor 1980, 3). Less popular period-
icals also rather explicitly opposed the military, such as Nueva Presencia
[New Presence] (1977–1993), a weekly publication linked to the Jewish
community of Buenos Aires and directed by Herman Schiller (1937–).
The periodical denounced the disappearances of people and even pub-
lished opinion columns by a political prisoner, Hernán Invernizzi (for a
study of Nueva Presencia see Kahan 2019, 204–233). Towards the end
of the dictatorship period, El Porteño [The Porteño] (1982–1993) also
became a significant critical voice. Published on a monthly basis and
explicitly opposed to the regime, this left-leaning magazine focused on
issues such as feminism, homosexuality, drugs, and rock music. These
subjects were rather new for the Argentine left and were also profoundly
transgressive for the official discourse imposed by the military.
Furthermore, the most sophisticated and respected cultural publica-
tion from the period was Punto de Vista [Point of view] (1978–2008).
This review was first published in 1978 in Buenos Aires and was founded
by Carlos Altamirano (1939–), Beatriz Sarlo (1942–), and Ricardo Piglia
(1941–2017), with the financial support of a Maoist-oriented organisa-
tion, Vanguardia Comunista [Communist Vanguard]. The leaders of this
left-wing group were disappeared by the military when the magazine’s
second issue was in the printing press, but the three founders decided to
carry on with the project. Punto de Vista would increasingly become the
publication of reference within the intellectual field and the “hegemonic
magazine in the field of cultural magazines in 1980s Argentina” (Patiño
1997, 23). The review’s masthead was revista de cultura (cultural re-
view), and therefore culture, in its numerous and diverse manifestations,
was the main subject of analysis of its articles, which covered topics
from literary, cultural and aesthetic criticism to the history of ideas and
intellectuals and from cultural and political sociology to mass media
analysis.
One of the most important contributions of Punto de Vista during
the dictatorship was its ability to maintain, as the catacombs univer-
sity did, a space for intellectual reunion. And the most evident exam-
ple of how successful the magazine was in achieving this goal was the
connection its editors established with Argentine intellectuals living in
exile. In particular, the editors of Punto de Vista maintained links with
a group of exiles in Mexico who had published the magazine Controver-
sia [Controversy] (1979–1981). Controversia was founded by prominent
intellectual figures such as Juan Carlos Portantiero (1934–2007), José
Aricó (1931–1991), and Emilio de Ípola (1939–), among others. After
1983 and upon their return to Argentina, Portantiero and Aricó joined
Punto de Vista’s editorial board, while Piglia left the magazine around
this time. Aricó and Portantiero would later found another magazine,
La Ciudad Futura [City of the Future] (1986–1998, 2001–2004), whose
articles tackled questions such as socialism and democracy, intellectual
reflections on the Latin American left, the revision of Marxism, and
assessments of Alfonsín’s government.
As censorship and repression began to decrease towards 1981, Punto
de Vista adopted a more politicised stance. The editors never ceased to
hold political viewpoints, but these had to be veiled during the initial
issues as it was already too dangerous to publish the magazine in such
risky circumstances. From 1981 onwards, Punto de Vista disclosed its
political views by condemning the dictatorship, opposing the Falklands/
Malvinas War against the predominant nationalist discourse fostered
by the military, and supporting the democratisation process opened in
1983. Particularly important was the reflection on the crisis of the po-
litical left and the elaboration of a theory of democracy displayed in its
pages, which was mainly introduced by the Argentines returning from
Mexico. Most left-wing intellectuals had changed, they no longer en-
dorsed revolutionary utopias and were now advocating for less radical
goals, such as the consolidation of a stable and enduring democracy
that would incorporate demands for social justice, human rights, and
the modernisation of institutions. Most of the intellectuals gathered
around Punto de Vista progressively detached themselves from the
hard-line Marxism they had adopted in the 1960s and 1970s, putting
forward a socialist programme that incorporated elements from polit-
ical liberalism (Lesgart 2003, 149). Punto de Vista and its members
were, in this sense, setting forth what Garategaray and Reano called
a new “political language” based on consensus and democracy, which
dominated public discussions during the transition (Garategaray, and
Reano 2017).
But the collaboration between Punto de Vista and the intellectuals
returning from exile was not limited to magazine collaboration, for they
also attempted to set forth a political programme through the Club de
Cultura Socialista (CCS) [Socialist Culture Club]. Founded in Buenos
Aires in 1984 by members of Punto de Vista and the exiles returning
from Mexico, the CCS was a club for political and intellectual debate.
It was a meeting hub for scholars, politicians, journalists, and artists
who believed that it was imperative to make a contribution to the con-
solidation of democracy through an intellectual and progressive per-
spective. From its foundation and up to 2008, when it closed down,
the Club hosted a significant number of local and foreign scholars who
lectured on different topics and engaged in discussions with both senior
and young intellectuals in Argentina. Nevertheless, it was during the
years of the transition that the Club played a leading role in the intel-
lectual field, hosting activities every week and providing a platform for
discussion and debate for many intellectuals who, after so many years of
repression, were eager to have their voices heard (for an analysis of the
CCS, see Ponza 2013).
Even President Alfonsín sought the advice of CCS members. Sergio
Bufano (1943–), Emilio de Ípola, and Juan Carlos Portantiero, found-
ers of the CCS and contributors to Punto de Vista, served as presiden-
tial advisors through their affiliation to the Grupo Esmeralda [Emerald
Group] (Elizalde 2009). This group, comprising experts in political
theory, used to meet with Alfonsín every week in the presidential house
in Olivos to plan the President’s speeches. One of the most important
speeches Alfonsín gave, often considered as a main political text in
Argentine contemporary history, was the “Discurso de Parque Norte”
[North Park Speech], written by Bufano, de Ípola, and Portantiero. It
was delivered by Alfonsín to the Radical Party’s national committee in
December 1985 and it was structured around the notion of modernisa-
tion, as it proposed not only an economic modernisation but also the
establishment of modern democracy with modern institutions (Aboy
Carlés 2004).
Democracy was the keyword of the period, and great expectations
were placed on it, as expressed in the emblematic phrase coined by Al-
fonsín in a campaign speech: “democracy feeds, cures, and educates”.6
There were reasons to believe that intellectuals had an important role to
play in civic life: Alfonsín listened to intellectuals, he sought their advice
when planning the judicial strategy for the trials, entrusted them the
writing of some of his speeches and he was personally engaged with dis-
cussions taking place in the intellectual sphere. Moreover, intellectuals,
and particularly those in Punto de Vista and the CCS, were now being
recognised as authoritative figures.
The above-mentioned groups are therefore generally regarded as
aligned with Alfonsín’s government during the transition. They ex-
press better than other groups the breadth of the “consensus of 1983”,
namely the notion that the establishment of democracy would lead to a
re-foundation of the social contract, a new economic model, new insti-
tutions based on ethical principles, and, in short, to a resolution of long-
term and recurrent problems of economic and political instability and
authoritarianism (Novaro, and Palermo 2003, 12, 13). Many intellectu-
als directly participated in the reconfiguration of culture and intellectual
activity during the transition while they also believed that democracy
was the key to solve Argentine problems. However, other groups were
less aligned with the politics set forth by the government
Those aligned with Peronism, for instance, were best represented by
Unidos [United] magazine (1983–1991), a project led by politician Car-
los “Chacho” Álvarez (1948–), which sought to establish a platform for
intellectual discussion on the new challenges for Peronism (Garategaray
2010). After the defeat of 1983, Peronism was in crisis, and for those
intellectuals aligned with it, it was time to reconsider, or even found,
the basis of a renovated and more democratic approach. Unidos was
therefore aligned with what was known in the political arena as the ren-
ovación peronista [Peronist renovation], led by Antonio Cafiero (1922–
2014), a movement within Peronism that incorporated liberal-democratic
values, which had never been Peronism’s strongest point (Garategaray
2013). Unidos opposed Alfonsín insofar as the intellectuals who gath-
ered around this magazine were sceptical of the government’s discursive
endorsement of formal democracy. For Peronists, more urgent than the
consolidation of formal democracy and civil and political liberties was
to bring what they called “substantive” democracy to society, referring
to social and cultural equality.7
The second group of intellectuals –more marginal than the other two,
but relevant in order to understand the disputes within the intellectual
field– was composed of those intellectuals aligned with an extreme
leftist discourse. The representative magazines of this group were Pie
de Página [Page Footer] (1983–1985), Mascaró (1984–1986), Praxis
(1983–1986), and La Bizca [The Cross-eyed] (1985–1986), all edited
by a younger generation than the Punto de Vista group. Although they
were not particularly influential magazines, they represented quite ac-
curately the standpoint of a more intransigent left that accused an older
generation of leftist intellectuals of betraying their previous beliefs (Pa-
tiño 1997, 17). In Praxis, for example, theoretical problems of Marxism
were discussed, but the superiority of Marxism and the endorsement of
a socialist future were always in the background of analyses. The Praxis
group thus sustained a critique of liberal democracy and considered
Alfonsín’s government an expression of a social democratic movement
that they rejected in favour of a more revolutionary process (Praxis
1984, 1–3, 161–176). By the time that Praxis was published, La Bizca
also set out to challenge the democratic discourse and abandonment of
Marxism by leftists’ intellectuals such as those joined together in Punto
de Vista.
Despite the intellectual disputes represented by these magazines,
as Juan Carlos Torres (2004, 193–197) has argued, one of the main
features of the cultural field in the transition was the dissolution of
ideological-political borders. In hindsight, intellectuals and writers be-
came generally less concerned about past ideological discussions and
more concerned about forward-looking problems. Most members of
the Argentine new left of the 1970s, for example, had abandoned their
partisan militancy and, although ideological discussions and divisions
still defined intellectual groupings, they more or less shared the political
“consensus of 1983”, based on a rejection of authoritarianism and a
valorisation of democracy.
In short, the above-analysed cultural platforms set the basis for a rein-
corporation of intellectuals into public life in Argentina. They provided
spaces for debate and theoretical advancements in the social sciences and
cultural criticism. Moreover, they show the extent to which intellectu-
als actively engaged in the transition to a new democratic order. Recent
studies have suggested the absence of a proper institutional policy con-
cerning exiles and insiles and their absorption into the mainstream of
public life in Argentina, unlike in Chile and Uruguay, where many intel-
lectuals were incorporated into state institutions and occupied political
positions after the transition as we shall see below (Roniger et al. 2017).
Nonetheless, experiences such as Nino’s involvement in Alfonsín’s gov-
ernment, the Grupo Esmeralda, and the CCS are good examples of the
extent to which Argentine intellectuals engaged in politics during the
transition.
Chile: Cultural Platforms as Limits of the Region’s
“Miracle”
Chile underwent an agreed transition after Augusto Pinochet lost the
1988 plebiscite that determined the regime’s future, which resulted in
the military’s departure from office. Although censorship and political
persecution persisted throughout the entire dictatorial period, different
cultural platforms, such as magazines and private academic institutions,
managed to stay active, especially in 1977 and 1983.
Under the so-called “terrorist” period, namely the dictatorship’s ini-
tial years from 1973 to 1980, the military imposed a cultural lockdown.
A wide range of cultural magazines disappeared, were published clan-
destinely or, on occasion, in exile.8 For instance, the magazine Chile-
América, initially founded and directed by Chilean intellectuals and
politicians linked to the Christian Democratic Party, the Christian Left,
and the Unidad Popular [Popular Unity], was published in Rome be-
tween 1974 and 1983 (Monsálvez-Gómez 2018). Overall, the media was
subjected to strict censorship and only a small number of outlets were
authorised by the government. However, only three years into the re-
gime, the first contestarian publications began to appear.
The magazine of the Agencia Publicitaria y de Servicios Informati-
vos [Advertising and Information Services Agency], Apsi (1976–1995),
was first published in June 1976 thanks to a distribution permission
obtained due to its self-definition as an international news journal.
Initially directed by Arturo Navarro Ceardi (1951–), the magazine
was published with the support of the Movimiento de Acción Pop-
ular Unitaria-Obrero Campesino [United Popular Worker-Peasant
Action Movement] until late 1978. Over the years, the magazine ded-
icated an increasing number of pages to national politics, covering lo-
cal economic and social issues, and including articles by politicians
such as Patricio Aylwin (1918–2016) and Ricardo Lagos (1938–), both
of whom would serve as presidents after the transition (Araya Jofré
2007). Due to the publication of these articles, the government banned
the magazine between September 1982 and May 1983 and thereafter
the review circulated clandestinely.
Initially, Apsi was mostly financed by funds raised in Europe by the
priest Cristián Precht (1940–). Precht was also in charge of Solidaridad
[Solidarity] (1976–1992), the first publication to articulate a defence of
human rights in Chile thanks to the protection it received from various
ecclesiastical actors.9 Solidaridad was the official communication organ
of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad [Vicariate of Solidarity], an organisa-
tion that offered integral assistance to people targeted by the military.
The Vicaría played an important role in collecting information on disap-
pearance and torture cases very early on during Pinochet’s regime. For
this reason, it became the first Latin American organisation to receive
international awards for defending human rights and was recognised for
its work by the United Nations as early as 1978 (Gutiérrez 1986).
The Academia de Humanismo Cristiano (AHC) [Academy of Chris-
tian Humanism], also associated with ecclesiastical groups, was another
relevant meeting space for social scientists who had been expelled from
universities.10 Two years after its creation, the AHC launched its maga-
zine Análisis [Analysis] (1977–1993), initially funded by foreign NGOs,
embassies and several foundations (the Ford Foundation provided a
large part of the funds). The AHC also enabled a first rapprochement
between the Christian Democracy and some centre-left thinkers, such
as Ricardo Jordán Squella (1929–1991), the Jesuit priest Renato Poblete
(1924–2010), the economist and former head of the University of Chile
Edgardo Boeninger (1925–2009), the economist and former advisor
to Salvador Allende Humberto Vega (1943–2009), and the sociologist
Manuel Antonio Garretón (1943–). Some years later, a number of aca-
demics and journalists who returned to Chile from exile – Juan Pablo
Cárdenas Squella (1949–), Fernando Paulsen (1956–), Mónica González
Mujica (1949–) and Patricia Collyer – also contributed essays to Análisis.
1977 was also the year when the magazine Hoy [Today] (1977–1998)
was launched, which, as the above-mentioned publications, initially ob-
tained funds from ecumenical sectors. Its leaders, the journalist Emilio
Filippi Muratto (1928–2014) and the owner of the magazine Sergio
Mugica, were linked to the Christian Democratic Party and had ed-
ited the long-lived magazine Ercilla (1933–2015) until 1976. Another
important cultural magazine, La Bicicleta [The Bicycle] (1978–1990),
appeared in 1978 offering coverage on art, literature, theatre, comics
and national music. Although it was too dangerous to advance an oppo-
sitional discourse against the regime, the magazine’s cultural analyses
set forth an alternative agenda that highlighted new references at a time
when local cultural production was limited. La Bicicleta became an im-
portant promoter of national music, along with other areas of culture
such as psychology, ecology and spirituality (Benítez et al. 2016; Muñoz,
and Montgomery 2017).
In parallel to the emergence of these periodical publications, two im-
portant research institutes organised activities during these years. The
Corporación de Estudios para Latinoamérica [Latin American Studies
Corporation] (CIEPLAN), created in 1976 by a group of economists
led by Alejandro Foxley (1939–), launched a collection of social stud-
ies called Estudios CIEPLAN [CIEPLAN Studies] that managed to
avoid censorship through the use of professional language and quanti-
tative analysis (Huneeus, Cuevas and Hernández, 2014). Furthermore,
the Centre for Social Studies and Education (also known as “Sur”) was
founded in 1978 by Alfredo Rodríguez, José Bengoa, Eugenio Tironi,
and Javier Martínez, professionals associated with the Movimiento
de Acción Popular Unitaria (MAPU). The group later founded the
magazine Proposiciones [Propositions] (1980–2010), which had a very
limited circulation until 1982. Although the political criticism that these
magazines and institutions were able to put forward was extremely lim-
ited (they were, for instance, unable to campaign against the 1980 new
constitution), the cultural discussions that they advanced were relevant
to the period. As research groups, they also played a key role in the fol-
lowing years and amidst the economic crisis, as they became authorised
voices and advanced theorisations on Chile’s political future (Moyano,
and Mella 2017).
Ten years after the military coup, the 1982/1983 economic crisis re-
sulted in protests bursting in different Chilean regions and opened up an
opportunity for discussing the country’s economy and politics. With the
uprisings, violence increased again, and a number of new arrests and dis-
appearances took place. On November 6, 1984, Pinochet reinstated the
state of siege and violent events, widely reported by the media, ensued.
Protests continued for almost three years, leading to a new repressive re-
sponse by the military, while the opposition media suffered serious legal
obstacles to their journalistic activity. A decree in 1984 prohibited the
publication of information regarding politics without prior authorisa-
tion, severely affecting the above-mentioned publications and prompting
their reconfiguration.
In this context, political and social actors were reorganised. The Con-
federación de Trabajadores del Cobre [Confederation of Copper Work-
ers] and the Comando Nacional de Trabajadores [National Workers’
Command] staged protests in the first months of 1983. That year, the
Democratic Alliance brought together different political organisations,
such as the Christian Democratic Party, the Social Democracy Party, the
Radical Party, the Popular Socialist Union and a sector of the Socialist
Party. This alliance promoted peaceful strikes and marches. In Septem-
ber, the Communist Party, the other sector of the Socialist Party and
the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria created the Movimiento
Democrático Popular [Popular Democratic Movement] (MDP). Some
authors have argued that these groups revised their political stances
during this period, as they went from a defence of revolution to the ac-
ceptance of democratic institutions, in a process similar to the case of
Argentine intellectuals, as seen above (Walker 1990).
Another relevant magazine to Chile’s transition was Cauce [Course]
(1983–1989), first published in November 1983. Its first director, the
lawyer Carlos Neely Ivanovic (1925–), had been a member of the Com-
munist youth and the author of the book Cartas Políticas a la Juven-
tud [Political Letters to the Youth], published in 1982. From the pages
of Cauce, the intervention of universities by the military was criticised,
the democratisation process undergoing in Argentina was praised, and
the democratic restoration was called for. Cauce consistently opposed
violence as a means of political resistance and denounced the torture
exercised by the military (Segovia 1990). Also in 1983, the above-
mentioned AHC launched a second magazine, the Revista Chilena de
Derechos Humanos [Chilean Journal of Human Rights] (1983–1990),
which not only focused on human rights but also featured articles on
torture, neoliberalism, the recent engagement of the Chilean Church
with human rights activism, and a defence of workers’ right to unionise.
These emergent cultural magazines brought new Chilean authors and
ideas forward and provided spaces for analysing the local context in
relation to regional events. These interventions were possible thanks to
the connections that the magazines established with renewed research
institutions for the social sciences. Notably, the advancement of this crit-
ical discourse was possible thanks to the use of a professional language
stripped from any obviously ideological terminology, in the interviews
and articles published in these magazines.
Also in 1983, several private research institutions began to organise
relevant activities for the transition.11 In the most detailed work on the
subject, Puryear (1994) has argued that the role of Chilean intellectu-
als during the democratic transition has been crucial, for they set forth
a series of discussions and developed ground-breaking studies within
these institutions. According to Puryear, economists and social scien-
tists became authoritative voices within public opinion and they had a
moderating effect on political opposition, resulting in the unification of
political parties under the advocacy for the “No” campaign in 1988.
Norbert Lechner (1988, 1990) has also argued that years before the
effective transition, these institutions promoted discussions on funda-
mental problems regarding democracy from a descriptive, historical, and
theoretical point of view. As Puryear (1994) claims, the academic work
during the dictatorship was fruitful but limited to the inner circles of
these institutions. Only after 1990 they became more visible and played
a political role in the transition, while the intellectual figures who par-
ticipated in such groups became prominent after their works were pub-
lished and they began to write in the mainstream media.
Among the private research centres that gained visibility after 1983
there was the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales [Latin
American Faculty of Social Sciences] (FLACSO), the Corporación de
Estudios para Latinoamérica (CIEPLAN), the above-mentioned Sur,
the Instituto Chileno de Estudios Humanísticos [Chilean Institute of
Humanistic Studies] (ICHEH), the Centro de Estudios del Desarrollo
(CED) and the Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnaciona-
les [Latin American Institute for Transnational Studies] (ILET). CED
and FLACSO established links with scholars working in private insti-
tutions, while others, such as the Centro de Estudios Económicos y So-
ciales VECTOR, founded by members of the Socialist Party, organised
a well-known series of conferences that brought together scientists and
politicians. CIEPLAN organised courses on economics and created the
Revista de CIEPLAN, which was addressed to the general public.12 The
intellectuals affiliated with these private institutions tackled, theoret-
ically and practically, issues that went from a theory of democracy to
human rights and from the role of the Church, the armed forces, and the
State, to the Chilean economy. Classes, seminars, articles, and training
courses were organised on these subjects, at a time of permanent mobil-
isation and economic crisis.
In August 1985, at the initiative of Cardinal Juan Francisco Fresno,
eleven political parties from different origins and ideologies signed the
Acuerdo Nacional para la Transición a la Plena Democracia [National
Agreement for the Transition to a Full Democracy]. The initial signato-
ries were the Christian Democratic Party, the Socialist Party, the Chris-
tian Left, the Radical Party, the Social Democratic Party, the People’s
Socialist Union, the National Party, the Republican Right and the Na-
tional Union. They were later joined by the Movimiento de Acción Pop-
ular Unitaria [United Popular Action Movement], the National Workers’
Command, the Democratic Union of Workers, and the Student Feder-
ations of the University of Chile. In addition, numerous cultural and
institutional organisations also showed their support to the document.
Rejected by Pinochet, the agreement enjoyed an unexpectedly wide
consensus, ultimately setting the basis for the “No” campaign in the
upcoming plebiscite. The political agreement implicitly acknowledged
the validity of the 1980 constitution without affirming its legitimate
character.
Although discussions on the continuity of the regime’s economic
model became important for these magazines and intellectuals’ forma-
tions, authors such as Brunner (1983) and Foxley (1984, 1986) were
among those who discussed the possibility of a democratic transition
that would maintain a neoliberal economy. Accounts of the period often
criticised the fact that, although the change towards political unity was
very important, the new democratic government of President Patricio
Aylwin (1990–1994) nonetheless allowed the economy to open up even
further and he reduced import tariffs, when, paradoxically, his economic
team had been extremely critical of the neoliberal reforms.13 In fact, this
has become one of the most discussed issues by progressive intellectuals
in Chile (see, e.g., Moulian 1997).
In summary, Chile’s main problems on the eve of institutional change
revolved around the acute social and economic inequality of Chile after
the dictatorship years, the existence of an economic elite with extensive
power and influence on politics, and the absence of debates about the role
of the armed forces. In recent years, a strongly critical literature on Chile’s
political configuration at the transition highlighted these problems. In-
deed, some authors have argued that the transitional process in Chile re-
sulted in a “flawed democracy”, as society remained disarticulated and
political progress was limited for most of the post-transitional period.14
Uruguay: The Role of Cultural Platforms in the Long
Transition
Uruguay went through a long transition, from 1980, when the military
lost the plebiscite to remain in power, to 1985, when the three main
political parties – the Frente Amplio coalition, the Colorado Party, and
the Blanco Party – competed in the presidential elections. The five years
between 1980 and 1985 became known as the period of “transitional
dictatorship”, which followed the “foundational dictatorship” between
1976 and 1980, years in which the military attempted to create a new
political order, ultimately failing to do so (see Caetano, and Rilla 2006).
As in Argentina and Chile, censorship significantly affected the cultural
field during the regime’s initial years, when at least one hundred period-
icals were shut down or suffered temporary suspensions, thirteen radio
stations and two TV channels were penalised and a left-leaning inter-
national news agency, Prensa Latina [Latin Press], was closed (Álvarez
Ferretjans 2008, 562–564). However, as in Argentina and Chile, the
transitional period brought about a decrease in censorship and the emer-
gence of new cultural platforms.
In Uruguay, centres for research on social sciences served as dynamic
devices for the congregation of intellectuals. This was the case of the
Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre el Desarrollo, Uruguay
(CIEDUR) [Interdisciplinary Centre for Development Studies], founded
in 1977 as an interdisciplinary institution for the study of economic
development and social issues. One of its founders was Danilo Astori
(1940–), an economist who had served as the Dean of the Faculty of
Economics at the Universidad de la República (UDELAR) [University of
the Republic] until 1973 when he left for exile. Astori’s career is import-
ant because it shows the extent to which intellectuals who were victims
of repression went on to occupy important government positions after
the transition. In 1971, he co-founded the Frente Amplio but soon had
to flee the country in 1973, after being ousted from his post at UDELAR
by the military. During the transition, he returned to Uruguay, regained
his position at the University and remained an active politician ever since
(Roniger et al. 2017, 153). He was the senator for the Frente Amplio
during two periods: 1990–1995 and 2000–2004, and when the Frente
Amplio won its first presidential election in 2004, he was appointed
minister of economy by President Tabaré Vázquez. More recently, he
served as José Mujica’s Vice-President between 2010 and 2015.
Ricardo Ehrlich (1948–) followed a similar trajectory. A physician
who worked at a biology research centre prior to 1973, he had close ties
with the Tupamaros guerrilla and was imprisoned and tortured by the
military at the beginning of the dictatorship. He fled the country after
his release and lived most of his exile in France, where he did a Master’s
in biochemistry and a PhD in Physics. Upon his return to Uruguay in
1987, he participated in the consolidation of a newly created faculty of
sciences at UDELAR, which greatly contributed to the reconstruction
of the scientific environment in the country. In 1998, he became Dean
of the Faculty of Sciences and at UDELAR, and in 2005, he was elected
mayor of Montevideo for the Frente Amplio. In 2010, he was appointed
minister of education under President Mujica, developing a broad edu-
cation plan that addressed primarily the achievement gap between stu-
dents of different household incomes (Roniger et al. 2017, 157).
These trajectories are good examples of the reinsertion of exiles into
academic institutions but also into politics upon their return to Uruguay.
In effect, other professionals who lived in exile, such as historian Hugo
Achúgar, social scientist Samuel Lichtensztejn, engineers Rafael Guarga,
Rodrigo Arocena, and Isa Holz, went back to Uruguay to occupy posi-
tions at UDELAR after having lived in exile in different countries. In the
case of Lichtensztejn, he also had political participation as he ran as the
Colorado Party candidate for mayor of Montevideo in 1989 and served
as minister of education under President Julio María Sanguinetti from
1995 to 1998. (Roniger et al. 2017, 151–157).
However, magazines constituted the most important cultural plat-
forms during the transition, especially the semanarios (weeklies) that
started to multiply from 1980 onwards and became known as the sem-
anarios de la transición (transition weeklies) or, alternatively, as prensa
alternativa (alternative press) (De Torres 2014, 35; Guinovart 2014,
21). These publications, which combined journalism, opinion essays,
and cultural analysis, offered privileged platforms for opposition pol-
itics throughout the transitional period. In particular, the weekly for-
mat allowed for elaborating materials with more detail and depth than
daily publications, while also offering information on current events
and political comment opinions (Guinovart 2014, 21). Although most of
these journals were associated with political parties, their contributions
went beyond political sectarianism, and they rather represented broader
cultural voices that denounced and challenged the official military dis-
course and advocated for a return to democracy. The most relevant
publications from this period are La Plaza [The Square] (1979–1982),
Opinar [Comment on] (1980–1985), La Democracia [The Democracy]
(1981–1985), Opción [Option] (1981–1982), Aquí [Here] (1983–1989),
El Correo de los Viernes [Friday’s Post] (1981–1985), Jaque [Check]
(1983–1990), Búsqueda [Search] (1981–), Convicción [Conviction]
(1983–), and Brecha [Gap] (1985-continues). El Dedo [The Finger]
(1982–1983, 1992), a magazine that shared features with the Argentine
Humor, also played an important role in denouncing, through the use of
political humour, the dictatorship (Schultze 2014).
La Plaza (1979–1982) was arguably the first cultural magazine to
appear during this period. It was a monthly publication founded in
the city of Las Piedras, a town close to Montevideo, by Felisberto
Carámbula, a recognised professional affiliated to the Colorado Par-
ty’s batllismo, his two sons, Marcos and Gonzalo, and “Perico” Pérez
Aguirre (1941–2001), a jesuit priest and a human rights activist. The
publication, which reached 20,000 monthly copies (a considerable
number given Uruguay’s scant population), outspokenly opposed the
military government. The editorial article of La Plaza 2 (December
1979), for instance, focused on the plebiscite that took place in 1980.
In it, the editors declared that they wanted to “serve the country freely
and honestly, but within liberty and democracy” (La Plaza 1979, 2),
in a rather explicit denunciation of the lack of freedom and politi-
cal participation in the country.15 A look at the magazine covers tells
much about the publication’s opposition to the regime. For instance,
La Plaza 21’s cover (December 1981) declared that “freedom will be
beautiful” and Issue 23’s cover demanded to “end proscriptions”. Al-
though La Plaza defined itself as a cultural magazine, the editorial
articles and the essays written by Perez Aguirre denouncing the dic-
tatorship gave the publication a political nuance. The military finally
shut down the magazine in 1982, in an episode that ultimately proved
that censorship was not completely fading away.
Despite this episode, in the years following the 1980 plebiscite, a series
of new weekly publications appeared in Montevideo, many of which
were associated, as mentioned, with partisan groups. El Correo de los
Viernes was founded in 1981 by Julio María Sanguinetti, member of the
Corriente Batllista Independiente (CBI) [Independent Batllista Current],
a group within the Colorado Party comprising young and progressive
politicians. Sanguinetti would be elected president in 1984 along with
his vice-presidential candidate, Enrique Tarigo, who had also founded
another weekly, Opinar, in 1980. La Democracia, which appeared in
1981, was aligned with the other main traditional party, the Blancos,
but it was edited by the more progressive group within the party, the
wilsonistas, namely those who supported Wilson Ferreira Aldunate, the
centre-left leader in exile. Opción, founded that same year, belonged
to the Christian Democracy, which was part of the Broad Front. This
magazine ceased publication in 1982 and its editors later founded Aquí
in 1983. Búsqueda and Convicción did not have a party affiliation, but
the latter was associated with unions. Lastly, Brecha was an independent
magazine founded in 1985 by former members of the weekly Marcha
[March] (1938–1974).16 Marcha arguably remains the most emblem-
atic Uruguayan magazine of the twentieth century and a publication of
reference for the Latin American left. Another weekly, Marcha was a
role model for these transitional publications and especially for Brecha,
which is regarded as its continuation. Although Brecha went through
different changes in the editorial board throughout the years, it remains
until today the most important independent publication of the Uru-
guayan left.
Jaque, however, was the paradigmatic publication of the alternative
press in Uruguay during the transition (Álvarez Ferretjans 2008, 576). It
was founded in 1983 by Manuel Flores Silva (1950–), one of the leading
figures of the CBI, to which Sanguinetti belonged. Its editorial board
comprised a group of young professionals and writers: Flores Silva was
only 33 years old when he pubished the magazine, while the rest of the
editorial committee was under 24. However, some older figures also
contributed to the magazine, such as Manuel Flores Mora (1923–1985),
Flores Silva’s father and former member of the 1945 generation of Uru-
guayan writers and intellectuals associated with Marcha. Although
Jaque was close to the Colorados’ CBI (Flores Silva is, until today, a
member of the Colorado Party), the rest of the editors had different po-
litical backgrounds. The contributions to the weekly of people like Clau-
dio Invernizzi and Carlos Núñez, members of the Communist Party and
the Tupamaros, respectively, show the extent to which Jaque set forth a
politically pluralistic platform for opposition politics.
In its first issue (November 1982), Jaque published an editorial article
which strongly denounced the violence that had characterised the recent
past, and advocated for the establishment of peace, a word that the es-
say’s author associated with freedom, social justice, ethics, pluralism,
and democracy. Probably written by Flores Silva, the article stated that
Jaque represented “a generation with a primary mission: to leave vio-
lence behind [...] and to push the country forward” and presented the
weekly as a publication that served the purpose of imagining a future
of peace and democracy (as the latter had been “interrupted” by the
military) for Uruguay (Jaque 1983, 7). Throughout the transitional pe-
riod, the magazine consistently denounced the proscription of political
parties, called for Líber Seregni’s release from prison, and petitioned
for lifting the ban on Ferreira Aldunate. Through its editorial articles,
Jaque also stressed the importance of uniting political parties against
the military, while it also advocated for democracy and social justice. In
issue 15 (March 1984), as the military was leaving power, Manuel Flores
Silva wrote that “only a call for a broad consensus will make possible a
government that, facing our dependency, sets forth a national develop-
ment project” and he called for “the economic democratisation and the
participation of national working class majorities” (Flores Silva 1984,
9). Flores Silva’s text shows the extent to which Jaque was committed
to a programme of democratic regeneration that incorporated values of
social justice in what can be defined as a social democratic stance. Its
insistence on ending the ban on political parties and leaders, and the
voice it gave to members of other political factions, also show the extent
to which the main parties coalesced in their opposition to the military
and jointly claimed for a return to democratic practices.
The last comment regarding these weekly publications may clarify
their relevance to Uruguay’s cultural field. Most of these magazines
cultivated a cultural journalism style in pages that followed the tradition
initiated by Marcha. It was precisely in Jaque that Teresa Porzecanski,
Fernando Anchart and Uruguay Cortazzo wrote an article about what
they called “journalistic literary critique”, which they defined as a kind
of literary criticism that used an accessible and non-academic language.
They identified Marcha as the initiator of this trend and proposed that
the alternative press between 1980 and 1985 had made use of this jour-
nalistic language in order to challenge the official discourse of the dicta-
torship (Anchart et al. 1985, 2, 3). Their article featured images of the
above-mentioned weeklies, such as Opinar, Búsqueda, and El Correo de
los Viernes, which ultimately conveyed the extent to which these mag-
azines were regarded as important cultural agents that served as plat-
forms for opposition politics in the transition.
The political participation of returnees and the publication of these
transition weeklies ultimately tell us much about the kind of democratic,
partisan culture that Uruguayans resumed during the transition. The
fact that exiles, many of whom were academics, took important politi-
cal positions throughout the years that followed the transition, conveys
the extent to which party structures remained in place throughout the
period. Furthermore, these parties maintained the consensual practices
that had characterised Uruguayan politics prior to the coup. They united
against the authoritarian government, demanding a return to the dem-
ocratic tradition that Uruguayans were so proud of. Unlike Argentina,
where exchanges between intellectuals and politicians from different af-
filiations were rare, the Uruguayan transition was characterised by this
partisan coalescence against the regime and a certain consensus around
the need of adopting, at least on the eve of the transition, progressive
policies, rather than neoliberal ones.
Conclusion
While studies on the Southern Cone dictatorships in the 1970s continue to
elicit strong controversies among scholars regarding certain problems – such
as the role of the Church, the action of left-wing armed groups, the support
given by the United States to these regimes, or the connivance of civil society
with the military – the literature on the transitions tends to agree on the use
of certain historiographic concepts. There is consensus around the notion
that the transitions saw the emergence of the “intellectual citizen” with re-
publican convictions and that a theory of pactism was consolidated during
these years. As Lesgart (2003) and Garategaray and Reano (2017) have ar-
gued, a common political language based on a consensus regarding democ-
racy and the need to resume democratic institutional practices dominated
the intellectual and cultural fields. This transnational “political language”,
strongly anchored in a reevaluation of the value of liberal democracy, argu-
ably persists as a central political idea in Southern Cone countries.
As seen in the pages above, the kind of discourse intellectuals put for-
ward was made possible thanks to cultural platforms that enabled them
to put together a critical thought. During the transitions in Argentina,
Chile and Uruguay, intellectuals who had been expelled from universi-
ties found spaces to develop their work in private academic institutions
and research centres. Periodical publications also played an important
role, especially during the late years of these regimes, in communicating
ideas envisaged for the upcoming democracy, as many were eager to
leave behind the violence, censorship and repression and move on to a
renovated and promising democratic future.
The way in which intellectuals inserted themselves into the public
sphere, however, varied significantly from country to country. In Chile
and Uruguay, intellectuals and scholars living either in their home coun-
tries or in exile maintained their political affiliation and many went on
to occupy government positions once democracy was restored. This
might be explained by the fact that leftist parties in Chile and Uruguay
managed to survive the dictatorships and unite under political coalitions
that competed in elections, as was the case of the Chilean Concertación
and the Uruguayan Frente Amplio. In Argentina, left-wing political par-
ties were not able to compete in elections under a broad coalition and
intellectuals somewhat detached themselves from partisan politics.
Paradoxically, it was in Argentina that the centrist government im-
plemented a more aggressive policy of judging the military for having
committed human rights violations, which became one of Argentina’s
transition main features and an important precedent for transitional jus-
tice worldwide. In Chile and Uruguay, partly due to their pacted transi-
tions, the possibility of trying those responsible for committing crimes
under the dictatorships was curtailed. However, it must be acknowl-
edged that the retroactive justice strategy set forth by Alfonsín –with,
as analysed above, the help of intellectuals– suffered many setbacks and
a series of military uprisings took place between 1987 and 1989, after
which the President had to leave office six months earlier than expected.
Furthermore, one particular feature of Chile’s transition is that the
Church and ecclesiastical actors played a crucial role in the advocacy
for human rights. They also facilitated funds for private research centres
in which intellectuals and victims of repression were able to work and
develop their careers. The Church thus served as a shelter institution that
habilitated spaces for survival but, also, for critical thinking.
In Uruguay, it was not the Church, but periodical publications and
political parties that provided spaces for opposition politics. Proud of
their country’s democratic tradition, Uruguayans repudiated the lack of
freedom and censorship exerted by the military once the transition be-
gan in 1980 and censorship decreased as a result. It was not only the
left-coalition Frente Amplio that opposed the regime, but also the more
progressive sectors from the traditional parties. During the years from
1980 to 1985, these groups notably founded weekly publications that of-
fered platforms for opposing the military and giving voice to politicians
from different ideological backgrounds.
In Argentina, intellectuals contributed most notably to create a cul-
tural climate of opposition to the regime. Although they did not assume
political positions themselves, they were involved in theoretical discus-
sions about politics, culture, and society as they set forth ideas for the
new democratic period inaugurated in 1983. They contributed, thus, to
an important revival of the intellectual and cultural fields, by assuming
positions at universities and research centres and by publishing the most
relevant magazines and books from the period.
Despite these differences, it is possible to find a common language in
these platforms. Most intellectuals and magazines analysed here shared
a discourse based on the need to leave behind violence in order to build a
new democracy. And this notion of democracy was associated with a
constellation of other concepts such as peace, ethics, social justice, and
pluralism. As we have argued, through magazines and institutions,
this language found different ways of materialising itself in relation to
politics.
Notes
1 Although Madres and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo were the most visible or-
ganisations, other human rights associations in Argentina also played a very
important role in the denunciation of the crimes perpetrated by the military.
Carlos Acuña and Catalina Smulovitz have divided these organisations in
three: a) Those whose members were affected by repression (Madres de Plaza
de Mayo, Familiares de Detenidos y Desaparecidos por Razones Políticas
[Families of Detained and Disappeared for Political Reasons], and Abuelas
de Plaza de Mayo), b) Organisations that provided assistance to victims of
repression and their families (Servicio de Paz y Justicia and Movimiento
Ecuménico por los Derechos Humanos [Ecumenical Movement for Human
Rights]), and c) Organisations that provided legal aid or gathered all the
information available (Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos,
Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales [Centre for Legal and Social Studies],
and Liga Argentina por los Derechos del Hombre [Argentine League for the
Rights of Man]). Acuña, and Smulovitz, 1995, 35.
2 From the beginning of 1975 to 1981, the Chilean economy recovered rap-
idly. As the economy opened up, the GDP grew steadily, from US$7.5 billion
in 1975 to US$34.5 billion in 1981, after which this tendency was reverted.
With the support of the United States, the inflation rate decreased and im-
port tariffs were lowered. The public deficit was substantially reduced, from
25% of the GDP in 1973 to 3% in 1976. However, it is estimated that this
neoliberal scheme resulted in a sharp depreciation of the Chilean economy
and when the crisis began in 1982, unemployment reached 20%. Carrasco
Vásquez 2001; Balassa 1983, 49–79.
3 The term “insile” refers to victims of repression who endured censorship and
persecution as they remained in their home countries during the dictatorial
period, as opposed to the exiles. See, e. g., Sosnowski 1987, 16.
4 They were Gustavo Humberto Cavarozzi, Marcelo Cavarozzi, María Teresa
Emery de O’Donnell, Norma Martha Fischberg de Oszlak, Alejandro Mario
O’Donnell, Guillermo O’Donnell, Oscar Oszlak, Beatriz Elba Schmucler,
and Teresa de Sega. See Roniger, Senkman, Sosnowski, and Sznajder 2017,
142.
5 The Full Stop law (Ley de Punto Final) was drafted with the purpose of
bringing an end to the trials against the juntas and easing the anxiety of the
military. The law, enacted in December 1986, established a sixty-day limit
for filing cases based on criminal activity during the dictatorship; otherwise,
all such claims would be extinguished. Although it deserved the strong con-
demnation of the left and human rights movements, the Full Stop law had a
boomerang effect, as courts all over the country began to file cases and over
300 high ranked officers were indicted. Later on, the Due Obedience law
(Ley de Obediencia Debida), enacted in June 1987, created the conditions
for the defence of middle- and lower-ranked officers. It was received with
bitter criticism by national and international human rights movements, since
it limited the prosecution of all actors involved in the repression.
6 “Cada uno ha entendido que con la democracia no sólo se vota, con la de-
mocracia se come, se cura, se educa…”. Speech delivered by Raúl Alfonsín at
Ferrocarril Oeste Stadium in 1983. Retrieved from http://constitucionweb.
blogspot.com.ar/2010/03/discurso-de-alfonsin-en-la-cancha-de.html
7 The discussion regarding substantive democracy versus formal democracy
defined to a great extent the political positions adopted by intellectuals
during the Argentine transition. While those in the Club de Cultura So-
cialista revalorised the set of formal institutions as a basic component of
democracy, namely formal democracy, others, such as the members of Uni-
dos, believed that a political regime based on formal democracy was insuf-
ficient without redistributive politics, social justice and direct participation.
For an overview of this discussion see: Lesgart 2003, 13–19. Also, see the
roundtable organised by Unidos, in which they invited Altamirano, Aricó
and Portantiero as members of the Club de Cultura Socialista to discuss this
topic, and which exemplifies very clearly the two positions at stake. Unidos
August 1985, 115–125.
8 The conservative newspapers that favoured the coup against Salvador Al-
lende (1908–1973), such as El Mercurio [The Mercury] (1900-) and La
Segunda [The Second] (1931-), both owned by Agustín Edwards Eastman
(1927–2017), naturally continued publication during this period, as did the
newspaper La Tercera [The Third] (1950-). The tabloid Vea [Look] (1939–
2015) was also exempt from political censorship, while the magazine Ercilla
(1930-) was acquired by an official group in 1975. The rest of the periodi-
cals ceased publication, continued in exile or appeared circumstantially and
clandestinely. This was the case of serials such as El Siglo [The Century]
(1940–1973), associated with the Chilean Communist Party, Clarín [Bugle],
the best-selling newspaper in 1973, Puro Chile [Pure Chile] (1970–1973),
the evening serial Las Noticias de Última Hora [The Latest News] (1943–
1973), the left-wing publication Punto Final [Final Point] (1965–1973;
1981–1986; 1989–2018), which was edited in Mexico between 1981 and
1986 to be reinstalled in Chile in 1989, and El Rebelde [The Rebel], associ-
ated with Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) [Revolutionary
Left Movement].
9 The Vicaría’s immediate predecessor was the Comité de Cooperación para
la Paz [Committee on Cooperation for Peace] en Chile, in activity between
1973 and 1975. This organisation emerged thanks to the protection of
ecclesiastical authorities and played a leading role in defending the lives of
several citizens until 1975 when, by direct order of Augusto Pinochet, it was
dissolved. A few months later, Archbishop of Santiago Santiago de Chile
Raúl Silva Henríquez (1907–1999) promoted the creation of the Vicaría
de la Solidaridad [Vicariate of Solidarity] and its magazine, Solidaridad
[Solidarity].
10 The Academia de Humanismo Cristiano was also founded at the initiative of
Archbishop Silva Henríquez in order to create a non-confessional space that
would include a wide group of academics without institutional affiliation
after 1973.
11 Compared to other countries in the Southern Cone, social sciences and eco-
nomic studies had an early development in Chile. In 1957, FLACSO was set-
tled in Santiago de Chile with several postgraduate schools. These initiatives
made Chile the largest centre for teaching and research in economics within
the region. According to an estimate, between 1960 and 1970 the number
of qualified economists went from 121 to 727. The number of economists
with postgraduate degrees abroad rose from a few in 1959 to 46 in 1971. Six
new research and teaching institutions were created, including the Centre
for National Planning Studies (CEPLAN), the Department of Agricultural
Economics (Catholic University), and the Planning Centre (CEPLA) at the
University of Chile. But in 1973 FLACSO had to cease activities and most of
these young academics left for exile and continued their studies abroad. Ten
years later, however, as Chile went through institutional changes, new so-
cial and economic research institutions were founded. For an analysis along
these lines see, e.g., Puryear (1994).
12 During the 1980s, other research centres, which represented a new gener-
ation of academics who returned from exile or had finished postgraduate
studies abroad, were founded. Brunner noted the enormous international
funding that these new institutions were able to obtain, with support from
U.S. private agencies and companies. Among them were the Ford Founda-
tion, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Swed-
ish Agency for Research Cooperation in Developing Countries (SAREC).
In alphabetical rather than chronological order, these were the main pri-
vate research centres that emerged in Chile during this period: Academia
de Humanismo Cristiano [Academy of Christian Humanism], Centro de
Estudios del Desarrollo [Centre for Development Studies], Centro de Estu-
dios Públicos [Centre for Public Studies], Centro de Estudios de la Realidad
Contemporánea [Centre for the Study of Contemporary Reality], Centro
de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Educación [Centre for Educational Re-
search and Development], Corporación de Investigaciones Económicas para
Latinoamérica [Economic Research Corporation for Latin America], Centro
de Investigaciones Socioeconómicas [Centre for Socioeconomic Research],
Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales [Latin American Council
of Social Sciences], Centro Latinoamericano de Economía y Política [Latin
American Centre for Economics and Politics], Grupo de Estudios Agro-
regionales [Agro-Regional Studies Group], Grupo de Investigaciones Agrar-
ias [Agrarian Research Group], Instituto Chileno de Estudios Humanísticos
Instituto de Estudios Políticos [Chilean Institute of Humanistic Studies In-
stitute of Political Studies], Instituto Latinoamericano de Doctrina, Estu-
dios Sociales [Latin American Institute of Doctrine and Social Studies] e
Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales. Among these, an
exception was the Centro de Estudios Públicos, founded by economists and
businesspeople who sought to legitimise neoliberal political and economic
thought, but who also distanced themselves from the regime. It was a centre
independent of the government and financed by Chilean business groups
and foreign donors. Its magazine, Estudios Públicos [Public Studies], was
the local broadcaster for authors such as Michael Novack, Friedrich Hayek,
Samuel Huntington and Milton Friedman.
13 Puryear stressed the role played by intellectuals in the new democratic gov-
ernment: “In March 1990, Ricardo Lagos, an economist with a PhD from
Duke University and professor at the University of Chile for nearly twenty
years, was appointed Minister of Education. Alejandro Foxley, a PhD in
economics from the University of Wisconsin and founder of one of Latin
America's most prestigious research institutes, was appointed finance min-
ister. Edgardo Boeninger, former rector of the University of Chile, became
minister-secretary general and chief political strategist for the presidency.
Enrique Correa, former professor of philosophy at the Universidad Técnica
del Estado [State Technical University], was appointed to another important
portfolio. René Cortázar, a prolific PhD researcher at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), took over as minister of labour. Carlos Om-
inami, a former militant of the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left)
and doctorate from the University of Paris, became Minister of Economy.
Sociologist Germán Correa, trained at Berkeley, became minister of trans-
port. Lawyer Francisco Cumplido, who in the 1970s had directed a pro-
gram in sociology of law at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences
(FLACSO), became minister of justice. José Antonio Viera Gallo, former
professor of political theory at the Catholic University of Chile and director
of a private research centre, took over as president of the Chamber of Depu-
ties”. Puryear (1994, 10).
14 Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser asked in 2007 (371): “Cabe preguntarse en-
tonces qué sucedería si Chile viviera una crisis económica de proporciones
mayúsculas o si sus índices de crecimiento descendieran. Quizás entonces
se produciría un despertar de la sociedad que potenciaría un verdadero au-
mento de la autodeterminación colectiva”. [What would happen if Chile
were to experience an economic crisis of major proportions or if its growth
rates were to fall? Perhaps then there would be an awakening of society that
would promote a real raise in collective self-determination].
15 “Queremos servir al país con libertad y honradez, pero en libertad y en de-
mocracia” [We want to serve the country with freedom and honesty, but in
freedom and democracy], “La Constitución…Y?” [The Constitution…So?],
La Plaza December 1979, 1, 2.
16 Brecha’s initial editors were Hugo Alfaro, Mario Benedetti, Oscar Brus-
chera, Guillermo Chifflet, Eduardo Galeano, Ernesto González Bermejo,
Carlos María Gutiérrez, Carlos Núñez, Héctor Rodríguez, José Wainer,
Guillermo Waksman, Coriún Aharonian, and Gabriel Peluffo.
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Section III
Religious
11 New Perspectives on Latin
American Freemasonry
Three Case Studies
Guillermo de los Reyes, Felipe Côrte Real de
Camargo, and Rogelio Aragón
Introduction
Freemasonry has had an undeniable impact on the formation and devel-
opment of Latin America. Through its ideals, institutions and/or socia-
bility, the Masonic phenomenon pushed the idea of independence and
modernity during the nineteenth century; and aspects that were taken
for granted during the twentieth century – such as parliamentary de-
mocracy, laicity and rationalism – were put forward or reinforced by the
freemasons.
As a social entity, this fraternal organisation – the largest and most
widespread in the world – acquired different shapes and structures de-
pending on the society that harboured it. Because of that, academic ac-
curacy calls for the concept of “Freemasonries” since each manifestation
of the Masonic idea is authentic in its own right. The freemasons may
be studied and understood in the same light: albeit they are members of
lodges, and these lodges, in turn, are part of Grand Lodges or Grand
Orients, it does not mean that they act under instructions or in an organ-
ised or centralised manner. This scenario is even more verifiable in Latin
America. The initial lodges sprouted into a myriad of lodges, Masonic
bodies, rites and rituals. The structures and uniformity of European
Freemasonry were reinterpreted and gained other contours on the other
side of the Atlantic. A heterodox approach to the fraternity also enabled
transformations and adaptations that made Latin American Freema-
sonry active in political and social developments.
The three examples brought up in this chapter aim to present three
different stories of the arrangement Freemasonry, freemasons and Latin
America. This is by no means an exercise on comparative history: it is
more a cross-section of the socio-political role of Freemasonry in three
scenarios and one period, from the end of the nineteenth to the end of the
twentieth centuries. Through these aspects we intend not only to demon-
strate the importance of Freemasonry to Mexico, Brazil and Cuba but
also to expose that Freemasonry is a social and political phenomenon
that became part of the structures of everyday life in the region.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-15
282 Guillermo de los Reyes et al.
Mexico
Freemasonry has played a pivotal role in Mexico’s social sphere and
public life since before its independence in 1821. Inquisition documents
show the presence of freemasons in the Mexican territory since the eigh-
teenth century. However, it was during the 1800s when the Masonic
lodges expanded around Mexico and contributed to the young Repub-
lic’s political culture. As María Eugenia Vázquez Semadeni argues,
Mexican Freemasonry in the first decades of the 19th century was

closely linked to political activity […] on the one hand, the principal
or most prominent masons in those years were also some of the most
important political actors and on the other hand, the public images
of the groups struggling for political power were constructed in part
around the Masonic affiliations of their members.
(2009, 232)
This involvement in Mexican political life continued throughout the rest

of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this section, we will discuss
the political, cultural and social impact that Freemasonry had in Mexico
in the past century.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, Masonic lodges became a
group that exerted political influence – a pressure/lobbying group – that
took charge of promoting laicism and secularisation in the country. This
does not mean that the Masonic lodges sustained the prominence they
enjoyed during the previous century. More than anything, its participa-
tion changes in proportion to the transformations within Mexico; among
the Masonic ranks are reproduced many of the models and discourses
that post-revolutionary governments began to utilise (de los Reyes 2009,
143, 144). During the 1920s and 1930s, under Alvaro Obregon’s and
Plutarco Elias Calles’ administrations, Freemasonry again undertook its
work towards secularisation, anticlericalism and laicism. This became a
symbol and a bulwark of Mexican Freemasonry. During this period, the
conflicts between the Church and Freemasonry were complicated by the
Cristero War. The government took strong measures against the Cath-
olic Church, which resulted in a rebellion as a reaction to government-
imposed limitations. This response on the part of the Church, led by the
so-called cristeros, caused the government to react radically, to such an
extent that it closed Catholic churches, seizing some of them. In fact,
many of the confiscated Catholic churches were awarded to some of
the Masonic lodges, where they continue meeting to this day (in the
state of Puebla, there are several examples of this). Although there is
no convincing evidence of the Masonic activity of Alvaro Obregon and
Plutarco Elias Calles, it is known that both presidents, in addition to be-
ing members of the masons, supported that institution; the donation of
New Outlook on Latin American Freemasonry 283
confiscated Catholic temples to the Masonic lodges is a glowing example
of this. Beatriz Urias Horcasitas points out that during the governments
of Obregon and Calles, “the Masonic organisation emerged with a new
moral power, capable of substituting for religion and of offering alter-
native forms of spirituality” (2004, 93). Masonic lodges became, for
some, an alternative space to religion, and for others, places for political
education in the promotion primarily of a lay and secular state. For this
reason, politicians looked upon the lodges favourably since the freema-
sons were promoting the liberal ideas and discourse of secularisation
that the government itself was championing. And inside the lodges, the
development and practice of political skills were taking place, such as
the art of public speaking, debate, philosophical reading, among others
(de los Reyes, and Rich 1997, 957–967).
Mexican Masonry during the 1930s and 1940s was seeking to re-
structure itself and to maintain the international recognition it had
achieved since it had frictions not only with the Church but also inter-
nally. Thus, Lazaro Cardenas, before he became President of Mexico in
1934, saw himself in need of becoming involved in Freemasonry to rec-
oncile the religious and anti-religious factions that had caused so many
problems in the immediate past. In 1927, Lazaro Cardenas founded the
Independiente y Simbólica Gran Logia Mexicana [Independent and
Symbolic Grand Lodge of Mexico] (Zalce 1950, 92–95) that, without
being recognised and accepted by the other rites that existed, achieved
great popularity and spread throughout the country. However, not ev-
eryone’s heart was in it, such as is the case of the Masonic leader, Genaro
P. Garcia, who sent an insistent letter to the sovereign Grand Inspector
General in Texas, Walter C. Temple, on October 10, 1938, in which he
spoke of the irregularities that were happening in the Masonic realm in
Mexico. He added:
Your great antipathy and anger cue to the formation of an irregu-

lar lodge by General Lazaro Cardenas, who is now President of the
Republic, when he was Governor of one of our States. One of the
most important stated principles for this so-called Grand Lodge was
that Masonry should be exclusively for this country. Since Cardenas
became President of Mexico, the lodges under the jurisdiction of
your special Grand Lodge became important entities, with factors
both political and bureaucratic. […] Some Grand Officials of several
Grand Lodges have visited these clandestine lodges and have ac-
cepted clandestine Masons in their own lodges.
The foregoing clearly shows the struggles that were taking place within
Mexican Freemasonry during those times. There was rivalry among the
different orders and/or jurisdictions over demonstrating their own re-
spective preponderance in the matter of irregular lodges.
One of the factors that considerably influenced the rise of Cardenas
to power was the incorporation of the lodges that he had formed at
the request of a higher-ranking fellow mason, President Plutarco Elias
Calles. Some Masonic analysts claim that during the Cardenas presi-
dency, Freemasonry enjoyed its heyday in the twentieth century. The fic-
tional narratives indicate that almost all of Mexico’s important people,
from the army to the government, were masons. In many cases, that is
how it was – but not in all. It cannot be said with certainty that this in
fact was Freemasonry’s zenith; however, we can be sure that it was one
of the most active periods for Freemasonry in Mexico’s politics and that
there was an attempt by Cardenas to create national Masonic lodges.
One great example of this can be seen in the role that Freemasonry
played during the Cardenas presidency. During those six years, there
was a close relationship between Cardenas and the masons; it is there-
fore no coincidence that in the years following that presidency, a great
number of lodges carried his name and recognised him as the promoter
of a new and broad movement within Freemasonry (Bastian 1991, 373).
Cardenas’s connection with that institution probably confirms that his
was a diverse mix of motives and interests as he reconfigured the labour
movement in Mexico. Additionally, his relationship with Freemasonry
illustrates the fact that Cardenas attempted to have the final say in all
decisions that concerned Mexico.
Another characteristic in the development of Freemasonry in Mexico
is that most of its members came from the ranks of the predominantly
urban elite and the middle class. We find the explanation of this fact
in the enormous government centralisation in the urban zones, in the
broad growth of the cities, and in the relative prosperity that the urban
centres enjoy. That the lack of opportunities for development in rural
areas has precipitated urban growth is evidenced by the concentration
of Masonic lodges in the cities. Finally, this high density of the most
important Masonic precincts in urban zones is due to the simple fact
that the jewellery and vestments necessary for carrying out their rituals
are out of reach of the salaries of workers and farmers. In this respect,
Cardenas moved to establish a new type of Masonic lodge, which stood
as an exception to archetypal Mexican Masonry founded on the elite
(de los Reyes 2009, 158, 159). In spite of his critics, Cardenas was pro-
foundly interested in the social development of Mexico’s farmers and
workers, among whom this type of organisation was scarce and of lit-
tle impact. He therefore brought Freemasonry to these sectors so that
they might have influence within the Mexican political system. Carde-
nas may have been ahead of his time in recognising the importance
non-governmental organisations have in the process of democratisation;
or the reverse could also be argued, that he did it to win supporters and
sympathisers among an organisation that owed him a debt of loyalty.
In other words, he set up a form of “clientelism”. He supported the
creation of lodges especially for Mexico’s farmer and worker classes,
which would have been a unique decision in the sense that it would
break with the tradition of the Masonic institution; which, in practice,
was meant only for the middle and upper classes. A question arises con-
sidering this action: What was Cardenas’s true objective in attempting
to introduce Masonry to the farming and working sectors? A definitive
answer is not to be had since there exist no documents to support one.
But by analysing his legacy, it can be safely argued that Cardenas sought
to carry Masonry to the popular sectors and that he tried to reaffirm
Mexican nationalism within this organisation. In other words, Carde-
nas attempted to put Mexican Freemasonry’s European and U.S. past
behind it so that it might be seen as an essentially Mexican organisation.
It can be stated, therefore, that the Mexicanization of Freemasonry is
more evident during this period than in others. This does not mean that
there were no efforts to Mexicanize Freemasonry dating back to the
nineteenth century. In fact, some Masonic rites began to use the Mexi-
can Constitution in their ceremonies, rather than the Bible as is required
by international Masonic manuals. The Mexican National Rite came to
be because of this very reason, although in practice it did not achieve
that goal (de los Reyes 2009, 158, 159).
The lodges found themselves deeply enmeshed in the country’s polit-
ical affairs. One convincing bit of evidence of this is that the President
of the Republic became the supreme chief of the masons and that the
ministers of property, agriculture, and of the Agrarian Department were
Masons. In addition, the lodges that Cardenas created had the objective
of incorporating the farmer into the Masonic rite; this is probably the
closest thing one can find to what might be called the farmer mason. The
mistake that Cardenas made was to attempt to enlist the farming sector
into the moral principles and foundations of such initiation, through
the lodge Tierra y Libertad [Land and Liberty], imposing the rituals
and liturgies of the middle- and upper-class lodges, without making any
modifications to these rituals, and the farmers could neither understand
nor interpret their meaning. As stated earlier, the Masonic activities of
Cardenas were looked upon with suspicion by Freemasonry’s important
and influential members (Cockcroft 1990, 22). However, the lodges that
boasted Cardenas’ influence seem not to have had any profound long-
term social impact.
As the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas ended, attempts to incorporate
the rural sector into Freemasonry ended too. Cardenas’s attempt to cre-
ate special lodges for the rural sector did not meet with the success he
had hoped for. He was only able to vigorously promote the activity of
the lodges during his time in power. Additionally, the only thing that he
managed to do was to increase the degree of confusion that existed in
Mexican Freemasonry. Finally, it should be made clear that Masonry
did not find itself – and perhaps it still is not – prepared to incorporate
the country’s rural sectors, even despite the unconditional support of
General Cardenas that it enjoyed.
The moment the Cardenas’ presidency ended, the long-awaited suc-
cession took place amid various political tensions. Ambition for power
provoked groups that had been united for extended periods to separate.
Even Freemasonry itself was unable to halt these differences, and new
disputes among “brother masons” arose within them, as had happened
repeatedly. From that moment, this organisation that had been so pow-
erful in the past began to experience a low period. Manuel Avila (1940–
1946) became President of Mexico, supported by President Cardenas as
well as by the conservative sector within Freemasonry (Martin 1992, 7).
The masons threw their support behind Avila more as a gesture of loy-
alty to Cardenas than for any fondness for the candidate himself. Avila
had not demonstrated anticlerical thoughts and sentiments, which was
a sign that the masons looked for from a candidate as a guarantee of
respect for the idea of separation of Church and State.
The affiliation of Mexican presidents and other political leaders has
lent the organisation a certain projection. When some masons take pub-
lic office, they apparently support their lodges and their fellow masons.
As we have stated here, several Mexican politicians have adorned their
cabinets with freemasons, such as was the case with several presidents
after Avila who were masons, such as Miguel Aleman (1946–1952),
Adolfo Ruiz (1952–1958), Adolfo Lopez (1958–1964), Gustavo Díaz
(1964–1970), Luis Echeverria (1970–1976), and Jose Lopez Portillo
(1976–1982). This situation has contributed to the perception that Free-
masonry has been (or is) an institution that has played (or does play) a
prominent role in the history of Mexico. However, Miguel Aleman was
the last president to be an active mason. Indeed, some lodges continued
their involvement in political and public events, but the role of Freema-
sonry in the public sphere significantly decreased.
During the presidency of Miguel Aleman, there was a great relation-
ship with Masonry in the United States, due to his close relationship with
President Harry Truman and Senator Tom Connally. These relationships
were chiefly for the purpose of creating networks of mutual support in
the business sector. However, Freemasonry in Mexico continued to have
the same problems with the regular/irregular distinction that it had had
in prior decades, but they gave credit to President Aleman for succeeding
in rechannelling Freemasonry into its original apolitical course. (This
was a requirement that foreign lodges, particularly the United Grand
Lodge of England, requested of Mexican Freemasonry.) It should be
made clear that many lodges did in fact comply, but others preferred to
maintain their irregular status so as not to alter the status quo.
In the case of Miguel Aleman, the Masonic lodges close to him in-
ducted businessmen and other members of the middle class that ben-
efited from their Masonic affiliation in that it helped them to establish
relationships with masons in the United States who made up part of the
private sector. In the correspondence between Mexican and U.S. lodges,
Aleman was recognised as a great mason and a wonderful president. He
received invitations to special masonic events in Houston and Washing-
ton. The friendliness towards Aleman was due to his interest in develop-
ing the private sector in order to establish commercial relationships, as
well as for his eagerness to make the Masonic lodges regular.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Freemasonry was a con-
structive current in Mexico; it fought a thousand battles simultaneously
on many different fronts and was able to bring its influence in the strug-
gle for freedom of thought and freedom of expression. In addition, it
contributed to the establishment of a secular-lay society. Over the years,
many of its members have used the association’s historic weight as a
support in their quest for the Masonic organisation to regain the place
that it once occupied in Mexico’s political life. Freemasons in Mexico
live inspired and motivated by what their brotherhood once was. Even
though a great majority of them claim that Freemasonry is not a political
institution, present-day Masonic discourses are closely tied to the organ-
isation’s past political accomplishments (Padilla 1993, 78).
Traditionally, Freemasonry has always kept updated with regard to
governmental activities and official ceremonies, assemblies and other
events. Politics never escape them. Although they do not introduce
themselves as freemasons, they do identify themselves as Mexican lib-
erals. Freemasons in Mexico in the twentieth century became the sol-
diers to protect the separation between the Church and State and the
secularisation of the country. During the last decades of the past cen-
tury, all the Masonic speeches invoked the protection of lay and secular
ideals. This was particularly because the masons of the time felt that
President Carlos Salinas (1988–1994) had broken with the tradition
that many Mexican presidents had managed to protect. President Sali-
nas reformed article 130 of the Mexican Constitution, giving gave back
some political rights and recognition to the Catholic Church. However,
despite this discontent on the part of the masons, they did not organise
acts of civil disobedience; it all stayed within the discursive points or in
discreet complaints. Perhaps this was because of their closeness to the
PRI, Partido Revolucionario Institucional [Institutional Revolutionary
Party], political party and, at the same time, because of being part of a
system in which the ultimate authority is not questioned – in this case,
the President of Mexico. However, the changes caused members of the
Masonic organisation to establish civil associations and NGOs of li-
brepensadores [free-thinkers], with the aim to protect Mexico’s secular
tradition and to act as a political pressure group to continue the fight
Benito Juarez and other Mexican leaders, such as Obregon and Calles,
who fought for the separation of Church and State, to promote laicism
and secularisation.
Brazil
Modern Freemasonry arrived in Brazil in a similar way to other Latin
American countries. The Masonic phenomenon came through enlight-
enment ideas and ideals, promoting a common and long-lasting puzzle-
ment between illustration and affiliation to Freemasonry.
Plenty is the hypothesis on the first Masonic lodge in Brazil. The
sources are mostly fragile, such as testimonies that survived by hearsay
over time. If we accept this oral tradition, it is possible to affirm that
Freemasonry blossomed in northeast Brazil, mainly on the Provinces
of Bahia and Pernambuco around the end of the eighteenth and begin-
ning of the nineteenth century. Proven, is the fact that during the 1810s,
lodges were founded in Rio de Janeiro. The arrival of the Portuguese
Royal Family in Brazil probably brought more Masonic elements to the
then colony, in form of members of the Craft and new ideas.
More than a colony, Brazil was a Portuguese one, with a mental-
ity blended between absolutism and Catholicism. The composition of
the House of Bragança that arrived in Brazil was pervaded with anti-
Masonic feelings which blamed the fraternity for every turmoil Eu-
rope experimented with, and the ones it was experimenting, since the
mid-eighteenth century (Roberts 2008, 15–31). This suspicion of the
Royal Family, allied to the sprouting of Masonic lodges in Brazilian soil,
led D. João VI, at that point King of the United Kingdom of Portugal,
Brazil, and Algarve, to issue in 1818 a Royal Charter prohibiting “any
society, congregation, or association of people with some statutes, with-
out them being firstly approved by me […]” (Collecção 1889). Nonethe-
less, the Masonic lodges kept their activities, even facing penalties such
as death according to the issued chart. At this point, the number of free-
masons was growing with, and within, the feelings for independence.
Unsurprisingly, the events that led to the creation of the Grande Ori-
ente Brasilico, or Brasiliano, [Brazilian Grand Orient] on the 17th of
June 1822 (Carvalho 2010, 35) and the proclamation of independence,
on 7 September of the same year, are intertwined. Several individuals
were involved in both events, with special mentions to Jose Bonifacio de
Andrada e Silva, statesman and counsellor of the crown, and Pedro de
Bragança, Regent Prince, who became the first Emperor of Brazil. They
were, respectively, the first and second Grand Masters of the newly born
Brazilian Masonic body.
It is debatable if D. Pedro was played by, or if he played with, Free-
masonry and the freemasons. The sources display traces of a political
manoeuvre of the freemasons to attract the Emperor to declare inde-
pendence, a cause that most of them identified with. For that purpose,
D. Pedro was initiated and passed on 2 August 1822 (Castellani 1996,
158, 159), and raised to the master mason degree three days later.1 The
newly initiated Emperor was made the new Grand Master on 4 October
the same year. If the intention was to influence the Emperor, the opera-
tion backfired: D. Pedro shut the Grande Oriente Brasilico two weeks
later amid a crisis in his first ministerial cabinet that involved Bonifacio
(former Grand Master), and the other political group, led by Joaquim
Gonçalves Ledo (Barata 2006, 237–248).
The historiography of Brazilian Freemasonry is intertwined with the
one related to Brazilian independence. In practical terms, they were born
and grew together. Both were traditionally built as a simple narrative,
as foundational histories are, of struggles between presumed opposites:
Metropolis vs. Colony, Portuguese vs. “Brazilians”, liberals vs. conser-
vatives, freemasons vs. absolutists (Azevedo 1997, 182–187).
Masonic bodies would be re-established after the abdication of D. Pe-
dro I, in 1831. First, the Grande Oriente Nacional Brasileiro [Brazilian
Grand National Orient], and some months later, some members of the
first Masonic body would “resume” its activities, adopting the name
Grande Oriente Brazileiro [Brazillian Grande Orient], until embracing
its definitive nomenclature Grande Oriente do Brasil [Grand Orient of
Brazil].
During the nineteenth century, what we will see is the accommoda-
tion of the Masonic mentality to the status quo. Most of its members
will take part in ministerial cabinets, occupy political positions, or play
other key roles as businessmen. Although acclimatised, Brazilian Free-
masonry during the Brazilian Second Empire (1841–1889) had internal
and external clashes. The most famous one, “The Religious Question”,
is deemed as one of the episodes that led to the debacle of the Brazilian
Empire. Following Vatican’s Ultra Montanism, two bishops from north
Brazil decided to demand the expulsion of freemasons belonging to re-
ligious brotherhoods. That went against the custom of the Padroado
established between the Brazilian Empire and the Holy See. Therefore,
the two bishops were arrested (pardoned after a year), starting a crisis
between liberals and conservatives.
Freemasonry in Brazil, roughly, was divided between the more conser-
vative approach of English Freemasonry and the more liberal one of the
Grand Orient de France. The latter, in the decade of 1870, was advocat-
ing for a Freemasonry with “absolute liberty of conscience”, which, in
their interpretation would signify not to reinforce matters of belief. That,
and other struggles for power, translated itself into divisions, formation
of schismatic Grand Orients and Supreme Councils, and failed unions
(Carvalho 2010, 37–43). Besides that, Freemasonry had an influence in
reinforcing modern ideas in Brazil, such as the abolition of slavery and
the institution of a Republic. These two things happened; however, the
influence of Freemasonry is rather inflated.
Brazilian Freemasonry greeted the arrival of the twentieth century
with optimism and anticlericalism, which was expressed through anti-
Jesuitism (Grande Oriente do Brasil 1901, 664–667). During the first 40
years of the Republic – a period also known as the “Old Republic” – the
pages of the Grand Orient of Brazil’s bulletin expressed new intellec-
tual trends in several fields, at the same time that there is a reliance on
the status quo. There was a reason for that: Freemasonry had been one
of the platforms for republicanism, republican clubs and the first Re-
publican Party in Brazil. The translation of this relation is found in the
number of freemasons that ended up being presidents of Brazil before
1930, seven out of thirteen: Deodoro da Fonseca (1889–1891), Floriano
Peixoto (1891–1894), Campos Sales (1898–1902), Nilo Peçanha (1909–
1910), Hermes da Fonseca (1910–1914), Wenceslau Brás (1914–1918),
and Washington Luís (1926–1930).
Socialism, spiritism and esperantism were among other new ideas that
attracted some Brazilian freemasons’ attention and even engagement.
Freemasonry plunged, for some decades, into the political, social and
ideological diversity of Brazilian society of the first quarter of the twenti-
eth century. Imbued with a positivist approach towards social conflicts,
the freemasons beneath the Equator Line believed in conciliation of
classes through social improvement (Morel, and Souza 2008, 189).
Despite all the political and social turmoil of the Brazilian society in
the 1920s, there was no match for the internal disputes of the Grand
Orient of Brazil, the sole national organ of Brazilian Freemasonry since
1883. The robust centralised system reigning in Brazilian Freemasonry
started to present fissures propelled by the federalisation of the Brazil-
ian State, such as the foundation of state-based Masonic bodies such as
the Grande Oriente Paulista [Grand Orient Paulista]2 and the Grande
Oriente e Supremo Conselho do Rio Grande do Sul [Grand Orient
and Supreme Council of the Rio Grande do Sul], in 1893 (Barata 1999,
76). Other elements added tension within the Grand Orient of Bra-
zil: the decline in the number of lodges; the expansion of Freemasonry
throughout the country, diminishing the power of the great centres,
such as Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo; and the Catholic opposition
that found a battleground with Freemasonry in the field of education
(Barata 1999, 141).
This internal dispute over the elections, and consequently control, to
the position of Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Brazil, combined
with other issues related to the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Ac-
cepted Scottish Rite, led to the first big schism of the twentieth century
in Brazil. Such separation, in 1927, gave birth to the state Grand Lodges,
using an organisational model similar to the State Grand Lodges in the
United States. However, other blows would hit Brazilian Freemasonry
in the next decade with the establishment of a new regime, translating
the shift on the traditional political structures, so far favourable to the
freemasons, and the arrival of the fascist movements and ideas in Brazil.
In 1937 President Getulio Vargas playing on the internal and exter-
nal political environment, dissolved the Congress, decreed a state of
emergency, abolished the Constitution and proclaimed the establish-
ment of the Estado Novo [New State]. A new nationalist ideology arose,
Catholic intellectuals such as Gustavo Barroso wrote profusely against
Freemasonry, being his work in three volumes História Secreta do Bra-
sil [Secret History of Brazil], published from 1936 to 1938, a success.
This work was the one that better incorporated the narrative against
Freemasonry into the national political discourse (Costa 2009, 102).
Freemasonry was shut by the Comissão Executiva do Estado de Guerra
[Executive Commission of the State of War], an organ with powers to
stop any propagator of the communist ideology (Kornis 2009). The in-
volvement of Brazil in the Second World War postponed any chance
of resuming the Masonic activities in Brazil. The situation would be
normalised only with the 1946 elections; however, it can be said that
Brazilian Freemasonry would never regain its political stature (Morel,
and Souza 2008, 217).
In the 1950s and 1960s, agitations on the Brazilian political scenario
and the ongoing movements of accord and dissent within Brazilian Free-
masonry led to another troubled decade. Attempts of union found the
resistance of lodges in other places of the federation, displaying a with-
draw of power from the centre: Rio de Janeiro (Castellani, and Car-
valho 2009, 228). In May 1960, a newsletter from the Grand Orient
of Brazil made a call for political sobriety and social justice; in 1961,
amid a constitutional crisis, the Grand Master Cyro Werneck called for
respecting the Constitution. In 1964, the military and a parcel of the
Brazilian society took power over a coup; the majority of the freemasons
were in favour of the new regime (Castellani e Carvalho 2009, 243);
however, dissidences existed although silenced for fears of persecution
(Alméri 2013, 77).
It is unsurprising that another schism occurred within Brazilian Free-
masonry in 1973, again ignited by controversial elections. Through the
hardening of the regime, with instruments such as the Institutional Act
Number Five, the atmosphere of betrayal encroached lodges, mainly the
ones in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Numerous were the denunciations,
often related to personal differences, a practice easily manifested in cli-
mates of political repression. One of these accusations, as many others,
claimed a “communist infiltration” due to a newsletter from the Grande
Oriente de São Paulo [Grand Orient of São Paulo] – federated to the
Grand Orient of Brazil. It developed into a police-military investigation
in 1970. The Grand Master upheld the loyalty of the Masonic body by
quoting, among other things, an obsequious document produced by the
Grand Orient of Brazil called “The thinking of Brazilian Freemasonry
on the relevance of the Armed Forces on the defence of the Democratic
Regime”. Nonetheless, the process went on and the Nacional Service
of Information kept regular reports on Brazilian Freemasonry until the
next decade (Camargo 2016, 145).
Freemasonry and the Brazilian society have a common and entangled
past. Both encounter in their historiography a space of dispute that, as
all historical discourses, is rooted in the present. The rest of the twen-
tieth century in Brazil would testify to the end of the dictatorship, the
promulgation of a new Constitution and several political turbulences.
Brazilian Freemasonry, which once confused itself with the apparatus
of power and was a champion of new ideas, even if circumscribed to an
elite, will see its lodges increase in number, but decrease in relevance.
This decline is unveiled by a focus on the past, when it comes to its
regime of historicity, within Masonic emic historiography, and the con-
fused attempts of regaining influence in the Brazilian political scenario,
at the expense of challenging their own fundamental rules, the so-called
Masonic landmarks.
Cuba
Cuban Freemasonry represents a unique case in the world because it is
the only one that has been tolerated – and furthermore, has thrived –
under a communist regime. Although there were a few short-lived lodges
during the brief British occupation of the island in 1762 – albeit some
claim before that there were “operative” freemasons in Cuba in the first
half of the eighteenth century, which is extremely unlikely (Barboza) –
the first records of Masonic lodges on Cuban soil date from the time of
the Haitian revolution, which were founded by French citizens fleeing
the revolt (Torres 2011, 76). But the first all-Cuban lodges came in 1859
when the Gran Logia de Colon [Grand Lodge of Colon] was established
in the eastern city of Santiago; but during the Ten Years’ War (1868–
1878) – an independentist movement led by Cuban-born wealthy planta-
tion owners against Spanish rule – these lodges were accused of having
taken the revolutionaries’ side and many of their members were arrested
and imprisoned. Therefore, Santiago freemasons had to close down their
temples and cease all Masonic activity not to come at odds with the
Spanish authorities; as a consequence, the Masonic epicentre shifted
westwards to Havana and has remained there ever since (Soucy, and
Sappez 2009, 93). The renewed Cuban independence movement of 1895,
in which freemasons Jose Marti, Maximo Gomez and Antonio Maceo
played a crucial role, derived in a new ban on Masonic activities until,
in 1899, the end of the Spanish rule brought about a reconfiguration of
Freemasonry in the island, under a more republican, patriotic and sec-
ular perspective. Besides its usual philanthropic and fraternal activities,
Cuban masons engaged themselves in social and cultural activities and
participated in the “wider debate about Cuban society, its time and its
relationship with a more universal line of thought” (Torres 2011, 99).
And indeed, Cuba’s Masonic diplomacy established a wide network of
contacts and an intense epistolary exchange – which versed not only on
matters of the craft but on politics and cultural affairs too – with other
lodges and Masonic bodies, from the United States and Mexico to Spain
and Morocco, which lasted well into the 1940s (Aguiar 2018, 223–233).
At the turn of the twentieth century, as the United States handed con-
trol of the country to the Cubans, Freemasonry in Cuba took the centre
stage in the political debate around which direction the newly created re-
public should head to. In the new party-based structure, it was not only
a matter of political influence in the strict sense of the concept: Masonic
symbols and aesthetics were borrowed by different political parties in
order to establish a connection with the perceived Masonic ideals of ci-
vility and honesty and to capitalise on the good fame of the fraternal so-
ciety and its members. The first mayor of Havana, Miguel Gener – who
was also a pivotal figure in the creation of a new justice system – was
a freemason; the first president of Cuba, Tomas Estrada, was a mem-
ber of the fraternity as well. Across the political spectrum, the different
parties incorporated Masonic-like triangles, squares, compasses, three
dots and stars to induce voters to associate them with “masonic” values
(Gutierrez, and Iglesias 2010, 226, 229, 233). Of course, the Catholic
Church, Freemasonry’s historic rival, reacted to the spread of Protes-
tantism, Marxist political parties, Freemasonry and labour unions by
establishing socio-political associations of its own, such as Federacion
de la Juventud Cubana, Accion Catolica and Caballeros Catolicos [Fed-
eration of the Cuban Youth, Catholic Action, and Catholic Gentlemen]
(Crahan 1989, 4).
The next four Cuban presidents – Jose Miguel Gomez (1908–1912),
Mario Garcia (1913–1920), Alfredo Zayas (1920–1925) and Antonio
Machado (1925–1933) – all came from the ranks of the independentist
movement of the late nineteenth century, but this did not mean that
the relationship between them was entirely frictionless. When Garcia’s
four-year term ended, he refused to give up the presidency and stayed in
power; Gomez rose in arms against him and was ultimately defeated.
Zayas formed part of the rebellion and eventually was elected president.
When freemason Antonio Machado rose to power in 1925, he put for-
ward an ambitious plan to modernise Cuba’s ailing infrastructure and to
build motorways and an array of much-needed civil works. But he also
systematically curtailed freedom of press: many magazines and newspa-
pers were forced to shut down, and those that remained chose to carefully
select what to publish in order to remain on good terms with Machado,
who was clinging to power albeit his constitutional term had ended. La
Gran Logia magazine, the official organ of Cuban Freemasonry, was
spared from the purge but was faced with a dilemma: many of those
who opposed Machado were freemasons just like him, but even so were
detained, tortured and in some cases killed for voicing their disapproval
of the government. Masonic lodges were ordered to disband and shut
down, not just individually but regionally too, like in Camagüey, where
all Masonic lodges had to disband after publishing a series of pamphlets
against the government. The Grand Lodge of Cuba and La Gran Logia
had to act very carefully not to be accused of taking sides, whilst trying
to achieve a much-needed reconciliation. Still, during 1929 the maga-
zine constantly praised Machado despite him growing more despotic,
but in 1931 – after a change in the Grand Lodge’s administration – La
Gran Logia stopped acclaiming the president and even turned critical on
him. When, in 1933, Machado was finally deposed, Cuban Freemasonry
tried to clean their act. La Gran Logia described the day Machado was
overthrown as “a stellar spot in Cuba’s ephemerides” and played safe
by taking its share of the blame for propping up Machado’s dictatorship
and, at the same time, distancing the institution from any conflict:
Freemasonry could not avoid those nefarious actions because she

accepts people of all political mindsets within her ranks […] besides,
she was deceived by the dictator and the oligarchs around him […]
and now what must be done is to strip General Machado of his 33rd
degree.
(Beltran, and Mendoza 2011, 193, 196, 203)
Machado was succeeded by the short-lived presidency of Carlos Manuel

de Cespedes, who was overthrown by a military coup in which Fulgen-
cio Batista played a crucial role. The country was ruled for a few days
by a five-member coalition known as the Pentarchy of 1933, which was
ousted by the Student Directory movement lead by Ramon Grau, who
in turn was ousted and succeeded by a series of ephemeral governments
until Batista seized power in 1940, keeping effective control over Cuban
politics until he was overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1959.
But the relationship between Freemasonry and politics is a two-way
phenomenon. Thanks to well-kept records and due to the fact that in
Cuba the organisation and its members have been more willing to come
under the scrutiny of historians and sociologists, the impact of political
and social developments on the Masonic institution can be measured not
just in terms of ideas and opinions but also statistically. For instance,
the studies show that in the period prior to the revolution, the number
of men joining Masonic lodges jumped from 15,361 in 1945 to 32,899
in 1959, out of a population of a little more than five million and six
and a half million, respectively, coinciding with the growing opposition
to the Batista regime, and the number of lodges went from 207 to 340
in the same lapse. After the 1959 revolution, which overthrew Batista
and imposed a communist dictatorship with Fidel Castro at its helm,
the number of lodges and freemasons decreased dramatically to 25,072
members in 1968 – out of a total population of just over eight million –
to an all-time low of 19,690 in 1981 – when compared to a total popula-
tion just shy of 9.8 million. Interestingly, the number of lodges remained
stable: there were 326 in 1981, just 14 fewer than in 1959. Between the
last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-
first, the figures climbed slowly but steadily, from 21,153 freemasons
and 314 lodges in 1990 to 28,863 members and 316 lodges in 2010
(Romeu 2013, 143–145).
The peculiar relationship between Freemasonry and the Castro re-
gime, unheard of in any other communist country, from the Russian rev-
olution to the fall of the Iron Curtain, is the subject of many speculations
and legends and, quite interestingly, has been almost completely avoided
by scholars and experts. According to some (Richter 2014, 2016), the
cosy association started when Fidel and Raul Castro and their men dis-
embarked in Cuba to start the revolt against Batista and were sheltered
by the members of a Masonic lodge. In gratitude, Fidel Castro allowed
Freemasonry to carry on with its philanthropic and philosophical activi-
ties but always kept a vigilant eye on it. Another theory states that either
both the Castro brothers, or probably just Raul, were initiated freema-
sons sometime in their youth and, therefore, left the organisation un-
scathed after establishing their rule over the island. A less romanticised
take on the story comes from a study conducted for unspecified reasons
by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada and posted at the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) website,
based on news reports and on the information contained on a previous
version of the Grand Lodge of Cuba website – the link to the Historia
de la masoneria en Cuba in the 2020 version of the web page produces
a 404 error. Said report states that there are other two para-Masonic
organisations with a membership that rivals “traditional” Freemasonry:
the Sociedad de Antiguos Honorables Compañeros Distintos [Ancient
and Honourable Distinguished Companions] and the Caballeros de
la Luz [Gentlemen of the Light], with around 25,000 members each
as of 2010. So, it is safe to say that a decade ago, there were at least
around 55,000 Cuban men engaged in Masonic and fraternal organi-
sations, allowed to do so by the government. But the report, conducted
in 2014, also claims that the relationship with the government has not
been entirely smooth. According to Cuba’s Grand Lodge website, after
the revolution and given the “radicalisation” of the communist regime,
many high-ranking freemasons fled the island and established the Grand
Lodge of Cuba in Exile, on U.S. soil. As of May 2020, this information
is no longer available on http://granlogiacuba.org/, Cuba’s Grand Lodge
official website and the report does not state when it was accessed. Citing
interviews with Manuel Olmedo, president of the Federation of Cuban
Masons in Exile, and with Gustavo Pardo, former president of the Cu-
ban Academy for Higher Masonic Studies, the report indicates that the
Masonic organisations are under the strict surveillance of the Office for
Religious Affairs of the Communist Party and the Register of Associa-
tions Office, which demands all lodges to fill and submit detailed reports
on their activities, and are deeply infiltrated by undercover government
security officers, to the extreme that, according to Cubanet news agency,
even when a government spy commits an act that would get any normal
mason expelled from the lodge, the regime intervenes to reinstate his
Masonic rights. Such was the case of Jose Manuel Collera, an officer of
the political police who climbed the ranks of Freemasonry and became
Grand Master of the Solano Ramos lodge, who in 2011 was accused by
his brethren of abusing his office and embezzlement. The Register of As-
sociations Office pushed to have him reinstated, when the lodge refused,
it was threatened by the Ministry of Justice with “political accusations”
(Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada).
Another explanation for the unusual connection between Freemasonry
and the regime, would be that, from the beginning, Castro’s pragmatism
made him realise that trying to end by decree all the different religious
and spiritual beliefs existing in Cuba would not only be impossible but
detrimental to his government. Freemasonry fell under that same um-
brella, and the attitude the communist regime has had to it could be
extrapolated to the attitude it has had to Christian beliefs: “Christianity
was so intimately linked with Cuban identity that a government desiring
to increase nationalism would not want to uproot it”. In this mindset,
we could also extrapolate the resolutions of the 1971 First Cuban Educa-
tional and Cultural Congress, which outlined the government’s position
towards religious and spiritual beliefs:
The Revolution respects religious beliefs and cults as an individual

right. The Revolution does not impose or persecute or repress any-
one for religious beliefs. The Revolution offers possibilities and op-
portunities in its work of transformation to one and all, whether or
not they profess religious beliefs.
(Crahan 1989, 15)
Due to the fact that Freemasonry is also deeply rooted not only into
Cuban identity but also into its nationalism, thanks to the fact that the
three founding fathers of independent Cuba were freemasons – Marti,
Gomez and Maceo – to the political and social role of the Masonic in-
stitution during the twentieth century and to the ubiquity of Masonic
lodges across Cuba, uprooting it would not have been only a difficult
task, but also a politically perilous one.
Conclusion
As it has been stated in the previous pages, Freemasonry has witnessed
the transformations Mexico, Brazil and Cuba have undergone over the
last century. Such transformations have in turn served to influence the
organisation’s development. The role played by Freemasonry – at times a
leading agent, others playing a supporting role – shows that in order to
have a complete picture of twentieth-century Latin America, one needs
to include Freemasonry in the discussion.
Freemasonry’s secretive nature and its involvement in the political and
social spheres in Latin America have earned it many enemies, who oppose
its ideas and proposals. This has engendered even greater secrecy on the
part of the association and an impassioned stance on the part of its sym-
pathisers. Both its detractors and its defenders write that Masonry played
a key role in the social and political lives of Latin America. This chapter
attempted to show a small glimpse to that role from a different perspective:
an impartial, unbiased academic point of view that seeks not to detract nor
to defend the organisation. In like fashion, this is an attempt to study Free-
masonry’s development in its relation to other historical events important to
the construction of the Latin American nations and to assess the influence
of this formative process on the Latin American Masonic organisations.
It can be said that Freemasonry is a transnational ideological-political
combination, one that has enjoyed great success in the region, not only in
the three countries we have briefly analysed in the previous pages, even
despite the constant persecutions and criticisms it has attracted in different
times and places. Thus, we argue that Freemasonry’s contributions in Latin
America and other parts of the world should be explored and analysed from
different angles in order to gain a better understanding of the historical pro-
cesses and socio-political developments – as well as the cultural, artistic and
spiritual ones – in which the organisation has been involved. This essay is
only an introduction to the role of Freemasonry in the twentieth century in
Cuba, Brazil, and Mexico; and has probably raised more questions than it
has answered. Nevertheless, we hope that it has aroused the reader’s curios-
ity to learn more about this fascinating and transcendental subject.
Notes
1 Name given to the initiation on the basic three degrees in Freemasonry. The
ceremony of reception of a new mason is called initiation, in it the person
receives the degree of Entered Apprentice. The second, Fellow Craft degree,
is conferred in a ceremony called “passing”. And the “raising” is the confer-
ment of the third degree, Master Mason.
2 Inhabitant or native of the São Paulo State.
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12 The Rise of “Scientific”
Antisemitism in Latin
America
Rogelio Aragón
Preliminary Considerations
On 9 December 2019, BBC Mundo (the British Broadcasting Corpora-
tion’s service in Spanish, primarily aimed at Latin American audiences)
posted an article briefly explaining the difference between antisemitism1
and anti-Zionism, hinting – but ultimately falling short – at being a
guide of sorts on how to criticise Israel and its foreign policy without
being labelled as either anti-Semite or anti-Zionist. The article concludes
that – although often confused for one another, conflated, and used in-
terchangeably with one another – both concepts are not the same. This
has proven to be an abrasive and contentious issue around the world,
especially in the last 50 years, and Latin America has not been the ex-
ception. All over the region a vast number of journalists, politicians and
academics, not to mention the general public, independently of their po-
sition on the political spectrum, have equated Zionism to racism – and
even to Nazism – and Jew to Zionist, using the term as a slander and
to express “anti-capitalism, anti-nationalism, anti-Americanism” and to
disseminate “the myth of the intrinsically ‘good Palestinian’ – today’s
innocent victim par excellence” (Liewerant, and Sieman 2016, 123). In-
deed, a quick tour on Twitter, YouTube and any other social media,
will show that, most of the time, any argument that begins as a criti-
cism of Israel and its politics almost invariably turns into an antisemitic
rant filled with common places and Jewish stereotypes of all kinds: they
are racist and therefore ostracise themselves, they are rich and powerful
and control the media, the banks and the whole financial system, they
are intrinsically colonialists set to control the world. Even though Jews
make only a very small percentage of the population of Latin America –
around 3% of their 0.2% share of the world’s inhabitants live in the
area (Pew-Templeton) – their image as untrustworthy bloodsucking un-
assimilated aliens, always ready to exploit Latin Americans the same
way they do with Palestinians and other peoples, endures and it’s based
on the ideas contained in the myriad of “scientific” antisemitic books
and writings on which many fascist and nationalist political parties and
movements were based; works still widely available, especially online,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-16
Antisemitism in Latin America 303
written by the end of the nineteenth and all along the twentieth centuries
by Latin American authors, containing antisemitic and anti-Judaic ideas
which our common language has helped to spread across the region.
For conciseness’ sake and due to the nature and scope of the work
these pages are part of, I will not delve into the many distinctions be-
tween antisemitism and anti-Judaism put forward by scholars and ex-
perts on the subject. An extremely succinct and narrow definition of the
difference between both concepts is that anti-Judaism is the Christian –
predominantly Catholic – rejection of Jewish religious principles, prac-
tices and beliefs on a more theological and philosophical level; whilst, on
the other hand, antisemitism is the discrimination and hatred towards
the Jewish community based on their religious, cultural and genealogi-
cal origin, regardless of whether or how they follow said religious prac-
tices. The lines between both anti-Jewish attitudes are not always clear,
and that is especially true in the “scientific” antisemitic writings in Latin
America. Jews can be described in the same paragraph as deicides and as
usurers, as “Messiah obsessed” and as communists. Jewish stereotypes
have even permeated everyday language and idiomatic expressions: the
translation of “usurer” into Spanish on the website wordreference.com
yields “agiotista” [loan shark] and “Judío” [Jew] as synonyms. 2
In the following pages, an idea will be notably absent: the equation
of antisemitism to the far-right. Although many of the political move-
ments and authors analysed here have been categorised as far-right or
extreme-right, antisemitism is not exclusive to that side of politics, as
the recent scandals involving the Labour party in Britain have shown, or
as the many reports of antisemitism in the USSR, communist-era Poland
and Sandinista Nicaragua, just to name a few so-called leftist regimes,
can confirm. Also, the most ardent supporters of the Palestine Libera-
tion Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian cause, who in turn are the
most likely to use antisemitic slurs when referring to Israel and the Jews,
identify themselves with the left. As we will see, even a rather politically
ambiguous movement such as Peronism, had its share of antisemitism.
Besides, in my opinion, the left-right divide no longer reflects the com-
plexity of the new political reality, in the making for the last three de-
cades. Therefore, the right-left label will be avoided.
The Rise…
The image of the Jew as a “Christ-killer”, as a sorcerer, as a Devil wor-
shipper, and as an enemy of Christianity, arrived in the New World with
the Catholic priests and missionaries in charge of preaching the gospels
to its inhabitants. And, along with those clergymen and Iberian settlers,
who also brought the Inquisition, came the many crypto-Jewish immi-
grants that established themselves on this side of the Atlantic. Techni-
cally, Jews were barred from entering the Spanish colonies and were out
304 Rogelio Aragón
of the Inquisition’s jurisdiction simply because they belonged to a differ-
ent religion, albeit a despised and rejected one, and basically because, the-
oretically, the Holy Office dealt only with Christian heresies. The trouble
with the conversos was that they had – forcibly in most cases – converted
to Christianity, they had become cristianos nuevos [new Christians], and
whenever they deviated from Catholicism, they were subjected to the In-
quisition. But the transition from anti-Judaism – the Christian rejection
of Jewish religious practices and principles – and the traditional antisem-
itism based on it, to what Joshua Trachtenberg (1993, 3–5) defines as
“scientific” antisemitism – contingent on alleged historical and factual
evidence – was swifter in the New World, ironically, because of its ap-
parent lack of Jewish population and communities. Whilst in Europe
“the Jewish question” was ever-present and the Jews were permanently
under the vigilant eye of both civil and religious authorities – Reformed
and Protestant churches proved to be as anti-Judaic and antisemitic as
their Catholic predecessors – in the Spanish Americas after the mas-
sive inquisitorial processes against conversos [converted] in the second
third of the seventeenth century, which drove crypto-Jews out or deeper
underground, the cases involving conversos [converted] were few and
far between. Even the inquisitorial term judaizante [judaizers], which
was used against those who preached Judaism, became, later, a charge
against whoever preached ideas Catholicism considered unorthodox –
freemasons, protestants, atheists and deists all fell under this umbrella.
In stark contrast, in Spain, during the eighteenth century, there was a
renewed interest in the converso community which kept the peninsular
Inquisition busy during the rest of the century (López 2014).
In the seventeenth century, the focus of Jew-hatred in the Spanish
Americas had shifted from solely religious to economic and political
grounds. In the 1630s and the 1640s, the times of the largest autos de fe
in the region, Portuguese and Jew became synonyms. During the Iberian
Union, a period in which the Spanish and Portuguese crowns were united
(1580–1640), large groups of Portuguese conversos and crypto-Jews set-
tled mainly in the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru. They excelled in
trade and shop-keeping, and many of their cristianos viejos [old Chris-
tians] counterparts soon started raising their voices against them and
complaining about their meteoric success. They owned shops in the centre
of Lima’s commercial district, but they also ventured into street trade and
door-to-door sales. Three centuries later, in Costa Rica, Jewish immi-
grants from Poland resorted to door-to-door trade to survive – they were
known as klapers for the Yiddish onomatopoeia for door-knocking – and
they also came under fire from the local traders and the Costa Rican
Chamber of Commerce, who not only accused them of tax evasion but
also of poisoning milk, of promoting communism and of usury, which
further stirred the antisemitic attitudes common in the 1930s (González
2017, 137). But let us go back to the seventeenth century.
In 1635, a Portuguese merchant living in Lima, Peru, Antonio Cordero,
was brought before the Inquisition accused of secretly being a Jew. Ac-
cording to a witness, Cordero refused to open his shop on Saturdays and,
when offered a piece of tocino [bacon], he said “why would I eat some-
thing neither my parents nor my grandparents ate?” (Medina 1956, II,
47). Cordero was detained and questioned. Under torture, he confessed
that many other Portuguese merchants were also secretly Jews. They in
turn were questioned and tortured, and soon the number of crypto-Jews
detained grew so much that the prison reached its maximum capacity,
and the prisoners had to be housed in makeshift cells (Medina 1956, II,
49). The accusations against them ranged from taking baths and putting
on clean clothes on Friday evenings and eating only fish and fruits and
never any meat, to plotting to blow up the city and conspiring with the
Dutch to do so. Why the Dutch and not any other enemy of Spain? Be-
cause by that moment the Dutch had invaded and occupied the northern
coast of Brazil – propped up by the Jews, according to the confession of
another converso – and the Portuguese Jewish merchants were known to
have very strong commercial and religious ties with the Jewish commu-
nity in the Netherlands (Liebman 1973, 22–24).
But probably the most illustrating accusation of all can be found in the
words written by the Inquisitor Leon de Alcayaga, in 1636:
Since six to eight years ago, the Portuguese came in droves to the
Kingdom of Peru, though Buenos Aires, Brazil, New Spain, the New
Kingdom [Nuevo Reino de Granada, part of present-day Colombia]
and Puerto Velo. […] They became the sole masters of trade, Mer-
chants’ Street [in Lima] and its alleys and most shops were practi-
cally theirs; all the streets were swarming with them […] and all the
goods, from brocades to coarse wool, from diamonds to cumin and
from the vilest negroes of Guinea to the most precious pearls, every-
thing passed through their hands.
(Medina 1956, II, 46)
The massive auto de fe [act of faith], in which the defendants received

their sentences and ended the period known as la complicidad grande
[the great complicity], the Great Conspiracy, took place in January 1639.
A few years later, in 1642, another complicidad grande – the wording
was not a coincidence – was discovered in Mexico City, and again the
Portuguese crypto-Jews took the centre stage. According to some schol-
ars, the process against the conversos in New Spain was a direct conse-
quence of the proceedings in Peru, because many of the Jews imprisoned
and tortured in Lima stated that they had relatives and business part-
ners in present-day Mexico (Lea 1908, 229). But the accounts written
in Spanish by Latin American – mostly Mexican – historians, reveal
that the largest auto de fe against Jews in New Spain started out when a
306 Rogelio Aragón
Catholic priest told the inquisitors that two of his servants overheard a
group of Portuguese men plotting to set ablaze the Houses of the Inquisi-
tion and burn its occupants to death. By this moment, the Iberian Union
had dissolved, Portugal, now an independent kingdom, had forged an
alliance with Spain’s arch-enemy France and, therefore, Portuguese na-
tionals who had moved to Spain and its colonies were now regarded not
only as foreigners but also as disloyal and false-hearted (Liebman 1973,
18). The process against the crypto-Jews in Mexico City sent shock-
waves through the political system. The viceroy, Diego López Pacheco,
was not only remarkably close to the Portuguese community: he was
also the first cousin of the Duke of Braganza, who was crowned as King
John IV of Portugal after the successful revolt against the Spanish rule.
The bishop of Puebla, Juan de Palafox, led what could only be described
as a coup d’état against Viceroy López. He was deposed and sent back
to Spain; Palafox became the de facto head of the viceroyalty. Accord-
ing to him, this was because “those who used to be good have turned
bad and became the mortal enemies of the Castilians, as adherents and
professors of the errors of the Jews […] conspired against His Majesty”
(González 1952, 224, 225).
The image of the Jew as a conspirator against Crown and Cross en-
dured and received a renewed impulse in the work of Francisco de Tor-
rejoncillo, a Franciscan monk, who in 1674 published Centinela contra
Judíos [Sentinel against the Jews], a book which fuses the more classi-
cal tropes of anti-Judaic theology with gruesome antisemitic accounts
of ritual killings of Christian children, desecrations of the Host and of
images of Christ, along with numerous “proofs” of conspiracies and
plots against Christianity, peppered with descriptions of the behaviour
and physical appearance of Jews, their descendants and the conversos, 3
closer to the “scientific” antisemitism of the past 150 years. The Cen-
tinela proved to be a very successful book: it was reprinted and re-edited
many times through the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries,
and it served as the basis to other contemporary works of similar nature,
such as Oración Panegírica by Francisco Navarro (1722), Impugnación
contra el Talmud de los Judíos by Felix de Alamin (1727) and Mayor
fiscal contra Judíos by Antonio Contreras (1736). But, most importantly,
Centinela served as a blueprint for later works that set aside the tales of
desecration of holy images and symbols and ritual killings to focus on
the alleged proofs and facts about the conspiracies against Church and
State.
By the time of the wars of Independence in Latin America, Freema-
sonry had taken the spotlight. The blame for the anticlerical steps taken
by many of the new republics, aimed at placing the Church’s assets and
personnel under the control of the novel governments, was pinned on the
freemasons, a term that became shorthand for atheist, liberal and anti-
clerical. Pamphlets, libels and newspaper articles attacked freemasons
and their institution, with arguments mainly based on the Memoires
pour servir a l’histoire du Jacobinisme, written by Augustin Barruel, a
French Catholic priest who tried to prove that the French Revolution and
the ensuing persecution of nobles and Catholic clergymen was part of an
elaborate plot against Christianity and Monarchy. Strangely, the Jews
were absent from this alleged plot, although a previous book – published
a decade before Barruel’s and three years prior to the French Revolution
– mentions them as part of the conspiracy to start future revolutions
across Europe.4 Barruel received a letter in 1806, nearly a decade after
his Memoires were published, supposedly written by a man named Jean
Baptiste Simonini, in which he details the connection between Jews and
freemasons and therefore between Jews and the French Revolution. Bar-
ruel dismissed the letter, but copies of it – the original is thought to be in
the Vatican archives – widely circulated across Europe, fuelling the idea
of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy and renewing the antisemitic tropes that
filled the pages of writers such as Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux and
Edouard Drumont, whose works in turn widely circulated across Latin
America, either in their own right or through the writings of Vicente de
la Fuente, author of Historia de las sociedades secretas, who comes full
circle to blame the Jews for conspiring to start revolutions and for killing
Christ, and through the works of Marcelino Menendez, who defends the
racial and religious purity of the Catholics against the “cursed race” of
the Jews.
In Mexico, the writings of Gougenot, Drumont and De la Fuente,
along with those of the infamous anti-mason Leo Taxil, translated into
Spanish, were available either by mail or at the offices of the newspaper
El amigo de la verdad [Friend of the truth] and through articles published
in Catholic newspapers, such as El Tiempo [The Time] and La voz de
México [The voice of Mexico]. Francisco Flores, editor and owner of El
amigo de la verdad, one of the staunchest pro-Catholic and conservative
newspapers published in the last quarter of the nineteenth century in
Mexico, wrote a long pamphlet dedicated to Mexican President Sebas-
tian Lerdo, titled Voz de Alerta [A Voice of Warning]. Its main goal was
trying to convince the president to steer away from the temptation to
join Freemasonry, “the leprosy of our century”, whilst exposing its true
origins and goals. Following in Barruel’s footsteps, Flores claims that
there are two kinds of Freemasonry: an “external” Freemasonry, with
all its ceremonies, handshakes and oaths, that is only a façade for the
“secret” Freemasonry, the one that pulls the strings of political power
and uses the “external” freemasons as cannon fodder to execute its will
and achieve its goals. But who are those “secret” masons? Here, Flores
takes the path lead by Gougenot, Drumont and De la Fuente, to claim
that “freemasons descend from the Jews, because they are the inventors,
supporters and propagators of masonism [sic.]”. According to Flores, the
Jews own the most “impious and revolutionary” European newspapers
308 Rogelio Aragón
and control the money and the bankers, “who, in turn, are all free-
masons”. How about the Mexican freemasons? “In Mexico freemasons
never pass the exterior stage, because here there are no Jews or there are
so few that you can say there aren’t any” (Flores 1873, 5, 26, 27).
If there were no Jews in Mexico and, therefore, Mexican Freema-
sonry was “second-class”, then why would they be interested in taking
over the country? Half a century after Flores, Antonio Gibaja, another
conservative writer, would try to come up with an answer: the Jews,
operating from their central headquarters, the United States, had been
trying to control their southern neighbour in order to exploit its natural
resources and to deliver yet another blow to conservatism and Cathol-
icism. To achieve said control, the “International Jewry” – through its
proxy, Freemasonry – planned and executed three revolts against the
“established order”, spanning a century of Mexican history: the War of
Independence (1810), the War of Reform (1857–1860) and the Mexican
Revolution (1910). Along with the violent uprisings, the Jews also in-
troduced social changes and ideas (liberalism, feminism, free press and
laic education) that ran counter the traditional, Catholic values of the
Mexican people. Gibaja’s Comentario crítico, histórico, auténtico a las
revoluciones sociales de México [Critical, historical, true commentary
to Mexico’s social revolutions] is massive: 5 volumes, around 500 pages
each. Most of the volumes are what today we would call “copy-paste”,
reproducing large passages of the works he consulted to create his in-
terpretation of history, peppered with his own ideas and opinions. The
whole work was written sometime around the late 1910s and the early
1920s, and it was first published in 1926. In the 1973 edition a synopsis
was added on the back cover of each volume. The one corresponding to
the first volume, states:
Gibaja is not mentally-ill: he does not see Jews everywhere. In fact,

he does not turn into Jews any of the main characters of our great
national tragedy; but he does prove how the traitors were all depen-
dant on International Jewry, through the ubiquitous Freemasonry.
The author of all five synopses was Salvador Abascal, founder and leader
of the 1930s Mexican synarchist movement: a political organisation
modelled after fascism, that tried to continue the struggle of the cristeros
to repel the anticlerical laws of the Reforma (1857) and of the Mexican
Constitution of 1917. We will come back to him and the sinarquistas
later.
If Gibaja did not “see Jews everywhere”, a later antisemitic writer
does. Federico Rivanera is an Argentinian writer, furiously antise-
mitic and anti-masonic, radical advocate for extreme Hispanism, self-
proclaimed revisionist and devout Catholic. In his latest book, La
historia ocultada [The concealed history] (2019), Rivanera traces back
the lineage of the main protagonists of the Latin American independence
movements – the author considers the process to be more a “secession”
than an “independence” – to prove that they were all conversos and,
needless to say, part of a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the power of
Spain – the last of the “unadulterated” Catholic world powers – and to
subsume the new nations to the hegemony of “Jewish” England first
and of the “Jewish” United States later. For instance, he extensively
traces the surnames and genealogy on both the paternal and maternal
sides of Simon Bolivar, probably the best-known caudillo in the Latin
American wars of independence, to demonstrate that many of his an-
cestors had marrano – a very derogatory but widely used synonym of
converso – surnames and that some of them – who lived back in the
sixteenth century – were in turn descendants of Jews who were peniten-
ciados [penitenciaries] and reconciliados [reconciled] by the Inquisition
(Rivanera 2019, 570). Anyone who checks the existing web pages with
Sephardic and Jewish-Iberian surnames databases will realise that, apart
from a few obvious exceptions, Spanish and Jewish-Spanish surnames
are the same. Even the most common and most “Spanish” surnames
(Hernández, Martínez, Pérez, López) also appear in those listings. But
Bolivar is absent from all of them.5
The same genealogical exploration – although not as extensive or
intensive – is repeated over and over along more than 700 pages to
drive home his point that the vast majority of Latin American founding
fathers – Sucre, San Martin, Hidalgo, Morelos, Rocafuerte – all had
conversos in their family trees, and that some others – like Agustin de
Iturbide, the first ruler of independent Mexico – were of “dubious racial
condition”, in this case, because Mexico’s self-proclaimed emperor had
an ancestor whose surname was Aragon, “superabundant amongst tor-
nadizos” (Rivanera 2019, 629). Of course, the connection between the
family tree and the role played in the revolutions of independence is, at
best, unclear. For instance, Rivanera claims that Iturbide’s alliance with
Vicente Guerrero – Iturbide was an officer in the Spanish Army and
Guerrero an independentist leader – to consummate Mexico’s indepen-
dence, was beneath the behaviour of a cristiano viejo, without any fur-
ther explanation. Rivanera did an extensive bibliographical and archival
research – “the converso world war against Spain is a historical reality
and not a conspiracy theory” (Rivanera 2019, 67) – to give his work an
academic and scientific aura.
Unlike Gibaja, who followed the positivistic guideline of “letting the
sources speak for themselves”, Rivanera relies heavily on footnotes to
illustrate his points and arguments. Of course, his efforts to emulate
academic rigour fall flat not only because of the bias and bigotry of his
approach to the subject but also because of a shortcoming he shares with
all of his fellow conspiracy theorists, past and present: the way he takes
his sources at face value, without any kind of source criticism except
310 Rogelio Aragón
for those sources that contradict his claims, which in turn he spins to
further drive his point. In what is probably his most viciously antise-
mitic work, La última etapa de la globalización: el gobierno mundial
judío [The final stage of globalisation: the Jewish world government],
Rivanera cites the anti-German libel Germany must perish! penned in
1940 by Theodore Kaufman, a Jewish-American businessman, who
proposed a wicked plan to eradicate both the German people and their
culture through selective cross-breeding with non-Germans, forced
sterilisation of the “undesired” population, carving up and distribut-
ing Germany’s territory amongst the Allies and a blanket ban on the
German language. Rivanera also dwells on the book Germany is our
problem, written by Henry Morgenthau Jr, Secretary of the Treasury
under Franklin D. Roosevelt and descendant of Ashkenazi Jews, who
devised a plan to strip Germany of a large portion of its territory and of
its industrial capabilities to turn it into a rural and agricultural society.6
Rivanera takes both works at face value without even trying to put them
in historical perspective to shed some light on why and when they were
produced and to analyse their impact, if any, on U.S. politics and public
opinion; he just spins them to prove that Jews have been aggressive and
belligerent since Biblical times, to deny the Holocaust and to pin the
blame on the Jews for the many German civilian casualties during the
Second World War and the hardships the Germans had to endure in its
aftermath, something he calls “the German Holocaust” (Rivanera 2010,
173–176).
Chronologically in between Gibaja and Rivanera lie the works of Sal-
vador Borrego, probably the best-known and most prolific antisemitic
author and conspiracy theorist in the Americas. His books are more
argumentative than factual, but still rely on sources that are not always
cited in the critical apparatus. One of Borrego’s most influential books,
América peligra [America in danger], argues that the Jewish conspir-
acy against the world started the very moment the Christian Messiah
was crucified when two sides were formed: the Christian and the anti-
Christian. According to the author, ever since the year 66 AD and all the
way through the present-day Jews have tried to undermine the Catho-
lic world, both from the inside and from the outside: they surrendered
Spain to the Muslim invaders in the eighth century, they elevated vari-
ous antipopes in Rome, they masterminded the Reformation – Borrego
seems to overlook the fact that Martin Luther was a consummate anti-
Semite – and, of course, they invented Freemasonry in complicity with
the Knights Templar, who hated the Papacy, the Nobility and the Army.
“The Jewish plan and the masonic plan are identical: above all else, the
destruction of Christianity” (Borrego 1969, 58–65).
In the Americas, as maintained by Borrego, the assault against the
“world order” was successful firstly in the United States, and from
there it focused on the rest of the countries in the continent, all of them
Catholic and conservative. Along 650 pages, he details every historical
moment in which, from his perspective, the Jewish-Freemasonry duo
acted against Latin America in general and Mexico in particular, with the
ultimate goal of establishing a Soviet-style “Marxist super- capitalism”,
more ruthless and dictatorial than communism and capitalism, aimed
at destroying free enterprise, private property and moral values, to gain
economic, social and political control of every country in the region
and in the world. Borrego wrote this peculiar interpretation of history
in the mid-1960s, during the Cold War. But, of course, he dismisses the
U.S.-USSR rivalry as nothing but smoke and mirrors, claiming that the
United States and the West helped Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1917 and
saved the Soviet Union from the Nazi invasion in the Second World War.
In another book, Derrota mundial [World Defeat], Borrego pictures the
Nazis as the intended “saviours” of the world, who ultimately were over-
whelmed by the conspirators.
Paradoxically, the link between the Nazis and Latin American
fascist and antisemitic movements in the 1930s and the 1940s was
not always as strong or clear as one would probably think. Besides
their shared aversion to Jews, communism, capitalism, liberalism and
Freemasonry, and for the organisational structures borrowed by the
Latin American pro-fascist and pro-Nazi parties and associations,
they differed in their approach to Catholicism and to racial purity
and superiority. For instance, in Chile, in 1932, an amalgamation of
conservatives, nationalists, pro-fascists and corporativists formed the
short-lived but influential Movimiento Nacional-Socialista de Chile
(MNSC) [National-Socialist Movement of Chile], better known as
the Nacistas. Their political manifesto was clearly based on German
Nazism: a popular and nationalist movement moulded on socialism
but not of the Marxist kind, i.e. not based on class struggle but rather
on “class cooperation”; not opposed to private property and free en-
terprise but based on the “social function” of economic activity and
profit, above and beyond egotistical individualism, in which every-
body was expected to work for the collective wellbeing and where in-
dividuals should first and foremost be “servants of the State”. In this
early stage the call to find an alternative to “dictatorial communism”
emanated from the USSR, to “parasitic capitalism” coming from the
United States, and to “failing liberal democracy” was, at least in the
mind of its founder, Jorge González von Marees, supposed to be for
“all Chileans, regardless of creed” (Movimiento Nacional Socialista
de Chile 1932, 4–26). But in practice, the nacista base turned out to be
just as viciously antisemitic as their European counterparts. To appeal
to a wider audience and to gain the support of the German popula-
tion in southern Chile, the movement became increasingly antisemitic.
The nacistas published a weekly magazine in the city of Valdivia, El
Rayo, and a newspaper, Trabajo. In the pages of both, they constantly
312 Rogelio Aragón
published news, articles and op-eds that spread the archetypal yet con-
tradictory image of the Jews as both the owners and controllers of
international capitalism and instigators of communism, “in order to
drive the hungry masses to act according to their ambition of world
domination”. The nacistas also made use of The protocols of the el-
ders of Zion, which apparently were first published in Chile around
1924, and constantly played the Freemasonry card to emphasise the
idea that the Jews were set to control the world and destroy Christian-
ity, “without which the world would become an immense cesspool of
vice” (Guzmán 2012, 57–62).
The nacista campaign against the Jews began to wane in 1937 and
came to an end in 1938. The founder of the MNSC, Jorge González
von Marees, had always opposed any kind of racism and antisemitism
within the movement; he publicly repudiated Nazi persecution of Jews
and openly spoke against Ecuador’s provisional military junta plan to
expel all the Jews from the country, who had arrived escaping Nazism,
and who were welcomed to the country by the former Ecuadorian pres-
ident, Jose Maria Velasco. In an op-ed published in Trabajo, González
spoke against any kind of imported racial conflicts, maintaining that,
as stated in the 1932 manifesto, Chile welcomed everyone and that na-
cismo was for “the indigenous, the Spaniard, the Latin, the German,
the Anglo-Saxon and the Jew” (Guzmán 2012, 63–64). By mid-1938,
González and the MNSC had cut all ties with Nazism and leaned more
towards socialism, whilst the most hardcore nacistas went on to found
the Partido Nacional Fascista (PNF) and its propaganda organ, the
newspaper La Patria, in which they carried on their antisemitic offensive
until both fizzed out by the mid-1940s (Guzmán 2012, 90–115). In Sep-
tember 1938, a group of nacista dissidents and PNF members clashed
with the police during a protest. Many protesters died, and others were
imprisoned. In recent years, several neo-Nazi groups and organisations
have sprung up in Chile, mainly in the disenfranchised neighbourhoods
of Santiago, with bombastic names such as Gótico Araucano [Araucano
Gothic], Batallón 88 [Battalion 88], and Estandarte Hitleriano [Hit-
lerian Standard]. Every September, they pay their respects to the 1938
“martyrs” at the monument erected in their honour at Santiago’s Gen-
eral Cemetery (Navarro 2007).
At around the time, the nacista movement was shifting from national
socialism to straight-forward socialism and their antisemitic crusade
started to fade, in Mexico, the Unión Nacional Sinarquista [National
Synarchist Union] was founded. It was intended to be a political con-
tinuation of the cristero rebellion against the Mexican government; a
rebellion that started in the mid-1920s to resist the enforcement of the
more anticlerical articles of the 1917 Constitution – the ones Gibaja and
other conservatives blamed Freemasonry and “international Jewry” for
– that introduced mandatory secular education and banned religious
teaching at schools, barred Catholic priests from forming or joining
political parties and from standing for any public offices in local and
federal elections, and stripped all religious organisation from their le-
gal status. Furthermore, during President Plutarco Elias Calles’ admin-
istration, the number of Catholic priests was reduced and regulated
by the government, and all forms of public worship were banned. The
cristeros relied on guerrilla warfare and tactics, and the fighting came
to an impasse until a peace agreement was brokered in 1929. Pock-
ets of resistance held their ground and continued the fight well into
the 1930s, but conservative Catholic organisations that supported the
cristero ideology opted to bring the fight for their religious rights to
the political arena. Thus, they agglutinated around the sinarquistas, a
movement that many accused of being financed by the Nazis through
Helmut Schreiter, a German official and university teacher who cre-
ated an “Anti-Communist centre” in the state of Guanajuato, one of
the cristero hotspots, with the help of several of his former students,
amongst them Salvador Abascal (Gill 1963, 40); this point of view was
shared by the press and the official government newspaper, El Na-
cional. A conflicting version states that the sinarquismo was formed
around several pre-existing Catholic organisations without any foreign
interference (Campbell 1976, 86–88). Independently of its origins, the
organisation was clearly inspired by Italian and German totalitarian
regimes, and because the sinarquista goal was to establish a theocracy
of sorts and to subsume every aspect of Mexico’s social, political, eco-
nomical and cultural life to Catholic values and to erase the separation
of Church and State, the movement took a clear anti-communist, anti-
capitalist and antisemitic stance. According to Juan Ignacio Padilla,
one of sinarquismo’s ideologists, and to Salvador Abascal, Soviet com-
munism and American capitalism are just manifestations of the same
revolution, whose body resides in fanatical Judaism and whose goals
were achieved in the French Revolution, the Mexican Revolution and
the Russian Revolution […] the true essence of Marxism, its soul, is the
same as the essence of Liberalism: the denial of God, the Jewish mate-
rialism (Campbell 1976, 103).
But since in real terms Abascal’s movement was primarily Catholic
and his concept of political power was that it emanates from the Chris-
tian god and nothing could be above it, he openly repudiated Germany’s
regime:
Nazism is, specifically, a Germanic revolution, legitimate daughter

of Luther’s protestant revolution; that cannot be our model. Neither
can be fascism, which, just as Nazism, is the deification of a race
and of a government. […] Hitler is an enemy of God, his theory is
barbaric, anti-Christian and fundamentally false.
(Padilla 1948, 217).
314 Rogelio Aragón
Abascal was asked to step down as leader of the sinarquistas by the
Catholic archbishop Luis Maria Mártinez, to please both President
Lazaro Cardenas – at whose request he was appointed to the post –
and the American government (Meyer 2005, 1). He then went on to
establish a utopian Catholic settlement in Baja California, which ulti-
mately failed. Abascal returned to Mexico City, where he continued to
write about his peculiar interpretation of Mexican history from a radical
Catholic perspective. He founded the Tradición publishing company –
which reprinted Gibaja’s works – that served as an outlet for his own
writings, amongst which there is a book critical of Mexican historian
Enrique Krauze, “the wicked Jewish sapper at the service of the Mexi-
can Revolution.” One of Abascal’s sons, Carlos, was appointed Minis-
try of Labour and Ministry of Home Affairs during President Vicente
Fox’s term, the first-ever Mexican president coming from the ranks of
the Partido Acción Nacional [National Action Party], a political party
linked with conservative Catholics and moderate sinarquistas. Another
of Abascal’s sons, Juan Bosco, through his writings and his YouTube
channel, continues to defend Catholicism from communism, liberalism
and “postmodern” values, which he traces back to “Jewish materialism”
as opposed to “Christian spirituality.”
But if some Mexican Nazi admirers and look-alikes were not that
much into the core tenets of Nazism, some others embraced them, with
a twist. Jose Vasconcelos is one of the most celebrated Mexican intellec-
tuals of the twentieth century:
his name adorns streets, libraries, cultural centres and schools;

Mexico’s National University rather obscure and outmoded motto
is his brainchild and he is considered to be one of the Maestros of
Latin American youth, right next to Jose Marti and Gabriela Mis-
tral. He was also a presidential hopeful, but even his fame and his
credentials were no match for the official electoral machine. Before
his unsuccessful presidential bid, he masterminded the futuristic/
prophetic idea of a “cosmic race”, superior to all others, formed by
the amalgamation of all human races, a race that would dominate
the world and establish a new civilisation.
(Universopolis)
What has been swept under the rug in the last decades is that, in the late
1930s and early 1940s, Vasconcelos was an ardent follower of Hitler
and national socialism. Of course, he was not alone: writer and poet An-
dres Henestrosa and Gerardo Murillo, better known as Dr. Atl, one of
the most recognised Mexican painters alongside Rivera, Kahlo, Orozco
and Siqueiros, were also drawn into the Nazi whirlwind. Dr. Atl went
as far as writing a book against the Jewish presence in the Americas,
Los judíos sobre América [The Jews over America] – partly financed by
members of the Partido Acción Nacional – that basically carries along
the same arguments of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion but centred
in the United States and the Americas, racially profiling American and
Latin American leaders to prove that they were, in fact, Jewish. Dr Atl
despised his fellow painter David Alfaro Siqueiros, whom he called “the
Portuguese”, i.e. the Jew (Kaplan 2015).
But before that, Dr. Atl collaborated in an editorial enterprise with
Jose Vasconcelos. Timón [Helm] was a weekly magazine unlike any
other of its kind in the era: it was printed in a large format and in offset
in full colour, well designed and with plenty of space to insert adver-
tisements, which were all taken by German companies and businesses
established in Mexico. A far cry from the cheaply printed and poorly
designed libels and pamphlets that pro-Nazi and pro-fascist groups used
to publish and hand out back then and even in more recent times, before
the internet. Timón, with Vasconcelos as director, was first published on
22 February 1940. It was financed by the German embassy in Mexico
City through Walter Dietrich, the press attaché. This “continental mag-
azine” contained articles about literature, cinema, sports, Latin Amer-
ican news, German scientific discoveries and technological advances
and, above all, news from the front lines depicting German victories
and strategies. In the mix there were also op-eds attacking the Allies,
even the Americans, although they would not enter the war for another
almost two years, and, of course, antisemitic articles, mostly penned by
Vasconcelos, which included fragments of the Protocols as explanations
for the misfortunes of the world, praises to Hitler for being “the broom
of God sweeping the centuries-old maladies of the world” and the same
old ideas about the Jews controlling the press and the financial system.
According to Itzhak Bar-Lewaw (1971, 153), Vasconcelos passionately
believed that Hitler would win the war and that in Mexico a pro-Nazi
government would be formed. Of course, with Vasconcelos at the helm.
Timón only lasted 17 weeks. By June 1940, just days after the Wehr-
macht took Paris, the Mexican government raided the offices and confis-
cated the magazine. After the war, Vasconcelos was appointed director
of the National Library, was one of the founding members of the Colegio
Nacional – ironically, an institution established to disseminate culture
and civilisation as opposed to the barbarism of the Second World War –
and was elected member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua. But
Vasconcelos never really got over his brush with Nazism. In the 1950s,
he wrote the prologue to the first two editions of Salvador Borrego’s
nostalgic rant about the missed opportunity that Nazism represented
against capitalism, Bolshevism and Judaism, Derrota Mundial, in Vas-
concelos words, “one of the most important works ever written in the
Americas”.
At the other end of the subcontinent, Argentina is the “only Latin
American country in which there is a Jewish question” (Lvovich 2003,
316 Rogelio Aragón
19), the only country in which “the presence of Jews is considered to be
a national problem” (Besoky 2018, 3) and the only country in the Amer-
icas in which a pogrom has taken place.7
In 1962, Graciela Sirota, a young Jewish Argentinian woman was kid-
napped and tortured by three men, who burnt her with cigarettes and
carved a swastika with a knife on her chest. She was a University of
Buenos Aires student and member of the Federación Juvenil Comuni-
sta [Communist Youth Federation]. She went to the police and pressed
charges, but to no avail. In her statement, Graciela Sirota testified that
her attackers blamed her and all the Jews for the death of Adolf Eich-
mann, the infamous Nazi war criminal captured in Argentina by the
Mossad and executed in Israel that same year. About a month later,
Ricardo D’Alessandro Brodsky, another young student of Jewish origin,
was also kidnapped in the streets of Buenos Aires. His captors carved
three swastikas on his face (Gutman 2020). According to the Idisher
Cultur Farband (ICUF), a federation of Jewish cultural organisations in
Argentina, Horacio Green, then head of the Federal Police and a well-
known sympathiser of fascism, supported ultra-nationalist antisemitic
groups and never did much to investigate or clarify who was behind the
attacks against Ms. Sirota and Mr. D’Alessandro Brodksy, nor to in-
vestigate the numerous explosive devices planted at Jewish institutions,
the handing-out of antisemitic libels and pamphlets, the death threats
against Jews or the murder of Raul Alterman, a member of the Commu-
nist Party of Jewish descent.
The neo-fascist group called Tacuaras, which was active in Argen-
tina from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, took credit for the attacks.
The Tacuaras had their base on upper and upper-middle-class young
men, mainly from Buenos Aires, linked to the extreme nationalist and
pro-fascist fringes of Peronism, which was not antisemitic in itself, but
whose some supporters carried out attacks against the Jewish commu-
nity in Argentina as early as 1945: just a few months after the war had
ended and the horrors of the Holocaust had been revealed, a group of
peronistas took to the streets of Buenos Aires to shout antisemitic rants
and to destroy Jewish property (Lyra 1945). The basis for antisemitism
in the Peronist ranks did not come from Juan Domingo or Evita Peron
themselves, but from earlier authors and journalists who pushed the idea
of a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, such as Ramon Doll (an
ardent socialist and anti-liberal), Enrique Oses (director of the Catholic
magazine Criterio) and Hugo Wast (nom de plume of Gustavo Martínez,
head of the National Library between 1930 and 1944) (Gasquet 2016).
But the Tacuaras and their peculiar point of view on politics and re-
ligion, also had a more visible and present source of inspiration: the
writings of Julio Meinvielle, a furiously antisemitic Catholic priest who
also influenced Salvador Abascal, Federico Rivanera and who was one
of the main sources for Salvador Borrego’s America Peligra. Meinvielle
also left his mark on other more obscure anti-Semites, such as Mexican
Alfonso Castro, who in 1939 published El problema judío [The Jewish
problem], in which he refers to them as “the eternal wandering mystery”
and provides a series of apartheid directives to keep Jews and Christians
separated, such as stripping them of the right to own real estate and
setting strict Jewish quotas in the economic areas in which they suppos-
edly excel, in order for the Mexican government to tackle the problema
(Castro 1939, 277–286).
Meinvielle’s works span from studies on the philosophy of Thomas
Aquinas to world economy and politics, but in all of them, he never
missed the opportunity to blame the Jews for every mishappening in the
history of mankind, rooted in their alleged “materialism”, understood
in the most basic sense of being attached to material or “earthly” things
such as money and power, as opposed to Christian spirituality. In one
of his most influential books, El judío en el misterio de la historia [The
Jew in the mystery of history], first published in 1936, he exposes his
leitmotiv in the first few pages:
The Jewish people fill the history of God and of mankind. What
period of history can be written without mentioning them? […] Is it
necessary to warn that these lessons, that deal with such a difficult
topic, are not destined to justify either Semitism or antisemitism?
Both concepts tend to minimise a more profound and universal
problem. The Jewish problem is not that of Sem vs Japheth, it is that
of Lucifer vs Jehovah, the Serpent vs the Virgin, Cain vs Abel, the
Dragon vs Christ. Catholic Theology shall shed its light on the wan-
dering mystery that is every Jew, it shall lead the ways of coexistence
between Jews and Christians, two brothers who shall live separated
until the grace of God wills their reconciliation.
(Meinvielle 1982, 2–3)
In 1932, Meinvielle published Concepcion Católica de la Política [Cath-

olic conceptualisation of politics], in which he sums up not only his
views on politics and history but on race as well. He follows closely the
thought of Augustine of Hippo and defends the idea of a linear history,
that started with the creation of the world and will end on the Judge-
ment Day, and that humanity is divided into two opposing sides: those
belonging to the “City of God” and those in the “City of Man.” After
Thomas Aquinas, Meinvielle claims that only through common sense,
understood as the metaphysical nature of human thought, one can re-
alise that Catholicism is not something accidental or contingent but an
integral part of mankind and, therefore, should be an integral part of
politics and life in general; it is also through that Thomist concept of
metaphysical thought that men should hierarchise political ideas and
leave out those that go against the supreme nature of Being, human and
318 Rogelio Aragón
divine, which are one but not the same. In Meinvielle’s mind, none of
the current political options was suitable because they all failed to recog-
nise that the only legitimate political power emanates from the Christian
deity, and since Christianism (Catholicism) is the only path to achieve
“eternal life,” hence everything must be subordinated to it, including
politics. After the initial chapters, that deal with these philosophical
matters in an academic-like tone, the author goes all out to claim that
Zionism and the idea of a Jewish state are based on the Protocols of the
elders of Zion, and that the Jews’ “world domination programme” is
set to coincide with the advent of the anti-Christ (Meinvielle 1974, 293).
He also lashes out against sinarquismo, calling it out as the freemason’s
programme to establish a world government, backed by the Rothschilds
– and in later editions by the Bilderberg group too. In another point, and
based on the Bible, he divides humankind into three distinctive peoples
“who fulfil a theological function in history” derived from “God’s will”:
the Christians, the Jews, and the Pagans. He identifies Christianism with
Franco’s regime – he even defines the Spanish Civil War as a Crusade
– Judaism with Soviet communism, and Paganism with Hitler and the
Nazis. In Meinvielle’s eyes, the only thing that Hitler got right was his
fight against “the godless”, i.e. communists, atheists, liberals and Jews,
but he despised the Nazi regime for trying to impose a Germanic way
of life and mystique over the Christian (Catholic) one (Meinvielle 1974,
278–281). Meinvielle died under mysterious circumstances in 1973. In
an apparent hit-and-run, a van ran him down whilst he was crossing the
street. Albeit this has not been attributed to be part of a Jewish, masonic
or communist plot, it has added to the saint-like image many of his fol-
lowers have of him.
…But Not Yet the Fall

Unfortunately, the ideas briefly overviewed in the last few pages are still
pretty much alive and making their rounds on social media and the in-
ternet. Nowadays, to organise a pseudo-political movement or even a
virtual political party, all anyone needs is a Facebook or Twitter account
to reach a wide like-minded audience, beyond regional and national bor-
ders. YouTube is in a league of its own: countless videos posted from
all corners of Latin America address the alleged link between Zionism/
Jews and the “New World Order”, from improvised antisemitic pro-
Palestinian rants to bombastic hour-long speeches in a tone intended to
sound “academic” by quoting “scientific” sources, like those posted by
furious anti-Semites Alfredo Jalife and Adrian Salbuchi, both of whom
some people on the comment section call “geniuses”, “enlightened” and
“maestros”.
On Facebook, dozens of “parties” with some form of the naciona-
lista and socialista adjectives in their names and crosses, eagles and
swastika-like symbols in their logos, have sprung up in recent years
across Latin America, with followers ranging from a couple of dozens
to the few hundreds. In Mexico, the Unión Nacional Sinarquista, a
continuation of the movement started in the 1930s by Salvador Abas-
cal, is pretty much alive and active through a Facebook account, a
webpage and even a WhatsApp contact number. The Movimiento Tri-
garante’s Facebook page, a conservative “political organisation” op-
posed to gay marriage, mainstream politics and Freemasonry, named
after Agustin de Iturbide’s army in the final stretch of the Mexican
war of independence, has a post accusing Miguel Angel Yunes, former
governor of the state of Veracruz, of being corrupt and Jewish, another
explaining the “Jewish Problem for dummies” and another one pro-
moting an audio-book version of the Protocols of the elders of Zion.
Argentinian politician Alejandro Biondini, a self-proclaimed peronista
who founded a now banned pro-Nazi party in the early 1990s, Par-
tido Nuevo Triunfo, toned down his antisemitic rhetoric and disguised
it with a Catholic nationalist and homophobic narrative and recently
formed a new political party, Frente Patriota [Patriotic Front], which is
very active on social networks.
On Twitter, and in order to avoid the algorithms that filter out any
potentially offensive content, the anti-Semites use hashtags that are not
immediately obvious but drive home their point. For instance, user @his-
panistaVe25, a Venezuelan Hispanist, anti-Chavez, white-supremacist
and anti-Semite, uses the hashtags #puebloelegido [chosen people] and
#narigones [big nosed] to refer to Jews, and #DerrotaMundial as a ref-
erence to Salvador Borrego and his ideas. Her account is filled with nos-
talgic posts about Nazism and the Wehrmacht. Salvador Borrego has
a Twitter account under his name, @salvadorborreg1, which is only a
front for an online bookshop that sells pro-Nazi, revisionist and anti-
Semite works. Argentinian @ArioCriollo uses the hashtag #jabon and
#jabones (soap/soaps) – in reference to the myth that claims Nazis manu-
factured soap out of Jewish corpses – along with the more widely used –
and surprisingly not yet banned – #HitlerWasRight. From Guatemala,
user @MundialesSin, although not tweeting only antisemitic content,
often posts references to the Zionist-Illuminati-Masonic conspiracy
to control basically everything, including the contagion and the cure
for the Covid-19 virus. Colombian @janayaish, a self-proclaimed anti-
communist, anti-Zionist and anti-LGBT, constantly uses the hashtags
#sionista and #SinagogaDeSatan (Satan’s Synagogue) to speak out
against the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy; she claims that even Jorge Bergo-
glio (Pope Francis I) is part of it.
References to Julio Meinvielle and his writings are widespread across
social media. From obscure ultra-nationalists and staunchly Catholic ac-
counts like @EuropaCristiana and moderate Catholic information ser-
vices like @InfoCatolica, to mainstream TV commentators like Esteban
320 Rogelio Aragón
Arce, @estarc62, a Mexican Catholic and conservative news anchor.
There is also an “official” web page (in Spanish only) devoted to Mein-
vielle’s life and works, http://www.juliomeinvielle.org/, which includes
scanned downloadable versions of his books. On Instagram, the hashtag
#juliomeinvielle yields a few dozen posts, and on Pinterest it links to the
website www.libreriavigentedeladerrotamundial.com, an online book-
shop specialised in revisionist, pro-Nazi, anti-Zionist and antisemitic
books, which sells and ships worldwide all of Borrego’s, Rivanera’s and
Meinvielle’s works, and includes a blog with news on revisionism and an
almanac of Nazi-related events.
The appeal of “scientific” antisemitism resides in the combination
of four phenomena that some – although unfortunately, I should say
“many” – find useful to understand and interpret the seemingly chaotic
nature of history. First, the idea of a linear history, with a precise and
clear beginning and end. The idea that human – or divine – actions are
cumulative and follow a master plan that must be achieved through
time, provides the foundation to create a coherent timeline of events
and historical developments. The trouble is that nobody knows ex-
actly when that timeline ends or whether the intended goal has been
achieved or not. The Protocols, Barruel’s Memoires or Rivanera’s His-
toria ocultada attempt to point at the objective of a plan that has been
hundreds of years in the making, and carefully place events on their
timelines to prove their argument. Enter the second phenomenon: con-
spiracy theories. If history is linear, there must be an agent pushing
forward its historical agenda; notwithstanding whatever obstacles and
setbacks it might encounter, said agent will do anything and every-
thing in its power to accomplish its aim. Only a few “visionaries” will
be able to read the signs and find the trail of evidence left by the execu-
tors of the masterplan, providing an interpretation of the facts in order
to warn others about the direction history is heading, and pointing
their finger to the culprits and their accomplices. Thirdly, if the culprit
is easily identifiable but out of reach, a proxy or a scapegoat must be
found. Even the most ardent anti-Semite will admit that not all Jews
are Palestine-oppressing Zionists or controllers of the financial system.
But if the members of the “Great Sanhedrin” are not known, or if the
Rothschilds, Benjamin Netanyahu and George Soros are impossible to
hold accountable for conspiring against Church and State, then, in the
mindset of the conspiracy theorist, any other Jew – or anyone with a
“Jew-sounding” name – will do. And thanks to the racial and charac-
ter profiling of the Jews that some “visionaries” have carried out along
the centuries, from Tacitus to Francisco de Torrejoncillo and the Nazis,
the “enemy” is easily identifiable. Lastly, the nostalgic fascination with
the Third Reich and what it appears to represent is still a powerful
driving force in some sectors of the Western world in general and of
Latin America in particular. The idealisation of national socialism as a
strong and stable regime that hierarchises order above all things, not to
mention the Nazi paraphernalia and general aesthetics, are appealing
to those who believe that the region is disorderly, chaotic and ruled by
untrustworthy politicians who only seek their personal benefit and to
perpetuate the unjust status quo. On top of that, Hitler is seen as an
ordinary man who climbed the ranks against all odds, who dared to
stand up against the “colonialist” powers and – this is the terrifying
part – who got rid of all those who opposed him in a swift and grue-
some manner. If we add to the mix the ever-present and widespread
racism that permeates all the strata of Latin American societies, in
which fair skin and foreign-sounding names are considered equal to
higher social status and “purer” racial origin, then antisemitism is an
accident that has already happened.
In Latin America’s case, a fifth variable could be added to the equa-
tion: colonialism is still a fresh wound, yet to be healed. At school, Latin
American children learn that the Spaniards came to these lands with
the sole purpose of exploiting its natural resources and its indigenous
population, whilst imposing a foreign religion by fire and sword. Then,
they learn that there was a heroic war against the European oppressor,
won by the courageous locals, but only to find that there were other
imperialist powers ready to fill the vacuum left by the Spaniards. From
the Mexican-American War to the Falklands War, and from Operation
Just Cause and the Cuban Embargo to the economic sanctions against
Venezuela and the interference of the IMF on domestic economies, Latin
Americans have always felt under constant threat from foreign powers,
mainly the United States. Given the fact that the United States and Israel
are unconditional allies, thus it is quite clear whose side most Latin
Americans are on in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and why “Zionist” and
“Jew” have become synonyms of “colonialist” and “oppressor.” And if
on top of that we take into consideration the fact that many people in the
region regard their Jewish compatriots as unpatriotic “foreigners” loyal
only to Israel – regardless of how few Jews live in the area or whether
the anti-Semites know or have ever interacted with any Jews at all – then
it becomes clear why, sadly, “scientific” antisemitism has found fertile
ground in Latin America.
Notes
1 Although both “antisemitism” and “anti-Semitism” spellings are correct
and widely used, I will favour the spelling accepted by the International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, on the basis that “the hyphenated spell-
ing allows for the possibility of something called ‘Semitism’, which not only
legitimizes a form of pseudo-scientific racial classification that was thor-
oughly discredited by association with Nazi ideology, but also divides the
term, stripping it from its meaning of opposition and hatred toward Jews”.
Retrieved from https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/antisemitism/
spelling-antisemitism?usergroup=5
322 Rogelio Aragón
2 See https://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=usurero
3 A full, scanned version of Torrejoncillo’s work can be found here: http://histo-
riayverdad.org/Babilonia/Centinela-contra-judios.pdf. An English translation,
annotated and commented, is available in François Soyer, Francisco de Torre-
joncillo and the Centinela contra Judios (Brill 2014).
4 The book, written by Ernst August von Göchhausen, a German bureaucrat,
allegedly based on letters written by freemasons and members of other secret
societies, remained until recent years in obscurity, unlike Barruel’s Mem-
oires that became an almost instant bestseller.
5 See https://www.sephardim.co/. https://www.sephardicgen.com/databases/
indexSrchFrm.html. https://www.bh.org.il/databases/family-names/
6 The full text written by Kaufman can be found here: http://www.ihr.org/
books/kaufman/perish.shtml
7 In 1919, during the Semana Trágica, a strike in the metal works of Buenos
Aires turned into a pogrom. The government accused the Jews – many of
them of Russian origin – of trying to start a Bolshevik revolution in Argen-
tina. A very well summarised version of the event can be found here: https://
elpais.com/internacional/2019/04/04/actualidad/1554401794_922545.
html. And here: https://www.infobae.com/cultura/2019/05/05/la-historia-
del-primer-pogrom-en-argentina-el-episodio-oculto-de-la-semana-tragica/
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13 The Catholic Church and
Defense of Human Rights
during the Last Dictatorships
in Chile and Argentina1
Stephan Ruderer
Introduction
In 2013, when the Argentine Juan María Bergoglio became leader of the
universal Catholic church as Francis I, the first Latin American Pope, the
eyes of the world turned to the Catholic churches of the region. Due to
his attempts at reform and the humble image he projected, the Argentine
church also received favorable attention from researchers and journalists
(Levine 2014). Meanwhile, the Chilean church surprised the world in
2018 when all national bishops resigned en masse due to the scandal that
broke out within the Chilean church over the abuse of minors (Del Rio
2020). These current images of the Argentine and Chilean churches con-
trast with the generalized perception of the role that they played during
the last military dictatorships in both countries. Most of the Argentine
episcopal hierarchy supported both the 1976 coup and the subsequent
repression by the military, undertaken in the name of Christian values
(Obregón 2005; Catoggio 2016). In contrast, after briefly supporting the
coup in 1973, the Chilean episcopate became a political and moral op-
position to the Pinochet dictatorship and a key institution in the defense
of human rights, founding the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, or the Vicariate
of Solidarity (Smith 1982; Lowden 1996; Cancino Troncoso 1997).
Recent research on both churches has now managed to qualify these
general judgments a little more. The Catholic church is a heterogeneous
institution containing multiple actors and institutions with different
voices, which reflect different positions on politics and violence. There-
fore, this “civil society” of the Church (Levine 2015) must be considered
to reach a more global understanding of its reactions to the last dictator-
ships in Chile and Argentina. The specialized literature has made it clear
that these reactions were far more diverse than is generally assumed,
to the point that in Chile there were several bishops who supported the
dictatorship and in Argentina, there were likewise several bishops who
raised their voices against the military. The scene is even more diverse
on the level of priests, nuns, and laypeople, as the opinion of progressive
Catholics as well as that of conservatives and fundamentalists, which
exist in both countries, must be included.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-17
326 Stephan Ruderer
For this reason, we first present a summary of the current literature
on the relationship between the Catholic church and the last military
dictatorships in Chile and Argentina, focusing on the reasons for the
Catholic reactions to human rights violations before going on to briefly
analyze the first official reactions. That is, the episcopal letters in both
countries. Lastly, we go into greater depth on both churches’ defense of
human rights. The idea, which can only be outlined here, is to show that
a comparison between the two countries can shed new light on the role
the Catholic church played in the last military dictatorships, as it allows
emphasizing aspects that a purely national analysis does not necessarily
focus on.
Historical Judgments on the Chilean and Argentine

Catholic church es
The historiography of the Church in Chile and Argentina is still rather
uneven. While in Argentina many studies have emerged from different
disciplines over the last decade analyzing the Catholic church’s behav-
ior under the last dictatorship, in Chile, after a few fundamental initial
works, interest in the relationship between the Church and the dictator-
ship has been growing again only in the last few years.
In general, Chilean historiography shows the Chilean Church with an
“ambiguous and cautious” reaction (Cancino 1997, 24) to the coup and
the establishment of the military dictatorship in Chile. Chilean bishops
gave a certain legitimacy to the military junta and accepted the new
dictatorial government in their first public statements, as well as in their
private actions. There are several reasons for this attitude. Many authors
agree with the idea that the military coup prompted the expression of
several bishops’ negative views of Marxism, meaning part of the bish-
ops’ conference was happy with the end of Allende’s government and
grateful to the military (Smith 1982; Cancino 1997). These feelings were
fostered by the perception that the military government would be transi-
tory, and that Chile would return soon to the path of democracy. Or, as
Smith puts it in his study of the Chilean Church, out of a “naive trust”
in the military’s promises (Smith 1982, 294). Similarly, “pragmatic and
tactical” reasons weighed heavily (Cancino 1997, 29), in the sense that
the ecclesiastical hierarchy had it clear that the military junta had to be
accepted as the only real power in the country and that, to maintain the
freedom of the Church, dialogue with the new political authorities had
to be sought. The Church never completely broke off relations with the
dictatorship, precisely to maintain its freedom of action and to be able to
carry out its Samaritan work in favor of the victims through institutions
such as the Ecumenical Committee for Peace in Chile (Comité Pro Paz,
Pro-Peace Committee) and the Vicariate of Solidarity (Lowden 1996).
This coincides at the idea of several bishops, including Cardinal Raúl
Catholic Church and Cover of Human Rights 327
Silva Henríquez, who believed that they could be more effective in their
work of protecting the dictatorship’s victims through private actions,
which is why they renounced a direct public denunciation of the violence
for being counterproductive (Schnoor 2019, 369).
Recent research increasingly considers the Church’s “civil society”. In
this way, Antje Schnoor explains that, through their magazine Mensaje,
Chilean Jesuits did not dismiss the legitimacy of the coup, as they be-
lieved that the Allende government had not been able to maintain polit-
ical order. At the same time, they insisted on a return to democracy and
were censored by the regime in the early years, as it considered them to
be part of a progressive clergy. While the bishops received direct sup-
port from Jesuits (Schnoor 2019), they were criticized by conservative
Catholics. Catholic lay groups such as the Society for Tradition, Family
and Property (TFP) and the military Vicariate offensively legitimized the
military dictatorship and criticized the hierarchy for an allegedly very
“weak” attitude toward Marxists (Ruderer 2012, 2015). This support
and criticism from within the church must be considered to understand
some bishops’ ambiguous reaction to the dictatorship. In the same way,
there were critical voices from a “poor Church” that reproached the
bishops for an authoritarian attitude that, on the one hand, supported
the victims, but on the other never criticized the dictatorship’s authori-
tarian structures (Fernández 1996).
Now, the historical judgment is also almost unanimous in that this
ambiguous public attitude was accompanied by an immediate Samaritan
reaction in which the church mobilized its resources to help the dicta-
torship’s victims. In the early years this Samaritan work was channeled
through the Pro-Peace Committee, and since 1976 through the Vicariate
of Solidarity (Lowden 1993, 1996; Kelly 2015, Ruderer, and Strassner
2015; Wilde 2015; Del Villar 2018). Thanks to the work by these insti-
tutions, Chilean bishops became aware of the massive nature of human
rights violations, which influenced a change in attitude between 1974
and 1976. No later than 1976, the Chilean Church became practically
the only institution opposed to the regime capable of publicly criticizing
the dictatorship’s repression. On the one hand, this change in attitude is
explained by the knowledge bishops gained on human rights violations
and the fact that the dictatorship was not going to return power in the
short term. On the other were the progressive tendencies that had ex-
isted in the Chilean church prior to the military coup. These trends were
part of a long-term process within the Chilean Church that brought it
closer to the world of the poor (Botto 2018), either due to the alleged
competition from Protestant churches in low-income Chilean neighbor-
hoods (Gill 1998), the influence of central progressive figures on Chilean
Catholicism, such as Father Alberto Hurtado, since canonized, or the
bishop Manuel Larraín (Larios Mengotti 2017); or the application of
the changes that emerged from the Second Vatican Council to Chilean
328 Stephan Ruderer
reality, a process guided by the Chilean hierarchy itself (Fernández
2019). These processes made the Chilean Church one of the most pro-
gressive in the continent, meaning that it could not remain silent on the
dictatorship’s abuses and violations.
The historical judgment of the Argentine church's reaction to the last
military dictatorship is equally unanimous: “Generally speaking, the
military coup of 24 March 1976 was welcomed by the Argentine Catho-
lic hierarchy” (Obregón 2005, 58). As in Chile, most bishops expressed
their public as well as private support for the new military authorities.
There are several reasons for this legitimization, and they show similar-
ities and differences with those of the Chilean Church. Like in Chile,
many Argentine bishops were comfortable with the military’s strong
anticommunism, which prompted them to express their support to the
dictatorship almost without question. The hierarchy’s desire for unity
also weighed heavily in this official position of approval, which led the
most critical voices to give way to the majority position of legitimizing
the regime. These desires for unity were due on the one hand to the great
internal conflicts that had affected the Argentine church in the decade
prior to the coup and, on the other, to calls for unity from the Vatican,
which at the time was more worried about these intra-ecclesiastic con-
flicts than about Argentina’s domestic repression (Ghio 2007; Zanatta
2008; Di Stéfano, and Zanatta 2010). In addition, as was initially the
case in Chile, the Argentine episcopate had the idea of addressing prob-
lems with the military (including human rights violations) “privately”,
without engaging in public criticism to avoid damaging the good rela-
tions with the new rulers. At the same time, this vision of dealing with
problems “in the family” – which was expressed in a liaison committee
where from early 1977 three bishops, in the representation of the epis-
copate, engaged in behind-the-scenes negotiations with the military on
repression, without these negotiations ever leading to a change of atti-
tude by the military or sharper public criticism on the part of bishops
(Verbitsky 2006) – reveals a major difference with the Chilean case.
This familiarity between bishops and the military must be understood
in the context of Argentina's image as a “Catholic nation”, where national
identity is conceived as intrinsically Catholic and where the Church and
the military were the “guardians” of this Catholic Argentine identity.
This symbiosis between “the sword and the cross” is a longstanding tra-
dition in Argentina, as there has been a close relationship between both
institutions since the 1930s, which served to legitimize the various mil-
itary coups and governments throughout the century (Mallimaci 2015;
Di Stéfano 2020). This image led to the idea that any person who did not
agree with the traditionalist and anti-communist position of the Catho-
lic church and the military could be perceived as a subversive enemy of
the nation who had to be eliminated for the common good of Argentina
itself (Osiel 2001; Morello 2015; Ruderer 2015). The proximity between
the Catholic church and military – which did not exist in that way in
Chile – not only facilitated religious legitimization of human rights vio-
lations by a part of the Church but also helped to moderate some of the
more skeptical voices on the military’s actions. This, because the close
relationship with the state, which was reflected in this close relationship
with the military, also meant significant economic dependence on the
executive on the part of the Church. The military knew how to take
advantage of this situation, increasing Argentine bishops’ privileges and
salaries in the middle of the dictatorship to be able to count on their
silence regarding the brutal repression in the country (Mignone 2006).
Thus, most bishops felt materially, politically and spiritually close to
the military, which partly explains the fact that the Argentine church’s
official positions never went so far as a fundamental criticism of the dic-
tatorship, as it did in Chile.
However, the Church also contains many voices in Argentina and re-
actions were more varied than appears at first glance. Thus, the litera-
ture distinguishes several trends among the hierarchy, a situation that
expands even further if the focus is opened to Catholic priests, nuns and
laypeople. Obregón (2005) distinguishes three tendencies in the Argen-
tine episcopate at the time of the military coup.2 There was a tradition-
alist sector of bishops who had a medieval conception of the Church as
a perfect society, with strong anti-communist sentiment and a rejection
of democracy and the changes in the Church caused by the Second Vati-
can Council. These bishops saw the military as custodians of Argentine
nationality, and they felt called upon to be the spiritual guides of an
authoritarian military solution to the conflicts within Argentine society
and the church. Despite being a minority, they held significant influence
over the hierarchy’s attitude, especially through Archbishop of Paraná
Adolfo Tortolo, who was president of the Bishops’ Conference at the
time of the coup. This influence is also explained by a vast majority of
conservative bishops (the second segment) who were willing to accept
certain criteria from the Second Vatican Council and did not necessarily
believe in the myth of the Catholic nation, but who did see the military as
a defensive barrier against secularization and communism, and dictator-
ship as an instrument of social disciplining both outside as well as inside
the Church. Their desire for a unified Church led them to support and
oftentimes ignore the traditionalists’ legitimization of the regime. There
was also a minority of bishops in Argentina who favored renovation and
were committed to the changes of the Second Vatican Council and so-
cial work focused on the poor sectors of society, some of whom publicly
raised their voices to criticize the regime. The denunciation of economic
policy and human rights violations in episcopal letters is mainly due to
this segment of the Argentine church hierarchy (Obregón 2005).
The fact that progressive Catholics’ influence was weaker during the
military dictatorship is also related to the persecution and threats that
330 Stephan Ruderer
these groups had to face in the years prior to the military coup. In this
way, the Argentine church experienced the same “dramatic polariza-
tion” (Di Stéfano, and Zanatta 2010, 550) as the whole of society in the
1960s and 1970s and did not escape the “logic of militarization” (Ghio
2007, 237) that viewed all ideological adversaries as subversive elements
to be exterminated. Hence, the intra-ecclesiastic conflicts with progres-
sive Catholics were often solved with the help of the State through im-
prisonment, torture or murder of progressive priests or nuns (a trend
that was intensified under the dictatorship, including the assassination
of two bishops critical of the regime) (Catoggio 2016). This authoritar-
ian way of resolving the problems that emerged after the Second Vatican
Council, which led some of the more critical voices to be silenced, along
with the occupation of positions of power within the church on the part
of traditionalist bishops and this sector’s closeness to the military, espe-
cially through the military Vicariate, helped to strengthen the image of
a Church that legitimized the military dictatorship and human rights
violations.
Significant current research has now helped to qualify this image, es-
pecially by broadening the focus on the Church’s “civil society”. There
were also many Argentines committed to the defense of human rights
and to help the dictatorship’s victims. On the one hand, many of the for-
mer members of the Movement of Priests for the Third World (MSTM),
which had already been dissolved before the last military coup, devoted
their energies to helping the victims, in many cases risking their own lives
(Martin 2010; Touris 2016; Scocco 2020). On the other, even before the
dictatorship, several human rights defense groups had been founded with
significant participation by Catholics (see below), who played a leading
role in helping the victims of the dictatorship. This work was part of a
commitment to update the Church after the Second Vatican Council and
opting for the poor, which these laypeople, priests and nuns shared with
some bishops, like Monsignor Jorge Novak or Jaime de Nevares (Gomes
2011; Rupflin 2015).
As in Chile, in Argentina fundamentalist and ultra-conservative Cath-
olic groups had a significant impact on the Church and society. Groups
like Catholic City (Ciudad Católica) or the Argentine TFP itself, along
with others, managed to influence ecclesiastic opinion through their
publications and gave the military and the traditionalist bishops their
determined support (Ruderer 2012; Cersósimo 2014; Scirica 2020). In
this sense, the role played by the Argentine military Vicariate cannot be
overstated, as it not only had a discourse that legitimized the coup, but
also the brutal repression that followed the military takeover (Ruderer
2015; Bilbao, and Lede 2016). All these groups, progressives as well as
conservatives, showed a tendency to question the authority of bishops
(Ruderer 2020b), thus presenting a far more heterogeneous and diverse
Church than is generally supposed. For this reason, despite a majority
inclination toward supporting the last military dictatorship, the Ar-
gentine church’s reactions were also far more varied, and this broader
picture must therefore be taken into account to fully understand the
relationship between the Catholic church and military violence.
For this reason, what follows is a short analysis of the first episco-
pal letters and Catholics’ human rights defense work as an example, to
add certain additional elements to help explain the relationship between
Catholic church and the military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina.
The Church’s First Official Reactions

One realizes the importance of the comparison if the analysis concen-
trates on the texts of the first official statements by the Chilean and
Argentine episcopates and the contents of letters almost a year after the
coup, which reveals aspects that a general reading does not consider.
Thus, it is striking to see both the similarity as well as certain differences
between the initial official reactions by the respective episcopates. Both
the first reaction by Chilean bishops on 13 September 1973 (two days
after the coup) as well as that of Argentine bishops on 15 May 1976 (two
months after the coup) call for cooperation with the new authorities
and contain elements that are both positive as well as critical toward
the military. Chilean bishops ask for clemency with the vanquished and
have a positive opinion of the situation prior to the coup, while their Ar-
gentine counterparts justify state violence with the famous phrase that
“chemical purity” could not be expected of military organizations, but
they also mention human rights violations far more clearly and condemn
them. To be sure, their letter also includes a far more negative opinion on
the situation prior to the coup, blaming terrorism and Marxism for ev-
eryday violence, which can be read as a justification of the military’s ac-
tions (CECh 1973; CEA 1976). The similarities and certain differences
can be seen even more clearly in the important episcopal letters almost
a year after the military coup. Both episcopates are very worried about
the international image of their countries, which is why they defend
their historical processes and continue to call for cooperation with the
military forces, positively appreciating their declared Christianity. Both
documents also continue to justify certain restrictions on human rights,
but at the same time, they increase the criticism of state violence. Now,
one thing that comes to one’s attention is that, at these moments, the
Argentines are far clearer than their Chilean counterparts in mentioning
human rights and criticizing violations. In this way, the Argentine docu-
ment speaks of “torture” and “the missing” (CEA 1977), where Chilean
bishops used the euphemism of “physical and moral pressure” and only
mention “arbitrary and prolonged detentions” (CECH 1974).
This is not the place to engage in a more exhaustive analysis of the
text. Rather, the idea is to show that the first official texts by the bishops
332 Stephan Ruderer
do not provide a basis for reading the Chilean reactions as a strong criti-
cism of the military or the Argentine reactions as unconditional support.
The fact that both contemporaries as well as much of the specialized
literature interpreted it in that way has more to do with reasons that
go beyond the behavior of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. These interpreta-
tions, which have influenced the general opinion on the attitude of both
churches during the dictatorships to this day, are due to reasons men-
tioned in the bibliographic summary above and to contingency factors
such as the reactions by the military.
The Chilean military and bishops had a distant relationship. They did
not know each other very well, meaning that there were expectations of
support that the Church was not able to fulfill. Chilean generals, influ-
enced by conservative Catholics like Jaime Guzmán or the discourse of
the TFP (Ruderer 2012), saw themselves as the saviors of western Chris-
tian civilization and were unable to understand the Catholic church’s
criticism of their actions, when in their eyes the institution ought to be
grateful for the end of the Marxist government. Since they also perceived
the conflicts within the Chilean hierarchy, they sought to take advan-
tage of this disunity to attack certain prelates and guarantee the support
of others. For this reason, which is analyzed in greater detail in other
work (Ruderer 2020a), the Chilean regime exaggerated the critical tones
of bishops’ statements and began to strongly attack certain sectors of
the Church, including Cardinal and Archbishop of Santiago Raúl Silva
Henríquez. These attacks had a counterproductive effect, as the Chilean
Church closed ranks behind its leader and slowly became an increasingly
determined opposition to the dictatorship, something that might not have
happened if the military reaction had been different (Ruderer 2020a).
The opposite was the case in Argentina, where thanks to their long re-
lationship of trust, among other reasons, the military gave greater prom-
inence to the elements of support in the episcopal statements and ignored
the critical points. There were no public attacks on the Church in general
or against its leaders, meaning that this relationship of trust and respect
was maintained, which for the dictatorship meant dealing with a Church
that was much more docile than in Chile. This reaction was obviously
favored by the individual attitudes of bishops and by the structural ties
between the Church and State, which made the Argentine church much
more inclined toward the opinions of the military and much more de-
pendent on its resources. However, it is important to consider – not as a
single factor but as an additional point – this circumstantial game of ac-
tion and reaction that led two fairly similar Churches in terms of official
opinions to take different courses, with the Chilean Church becoming
the moral opposition to the dictatorship and the Argentine church the
moral pillar of the military.
Now, this different interpretation of the two dictatorships is also re-
lated to the parallel Samaritan work carried out by the churches. For
this reason, as the last point, we will mention this important element for
understanding the relationship between Catholic church and the dicta-
torships in Chile and Argentina.
The Defense of Human Rights

The Chilean church’s ambiguous public attitude toward the dictator-
ship was accompanied by an immediate Samaritan reaction in which the
church mobilized its resources to help the dictatorship’s victims. In the
early years, this Samaritan work was channeled through the Ecumenical
Committee for Cooperation and Peace in Chile (Pro-Peace Committee),
founded in October 1973, and later through the Vicariate of Solidar-
ity. This is not the place to tell the detailed history of these institutions
(Lowden 1993, 1996; Ruderer, and Strassner 2015, forthcoming). What
we are interested in highlighting is that the foundation of the Pro-Peace
Committee during the first month of the dictatorship was, above all,
thanks to the initiative of the Lutheran pastor Helmut Frenz and the
fruitful ecumenical environment in Chile at the time. The memoirs of
both Raúl Silva Henríquez and Helmut Frenz himself underscore the ex-
cellent ecumenical climate that existed between the Catholic church and
other Churches in those years (especially Lutherans and certain other
Protestant churches) (Cavallo 1991; Frenz 2006). Pastor Helmut Frenz’s
drive, along with the economic resources provided by the World Council
of Churches (Protestant) through Frenz were indispensable to the Pro-
Peace Committee's existence (Frenz 2006; Kelly 2015). We mention this
ecumenical atmosphere here, as it is an element that the historiography
tends not to take much account of, despite appearing as a central point
in the origins of the Catholic church’s defense of human rights and an
element that marks a profound difference with Argentina (Ruderer, and
Strassner forthcoming). Lastly, the Pro-Peace Committee was composed
of the members of various faiths (including Jews, Methodists, Lutherans,
and Catholics) and was dedicated to helping the dictatorship’s victims.
This institution very quickly became not just the most important center
for helping the victims of repression and of the economic and social ef-
fects of the dictatorship, but also a source of reliable information amid
the regime’s censorship. The Church’s channels could be used to pass
information on the human rights situation in Chile to other countries.
This is one of the reasons why the Committee created problems with
the dictatorship and by late 1975 Pinochet demanded its dissolution of
Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez. At this moment, the Cardinal made “the
most important institutional decision” (Wilde 2015, 183) of the Church
during the dictatorship and founded the Vicariate of Solidarity in early
1976 under the exclusive auspices of the Catholic church.
While the Committee was a dispersed and less institutionalized as-
sociation, the creation of a Vicariate made it an integral part of the
334 Stephan Ruderer
Church as an institution and it enjoyed its protection and official sta-
tus. This, because a military regime that also tried to legitimize it-
self with Christian values could not so easily attack the Church itself,
meaning that the Vicariate became THE institution for helping victims
and THE moral opposition to the dictatorship (Lowden 1996). There
is no need to list the numbers justifying the Vicariate’s importance in
the defense of human rights. It is enough to recall that the Vicariate
was not only instrumental in assisting the dictatorship’s victims but
also in the articulation of civil society and the restructuring of the
social fabric, allowing the Catholic church to gain a national and in-
ternational prestige never seen before or since. We are interested in
highlighting that the concrete work of the Vicariate (like that of the
Committee before it) would not have been possible without the partic-
ipation of many progressive Catholics and many women (Catholic or
not) committed to the defense of human rights (Del Vilar 2018). Many
of these Catholics had participated in or sympathized with Christians
for Socialism, a group of priests that had supported Allende’s Socialist
government before the coup and who were censored by the episcopal
hierarchy in October 1973 (Ramminger 2019; Diaz 2021). This once
again reveals the importance of considering the Church's heterogeneity,
as these same bishops now turned to several of these “censored” priests
to undertake the Samaritan work and gain the trust of the Chilean
population. The closer relationship that existed between certain bish-
ops and these progressive Catholics, despite the official censorship, was
an important factor in the Chilean Church’s transformation into the
dictatorship’s moral opposition.
Both the ecumenical relationship in Chile and the initiative of sev-
eral progressive Catholics led to the founding of several more human
rights defense institutions during the dictatorship. Thus, the Foundation
of Christian Churches for Social Assistance (FASIC), an organization
that helped those sentenced to foreign exile find a way to go to another
country (Garces, and Nicholls 2005) and the nonviolent opposition
movements Peace and Justice Service (Serpaj) Chile and the Sebastián
Acevedo Movement against Torture (Catoggio 2015) were founded.
There were also clandestine Catholic bulletins that spread a discourse of
human rights and resistance to the dictatorship among numerous Cath-
olic readers (Bernales, and Fernández 2021). They are mentioned here
to show that the ecclesiastical field of defense of human was quite broad
during the dictatorship, representing the Catholic church’s commitment
to its Samaritan work. Within this work, there is no doubt that the in-
stitutional foundation of the Vicariate of Solidarity was the most im-
portant milestone, to the extent that it is the institution that to this day
determines the image of the Chilean Church in dictatorship (Ruderer,
and Strassner 2015) and this marks the clearest difference with the case
of Argentina.
As in Chile, there were many Catholics in Argentina, from laypeople
to bishops, who were committed to the defense of human rights during
the last dictatorship. Nor was there any lack of organizations, often
ecumenical, that intervened on behalf of the victims. In this way, the
two most important human rights institutions with Catholic participa-
tion were founded before the military coup: the Permanent Assembly
for Human Rights (APDH) and the Ecumenical Movement for Human
Rights (MEDH). Bishops De Nevares (Neuquén) and Novak (Buenos
Aires) and the catholic Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who was to play a key role
in opposition to the regime, participated in the ADPH alongside certain
Protestant pastors. This organization collaborated on the issues of the
“missing” and became an important international voice on the situa-
tion in Argentina due to its good contacts with the World Council of
Churches. Many lay Catholics and priests participated in the MEDH, in
addition to certain dioceses like Quilmes, Viedma and Neuquén through
their bishops. There were several attempts in this organization to moti-
vate the Argentine Bishops’ Conference to found an institution similar to
the Chilean Vicariate of Solidarity, but they never came to fruition. The
nonviolent Christian movement also emerged in Argentina, as Adolfo
Pérez Esquivel founded Serpaj Argentina in 1978, an organization that
not only influenced the founding of another by the same name in Chile,
but also attracted much attention when its founder received the 1980
Nobel Peace Prize (Catoggio 2015; Ruderer, and Strassner forthcoming).
In addition to these organizations, there were many Catholic congre-
gations, both in Buenos Aires as well as in provinces, that were commit-
ted to fighting for the victims of repression, often guided by progressive
priests or nuns who had already adopted the lines of the Second Vatican
Council before the dictatorship (Morello 2015; Scocco 2020). Here the
congregation of the Holy Cross Church in Buenos Aires stands out for its
closeness to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and for the international
attention that the murder of some of its members attracted, including
the French nuns Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet (Catoggio, and Feld
2020).
This brief outline allows us to state that Argentine Catholics were no
less committed to human rights than they were in Chile, something that
can also be seen in the number of Catholic victims of repression, which
was far higher in Argentina than in Chile (Catoggio 2016). The big dif-
ference has to do with the Church’s institutional involvement through its
hierarchy, the bishops. There was never an institution like the Vicariate
of Solidarity, especially due to the apprehensions of many conservative
and traditionalist bishops, meaning that the Argentine church as an in-
stitution could not show the same levels of commitment to the defense
of human rights as its Chilean counterpart. This big difference, which
is fundamental to the general opinion on both Churches, can also be
explained by the different ecumenical atmosphere, among other factors.
336 Stephan Ruderer
The close relationship among the Christian churches of Chile managed
to institutionalize the work on behalf of the victims, something that,
also due to the misgivings between Catholics and Protestants, was not
possible in Argentina.
Conclusions
The Catholic church was and continues to be an important institution in
the political life of Latin American societies. This statement holds true
even more so for the 1960s and 1970s in Chile and Argentina, where
social conflicts were reflected in conflicts within the Catholic church
and where most of society felt a spiritual commitment to this institu-
tion. Therefore, its behavior during the last military dictatorships and
with regard to the massive and systematic human rights violations in
both countries is so important. At first glance, the general opinion on
Chilean and Argentine churches seemed quite clear: The Chilean Church
fulfilled its role as a Samaritan institution committed to defending the
most vulnerable people and it raised its voice in favor of the dictator-
ship’s victims, while its Argentine counterpart failed to fulfill these eth-
ical standards, that one assumes represent a religious institution, and it
provided the military and even repression with religious legitimacy. We
have already seen that these judgments must be qualified considerably,
on the understanding that the Church is a heterogeneous institution with
a pluralistic “civil society”, meaning that there were Catholics in both
countries that were in favor of and against the dictatorship and with
a variety of positions between these extremes. This brings us to a first
general conclusion: The Catholic church’s relationship with violence and
dictatorships does not depend on its religious doctrine, scriptures, or
internal structure. Rather, it is the historical context, the vision of the
actors and the socio-political structures and traditions that determine
the Church’s attitude toward human rights violations.
It is in this sense that this work only outlined the many reasons given
by historiography for understanding the Church’s attitudes during the dic-
tatorships in Chile and Argentina, revealing the breadth of Catholic reac-
tions. Both the different political development in the two countries, as well
as the different relationship with the military and the state, in addition to
the more circumstantial factor of the different leadership in both Churches
(it is not the same to have a bishops’ conference led by a traditionalist
bishop like Tortolo as it is to have one led by a conservative bishop but
one open to modernity like Silva Henríquez), are factors that to a certain
extent explain the hierarchy’s behavior in the face of state terrorism.
But a purely national analysis can sometimes lose sight of the reasons
that led two neighboring Catholic churches to act so differently, or else
exaggerate others that may lose their explanatory potential in compari-
son. Because at the level of the ecclesiastical hierarchy alone, the general
opinion is not so wrong: Despite its early support for the dictatorship,
the Chilean episcopate became a public and effective opposition and an
institution committed to the defense of human rights. Notwithstanding
some exceptions, Argentine bishops as a body did not play this role but
remained in an ambiguous position not much committed to the defense
of human rights and, in several cases, even one of support for the dic-
tatorship. These differences are not just explained by the political ten-
dencies of bishops or their anticommunism, which was not so different
in the two episcopates, nor by the previous conflicts within the Church,
which existed on both sides. There are several factors to understand the
Chilean and Argentine bishops, many of which have already been ana-
lyzed in the specialized literature and mentioned here.
The purpose of this work was to add two elements, without dismissing
the others, that only stand out in a comparison of the two cases. The
first has to do with the military forces’ reactions to Church publications,
starting with the point that these publications in themselves do not pro-
vide a strong basis for understanding such different judgments on the
episcopates. We believe that these judgments – an understanding that
we can only outline part of the issue here – are also related to a game
of action and reaction between the military and bishops that led the
Chilean Church to close ranks behind a greater commitment to human
rights, something that did not happen in Argentina, due to the different
reaction by the military.
The Samaritan work of the churches would appear to be an even more
important factor, where the role played by the Vicariate of Solidarity in
Chile stands out. This work was made possible thanks to the positive
ecumenical atmosphere in Chile and at the initiative of a Lutheran pas-
tor and the economic resources of the Protestant world churches. This
marks a sharp contrast with Argentina that helps to explain the non-
existence of a Vicariate-like institution in that country.
These conclusions do not aim to find single reasons, but rather to add
elements to the debate that stand out in a comparison between the two
countries. We believe that a comparison like this, that can broaden the
temporal focus to the entire twentieth century, would be a fruitful task
to better understand the behavior of the Chilean and Argentine Catholic
churches and their relationship to human rights violations in the last mil-
itary dictatorships. This task will perhaps also allow us to better under-
stand a world Church currently led by an Argentine bishop, Pope Francis I.
Notes
1 This paper was drafted under the auspices of the project CONICYT/FON-
DECYT/REGULAR/FOLIO No. 1200145.
2 The same is the case with Morello, who, expanding the view to all Cath-
olics makes a difference between anti-secularist, institutional and progres-
sive Catholics (Morello 2015). Ghio differentiates four sectors within the
338 Stephan Ruderer
episcopate: one corporativist-fundamentalist, one corporativist-traditionalist,
one moderate democratic, and a progressive minority (Ghio 2007). Overall,
specialists agree on the three general trends.
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14 People, Culture and Liberation
in Rafael Tello’s Theology
A Contribution from
Argentina to Latin America1
Omar César Albado
Introduction
The present article introduces some of the topics developed by Argentin-
ian theologian Rafael Tello. Though relatively unknown in the academic
world, he exerted a notable influence on Argentina’s pastoral action be-
tween the 1960s and 1990s, with proposals characterised by their orig-
inality and their perception of the signs of the times. In this text, I will
focus on a brief introduction to the categories of people, culture and
liberation in Tello’s theological universe.
First of all, I will offer a bibliographical summary that will allow us
a deeper understanding of Tello’s way of doing theology, strongly con-
ditioned by his life’s circumstances. We will then examine his theologi-
cal model in order to consider, later, that the popular pastoral practice
proposed by Tello draws on a theological current (it seeks to look into
God’s will in itself) and on a historical fidelity to the poor peoples of
Latin America. Finally, we will wonder whether the popular pastoral
practices devised by Tello have a future in the contemporary historical
conjuncture.
In the bibliography, I will leave references to some of the critical stud-
ies conducted on Tello’s theology in the last few years, for those who
may be interested. They will help them gain a more comprehensive view
about the complex, rich thinking which may not be fully depicted on
these pages.
A Life in Two Times

The Book of Ecclesiastes says that to every thing there is a season and
a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to break down, and a
time to build up; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones
together; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep silence, and a
time to speak (cf Eccle 3, 1–10). For the Israeli sage, life is marked by
these two times, and wisdom consists of living each of them with its
circumstances and in its own density. When our gaze turns to Father
Rafael Tello’s existence this rhythm becomes evident and dramatic. In a
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-18
342 Omar César Albado
rereading of that passage from the Ecclesiastes, we could say that there
is a time for public action and a time to remain hidden from the eyes of
the world.
Rafael Tello was born 7 August 1917 in La Plata (Buenos Aires prov-
ince) and died 19 April 2002 in Luján (Buenos Aires province).2 Since
his priestly ordination in 1950–1979 he stood out for his involvement
and initiatives that had a significant influence on the pastoral life of the
Church. Among the numerous activities he carried out we can highlight
his proximity to the members of the Movement of Priests for the Third
World [Movimiento de Sacerdotes para el Tercer Mundo, MSTM], his
participation in the Episcopal Commission on Pastoral Action [Comis-
ión Episcopal de Pastoral, COEPAL], his role as interlocutor of many
bishops, his capacity for acting as counsellor to several religious congre-
gations during difficult times, the preaching at retreats, the inspiration
for the VI Document of San Miguel on popular pastoral practice, the
promotion of a youth movement and the gestation of the Youth Pilgrim-
age to Luján.
However, this intensely public life was cut short in the late 1970s. In
March 1979, due to a dispute with Cardinal Aramburu, Archbishop of
Buenos Aires, Tello withdrew from public life and began a period of vol-
untary seclusion that would last 23 years, until his death in 2002. This
event marked a caesura in his existence that doubtlessly conditioned and
inexorably seasoned his theological reflection and his pastoral search.
The conflict with ecclesiastical authorities originated from Tello’s
work with the young. As stated above, his activities were varied and were
not limited or reduced to youth pastoral action. However, these multi-
ple occupations were not considered to be conflict generators by those
who knew him.3 It seems that from his work with youngsters a range
of pastoral possibilities surged, which made it clear that there were two
distinct styles (one promoted by Tello and the other one led by Cardinal
Aramburu) which were as different in their proposals for realisation as
in their theological content, obviously without doctrinal matters coming
into play here. But we must bear in mind his work as having truly deep
repercussions for the pastoral action of the Church in order to assess the
reason behind such a drastic decision to solve a conflict. A decision freely
made by Tello but also implicitly supported by the Cardinal.
Let us briefly go over the facts. In 1974, Tello and some other priests
convoked a group of youngsters who began to organise themselves around
certain activities that soon allowed them to gain space in ecclesial life
and achieve prominence in the public sphere. What later became known
as the Evangelising Youth Movement was in the making. The first major
event produced by this Movement was the Youth Pilgrimage in October
1975, when around forty thousand youngsters gathered to spend an af-
ternoon and night walking to the sanctuary of Our Lady of Luján. It was
a historical moment in the country, marked by an increasingly violent
A bestowal from Argentina to Latin America 343
climate, an unstable democracy and systematic attempts at social demo-
bilisation. The multitudinous event was unexpected, astonishing even its
organisers. “When we left Morón […] we reached a place where the road
slopes and we could see the column disappearing over the horizon. We
could not believe it, even though we had taken part in the organisation”
(Mitchell 2004, 59. Italics in the original). It is not odd that this happen-
ing brought about mistrust and suspicions which would affect the Youth
Movement in general and Father Tello himself in particular.
I will highlight two facts that undoubtedly represent a surge in the
conflict. For Christmas 1976 a Prayer Retreat camping trip was planned
in detail, which was supposed to take place over several days. “But
shortly before the start it was postponed, by order of the ecclesiasti-
cal authorities in Buenos Aires […] The reason given was that ‘it was
mixed-gender’” (Rivero 2013, 54). The second fact is connected with the
removal of a large part of the Youth Pastoral Team from the Archdiocese
of Buenos Aires in early 1977, which was interpreted by witnesses from
that time as a rupture with the style of work being carried out until then.
Gabriel Rivero points out that with the new members “the function of
said team was restricted”, causing an “estrangement” between the new
management and the Evangelising Youth Movement led by Tello (cf. Riv-
ero 2013, 62, 68, 77). For his part, Marcelo Mitchell narrates the event
with irony and refers to the texts that the new commission produced for
the 1977 pilgrimage in order to “let each person assess the continuity
and change regarding the previous stage” (Mitchell 2004, 107).
In early 1979 the situation reached its most dramatic point with Fa-
ther Tello’s withdrawal from public life. We find direct testimony of this
drastic decision in his professor’s file at the Faculty of Theology, in a
handwritten note from the Dean:
1979. Today, Tuesday 6th March, Archbishop Cardinal Aramburu

has informed me that Prof. Fr Rafael Tello has submitted his res-
ignation from his position of Associate Professor at the Faculty of
Theology. Carmelo Giaquinta. NB: the Governing Board and the
Academic Board must be notified in their next meetings.
The reasons why Tello makes this decision have been described in dif-
ferent ways. Gabriel Rivero generically points out that Tello’s presence
had become troublesome for religious authorities. For this reason, his
participation in pastoral initiatives was limited, “given that Father Tello
began shutting himself away more and more since 1979, to prevent his
presence from hindering the youth and pastoral activities led by the hi-
erarchy” (Rivero 2013, 73).
On the other hand, Rodolfo Ricciardelli establishes a close link be-
tween Tello’s seclusion and his proposal for a priestly formation espe-
cially designed for poorer boys and with an academic style that differed
from the traditional scholarly seminaries. He does not intend to replace
one seminary with another but to encourage a formation that would
consider other ways of life, particularly that of the poor. Ricciardelli
records a conversation between Father Jorge Vernazza and Monsignor
Iriarte where he reminisces about this wish of Tello’s:
Yes, he believed that there were a great number of people who were
humble, very simple, but felt a calling from God nonetheless; indi-
viduals who showed or could show remarkable aptitudes through
their contact with like people, and he said it was not a question
of training second-rate priests, their knowledge ought to be solid,
but the training program should be different, because these people
could not bear our school system […] So he planned how this could
be done quite thoroughly, for instance by leaving them an extract
from the Bible for them to read and mark, to see what they could
find there, so that a critical study could be conducted on it […] With
that system of observation, etc. things could work out a lot better.
And he ends his account with a brief but highly dramatic conclusion:
Around the years 1978/1979 the project was at an advanced stage,

conversations had taken place with Fr Lorenzo Esteva, with Mgr.
Iriarte and with Mgr. Raspanti, bishop of Morón, where this “sem-
inary for bums” was to be set up. But Mgr. Raspanti informed Car-
dinal Aramburu of this, and the latter was so infuriated that he
accused Fr Tello of lacking faith and carrying out parallel pastoral
actions, he stripped him of all his responsibilities and demanded that
he leave the country. Tello, not knowing where to go, decided to hide
himself away.
(Ricciardelli, unpublished)
Rivero’s explanation stresses Tello’s decision to step aside voluntarily

and gradually in order to prevent the work with the young from being
cut short. Ricciardelli moves the focal point of the conflict from youth
pastoral action to the sensitive core of priestly formation, and he high-
lights Cardinal Aramburu’s offensive, which leaves Tello a narrow mar-
gin for action. I believe that Ricciardelli’s account depicts the heart of the
conflict more deeply and lays highly peculiar emphasis on the figure of
Tello, contextualising his retreat against the background of a political-
ecclesiastical dispute. Concurrently, he outlines the actual incidence of
a priest’s pastoral proposals within the administration of a diocese in
just a few lines. This is not a tantrum by someone who cannot have his
way, but radicalised compliance with a superior’s will. In the end, I be-
lieve the gesture ought to be interpreted as an act of humility in pursuit
of the unity of the Church. The decision could have been defended and
appealed. He did not lack support.4 However, he preferred to obey, to
suffer in silence and remain steady in his convictions, occupying the last
place in the Church.
His withdrawal from the public sphere implied a readaptation for
Tello, from an intensely active life to a situation of seclusion, seeking
to remain true to himself without disobeying authority. This is one of
the main reasons why he refused to see bishop friends, priests who car-
ried weight in the institution and laypeople with incidence on pastoral
action. In this way, he fulfilled the duty that had been imposed on him:
to avoid generating parallel pastoral practices. But he never stopped en-
visaging a pastoral action that would reach everybody, and which was
clearly in harmony with the magisterium of the Church.5 He elaborated
it in his home, and communicated it to a small group of priests who did
not occupy positions of prominence in the ecclesiastical institution; nor
were they intellectuals with opportunities to socialise and universalise
his doctrine. They would work with the poor and with poor pastoral
means with no aspirations to change the Church, but rather with the
desire to remain true to the Gospel.
This time was an active one as well, although Tello never returned
to the public eye and he accompanied the initiatives he generated from
his retreat. His most active role was fulfilled in the “Escuelita” [little
school], the name given to a weekly meeting in which he got together
with a group of priests to teach popular pastoral theology and discuss
practical matters arisen in pastoral action. From these encounters nu-
merous theological texts emerged, some of which began to be published
after his death. During this time he also encouraged the creation of the
“Asociación Privada de Fieles Santa María Estrella de la Evangelización”
[Private Association of the Faithful ‘Saint Mary, Star of Evangelisation],
known in ecclesiastical circles as “La Cofradía” [The Brotherhood],
whose mission is the evangelisation of the poor, with poor means, and
taking into account their cultural way of experiencing Christianity. Sev-
eral activities originated here: retreats for homeless men [“linyeras”],
retreats for poor men and women, pilgrimages across the country and
Latin America carrying the Virgin of Luján, and favouring the furthest,
forgotten villages, encounters with men from popular culture in a dif-
ferent scheme from that of the retreats. At the same time, he promoted
the initiative to create a Charitable Foundation as an instrument to raise
funds to support the Association’s work and other initiatives which,
though not included in the Association’s activities, worked along the
same lines. The Foundation’s name was Saracho (the name of one of the
first pilgrims), it owns the copyright to Tello’s texts and was in charge of
their publication after his death. Both institutions are still active nowa-
days. We can see that Tello’s activity became invisible but not immobile.
In the year 2000, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires Cardinal Bergoglio
(now Pope Francis) visited him as a sign of recognition of his person’s
and his work’s importance. Tello was grateful but maintained his isola-
tion as a vital condition which he could not forsake.
The two times in Tello’s life undoubtedly point out different ways of
becoming embedded in the dynamics of ecclesial life and enacting insti-
tutional belonging. What was not modified was his initial theological
intuition, and his pastoral quest. As Bianchi points out “if there is a uni-
fying thread running through both stages of his life that is his search for
a popular pastoral action” (Bianchi 2012, 41). In fact, his most prolific
theological production took place during this time of seclusion, in a fluid
pastoral dialogue with the small group of priests who visited him every
week. Biography and theology are intimately related, conditioning the
access to and the interpretation of his writings. Tracing the main lines of
his thinking implies taking this situation into account, a situation which
highlights its originality while it makes us wonder about its value and its
current significance in theological reflection and in evangelisation.
Tello’s Theological Method

Comprehending an author’s ideas also involves looking into the found-
ing notions that make up their theological method, which underlies their
work often implicitly. In Tello’s case, this task is especially complicated
because he never systematically reflected upon the matter. We may find
references to the singularity of his theological proposal compared to oth-
ers, or to his place within the Church, but we will not find a text where
Tello explains the internal structure that shapes his theological work. I
believe the reason behind this absence is that as a theologian he is ori-
ented towards pastoral action instead of academia. Enrique Bianchi has
pointed out that “despite being an accomplished theologian in the aca-
demic sphere, what gave him recognition within the Argentine Church
was his encouraging of concrete pastoral initiatives” (Bianchi 2012, 45).
This concern about pastoral matters was precisely what made him offer
a theological basis for it but exempted him from dedicating himself to
the analysis of the method that enabled him to articulate both moments.
The lack of self-reflection on the fundamentals is completed when we
add his rejection of any attempt to personalise his theology.
A set of notes for internal use that Tello handed out on 27 July 1994,
titled “N.N.”, will offer us a way to delve into that perspective. The title
of this piece of writing indicates the explicit choice to let the individ-
ual who signs it remain anonymous. Tello wants to project this attitude
on every aspect of his life, which therefore influences his way of doing
theology. It is also true that N.N.’s traits as described in the text could
be applied to any person within the Church, but without a doubt, they
greatly express the mode of belonging and the place that Tello willingly
wanted to occupy in it. Within the Church as the body of Christ, N.N.
is located among the lesser, weaker organs. Occupying one of the last
places involves a double movement: on the one hand, he does not expect
others to yield to his action criteria, and, on the other hand, he makes
an effort to fulfil the small, concrete role that God has meant for him in
the Church. “N.N. is and wants to be part of the Church. The Church
today is determined to carry out a new evangelisation […] N.N. does it
as well” (Rivero 2013, 212).
In order to achieve this goal, he opts for the poor and their popular
culture, prioritising a lifestyle akin to the poverty of the poor, using poor
means to evangelise, acquainting himself with the language and other
means of expression typical of the poor people, adjusting themselves to
their values and way of being. That is why
N.N. chooses to work from that basic Christian core of our people
just like our people take it and experience it. Above all, in order to
reinforce it and make it more operative, building a stronger founda-
tion for subsequent, steady development which is commonly left for
other members and organs of the Church to carry out.
(Rivero 2013, 214, 215)
This option of Tello’s, consciously and explicitly stated, proposes a hum-

ble lifestyle as a result of his proximity to the world of the poor. This
humility is not abstract, on the contrary, it sprouts from his preferential
option for the poor. A theologian of the poor cannot aspire to occupy
a place of privilege, small as it may be. And the theology that emerges
from that encounter cannot aim to change the world or become a per-
sonalised school because the poor did not act that way, neither in his-
tory nor in the Gospel. Because they were not allowed to, and because
they refused to. N.N. chooses to follow that path. I believe this could
be a key to understanding the depersonalisation in Tello’s theology: he
understood himself as the one who unravels and scrutinises truths that
belong to God and the people, not to him. Ultimately, he was aware of
his originality, but he left that judgement for posterity.
This conviction, sifted through the joyful and painful experience of
the two times of his life, cemented his decision not to publish. At least
he could not, in any case, that would be a mission for his disciples. The
revolutionary humility of the poor became ingrained in him so deeply
that he did all his theology from an explicit personal oblivion.
Taking this assumption into account, I believe his way of doing the-
ology is supported by two pillars: an interpretation of history and an
interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine. From these two the other
elements in the reflection come into play, such as the use and application
of the Sacred Scripture, his relationship with tradition and the magiste-
rium of the Church, his conception of pastoral action.
History and its interpretation occupy a place of prominence in his
reflection. Tello is not a historian in the strict sense of the term. He
does not conduct archival historical investigations trying to find a novel
contribution to science. He works on others’ investigations, and from
them, he interprets. He does not quote his sources at all times, either.
In his texts we find explicit references to medieval historians of French
tradition (such as Régine Pernoud and Jacques Le Goff), but not much
more. The other sources must be assumed because for Tello the import-
ant thing was not to quote others but the historical interpretation that
could be generated from there. Now, interpreting for what? To act, to
take part in history. That is the ultimate reason for his theology. That
is why it is so important to understand where historical processes go in
his texts, because theology and the pastoral action originated from it
will not involve repeating what has always been done, but taking part in
history from another perspective. Hence, the concern for history is not
merely academic or scholarly. The ultimate goal is praxis.
The Argentinian theologian does not study history as a mere chrono-
logical succession of events, but as human, secular processes that shape
a cultural reality. Here the link to culture appears, understood from this
methodological axis as part of a process of configuration of personal
and communal subjectivity. Culture is not knowing objects in the first
place, but understanding the existential options that led subjects to pro-
duce such objects. And that occurs in history as part of a human process,
for culture is dependent on history and every historical core eventually
produces culture. Tello explains this principle clearly in an unpublished
text:
Here we consider history not on its own but in connection with the
new evangelisation. It is what the Pope did when he launched it in
Santo Domingo in October 1984. And rightly so, for evangelisation
is grace, but grace entails nature, and nature and its action do not
appear concretely but modified, determined by history and culture.
(Tello, unpublished. Italics in the original)
The second methodological axis is found in the interpretation of Thomas

Aquinas’ doctrine. Thomas’ use of theology acquires a double connota-
tion. First of all, this theology is officially recommended by the Church
and arouses no suspicions of heterodoxy. At a time when the magiste-
rium’s gaze focused on questioning any reflection which incorporated
contributions from modern sciences, Thomas’ theology offered structure
and content which was in principle free from any accusation. Secondly,
Tello considers himself a Thomist because he embraces the spirit which
inspired the medieval theologian’s theological thinking, and not because
he concerns himself with replicating the formal structure of his theology.
In Tello’s view, Thomas thinks universally, for all Christendom rather
than a specific sector. This universal character is what the Argentinian
theologian favours when choosing the instrument that will allow him
to go forward in his own elaboration. He does not intend to repeat the
structure of Thomism but recreate Thomas’ spirit applying it to Latin
America. Unquestionably, his knowledge of Aquinas’ entire work in its
formal and material aspects is extensive. But the use of Thomistic sys-
tematics aims at nurturing the large community of Latin America and its
particular historical process.
The crossing of these two methodological axes conditions the way of
approaching the Scripture, tradition and the ecclesiastical magisterium.
Tello always paid close attention to these three elements which make
up the basis of thinking. At all times he was concerned to remain true
to the Church’s teachings. But the historical process in Latin America,
evangelised and baptised since the early days of the conquest, could not
simply oppose God’s will. With all its virtues and contradictions, with
its cultural peculiarity, Latin America’s history and current life must find
a crack that will allow it to be included in the teachings of the Church
without forsaking its identity.
It is true, however, that Tello makes no mention of any contempo-
rary theologians. Not a single one is quoted, he does not lean on any of
them to move forward, no significant work of the 20th century is ana-
lysed. Tracking the origin and the reasons behind this absence exceeds
the scope of this article. What I am able to affirm is that Tello read
twentieth- century theologians. Not only theologians but also philoso-
phers, historians and authors who belong to the field of social sciences.
But even though we are not going back, we are moving forward. As I
said above, I believe that opening an exchange between Tello’s theology
and the contemporary lines of thought that are concerned with what is
popular is a methodological effort on our part. I do not intend to ex-
haust this work, but rather attempt an initial push.
The Convergence of Two Currents:

Theologal and Pastoral
It has been repeatedly stated that Tello was concerned with promoting
popular pastoral action and dedicated his whole life to that effort. Ga-
briel Rivero points out that
During his whole ministry, his guideline was always the dissemina-
tion of true popular pastoral practices among priests, members of
the clergy and laypeople. To this he devoted his life and his unusual
capacity […] It is from this fundamental option that his writings
must be read.
(Rivero 2013, 9, 12)
The editors of Tello’s texts reinforce this idea when they remind us that
reaching “the majority of Christians was always the heart of his quest.
And popular pastoral action was the method for the institutional Church
to move in that direction” (Tello 2014, 5, 6). They also highlight that this
popular pastoral action demands a theological answer that Tello offers:
Above all, his thinking is oriented towards the evangelising action,

for him theology and pastoral action are inseparable, he intends to
promote popular pastoral practices for Latin America and, based
on that, he develops his reflection. It may be said that his is a theol-
ogy of evangelisation, or even better, a theology of popular pastoral
action.
(Tello 2011, 8. Italics in the original)
Tello himself has put his reflection under the lens of this interpretation
when referring to the theology that he taught at the Escuelita: “What
the Escuelita does is seek the theological justification, the theological
reason, that will explain that this position of the people is acceptable,
something the official pastoral action does not see” (Rivero 2013, 137).
That said, what is popular pastoral action? What does Gabriel Rivero
refer to when he talks about true popular pastoral action? How do we
understand this fundamental orientation? I will take a 1999 reflection
from an Escuelita lesson as a starting point.
What is popular pastoral action? It is searching among God’s designs.
It is looking for ways in which every person can be saved. Popular pas-
toral action cannot expect to “limit”, rather it must “broaden”, under-
stand, seek the numerous paths to salvation that God has for everyone.
And it must comprehend that the people’s way of life is oriented towards
salvation as well. Saint Thomas understood this and claimed universal
salvation (Tello 1999).6
The quote allows us to examine some of the initial traits of popu-
lar pastoral action. First of all, the mystical-theological aspect of the
proposal is highlighted. The starting point is neither pastoral or insti-
tutional organisation, nor a conceptual argumentation from which an
action can be deduced. As fundament and beginning of popular pastoral
practice, Tello proposes the search for a contemplative road that will un-
ravel God’s will in his deepest designs, not to remain in a spiritualistic fit
but to found pastoral action there. Popular pastoral practice is based on
a spirituality that allows itself to be taught directly by God, and by the
action of God on the people. It is not a school of spirituality, but a theo-
logical spirituality, that is, a spirituality based on God’s will. The first
consequence that emerges from this contemplation is the universality of
salvation, explicitly opposed to any elitism, reasonable as it may appear.
In the background Paul’s cry resonates: “For God our Savior will have
all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim
2, 4). Popular pastoral action serves this universal salvation and must
look for ways that help bring it about by broadening instead of limiting
it. In Latin America, from where Tello reflects, this involves acknowl-
edging that the culture of the people is oriented towards salvation. Two
central notions in popular pastoral practice appear in a colloquial tone:
popular culture and popular Christianity. Both concepts are linked, and
Tello will seek to delve into their theological meaning, since, in order to
recognise the value popular Christianity has for the Church, one must
look into God’s designs. From there a theology emerges that finds a par-
adigmatic formulation in the synthesis by Saint Thomas Aquinas, who
did not experience or know Latin America but, with his theology and his
deep understanding of God’s designs, he left us a privileged instrument
to comprehend the people.
People, Popular Culture and Liberation

This first approach to popular pastoral action as a historical praxis em-
phasises the close bond with the theological current. Tello does not think
of pastoral action as a successful strategy in sociological terms, but as
an action that seeks, and respects God’s universal saving will. If we con-
tinue delving into this category, we come across concepts that begin to
give it a specific physiognomy: people and popular culture are the ones
that stand out. Attached to them the notion of liberation emerges as an
inescapable consequence of this reflection.
First of all, I would like to stress the intimate connection Tello es-
tablishes between people and popular culture. “The people, at least a
determining portion of them, are impregnated with popular culture”
(Tello 2013, 32). The quote claims that popular culture is the component
of a decisive part of the people, although it may not be so for the people
understood as a whole. However, he does not think of people in terms
of a class rivalling others to reach power, but as a section of the commu-
nity of which everybody is called to be a part. The people do not close
on themselves, but are inclusive and universal, the large community in
which everyone is included. Tello’s choice is to consider the whole from
the part, or, in his own words, from the determining sector that lives in
popular culture. This sector is made up mostly of the poor and the mar-
ginalised, who become the hinge to articulate the evangelisation of the
people in general. Among the people we can also find the “promoted”
ones, but popular pastoral action chooses to attend to the whole not
from them (who are also a part of it) but from the poor sector. In this
sense, popular pastoral action does not exclude anybody, but is thought
and carried out from the poor towards everybody.7
Popular culture lives in this determining sector. Let us say from now
on that by popular culture we understand not mass level phenomena,
but the typical lifestyle of the people that serves them as a vital channel
of expression. That is why Tello uses it as a socio-pastoral differentiating
category, and not just as a notion to identify a sector or a social class.
“Popular is, then, that which belongs to the people as a universal com-
munity. But popular also refers to a particular sector of the people: the
lowest, the poorest, the most numerous or majoritarian” (Tello 2008,
102. Italics in the original). A popular culture is a form of resistance by
the people which implies the affirmation of a lifestyle that goes beyond
folklore and tradition. It is resistance to colonialist domination.
Our peoples have been oppressed by external imperialism and colo-
nialism (cf. p.e. Medellín, Paz 8–10; DP 30; etc.), with serious internal
repercussions (Medellín, Paz 2–7; DP 27s); from where, in order to bet-
ter comprehend God’s providential vocation for the Christian people it
would be convenient to add that: popular culture is the culture of a peo-
ple, or of a sector of a people, dominated; in its own specificity it is not
shared by the dominators and, at least in reality, worked as a defensive
system to prevent total absorption by the dominators (Tello 2013, 34).
Popular pastoral action must take charge of the people and their cul-
ture, which is a confrontation with the dominant powers. It implies tak-
ing a stand on a religious but also socio-political level. Undoubtedly,
popular culture has a specific way of expressing its faith, and Tello
points out that this occurs in popular Christianity. Not only in popular
religiosity, which is an expression contained in the virtue of religion but
also in Christianity, which is understood as a global way of living the
entirety of faith characterised by cultural form. “Christianity without
cultural determinations does not seem to exist in this land, at least in a
social, collective dimension” (Tello 2014, 239). This Christianity is the
determining formative element, which popular culture specifies.
Taking a stand includes the socio-political dimension. Although pop-
ular pastoral action does not adhere to any political project, it does not
limit itself to reinforcing certain practices of popular piety while remain-
ing indifferent to that aspect either. It does not defend or strengthen
the people’s religious dimension in isolation, but the people’s historical
project, which includes the religious dimension.
Evangelisation would not be complete without a message and an

effort, especially vigorous nowadays, on liberation. With this the
subject of liberation, with a rather socio-political emphasis, drifted
towards the subject of evangelisation with a marked religious ac-
cent, and often the latter was used to weaken the first. But that was
an opportunistic use and, deep down, contrary to the real meaning
of pontifical teaching.
(Tello 2008, 16, 17)
That is why the commitment towards the liberation of the people is a fun-
damental part of popular pastoral practice. Tello claims that it is clear
that “evangelisation necessarily (albeit subordinately) involves working
for the temporal (and therefore economic, political, social or cultural)
liberation” (Tello 2008, 17. Italics mine). Subordinately should not be
equated with “accidental” or “secondary”, as if secular aspects were less
valuable or as if they only concerned evangelisation when there were no
ways left to avoid them. On the contrary, the expression makes refer-
ence to the detachment of the specific contents of evangelisation, and the
Church’s essential duty to attend to them. It might be said that religion
determines liberation and not the other way around. In no way is this
supremacy an excuse to let religion shirk concrete liberation. “After all,
the Holy See made it very clear that evangelisation is necessary, that it is
a substantially religious activity, but it should be extended to temporal
liberation as well” (Tello 2013, 17). In addition, he will also state that
popular pastoral action “seeks to experience and transmit that which is
Christian, -and, therefore, Christian liberation through the people them-
selves acting with their leaders and their own culture” (Tello 2013, 58).
As we can see, the emphasis is on the people as author and conductor of
their own historical destiny. We will later be able to analyse the Church’s
role in this process.
Tello makes sure to stress this supremacy of the people in their path to-
wards liberation with assertive statements. “Popular pastoral action takes
the people themselves and their faith as a principle of liberation and trans-
formation” (Tello 2013, 59). The link between Christianity and libera-
tion is explicit, but it is not considered from an avant-garde point of view
but as a seed that is embedded in the people and that popular pastoral
action must respect. Along the same lines, he will later say: “Popular pas-
toral action builds from the historical background of liberation typical of
the Latin American people since their baptism” (Tello 2013, 59, 60). The
proposal is to collaborate in a liberation process built by somebody else
from their own collective subjectivity, but feeling it as one’s own, for the
Christian element is not accidental, but central. But it is a popular Chris-
tian, not ecclesiastical Christian. Popular pastoral action accompanies,
strengthens, offers its word, but respects the people’s movement. It does
not rush the process even when the people slow it down. When that hap-
pens, when the times become slower, that is the moment when, in Tello’s
view, the support to the religious core of the people should be intensified,
but keeping in mind that this action strengthens the historical project.
That is why popular pastoral action should be carried out from the people
rather than from the ecclesiastical structures.
As long as the people make no certain movement towards a common,
binding goal (such as the movement for emancipation or the movement
for federalism could have been, for instance), popular pastoral action
will tend to act more specifically – and sometimes more exclusively – in
the “religious” core of the people, structuring their unity, culture and
their own identity, which may appear as inconducive to liberation in the
eyes of more learned individuals, even if the people harbour no doubts
about its liberating value (Tello 2013, 59).
I believe it is important to highlight, from this first approach, that pop-
ular pastoral action is a proposal that encompasses both religious and
political dimensions, which should not be understood from the partial-
isation offered to us by popular piety and party commitment. Without
disregarding them, Tello proposes to consider those areas as a condition
of possibility for the people’s work to build its identity in the specific
Latin American context. For this reason, he opens them to a 500-year
process, he submits them to the contradictions of the political conjunc-
ture, he shifts them through the misunderstandings established by the
Church. But he does not forsake his trust in the people’s intuition, who,
together with their culture, make a path for themselves to reach their
destiny. It is a historical destiny, imprinted with a supernatural stamp
for being Christian. Tello understands that authentic popular pastoral
action cannot omit these minimal conditions.
Does Popular Pastoral Action Have a Future?

This question makes sense because Tello never thought of popular pasto-
ral action as a theological matter to be debated in academia, but as praxis
with social incidence and theoretical argumentation. Pope Francis’ pres-
ence renders this query even more current since we can perceive many of
his gestures and his teachings to have been inspired by Argentinian-style
popular pastoral action, whose best-known representatives were Lucio
Gera and Rafael Tello. If we confine ourselves to the theologian pre-
sented in this article, the matter becomes more pressing: Is it possible
today to think of the people the way Tello proposes? Is it possible to keep
to the option for the poor on that level of deep empathy in the face of the
logic of modern culture? Is it possible to work for the strengthening of
popular Christianity with all the theological and pastoral consequences
it involves? Even after admitting that the criticism of modern culture is
real, is popular pastoral action viable in the world’s current state? Would
it not be utopic to persevere in it, given the advances that modern culture
has made for humankind? Who would be able to incarnate the radicality
Tello proposes?
I believe there are several levels to the answer, which must be con-
sidered individually. First of all, we must take into account the pasto-
ral action of numerous ministers in their everyday work, linked to the
vital concerns of different social sectors, especially those in the world
of the poor. In that area, I believe popular pastoral action has a prom-
ising future, providing every pastor is convinced that he can address
his community’s needs from it. Baptising everybody without distinction,
opening the door to the rest of the sacraments for most, being in the
world of the poor without attempting to modify their culture and seek-
ing the truth God has to say to history today among the people are at-
titudes that can be adopted as a group and individually as an answer to
the increasingly pressing requirements of our society. I know numerous
priests, laypeople, monks and nuns who tread this path. Their activity
is crucial because they live in direct contact with the bases, supporting
popular culture and popular Christianity. This task does not decline,
and every day others discover the richness of working for the poor from
popular pastoral action.
Secondly, I believe popular pastoral practice could be of great help
for the Church to move forward more decisively in their commitment
to the people in an institutional manner. Significant progress has been
made in this respect in the last few years, and the push that Francis’
current papacy has given it has been crucial. However, the hope that
some privileges that bind us to power and the established order can be
legitimately upheld still lingers. The popular pastoral action proposed
by Tello dreams of a poor Church for the poor, as does the Pope. And
this implies a Church that will work for them in the social sphere, one
that will not form alliances with the current powers to keep injustices
quiet. We are at a turning point in which we are requested once more,
as a Church, to opt for the poor and the marginalised. Popular pastoral
action can make a great contribution to committed, deep choices in this
sense. Although progress has been made, the future remains a challenge.
Lastly, we wonder about the fate of popular pastoral action in the
academic world, not just within the sphere of theology but also with re-
gard to social sciences. Tello’s popular pastoral practice is undergoing a
steady inclusion progress into that field. I believe this path to be the most
complex of all, as it forces us into a presentation of Tello’s theology that
goes beyond pastoral practice and which can be assimilated into the dis-
cussion of the diverse contemporary world of thought. In my view, Tello
can be a valuable contribution in the attempt to generate a new synthesis
in the reflection on God, peoples and social issues. But this will occur as
long as we take Tello’s intuitions and use them to launch ourselves into
a recreation of the most significant current matters instead of a mere
repetition of what he has already said. In this sense, important steps
have been taken. First of all, his texts have been getting published since
2008. This is crucial for the familiarisation with his way of writing and
thinking since his texts had remained unpublished for years. Secon, a
reception process regarding his thinking has begun, which facilitates the
orderly presentation of concrete subjects. Enrique Bianchi’s work on the
experiencing of faith in popular culture (Pobres en este mundo, ricos en
la fe. La fe de los pobres en América Latina) [Poor in this world, rich in
faith. The faith of the poor in Latin America], Fabricio Forcat’s doctoral
thesis on the use of grace in popular Christianity (La vida cristiana pop-
ular. Su legítima diversidad en la perspectiva de Rafael Tello) [The pop-
ular Christian life. Its legitimate diversity in the perspective of Rafael
Tello] and my own book (El pueblo está en la cultura. La teología de la
pastoral popular en el pensamiento del Padre Rafael Tello) [The people
are in the culture. The theology of popular pastoral in the thought of
Father Rafael Tello] follows these lines. In each of those works, the au-
thors deepen some theological dimension developed by the Argentinian
theologian, put in context and in dialogue with theology and human sci-
ences. I believe this to be a valuable task, given the difficulty some may
encounter while reading Tello’s work, and they constitute an inescap-
able communicative and pedagogical contribution. Thirdly, the dialogue
with contemporary thinking in order to assess the depth and incidence
of his reflection is still pending. This is, in my view, the task that remains
to be completed, and the challenge we must inevitably take on if we are
to get Tellian reflection rolling on new grounds.
Notes
1 Traducción del español al inglés de María Florencia Deminicis
2 I recommend reading two texts in order to know details about Tello’s life
and pastoral activities: Bianchi 2012 (chapter1), and Rivero 2013.
3 Fr. Rodolfo Ricciardelli depicts Tello as an agreeable, highly respected man
among his peers in this anecdote:
“Around the year 1971, a time when the MSTM (Movement of Priests
for the Third World) was being seriously questioned by certain sectors of
society and by many priests and bishops, Cardinal Juan Carlos Aramburu
asked Father Carlos Bordón to organise meetings with the entire presby-
terium from Buenos Aires with the purpose of establishing criteria for it.
Father Bordoni, who knew Father Tello – as a classmate whom he held in
high regard – requested that the latter coordinate and lead these encounters.
Although the job was far from simple, Father Tello performed splendidly,
and thus the priests who took part in these meetings remember it. The high
number of priests who attended was proof of this fact, as was the quality
of the debates generated there. During one of these discussions a joint pre-
sentation was organised, to be delivered by Fr. Jorge Vernazza and Fr. Julio
Meinvielle, who argued in favour and against the MSTM, respectively. It
was highly revealing that, at the end of both talks the first priest to stand
up exclaimed: ‘So there isn’t such a big difference!’. Their interest in these
meetings did not wane, and the priests requested that they be resumed the
following year, but Cardinal Aramburu no longer allowed it. This was how
Father Tello’s lucidity and prestige, evidenced in the coordination of these
encounters, turned the event into an experience that still lingers in the mem-
ory of those members of the Buenos Aires presbyterium who gathered back
then (Ricciardelli, n.d., unpublished).
4 Monsignor José Iriarte tells us: “What I can say is that back then he was
very [???] by the Cardinal [Aramburu], that was quite noticeable. Zaspe and
I offered to conduct the defence, we spoke to the people at the Holy See
and informed ourselves about the procedure that had to be carried out; we
offer to testify and organise his defence, but he never let us, he adopted this
non-defensive stance; in front of us he did, he swore the accusations against
him were false, etc. and I know that some time later the Cardinal summoned
him, gave him leave to act” (Ricciardelli, n.d., unpublished). A letter from
Cardinal Pironio that he was sent a few months after his retirement was
made effective is also known: “Rome, 12 -VI - 79. Dear Tello, I would like to
be by your side now, when I know you are suffering. I share your cross and
your hope. If I could be of any use to you, I ask that you let me know with
brotherly simplicity. In the mean time I’d like you to feel my constant, sincere
affection and the humility of my prayers. Saying more would be pointless –
you know it, you teach it and you live by it – but it is always good to have a
friend repeat it: a priest’s life – its greatness and its fruitfulness – is measured
by the serene intensity of the cross. I send you a warm hug and by blessing
in Christ and Maty Most Holy. E. Card. Pironio”. (The handwritten origi-
nal can be viewed at https://www.facebook.com/201005706642728/photo
s/a.201010756642223.47672.201005706642728/539113442831951/?type=3&theater
5 Many of Tello’s writings emerged as commentary on documents by the Pope
or Bishops. Suffice it to mention Tertio Millennio Adveniente or the final
document of Santo Domingo, product of the 6th Latin American Episcopal
Conference. As Bianchi states: “The voluntary isolation in which he lived al
those years was not bidirectional. Even though he tried his hardest to stop
influencing the Church, the Church continued to influence him” (Bianchi
2012, 40).
6 Some time earlier Tello expressed similar concerns in a letter to the then
Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Bergoglio, after welcoming him in his
home: “In my view, the Argentine Church’s biggest problem is how to ap-
proach that immense majority of Christians whom the institutional Church
does not reach. I believe that you, Your Eminence, have a providential mis-
sion to start changing the Church (Buenos Aires? Argentina? Beyond? I don’t
know). I pray to God you are able to accomplish it” (Quoted in Bianchi
2013, 6). The letter acquired greater relevance when Cardinal Bergoglio was
chosen as Pope Francis.
7 “The real man in our people is either already promoted or poor and margin-
alised. And there is a certain juxtaposition between the two. Turning to one
while letting the other move away is not the best. The way, then, both should
be approached and brought closer is a problem that must be faced […] But
regarding a new evangelisation the poor clearly have a certain priority; be-
sides, the Latin American Church has opted for them and intends to embrace
their cause” (Tello 2013, 15).
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Pastoral Approach to the Youth Pilgrimage to Lujan], edited by C. M. Galli,
M. Mitchell, and G. Dotro (pp. 35–166). Buenos Aires: Ágape.
Ricciardelli, R. (n.d.). Apuntes para una biografía del Padre Rafael Tello [Notes
for a biography of Father Rafael Tello]. Unpublished.
Rivero, G. (2013). El viejo Tello y la pastoral popular [Old Tello and the popu-
lar pastoral]. Buenos Aires: Patria Grande.
Tello, R. (1999). Transcription lesson 6th May 1999. Unpublished.
——— (2008). La Nueva Evangelización. Tomo I [The New Evangelization.
Volume I]. Buenos Aires: Ágape.
——— (2011). Pueblo y cultura I [People and Culture I]. Buenos Aires: Patria
Grande.
——— (2013). La Nueva Evangelización. Anexos I y II [The New Evangeliza-
tion. Annexes I and II]. Buenos Aires: Ágape.
——— (2014). Pueblo y cultura popular [People and Popular Culture]. Buenos
Aires: Patria Grande.
——— (n.d.). Consideración de nuestra historia [Consideration of Our His-
tory]. Unpublished.
15 Buddhism in Latin America
From Ethnic Religion to
Alternative Spirituality
Frank Usarski and Rafael Shoji
Introduction
Despite a recently growing academic interest in Buddhism in Latin
America, the current state of research of related issues remains unsatis-
factory. Most of the scholars involved have focused on certain countries –
primarily on Brazil (Usarski, and Shoji 2016), Argentina (Carini 2018b),
and Mexico (May May 2019). The few publications that deal with Bud-
dhism within a broader geopolitical context like South America (Usar-
ski 2019) or Latin America in general (Rocha 2017) lack in depths and
details. Among the aspects missing is a study of the institutional rele-
vance of Buddhism in the entire region as a basis for comparison both
between different Latin American countries and between Buddhism in
Latin American and other parts of the Western world. The present chap-
ter pretends to expand our knowledge about this specific issue. Reducing
the complexity of the object in question, the expression “Latin America”
refers to the part of the world that is located between 32 degrees north
latitude and 54 degrees south latitude, and 35–118 degrees west longi-
tude, and whose history is marked by the conquest and posterior set-
tlement by the Spanish and Portuguese. This excludes countries whose
main languages are French (Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe and French
Guiana), English (Antigua e Barbuda, Belize, Guiana, Jamaica, as well
as Trinidad and Tobago) and Dutch (Aruba e Suriname).
Institutional Manifestations of Buddhism in

Latin America
In terms of individual followers, Buddhism represents only a marginal
segment of the religious fields of the above specified Latin American
countries. The status of a minority religion is indicated by the results
of the Brazilian Census in 2010 that has counted around 244,000
self-declared Buddhists, which is not more than 0.2% of the country’s
population. Official data referring to Chile indicate that this statistical
insignificance is not restricted to Brazil. The national census of 2012
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045649-19
360 Frank Usarski and Rafael Shoji
counted 11,839 Buddhists, that is, less than 0.2% of Chile’s population.
(Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas 2012, 15).
It is also symptomatic for the relative numeric insignificance of Bud-
dhism that most of the national census does not offer separate calculations
of individual Buddhists but subsumes them under the category “other
religions” reserved for a series of “secondary” and small denominations
outside the mainstream. The quantitative underrepresentation of Latin
American Buddhists is also confirmed by rough estimations published on
platforms such as Nationmaster or by agencies such as the Association
of Religion Data Archives (ARDA). This is indicated by the below table
although it contains marked differences or even gross inconsistencies be-
tween the columns and – compared with the results of the 2010 National
Census – a heavy miscalculation regarding Brazil, maybe due to inflated
numbers provided by Buddhist institutions or sympathizers (Table 15.1).
The minority status of Buddhism in Latin American countries is also
indicated by the database promoted by the Spanish economic newspaper
Expansión. The journal’s Datosmacro-platform (https://datosmacro.ex-
pansion.com) contains estimations in per cent regarding 14 Latin Amer-
ican countries. In seven cases the data refer to 2010. The figures for five
countries are given for the year 2005. The most recent value concerning
Cuba stems from 1995 (Table 15.2).
Table 15.1 Estimations of Buddhist followers in Latin American countries (in

absolute values)
Country Nationmastera ARDAb
Argentina 42,611 21,631

Bolivia 8,127 7,383
Brazil 633,180 496,643
Chile 17,217 10,849
Colombia 9,149 1,845
Costa Rica 103,311 1,222
Cuba 16,086 6,116
Dom. Repub 10,220 1,787
Ecuador 23,158 15,209
El Salvador 6,108 No data
Guatemala 14,372 2,504
Honduras 8,448 4,287
Mexico 18,595 26,314
Nicaragua 5,789 6,656
Panama Nodata 26,890
Paraguay 13,257 14,811
Peru 74,623 65,413
Puerto Rico 7,348 487
Uruguay 3,324 65
Venezuela 42,688 35,413
a https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Religion/Buddhism/Buddhists.
b http://www.thearda.com/QL2010/QuickList_38.asp.
Buddhism in Latin America 361
Table 15.2 E stimations of Buddhist followers in Latin American countries (in
per cent)
Country % Year
Argentina 0.02 2010

Bolivia 0.04 2010
Brazil 0.13 2010
Chile 0.02 2010
Cuba 0.06 1995
Ecuador 0.05 2010
Guatemala 0.02 2005
Honduras 0.05 2005
Mexico 0.02 2005
Nicaragua 0.11 2000
Panama 0.38 2010
Paraguay 0.08 2005
Peru 0.08 2005
Venezuela 0.04 2010
Source: https://datosmacro.expansion.com
The absolute or relative number of followers, however, is not the only

criteria for measuring the success of a once “foreign” religion that strives
for settling in new surroundings. In some Latin American countries,
Buddhism can look back on a history of more than a hundred years
and today virtually all Buddhist lineages have established local institu-
tions in the region. In the absence of reliable statistics of Buddhist prac-
titioners, a survey of temples, centres and groups can serve as a means of
estimating the local impact of Buddhism. Although a certain amount of
these institutions may host a relatively insignificant number of commit-
ted affiliates, their mapping may even give a more realistic impression
than the data regarding self-declared Buddhists. The religious routines
of Buddhist communities are often not restricted to definitive members
but are also open for sympathizers and sporadic visitors. This means
that not only the institution’s inner circle will benefit from a temple pro-
gramme, but rather it is likely that in the long term, the religious activ-
ities will also benefit individuals who never appear in official statistics
of local Buddhists. In this sense, one can assume a positive correlation
between the number of Buddhist groups, centres and temples, on the
one hand, and the relevance of Buddhism in the respective district or
country, on the other hand.
In any event, the following list of Buddhist institutions compiled in
2018 resulted from the consultation of different sources including ac-
ademic publications (Shoji 2004), inventories of regional research
agencies (Prolades 2002), mappings of Buddhist institutions at the con-
tinental (Markham, and Lohr Sapp 1996, 356, 357), national (Zalpa
2015, 953–961; Carini 2018a) and municipality level (Mallimaci, and
Table 15.3 Buddhist institutions in Latin America
T M Chinese Ko Jap Vi Vaj Bö Ny Kg Sk Gg NK e ns/o Na To
et ch Fo Sh Sg Td Ni N2 SG Zn
Argentina 4 57 2 1 2 5 1 8 37 1 15 3 6 4 2 7 1 84
Bolivia 1 21 1 18 2 1 1 23
Brazil 14 261 2 3 4 6 73 2 1 20 10 91 43 6 120 1 68 23 4 8 13 3 5 2 402
Chile 3 50 1 1 23 25 31 1 4 15 3 3 1 4 3 87
Colombia 2 21 1 12 8 24 1 20 2 1 1 48
Costa Rica 2 15 1 1 11 1 1 4 1 1 1 1 1 22
Cuba 1 15 1 14 1 1 17
Dom.Rep. 10 2 6 1 1 10
El Salvador 4 1 1 1 1 7 4 3 11
Ecuador 1 11 1 5 5 3 3 15
Guatemala 5 3 1 1 9 4 2 3 14
Honduras 1 1 1
Mexico 4 34 5 3 17 9 98 3 8 18 1 16 34 18 3 139
Nicaragua 1 1 2 1 1 2 5
Panama 3 1 1 1 1 1 4
Paraguay 8 1 1 1 1 4 1 9
Peru 1 20 1 2 1 13 3 13 1 1 8 2 1 1 35
Puerto Rico 2 5 1 1 1 2 3 1 1 1 10
Uruguay 2 13 2 5 6 9 3 5 1 24
Venezuela 1 22 2 5 15 13 12 1 1 37
Total 38 577 13 9 6 13 86 2 2 26 12 240 158 10 354 8 89 118 11 44 55 29 25 3 997
% 3.8 57.9 35.5 2.51 0.3
Sources: Own elaboration based on different works: Shoji (2004); Prolades (2002); Markham and Lohr Sapp (1996); Zalpa (2015); Carini (2018a);
Mallimaci, and Cárdenas (2003); Costa et al. (2008); http://www.budismo.com/directorios/index.php
T = Theravada // M = Mahayana // Et = Ethnic Chinese/Taiwanese // ch = Chan // Fo = Fo Guang Shan // Co = Korean // Sh = Shin // Sg = Shingon // Td =
Tendai // Ni = Nichren-shu (including Honom Busuryu-shu) N2: other branches of the Nichiren-Spectrum without Soka Gakkai (such as Reiyukai) //
SG = Soka Gakkai // Zn = Zen // Vi = Vietnamese // Vaj = Vajrayana // Bö = Bön-branch of Tibetan Buddhism // Ny = Nyingma // Kg = Kagyu // Sk =
Sakya // Gg = Gelug// NK = New Kadampa // e/o: Ecumenic Tibetan Buddhism // n/o: non-sectarian Tib.Buddh. amd others [such as charity associa-
tions, journals or publishing houses] // Na = Buddhist national associations // To = Total.
Cárdenas 2003; Costa et al. 2008), as well as Buddhist directories such
as http://www.budismo.com/directorios/index.php and homepages of
local Buddhist groups. According to the combined information derived
from these references currently about 997 local Buddhist institutions
of different religious orientations, sizes and scopes are currently active
on Latin American soil. In addition to Theravada Buddhist-circles, Ma-
hayana temples of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese origin, and
Vajrayana groups associated with traditional Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya,
and Gelugpa masters, one finds centres that represent more recent de-
velopments such as the New Kadampa Tradition, the followers of Thich
Nath Hanh, neo-Buddhist movements within the spectrum of Nichiren
Buddhism, as well as non-dependent associations “ecumenical” dedi-
cated to the study and practice of Buddhism in an “ecumenical” sense
(Table 15.3).
Geographical Distribution of Latin American Buddhist

Institutions
In geographical terms, the spectrum of Buddhist institutions is far from
being proportionally distributed. In Brazil, with about 208 million in-
habitants the most populous country in the region, 402 Buddhist institu-
tions are registered. This is more than 40% of the total number of Latin
American temples, centres and groups. One hundred and thirty-nine
institutions were established in Mexico, the Latin American country
with the second-largest population (ca. 129 million). Next come Chile
with 87 Buddhist communities and Argentina, where 84 groups were
counted. Behind these countries, we find Columbia (48), Venezuela (37),
Peru (35), Uruguay (24), Bolivia (23) and Costa Rica (22). The countries
on the lower ranks are Cuba (17), Ecuador (15), Guatemala (14) and
El Salvador (11), followed by the Dominican Republic (10) and Puerto
Rico (10). Four countries are located within the single-digit range, that
is, Paraguay (9), Nicaragua (5), Panama (4), and, at the very end of the
line, Honduras (1).
Systematic Distribution of Latin American Buddhist

Institutions
As far as the presence of the different Buddhist currents in Latin Amer-
ica is concerned, the following aspects are relevant. Theravada, which is
the main Buddhist “vehicle” in South and Southeast Asia, is institution-
ally the least significant branch in Latin America. It is represented only
by 38 local centres.
On the other hand, the quantitatively strongest Buddhist “vehicle” is
Mahayana Buddhism, which in its classic form is dominant in China,
Korea, Japan and Vietnam. In Latin America, it is represented by some
Graph 15.1 Buddhist Institutions in Latin America.

Sources: Own elaboration based on different works: Shoji (2004); Prolades (2002);
Markham and Lohr Sapp (1996); Zalpa (2015); Carini (2018a); Mallimaci, and Cárdenas
(2003); Costa et al. (2008); http://www.budismo.com/directorios/index.php.
577 local centres and temples. The numerically most significant segment
within this category is of Japanese origin (526 institutions). Twenty-eight
local Latin American communities hold on to Buddhism of Chinese
Buddhism. Ten institutions are associated with Vietnamese Buddhism.
Within the Mahayana segment, Soka Gakkai is the numerically most
relevant school. Its 240 local centres correspond to circa one-quarter of
all Latin American Buddhist institutions. The second major Mahayana-
subline is Zen Buddhism practised in 158 centres. Third, 86 temples are
committed to Shin Buddhism.
The institutions that represent Tibetan or Vajrayana Buddhism (354
local centres) are represented by slightly more than one-third of all Latin
American Buddhist institutions. The proportions in terms of Tibetan
Buddhist schools are as follows: Kagyüpa (118 groups); New Kadampa
Graph 15.2 Institutions according to the type of Buddhism (Buddhist “vehicles”).

Sources: Own elaboration based on different works: Shoji (2004); Prolades (2002); Markham and
Lohr Sapp (1996); Zalpa (2015); Carini (2018a); Mallimaci, and Cárdenas (2003); Costa et al.
(2008); http://www.budismo.com/directorios/index.php.
Tradition (55 groups), Gelugpa (44); Sakyapa (11) and Bön (8). Twenty-
nine local communities declare themselves “non-sectarian”, which means
that they promote practices and teachings across definite school lines.
The below chart represents the percentual proportions of the Latin
American Buddhist field.
A comparison between different Latin American countries reveals the
following tendencies.
As the above charts concerning Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina
indicate, centres associated with the Theravada-vehicle make up between
3% and 5%. One notable quantitative difference consists of the Ma-
hayana segment in the four countries. While in Argentina, Brazil, and
Chile this “vehicle” is represented by over 50% of the Buddhist institu-
tions, it represents only 21% of the Mexican centres. This discrepancy is
mirrored by the ratio of Tibetan Buddhism. With 70% of the institutions
in Mexico Vajrayana Buddhism dominates the national Buddhist land-
scape which is quite different from the situation in Chile (36%), Brazil
(30%) and Argentina (18%). There are also country-specific dispropor-
tions in terms of Tibetan Buddhist schools. While in Brazil the largest
percentage of Vajrayana groups belong to the Nyingma lineage (about
57%), in Mexico most groups belong to the New Kadampa Tradition
(35% of all Tibetan groups active in the country).
Graphs 15.3, 15.4, 15.5 and 15.6 Institutions according to types of Buddhism in
selected countries.
Sources: Own elaboration based on different works: Shoji (2004); Prolades (2002); Markham
and Lohr Sapp (1996); Zalpa (2015); Carini (2018a); Mallimaci, and Cárdenas (2003); Costa
et al. (2008); http://www.budismo.com/directorios/index.php.
The Geographically and Historically Variable Impact of

Japanese Immigration
A considerable number of Buddhist institutions in Latin America
still have an immigration background. They render religious and so-
cial services primarily for families who have their roots in Asia and
whose commitment to their spiritual communities provides the finan-
cial basis for the institutions’ survival. Attending refugees from Laos,
the Wat Rattanarangsiyara, founded in 1997 in Pousadas, Argentina,
is the only ethnic institution in Latin America that is committed to
Graphs 15.7 and 15.8 Comparison of Tibetan Buddhism Institutions in Brazil and
Mexico.
Sources: Own elaboration based on different works: Shoji (2004); Prolades (2002); Markham
and Lohr Sapp (1996); Zalpa (2015); Carini (2018a); Mallimaci, and Cárdenas (2003); Costa
et al. (2008); http://www.budismo.com/directorios/index.php.
Theravada-Buddhism. Not more than a fourth of the ethnic temples

are frequented by Latin Americans, who are of Chinese or, to an even
a lesser extent, Korean descent, who entered the respective countries
from the 1960s onwards. Most of the “ethnic” temples have their ori-
gins in different waves of Japanese immigration to the region, a move-
ment that started already at the end of the nineteenth century and was
responsible in 2004 for the presence of around 1.5 million individuals
with a Japanese family background in Latin America (Masterson, and
Funada-Classen 2004, 86–110). This makes Latin America the world
region with “the largest Japanese community outside Japan” concen-
trated “in Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Paraguay, Bolivia, and a few other
countries” (Kunimoto 1993, 99).
While today most of the community members are no longer Bud-
dhists, traditional ethnic Japanese religiosity has been a major driving
force for the formation of the Buddhist landscape in the region. The in-
tensity of this impact is due to several complementary and often interre-
lated factors. One is the receptivity of the host society which in the early
days often went hand in hand with Japanese emigration policy in terms
of logistic and financial support in favour of certain Latin American
destination countries. Other aspects are the total number of immigrants
received by a Latin American country, the speed and consistency of the
influx of immigrants into a national context, the density of immigrant
settlements in certain regions, the gender ratio of the respected “colo-
nies” or the strength of ties with the part of the family that remains in
the homeland. As for the development of institutionalized Buddhism in
particular, one must not forget that since the beginning of the immi-
gration process, traditional Japanese Buddhist schools have gradually
expanded their activities to Latin America.
Compared to these criteria Brazil offered the most favourable con-
ditions both for the immigration of Japanese in general and for the
transplantation of Buddhism in particular not only in the sense of the
maintenance of private family traditions but, already before World War
I, also in the form of the first institutional manifestations. In 1941,
188,986 (77.3%) of the 244,536 Japanese who until then had immi-
grated to Latin America had established themselves in Brazil. With the
only six-digit figure leader on the list, the Brazilian colony was several
times more numerous than that of Peru (33,070 members) and of Mex-
ico (14,476). Even more dramatic was the difference between Brazil and
Argentina, with 5,398 members the only four-digit figure in the list, in
a considerable distance followed by Cuba (686), Paraguay (521), Chile
(519), Panama (415), Colombia (229) and Bolivia (202), not to mention
Uruguay (18), Venezuela (12), and remaining countries (4) (Kunimoto
1993, 103).
By 1958, due both to the continuation of the immigration process
from 1951 onwards and the amount of over 291,000 “niseis” (second
generation), the number of Brazilians of Japanese descent had grown
to over 430,000 individuals. The composition of the group in terms of
gender ratio (52% men, 48% women) (Tigner 1981, 471) enhanced the
probability of endogamous marriage – the rule at least until the 1940s
(Lesser 1999, 104) – as well and of the maintenance of Japanese family
traditions including religion.
The relative racial exclusivity of the immigrants whose majority was
concentrated in the State of São Paulo and its capital had as an import-
ant side effect the establishment of ethnic-specific social organizations.
The latter included Buddhist communities and it is symptomatic that to-
day Brazil hosts almost 75% ethnic Buddhist temples in Latin America.
The process of institutionalization started however in Peru, already in
1903 when Kakunen Matsumoto and Senryu Kinoshita, two Buddhist
priests from the Jodo-School, and Taian Ueno official representative of
the Soto-Zen school came to Peru to assist the immigrant families who
had entered the country by then (Ota 2003).
When the missionary work of the Jodo-priests ended in 1910 without
longer-lasting results, Taian Ueno had already established the Taihezan
Jionji-Temple (originally Nanzenji-Temple) in the outskirts of Lima. His
founding year 1907 makes it the first Zen institution in Latin America.
One year later Priest Tomojiro Ibaragi from the Nichiren-branch,
Honmon Butsuryū-shū, was among the first 781 Japanese Immigrants
who arrived in Brazil in June 1908 (Nakamaki 2000).
In 1932, Tomojiro Ibaragi, inspired and supported by the Honmon
Butsuryu-community in the city of Lins (State of São Paulo) began to
construct the local Taisseji temple. It was inaugurated in 1936 as the
very first official Buddhist institution in Brazil. During the War, two
more Honmon Butsuryū-shū institutions were constructed in the State of
São Paulo. In 1940, the Nissenji-Tempel was inaugurated in Presidente
Prudente, followed by the Ryushoji-temple in Moji das Cruzes (1941)
(Usarski 2013).
The wave of the founding of traditional Buddhist temples after World
War II was primarily due to the decision of most of the Japanese im-
migrants to settle permanently in Brazil. The Honmon-Busutryu-shu
school expanded its network of institutions to Taubaté (1949), Londrina
(1950), and Itaguaí (1950). In 1962, the school’s headquarters opened in
the city of São Paulo. At the beginning of the 1950s, the Tendai school
and the Otani branch of the Jõdo Shinshü school opened their first tem-
ples. The Honpa branch of the Jõdo Shinshü school established its na-
tional headquarters in the city of São Paulo. Other Buddhist lineages
such as Soto-Zen and Nichiren-shu announced the beginning of their
official missions in Brazil. In 1958, the umbrella organization Federação
das Seitas Budistas no Brasil (Federation of Buddhist Sects in Brazil)
was founded. Furthermore, Nichiren Shoshu began to appear publicly in
the 1960s (Usarski 1916, 722).
All of these institutions played an important role not only for Japanese
Brazilians who had entered the country before the war but also for more
than 34,000 additional Japanese who had immigrated to Brazil during
the 1950s (IBGE 2013). According to a survey conducted in 2003 (Shoji
2004), most of the ethnic Japanese temples established by then belonged
to the two branches of Jodo Shinshu. Fifty institutions were associated
with Higashi Hoganji, 30 with Nishi Hoganji. These are significant fig-
ures compared to the situation of institutionalized ethnic Buddhism in
other Latin American countries including the minor dependencies of
Shin Buddhism in Mexico (Shoji et al. 2019), Peru (McKenzie 2019) and
Argentina (Carini 2018), as well as the Nichiren Shoshū Temple in the
Veraguas-Province in Panama.
However, the values regarding Brazil appear in another light when
one reminds that most of these temples are spiritual homes of small
communities that are statistically far from being representative of the
total number of Brazilian citizens of Japanese descent. According to the
estimations Ministry of Foreign Affairs, slightly more than 1,656,000
individuals fell under this category. According to the website of the Min-
istry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/latin/),
the corresponding value had increased to approximately 2,050,000 in-
dividuals in 2018. In the same year, the number of Jodoshu-Temples
in Brazil had dropped to 73. Compared to the figure of 2003, this is a
difference of almost 10% which has a counterpart in the steady decline
of the number of individual ethnic Buddhists registered by the National
Census since the 1950s.
While there are failures on the side of the Buddhist institutions them-
selves (Usarski 2008, 48–50), the very reason for the negative trend goes
deeper. In the final analysis, the institutional decline of ethnic Buddhism
is a consequence of the interrupted transmission of Japanese ancestor
worship along family lines contextualized within socio-culturally rela-
tive distinct surroundings. More generally, the maintenance of cultural
heritage within a group of immigrants depends on the cohesion of the
ethnic group and the “density” of its plausibility structure. In this sense,
one can assume a positive correlation between the organizational, eco-
nomic and cultural self-sufficiency of the respective community on the
one hand and the validity of its cultural patterns, on the other hand.
The more the group is affected by tendencies such as urbanization, in-
dividualization, social mobility and dissemination of the members into
the host culture, the greater is the probability that family tradition loses
its relevancy for the interpretation and organization of the life of the
involved subjects. Generation change is an important factor in this con-
text. While the first generation of immigrant families is inclined to hold
on to the life-style, convictions, customs, and habits typical for their
homelands, the following generations already socialized under new con-
ditions “abroad” are in general inclined to emancipate themselves from
the ideological and practical standards of their parents and to assume
the patterns of the (former) “host” society.
These general principles shed a light on the La Colmena-community,
the only Japanese immigrant colony in Paraguay before World War II,
founded in October 1936. Finally, 138 families composed of 844 indi-
viduals lived together and closely cooperated. School lessons were given
in Japanese. Spiritual bonds with the homeland remained strong. Ex-
ogamic marriages were the exception (Fretz 1962). Until World War II,
the community gathered in front of replicas of domestic religious shrines
and commemorated the traditional festivals. Under these circumstances
was not a surprise that “as late at the end of the 1960s, 80 per cent of the
family heads in the colony claimed they were Buddhists” (Masterson,
and Funada-Classen 2004, 103).
Counterexamples taken from countries underline the correlation be-
tween aspects constitutive for the cohesion of an ethnic community and
the degree of maintenance of the cultural heritage of the immigrants.
Among these nations are Columbia, Chile and Argentina, which did not
receive high numbers of Japanese immigrants and where the pioneers did
not find the best conditions for the preservation of their cultural identity.
That way, in Argentina, for example, “the processes of assimilation and
acculturation among the Japanese are remarkably advanced” (Master-
son, and Funada-Classen 2004, 107).
Another case in this context is that of Bolivia. By 1923, approximately
600 individuals had arrived and settled in different places. This disper-
sion was dysfunctional for the creation of Japanese Language schools.
More importantly, only 8% of the pioneers were female immigrants.
The unfavourable gender proportion led to a high rate of extra-ethnic
marriages and contributed to the rapid dissemination of the immigrants
into the host society already in the first phase of Japanese immigration
to Bolivia. According to Tigner:
The assimilation of Japanese has progressed farther in Bolivia than

in any other of the Latin American states. This is demonstrated
impressively by the extent of intermarriage. Excluding postwar im-
migrants, about 85% of the Issei (born in Japan) married Bolivian
women, with an even higher percentage among the second gener-
ation. Cultural assimilation is similarly advanced, and the general
acceptance of the Japanese is perhaps unequalled on the continent.
(Tigner 1981, 466, 467)
It does not come as a surprise, that no single ethnic Buddhist institution

has been established in Bolivia. Early immigration to Mexico brought
about similar negative results. As in Bolivia, “although some Japanese
customs remained from the earlier period, overall Mexican culture and
customs subsumed most traces of Japanese origin” (García 2014, 15).
The main reason was again the relative absence of women among the ap-
proximately 15,000 Japanese who migrated to the country before World
War II. Consequently, 60% of the male pioneers married Mexican wives.
The percentage of intermarriage among the members of the second gen-
eration was even higher and contributed further to the loss “of char-
acteristics of Japanese nationality and spirit” (Tigner 1981, 463). One
indication for the dilution of the Japanese cultural heritage is that the
marriage between a Japanese immigrant and a Mexican woman often
led to the conversion of the husband to Christianity (García 2014, 15).
Opposite to the examples above, interethnic marriage was until the
1940s an unusual option for Japanese immigrants in Brazil. Less than
2% of the community members were born in Japan and less than 6% of
the Nikkeis was married to a partner without Japanese descent (Lesser
1999, 104) and although challenged by higher social mobility among
younger members for of the Immigrant families a negative attitude to-
wards interethnic marriage remained strong even after World War II. At
the turn from the 1950s to the 1960s, the rates of interethnic marriage
for individuals of Japanese descent were 18.36% for males and 7.63%
for females. Since then the situation has changed dramatically. In 1988,
more than 49.5% of Nippo-Brazilians” nationwide were married to a
partner of non-Japanese descent and today interethnic marriage is the
rule (Carvalho 2003, 43).
The correlation of the categories “race” and “religion” – two criteria –
among others – included in Brazil’s National Census-Questionnaire, in-
dicates that diminished commitment to the family heritage has religious
consequences similar to that observed in Peru where, already in 1989,
more than 90% of the members with Japanese family background declared
themselves Catholics and less than 3% Buddhists (McKenzie 2019).
According to the last five censuses conducted every 10 years, the num-
ber of Brazilians who associated themselves with the race category “yel-
low” and declared themselves Buddhism has constantly dropped from
149,633 in 1970 to 76,896 in 2010. That is a decrease of more than 48%
in 50 years. All these tendencies indicate that the current situation of
ethnic Japanese Buddhist temples is far from being comfortable and one
can assume that will be even less promising.
The Growing Importance of Convert Buddhism and Its

Organizational Implications
Today, the gradual statistical decline of ethnic Buddhism in terms both
of institution and followers has been more than compensated by the
numerical expression of a second subsegment of the Buddhist field, i.e.,
the so-called convert Buddhism (Numrich 1996). This is the result of a
longer-lasting evolution initially mainly represented by individuals at-
tracted by Zen-Meditation. From a national point of view, the move-
ment had different starting points. If favourable conditions were given
– in particular the presence of traditional Asian temples predisposed to
address an audience beyond the ethnic enclave, the influx of counter-
cultural ideas from North America, the availability of relevant litera-
ture or the dissemination of knowledge on Eastern religions by local
intellectuals – the “alternative Buddhism” gained momentum from the
late 1950s onwards. Already in August 1957, Erich Fromm, at that time
Professor of Psychoanalysis at the National University of Mexico and
resident in Cuernavaca invited D. T. Suzuki, the most important pro-
moter of Zen in the West to a conference on Psychoanalysis and Zen
Buddhism organized to demonstrate how Zen could be applied to West-
ern Psychology (Funk 2000, 133). The conference was attended by about
50 psychiatrists and psychologists from both Mexico and the United
States. Three years later the results of the symposium were published
under the title “Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis” (Suzuki et al. 1960).
The work represents a milestone in the dissemination of Zen Buddhism
in the West and also made an impression on Latin American readers
including Fromm’s Mexican students, especially after the publication of
the Spanish version Budismo zen y psychoanalysis in 1964. In 1970 also
the Portuguese translation Zen Budismo e Psicanálise was published.
One must also bear in mind that for around 10 years after the conference
Suzuki continued to visit Fromm in Mexico where he frequently became
involved in talks with members of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Society
(Friedman 2013, 169) during one of its last visits, Suzuki came to know
the traditional Rinzai-Zen monk Ejo Takata who had just arrived at
Mexico. Soon thereafter Suzuki introduced the monk to Erich Fromm
who, in turn, contributed to the establishment of Mexico’s first circle of
Zen-enthusiasts composed of artists, poets, academics and martial arts
practitioners (Martin 2018).
During the next years, Mexican psychologists continued to play an
important intermediate role. In 1976 they invited Suzuki’s North Amer-
ican Philip Kapleau for Zen talks in Mexico City. A second conference
at the beginning of the 1980s attracted an audience of around 300 peo-
ple who laid the ground for the foundation of the Casa Zen in 1985.
Another guest speaker (1979) was Soto-Zen master Taizan Maezumi
who in 1986 established his school in the country through the inaugu-
ration of the Centro Zen of Mexico. At the same time and under similar
circumstances small circles of Zen practitioners emerged, especially in
the city of São Paulo and to a lesser extend in Brasilia (Pereira 2008,
273). Again books on Zen (including D. T. Suzuki’s “Introdução ao
Zen-Budismo” as a forerunner of “Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis”
already published in 1961 (Rocha 2008, 82, 83) were decisive as were
reports and articles in magazines and journals.
Probably more important was the receptivity of the traditional
Busshinji temple which in those years began to show a greater openness
towards a wider audience. This spiritual pioneer work was above all
associated with the Japanese zen-master Rosen Takashina Roshi, who,
from 1961 onwards, organized Zazen-workshops for Brazilians with-
out a Japanese family background. Analogously to the early Mexican
zen-circle, the Brazilian group attracted primarily intellectuals, writers,
and artists.
In the following decades, the first nuclei of “alternative” Buddhists
were absorbed by a constantly increasing popularity of Zen and a wave
of institutionalization that let to currently almost 160 Zen-Buddhist cen-
tres in Latin American. Many of them have been the first institutional
expressions in countries such as Chile, Colombia, or Uruguay which had
been left out by Japanese immigrants, and Zen-Buddhist institutions
had an important influence in the 1980s and 1990s on the formation
of Buddhist landscapes strongly or exclusively represented by converts.
From the 1980s onwards, also Tibetan Buddhist schools began to ex-
pand their activities to Latin American countries. The success of their
missions becomes apparent through the significant increase of local
centres that in 2019 had accumulated to over 350 institutions in Latin
America. More detailed figures related to Brazil throw additional light
on the efforts to enlarge the networks of centres and temples committed
to Vajrayana Buddhism.
According to surveys conducted in 2004 and 2018, the number of
Tibetan Buddhist centres in Brazil increased in 14 years from 48 to 120
local institutions. This is the highest growth rate among Brazilian Bud-
dhist currents and exceeds the figures for Soto-Zen (from 31 to 43), and
for centres within the spectrum of Nichiren Buddhism (106–121), in-
cluding Soka Gakkai, i.e., one of the most attractive Buddhist currents
(91 in 2018) in most of the Latina American countries.
The Importance of Asiatic Religious Leaders for

Institutionalized Buddhism in Latin America
Throughout the history of Latin American Buddhism, official represen-
tatives of different traditional schools have played a decisive role in the
evolution of Buddhism in Latin American countries. Often monks, mas-
ters and lamas only stopped by to give a special message, for the sake
of certain instructions, or inaugurate a single event. The short sojourn
in Brazil of the Soto-official Shozen Akiyama on the eve of World War
II falls in this category. Sometimes a temporary stay was used for pre-
paratory institutional measures as in the cases of two Amida-Buddhist
from the Honganji order (Mori 1992, 563) or Reverend Shinba from the
Shingon-school (Shoji 2006, 43) who became active in Brazil in 1918
and, respectively 1934. Another example is that of Korean families com-
mitted to the female Master Daehaeng and responsible for the founda-
tion and administration of the Hanmaum Seon centre in Buenos Aires.
In 1991, the local members arranged flight tickets for some official rep-
resentatives of the lineage predisposed to transmit advanced teachings
and instructions to the group. In June of the following year, the Master
herself visited the Argentinean centre and engaged herself in the organi-
zation of a religious conference held in July 1992 (Younes 2013).
At best, religious authorities trained in Asia decided to move for a
longer period to a Latin American country with the intention or to lay
a firm ground for the institutionalization of a subsidiary of the respec-
tive Buddhist order or to take over the responsibility for an already
existing Buddhist temple. One example of such a move is the decision
of the Japanese Soto-monk Shingu Ryokan to assume the superinten-
dence of the Zen Busshinji temple in São Paulo between 1956 and 1985.
Tokuda Ryotan, who joined the team of Busshinji leaders in 1964, as
well as Shunkyo Aoki and Daiko Moriyama in the 1990s, increased the
spectrum of religious activities in the face of a growing number of non-
descendent practitioners of Zen Buddhism, in part against the will of the
associated traditional families (Albuquerque 2008, 65, 66).
Another Brazilian Buddhist institution that benefited from the support
of an Asian monk was the Buddhist Society of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro.
Between 1986 and 2006, the institution was supervised by Puhuwelle
Nayaka Vipassi, an ordained Theravada Buddhist and expert in Vipas-
sana meditation from Sri Lanka.
Due to the high importance of a personal master-disciple relationship
in for Vajrayana Buddhism, the presence of Tibetan lamas has been an
important element for the dissemination of Tibetan Buddhist schools in
Latin America. One Tibetan personality who took this principle very
seriously was Chagdud Tulku, who moved, along with the headquarters
of his international movement, from Junction City in California, USA,
to Três Coroas, in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. Resident in this Brazil-
ian temple, the Nyingma-master established a transnational network of
centres including institutions in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay.
Although only whistle-stops, the Dalai Lama's visits to Latin Ameri-
can countries in 1988 (Costa Rica and Mexico), 1991 (Argentina, Bra-
zil, Chile and Venezuela), 1999 (Brazil), 2004 (Costa Rica, Mexico, El
Salvador, Puerto Rico and Guatemala), 2006 (Brazil and Colombia),
2008 (Mexico), 2011 (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico) and 2013 (Mex-
ico) had a significant impact on the evolution of Buddhism in general and
Vajrayana in particular in the region. Already the first trip was highly
significant for the “Buddhist cause”. The Tibetan leader did not only
meet with the presidents of the visited countries (Oscar Rafael de Jesús
Arias Sánchez [Costa Rica] and Carlos Salinas de Gortari [Mexico]) but
also encouraged the inaugurated the first local support groups for Tibet.
Later, these two groups were integrated into the International Tibet Net-
work, founded in 2000. Today, this network is made up of about 180
NGOs, including branches in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa
Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. The protag-
onists of this network publicly underline the importance of Buddhism
for the Tibetan population and engage themselves in the propagation of
Vajrayana in Latin America.
The Role of Non-Asiatic Buddhist Authorities for the

Evolution of Latin American Buddhism
The presence of Asian Buddhist leaders has been complemented by the
increasing engagement of religious authorities without Asian ancestry.
Among these “western” protagonists one finds are “advanced” con-
verts from North America and Europeans who have assumed a leading
role in their respective religious orders and have included the coun-
selling or supervision of Latin American sister institutions into their
schedule of international activities. One example for the former cate-
gory is that of Paul J. Muenzen who was born in 1964 into a Catholic
family in New Jersey, USA. In 1992, he enrolled for traditional Bud-
dhist training in China and finally received the authorization to act as
a dharma teacher on behalf of the Korean Jogye. In this position, he
became an important religious reference for Argentinian practitioners
of Jogye-Buddhism.
More important in the context of this chapter are “advanced” Latin
American converts that had made a “career” within their preferred Bud-
dhist lineage and have now assumed a responsible position for the Bud-
dhist cause in their country.
Zen is one of the Buddhist currents which have inspired former “sim-
ple” followers to assume active roles within the lineage. A prominent
example is the case of Claudia Souza de Murayama, born in 1947 and
in her homeland Brazil today better known as “Monja Coen”. In 1960,
during a stay in San Francisco, she was introduced to the practice of Za-
zen by the teachers of the local Zen Mountain Center. Her growing reli-
gious enthusiasm led her to the Shoboji Temple in Nagoya, Japan, where
she received a long-term monastic training and ended up as an autho-
rized Soto-Zen teacher. After her return to São Paulo, she accepted the
invitation to become the head of the traditional Busshinji temple, was
appointed as a member of the South American Soto-Zen Council, and
elected as president of the “Brazilian Federation of Buddhist Sects,” the
umbrella organization of the traditional temples of Japanese Buddhist
schools in Brazil. As an advocate for including Buddhist converts into
the Busshinji community, Coen suffered from the resistance of the con-
servative board members, resigned from her high position and founded
the Tenzui Zen Dojo as a home especially for Buddhist converts (Rocha
2006, 50–54). This step did not undermine her credibility as a leading
Buddhist. On the contrary, for the general audience, the name “Monja
Coen” is almost a synonym for Buddhism in Brazil.
Another female Zen representative is Jisen Oshiro, an Argentinian
Soto-Zen- master with Japanese family roots. Jisen Oshiro was ordained
in 1998 in the Zuioji temple in Japan, an institution sympathetic to-
wards Western practitioners. In 2008, she became the head of the tradi-
tional Zen temple Taiheizan Jionji. in Lima. Simultaneously she made a
name for herself as a national reference for Peruvian converts committed
to Soto-Zen (Rocha 2017, 309).
The third example is that of the Columbian Zen convert Densho
Quintero. Buddhist since 1984 the latter was formally ordained as a
Soto-monk by Shinyu Miyaura from the Antaiji Temple, Japan. Today
Densho Quintero is the head of the Daishinji Zen Temple in Bogota.
The Argentine convert Ricardo Dokyu (born in 1959) joins the rank
of “native” Latin American Zen protagonists. Like Claudia Souza de
Murayama, he studied Soto-Zen in Nagoya, Japan. In 1991 he became
an ordained monk of this lineage. In 2002 he was authorized to teach
the dharma. Back in his homeland, he founded the Anraku-ji Temple in
Buenos Aires (2003) as well as the Soto-Zen Buddhist Association of
Argentina (2007). Two other examples of people associated with Zen
Buddhism in Argentina are Antonio Eiju Pérez and Augusto Alcalde.
The former started his Zen in 1988. Nine years later he moved to Japan
to study Zen under Roshi Harada Tangen. In 2000 he was ordained as
the Soto-Zen minister Tenshin Fletcher at the Zen Mountain Center,
California. After his return to Argentina, Antonio Eiju Pérez founded
the Zen Center in Mendoza. Augusto Alcalde’s interest in Buddhism is
due to his countercultural ambitions in the 1960s. In 1984, he became
a member of the Diamond Sangha in Hawaii and studied Zen under
Robert Aitken Roshi who finally authorized his Argentinian disciple as
a dharma teacher. Back in his homeland in 1986, he founded the Shobo
An Zendo in Córdoba, which is a subsidiary of the Hawaii Diamond
Sangha.
The next example is the case of Daniel Terragno, born in Chile in
1947. In 1988, he began to study under John Tarrant Roshi, who had
been initiated by Robert Baker Dairyu Chotan Aitken Roshi, a North
American Zen teacher in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. In 2001, Daniel
Terragno received from John Tarrant Roshi the authorization to teach
the dharma. For several years, Daniel Terragno taught Zen in the Rocks
and Clouds Zendo in Sebastopol, California, which he had founded in
1997. From 1999 onwards he began to sporadically visit the Grupo Zen
Viento del Sur, in Buenos Aires where he offered 7-day retreats for local
practitioners. In 2005, he started similar activities in a local Zen Center
in Santiago de Chile.
A prominent case within the spectrum of Tibetan Buddhism in Latin
America is that of the Brazilian Michel Lenz Calmanowitz alias “Lama
Michel”. The latter was still a small child when his parents inaugurated
in São Paulo the first institution of an international movement founded
by the Gelugpa monk Lama Gangchen. After Lama Gangchen recog-
nized the boy as a reincarnation of his deceased master, “Lama Michel”
joined the monastic community of Tibetan Buddhist exiles in Sera Me
in southern India. Since then, and even more decisively after the death
of Lama Gangchen caused by the Corona virus in 2020, Lama Michel
plays a leading role within the movement which, in addition to Brazil,
includes local groups of followers in Santiago and Buenos Aires. An-
other converted Tibetan Buddhist protagonist is the Argentinean Ge-
rardo Abboud, born in 1945 and today a resident dharma teacher at
Drukpa Kagy Center in Buenos Aires. Abboud began studying and prac-
tising Buddhism in the 1970s in India and Nepal. Since then he has also
dedicated himself to the tradition of Tibetan texts in English and Span-
ish serving as an interpreter during workshops and lectures by Tibetan
teachers during his trips to countries like Argentina, Brazil and Chile.
Conclusion
Due to the extreme complexity of the object under study and the related
still demanding state of research, one must be careful with conclusive
statements regarding institutionalized Buddhism in Latin America. Nev-
ertheless, some general tendencies can be summarized.
Firstly, the generalizing expression “Buddhism in Latin America”
obscures important details and is in many aspects misleading. This is
already evident for the word “Latin America” which – in our case –
covers a series of incongruencies between the subsumed countries such
as the impact or absence of Asian immigration, the influence of coun-
tercultural spiritual ideals or the aspirations of “foreign” religious orga-
nization to established subsidiaries in the respective national contexts.
The notion of “Buddhism” (singular) is likewise problematic. Neither
on the global level nor in continental dimensions Buddhism presents
itself as a homogenous entity, rather it is internally divided into several
currents, many branches, numerous schools and various sub-traditions.
Consequently, in Brazil that has witnessed a significant influx of Asian
immigrants especially in the decades before World War II, Buddhism
has taken a different path than in countries such as Chile or Colom-
bia where the first Buddhist circles were almost exclusively formed by
converts.
Nonetheless, the subtitle “From Ethnic Religion to Alternative Spiri-
tuality” is analytically appropriate. It alludes to the history of Buddhism
on Latin American soil from its first manifestations at the end of the
nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries to the present in-
dependent of the initially geographical limitation of these early man-
ifestations to only a handful of countries. Other countries entered at
different points in the progressing timeline and contributed in specific
manners to the ongoing process of phenomenological differentiation of
Buddhism at a “continental” level. While the evolution of Buddhism in
Brazil serves in this sense as a paradigm for the “full circle”, Chile is an
example for a country where from a “delayed” start Buddhism became
a biographical option for individuals in the sense of a deliberate choice
of worldview shift through the conversation on alternative spirituality.
The gradual numeric decline of both self-declared “Buddhists of yellow
skin” and ethnic Buddhist institutions in Brazil in the face of an increase
of Brazilian Buddhists that were not born into Buddhist families with an
immigration background has become obvious from the 1970s onwards.
This means that Brazilian Buddhism was caught up by a transnational
trend that represents a kind of common denominator for a “Latin Amer-
ican Buddhism” which – at least in this respect – is not very different
from other variants of “Western Buddhism”.
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Contributors
Omar César Albado holds a Ph.D. in Theology from the Faculty of The-
ology of the Catholic University of Argentina. He is an Academic
Secretary of the Faculty of Theology, and a Professor at the Faculty
of Theology. He also serves as a Director of the Specialization in So-
cial Doctrine of the Church, a postgraduate course that depends on
the Faculty of Theology. He is a member of the Argentine Society of
Theology (S.A.T) and collaborates with several specialized journals.
In 2017, he published El pueblo está en la cultura. La teología de la
pastoral popular en el pensamiento del Padre Rafael Tello (Buenos
Aires, Ágape).
Rogelio Aragón is a Professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mex-
ico City. He is a Historian, specialized in the history of anti-masonry,
antisemitism, and anticlericalism. He was Co-editor of the five-volume
300 años: masonerías y masones, 1717–2017 published in Mexico,
Argentina, and Spain. Also, he is the author of several articles on the
history of freemasonry for REHMLAC and Hispania Nova.
Pablo A. Baisotti holds two interdisciplinary M.A. degrees, one in In-
ternational Relations Europe-Latin America (University of Bologna,
2006–2008), and the other in Law and Economic Integration (Uni-
versity Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne and University del Salvador, Argen-
tina, 2005–2007). Also, he holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. from the
Faculty of Political Science of the University of Bologna in Politics,
Institutions, and History (2012–2015). He received his Bachelor’s de-
gree in History from the University of Salvador in 2004. He was a
Calas-Costa Rica postdoctoral researcher at the Maria Sibylla Me-
rian Center, University of Costa Rica. Besides, he is affiliated with
different research groups such as the Latin American Social Science
Council (Clacso) and the Latin (and Hispanic American) Academic
Network of Sinology Studies at the University of Costa Rica. He has
served as a researcher and educator in the Centre for Latin American
Studies at the School of International Studies, Sun Yat-sen Univer-
sity. He is currently a research assistant at the Department of Latin
384 Contributors
American Studies (ELA), University of Brasilia and external Professor
at Warsaw University.
Felipe Côrte Real de Camargo is a Professor at the University of Bris-
tol, UK. He researches the role of material culture as a source for
the study of history, and the place of sociability networks within
European intellectual and cultural exchanges. He is specialized in
eighteenth-century English Freemasonry and is currently developing
research on Latin American Freemasonry and dictatorships.
Guillermo de los Reyes is an Associate Professor of Latin American Cul-
ture at the University of Houston, where he also serves as an Associate
Director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality. He authored Herencias
Secretas: Masonería, política y sociedad en México, plus several arti-
cles in specialized journals, and book chapters on freemasonry, secret
societies, gender, and sexuality and masculinities.
Katarzyna Dembicz holds a Ph.D. in Human Geography and Political
Science. She specializes in socio-economic transformations, regional
development, and demographic changes in Latin America and the
Caribbean, with a particular focus on Cuba and Central America.
She is a Professor at the University of Warsaw and a member of
CESLA (UW from 1992 to 1997). In 2017, she was a Visiting Pro-
fessor at IHEAL, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. Currently, she heads
the NCN scientific project “Discourses and Development Dilemmas
of Central American local societies” (UMO-2018/29/B/HS6/00187).
Eduardo Domenech holds a degree in Political Science from the School
of Political Science and International Relations, Catholic University
of Córdoba. He also holds a Master’s degree in Demography from the
Centro de Estudios Avanzados (CEA) at the Universidad Nacional
de Córdoba, and a Diploma in Educational Innovation from the De-
partment of Applied Pedagogy, School of Doctorate and Continuing
Education at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. Besides,
he has another Master’s in Educational Quality from the Department
of Applied Pedagogy, School of Doctorate and continuing education
at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. Finally, he holds a
Ph.D. in Sociology from the Department of Sociology and Communi-
cation at the University of Salamanca, Spain.
Lucas Domínguez Rubio is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Uni-
versity of San Martín. He completed his Ph.D. and undergraduate
studies at the University of Buenos Aires. His work focuses on the
reception of philosophical currents of thought in Argentina and the
links between politics and philosophy in Argentine history. He has
published El anarquismo argentino (Anarres-Terramar-Tupac 2018)
and Carlos Astrada: textos de juventud. He has also published articles
Contributors 385
in journals from Argentina, Spain, France, United States, Uruguay,
Venezuela, Chile, and Colombia. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the
Ibero-American Institute in Berlin and the University of Tübingen in
2019, receiving funding from the Deutscher Akademischer Austaus-
chdienst (DAAD).
Michèle Guicharnaud-Tollis is an Emeritus Professor at the University of
Pau and the Pays de l’Adour. She holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages
and Literatures at the University of Bordeaux (France) and has been a
researcher at the “ALTER” Research Centre (Arts, Languages: Tran-
sitions and Relations) at the same university. Her research activities
focus on Cuban literature and cultural history and, in recent years, on
those of the Caribbean and Afro-American areas in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries. She has been a guest lecturer at the Universities
of Havana and Santiago de Cuba (Cuba), Santo Domingo (Dominican
Republic), Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), Cayenne (Guyana), Madrid
(Spain), and Berlin (Germany). She has published various articles and
several books mainly on Caribbean culture and cultural history.
Lisett Márquez López holds a Ph.D. in Urbanism from the Faculty of
Architecture at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She
is a Professor-Researcher at the Department of Theory and Analysis,
Division of Sciences and Arts for Design at the Universidad Autónoma
Metropolitana, Unidad Xochimilco, Mexico City, Mexico.
Maria Medianeira Padoin holds a Ph.D. in History from the Federal
University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS, BRAZIL). She is a Full
Professor of History at the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM,
BRAZIL); Coordinator of the Investigation Group Platenean History:
Society, Power, and Institutions; Co-coordinator of the Academic
Committee of History, Regions, and Borders of the Association of
Universities from the Montevideo Group (AUGM).
Sofía Mercader is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for
Research on Latin America and the Caribbean at the National Au-
tonomous University of Mexico. She holds a Ph.D. at the University
of Warwick and finished her undergraduate studies at the University
of Buenos Aires. Her work focuses on twentieth-century magazines
and intellectual networks in Argentina and Latin America. She has
published articles in Bulletin of Latin American Research, Políticas
de la memoria, and Nuevo Mundo/Mundos Nuevos.
Menno Oostra is an anthropologist specialized in the political, social,
and cultural history of Latin America, as well as in international de-
velopment cooperation. He has carried out extensive field research
in the Andes, Amazon, and Central America regions. His fields of
interest include indigenous history and mythology, oral tradition,
386 Contributors
intercultural relations, social policies and participation, gender rela-
tions, the impacts of globalization, social movements, civil society,
human rights, and political symbolism. He has published articles on
Colombia, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, on the Amazon and An-
des regions, and on North-South relationships. He has acted as a se-
nior evaluation expert for numerous social development programs.
Jussi Pakkasvirta is a Professor of Area and Cultural Studies at the Uni-
versity of Helsinki. He has published widely on theories of nationalism
and the history of ideas. His other research interests are interdisci-
plinary methodologies, environmental conflicts, and the culture of
social media – especially new applications of “social media big data”.
His latest research project is Citizen Mindscapes – Detecting Social,
Emotional, and National Dynamics in Social Media (Mindscapes24).
Pakkasvirta has also studied Latin American nationalism, and social
and cultural movements. He was rhe President of the European Coun-
cil for Social Research on Latin America, CEISAL (2016–2019).
Andrés Pereira currently works at the Instituto de Estudios Sociales –
CONICET/UNER. He researches on migration control policies.
His most recent publication is “Estudios migratorios e investigación
académica sobre las políticas de migraciones internacionales en
Argentina”.
José Antonio Pineda-Alfonso has a degree in History, specializing in
Modern and Contemporary History, and also in Philosophy and
Educational Sciences, specializing in Psychology (1989). He also holds
a Ph.D. in History and Educational Sciences. Since the academic year
2009/2010, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Didac-
tics of Experimental and Social Sciences at the University of Seville.
As a researcher, he has participated in several national and interna-
tional projects. He is a member of the Research Group “Didactics
and School Research” (HUM319) of the Andalusian Research Plan
funded by the Ministry of Economy, Innovation, Science, and Em-
ployment. His research fields are school coexistence, teacher training,
social sciences didactics, and education for citizenship and partici-
pation. In the area of history, his fields of research are the history of
ecclesiastical institutions in the Modern Age and Social History and
mentalities.
Emilio Pradilla Cobos holds a Ph.D. in Urbanism from the Faculty of
Architecture, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He also
serves as Professor-Researcher, Department of Theory and Analysis,
Division of Sciences and Arts for Design at the Universidad Autónoma
Metropolitana, Unidad Xochimilco, Mexico City. He is a National
Researcher Level III, National System of Researchers, National
Council of Science and Technology, Mexico.
Contributors 387
Stephan Ruderer is a Professor of Chilean and Latin American History
at the Pontifícia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) in Santiago.
He received a Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 2008. He
has been working as a researcher at the University of Münster on
the Catholic Church and military dictatorships in Argentina and
Chile, on corruption in Latin America, and on early post-colonial
decision-making processes in Argentina. Currently, he works on a
FONDECYT research project about the Catholic Church in Chile
and Argentina in the twentieth century.
João Vitor Sausen is a Master’s candidate of History at the Federal Uni-
versity of Santa Maria (UFSM, BRAZIL) with a CAPES/DS schol-
arship. He researches at the Investigation Group História Platina:
Sociedade, Poder e Instituições (Platenean History: Society, Power
and Institutions).
Rafael Shoji graduated in the Study of Religions at the University of
Hannover. From 2006 to 2007 and again from 2010 to 2011, he
joined the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture (Nagoya, Japan)
as a Research Fellow. As the cofounder of the Centro de Estudos de
Religiões Alternativas de Origem Oriental (CERAL) at the Pontifícia
Universidade Católica of São Paulo, he is engaged in the study of Bud-
dhism and other Eastern religions in Latin America.
Frank Usarski graduated in the Study of Religions from the University
of Hannover and lectured at various German universities. He is a
Professor of the Study of Religion at the Pontifical Catholic University
of São Paulo, where he founded the Centro de Estudos de Religiões
Alternativas de Origem Oriental (CERAL). In 2017, he founded the
International Journal of Latin American Religions published by
Springer.
Pablo Vommaro is a Professor and researcher at the University of Bue-
nos Aires and CONICET. Post-doctorate in Social Sciences, Child-
hood and Youth (PUC-SP, COLEF, U.Manizales/CINDE, UNLa,
CLACSO). He holds a Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the University
of Buenos Aires. He is an Adjunct Researcher at CONICET and the
Gino Germani Research Institute (UBA). Besides, he co-coordinates
the Group of Studies on Policies and Youth (GEPoJu-IIGG, UBA)
and is a member of the CLACSO Working Group “Youth and Child-
hood”. He is a Research Director of CLACSO.
Index
Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables; italic page numbers refer to figures and
page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes.
Abad, Marco Antonio 84 Aleman, Miguel 286, 287

Abascal, Salvador 308, 313, 314, 316, Alfonsín, Raúl 248, 253, 254, 256,
319 257, 269
accelerated urbanization: Aliens Act 195n4
decomposition of pre-capitalist Aliens, Extradition and Naturalization
forms of production 34; Act (1921) 185
establishment of popular housing Allende, Salvador 249, 260, 326, 327,
37–38; expansion – consolidation 334
– territorial expansion 39; internal Alonso, Alicia 85
market for manufacturing goods Altamirano, Carlos 255
33–34; peasant productive forms Alvarado, S. V. 54
and 33–34; rural-urban migration Álvarez-Borland, I. 88
34; underemployment rates 38 Anderson, B. 103
Achúgar, Hugo 265 Andreu, Olga 81
“Acto de Fe” [“Act of Faith”] 119 “antisemitism” 321n1
Acuerdo Nacional para la Transición ANUC (Asociación Nacional de
a la Plena Democracia [National Usuarios Campesinos) 228
Agreement for the Transition to a Aquinas, Thomas 347
Full Democracy] 263 Arab Spring 50
Agencia Publicitaria y de Servicios Aragón, Rogelio 17, 18
Informativos [Advertising and Aramburu, Juan Carlos 342
Information Services Agency] 259 Aranha, B. P. 205
Agrarian Reform 112, 114–115, 118, Arenas, R. 77, 79–83, 88, 119
224, 231–232 Argentina: Alfonsín speeches 256–
Agrarian Reform Law (1961) 228 257; Argentine Bishops’ Conference
agricultural development: capitalist 335; “catacombs university” 253;
economic development 29; Catholic church and military
European economy between 1873 329–330; “Catholic nation”
and 1893 28; export mining 28; 328; church’s reaction, historical
late and truncated 28–32; rise to judgment 328; “consensus of 1983”
growing trade balance deficit 32 257–258; contributions of Punto de
Aguilera, O. 63 Vista 255–256; cultural platforms
Aguirre, Pérez 266 254–255; democracy 257; economic
Alamin, Felix de 306 and social consequences 175–176;
Albado, Omar César 18 1983 elections 252; expulsion of
Alcalde, Augusto 376 anarchists in 189–192; immigration
“Aldea Brasilera” 204 (1881–1914) 208; Infamous Decade
390 Index
(1930–1943) 176; intellectuals Bermúdez, Cundo 86
258, 270; Italian immigrants Bianchi, E. 346, 355
207–208; “national strategy” 154; Biondini, Alejandro 319
Nino’s view 254; passports and Birry, Francisco Rojas 229
identification records in 182–184; Blanco Party 251, 264
Peronism 257; Poles immigration Boeninger, Edgardo 260
209–210; reconfiguration process Bolivar, Simón 153, 155, 309
252–253; restoration of intellectual Bolivia: Amazon forest fires of
field 252–258; SADAF’s activities 2019 239; Andean peoples 235;
253–254; “substantive” democracy Bolivian Revolution (1952–1964)
257; Tacuaras 316; “undesirables” 33, 46n5; Chaco War 235; COB
under control in 175–178 workers’ union 235–236; cocalero
Argentine Bishops’ Conference 335 unions 236–237; “Gas War” 237;
Argentine Revolution 253 “indigenous” and “autonomy”
Aricó, José 255 238; 1924 law, “health passport”
Arocena, Rodrigo 265 180; Movement for Socialism
Arredondo, Enrique 86 238; MRTK political party 236;
Ash, A. 8 National Revolution of 1952 235;
Asociación Colombiana de rural-urban migration 236; in
Universidades (ASCUN) Tiwanaku 237–238
[Colombian Association of Bologna Declaration 135, 140
Universities] 66 Bologna process (1999) 126
Asociación Sindical de Profesores Bolshevik Revolution 29
Universitarios (ASPU) [Trade Bolsonaro, Jair Messias 214, 241, 242
Union Association of University Boltanski, L. 9
Professors] 66 Bordaberry, Juan María 250, 251
Association of Religion Data Archives Borrego, S. 310, 311, 315, 316, 319,
(ARDA) 360 320
Astori, Danilo 264 Bourdieu, P. 55
autogolpe (self-coup) (1973) 250 Bradford Burns, E. 161
Avila, Manuel 286 Brás, Wenceslau 290
Aylwin, Patricio 259, 263 Brazil: affirmative action policies 6;
Ayma, Evo Morales 236 Brazilian Indians 241; characteristic
features 62; concept of public
Baisotti, Pablo A. 16 space 61; conflict cases 241;
Bajtin, M. 54 CPC [Popular Cup Committees]
Ballagas, Emilio 83 58, 59; demarcation 240;
Baquero, G. 77, 83, 85, 90, 93–95 democratic restoration in 1985 60;
Bar-Lewaw, I. 315 “disappearing” peoples in Amazon
Barnet, Miguel 85 242; economic growth strategy
Barroso, Gustavo 291 241; establishment of FUNAI 239;
Barruel, Augustin 307, 320 Founders Memorial of the Brazilian
“Bases for the Sector Programme of Village 204; freemasonries 288–
Education 2001–2006” 130 292 (see Brazilian freemasonry);
Bastian, J. P. 14 hierarchies and direct participation
Batista, Fulgencio 108–110, 114, 121, 62; immigration process (see
294, 295 immigration process, Brazilian);
Batlle y Ordóñez, José 250 Latin American Freemasonry 288–
Bauman, Z. 8, 15 292; MPL [Free Pass Movement]
Behar, R. 79 58, 59; MTZ [Zero Tariff
Belaunde, Fernando 128 Movement] 58; National Census-
Bengoa, José 260 Questionnaire 371–372; national
Bergoglio, Jorge 14, 319, 325, 345 organization APIB 240; new
Index 391
Indian Statute (Estatuto do Indio) Bueno, C. 211
240; political system 61; PSOL Bufano, Sergio 256
(Socialism and Liberty Party) 242;
public appearances of youth 61; Cabrera Infante, G. 77, 86, 90, 91,
rolezinhos 61; street mobilizations 92, 94
58; strike of July 11, 2013 60; Cabrera, Lydia 82, 83, 88, 90
UPP [Peacekeeper Police Units] 62; Cacopardo, M. C. 208
urban organizations 58; Yanomami Cafiero, Antonio 257
lands 242; youths on streets 58–62 Calmanowitz, Michel Lenz 377
Brazilian freemasonry: arrival of Calvo, Lino Novás 83
twentieth century 289–290; Camacho, Jorge 80
controversial elections 291; creation Camargo, F. C. R. 17
of Grande Oriente Brasilico, or Campos, Martínez 79
Brasiliano 288; historiography of Cané, Miguel 190
289, 292; internal and external capitalism: capitalist accumulation 33;
political environment 290–291; inequality in 3
lodge in 288; during nineteenth Cárdenas, Juan Pablo 260
century 289; “Old Republic” 290; Cardenas, Lazaro 283–286, 314
political manoeuvre 288–289, 291; Caribbean, IESALC 127
state-based Masonic bodies 290; Cariola, Karol 56, 57
State Grand Lodges 290 Carpentier, Alejo 86
Brouwer, Leo 85 Casal, L. 87
Brunner, J. J. 263 Castellón, Pedro Ángel 78
Bucaram, Abdalá 233 Castro, Alina Hernández 87
Buddhism in Latin America: Castro, Fidel 16, 78, 79, 80–84, 90,
“alternative Buddhism” 372; 91, 110, 111, 113, 115–117, 294,
Asiatic religious leaders, importance 295
of 374–375; convert Buddhism Castro, R. 120, 121, 295
and organizational implications Castro Revolution 91
372–374; creation of Japanese Catholic Church, Chilean and
Language schools 370–371; Argentine: “civil society” of Church
estimations of followers 360, 325, 327, 330; defense of human
361; geographical distribution rights 333–336; Ecumenical
of institutions 363; impact of Movement for Human Rights 335;
Japanese immigration 366–372; first official reactions 331–333;
institutional manifestations Foundation of Christian Churches
359–363; institutions in Latin for Social Assistance 334; historical
America 362, 364, 365, 366; La judgments 326–331; Permanent
Colmena-community 370; list of Assembly for Human Rights 335;
Buddhist institutions 361, 362, 363; Pro-Peace Committee 327
Mahayana Buddhism 363–364; Ceardi, Arturo Navarro 259
Mexico Vajrayana Buddhism 365; Center for Latin American Studies
missionary work 368; Nichiren (CESLA) 210
Buddhism 374; “race” and centrales azucareros [sugar
“religion” 371; role of non-Asiatic plants] 106
Buddhist authorities 375–377; Centre for Social Studies and
systematic distribution 363–366; Education 260
Theravada Buddhism 363, 367; Cervone, E. 232
Tibetan or Vajrayana Buddhism Cespedes, Carlos Manuel de
364–365, 367, 374–375; traditional 121, 294
Buddhist temples 369; Vietnamese Chaco War 235
Buddhism 364; Western Buddhism Chiang Kai-chek 163
378; Zen Buddhism 364, 372–373 Chibás, Eduardo 109
392 Index
Chile: Academy of Christian Indigenous movement 228; process
Humanism 260; Augusto Pinochet of mestizaje 227; Quintín Lame
dictatorship 63; Cauce [Course] 229; Revolutionary Armed Forces
(1983–1989) 261; Chilean of Colombia 230–231; in twentieth
intellectuals 262; Chilean Journal century 227
of Human Rights 262; Christian Colorado Party 264–267
Democratic Party 260; CONES Comitês Populares da Copa [Popular
64; CONFECH 64; cultural Cup Committees] (CPC) 58
platforms 259–263; deployment Communist Party 231, 267; of Jewish
of politics in everyday life 64; descent 316
“diversification and located Comte, Auguste 159
innovation of mobilization Confederación de Estudiantes de Chile
strategies” 63; 1982/1983 economic (CONFECH) [Chilean Student
crisis 261; Estudios CIEPLAN 260; Confederation] 64
“flawed democracy” 263; German Congreso de los Pueblos [People’s
immigrants 203; “location and Congress] 66
singularity” of conflict spaces 63; Congress of the Party (2011) 120
LOCE 64; “multi-relationships at Consejo Indio Sur Americano (CISA)
origin of conflict” 63–64; penguins 243
keep marching 62–65; political Constanzo, G. 192
and social actors 261; political Constitutional Assembly 104
parties 263; processes of student Constitution of 1917 312
politicization 64; process of Constitution of 1991 229
“re-enchantment with the public” Constitution of 1998 233
64–65; Proposiciones [Propositions] Constitution of Bolivia 238
(1980–2010) 261; “rhizomatic Contreras, Antonio 306
and molecular” movement 64; Convention on Indigenous and Tribal
Solidaridad [Solidarity] (1976– Peoples 223
1992) 259; student mobilizations convert Buddhism 372
(pinguinos, penguins) 62–64; Coordinadora Nacional de
“terrorist” period 259; visibility Estudiantes Secundarios (CONES)
after 1983 262–263 [National Coordinating Committee
Chinese immigration 179 of High School Students] 64
Christian Democratic Party 259, 260, Cortázar, Octavio 85
261, 263 COVID-19 pandemic 6; increase
Christian Left 259, 263 in poverty 43; of inequality 9;
cities: regional (see regional cities); Latin American cities 45; serious
transformation of 36–39 economic and social impact 40
Citizen’s Revolution 234 Creole aristocracy 37
“clandestine” 177, 178 crime, fight against 8
COICA 243 cristeros 282
Cold War 252, 311 Cristero War 282
Collasuyo 235 Cruz, Celia 86
Colombia: Agrarian Reform Law 228; Cuba: Afro-Cuban world 88;
Cauca and the Sierra Nevada 227; -American exile 87–88, 91;
Constitution of 1991 229; CRIC biculturalism 87–88; Black
(Consejo Regional Indígena del Spring and political repression
Cauca) 228; in eighteenth century 85; colony of Cuban writers in
227; higher education 66; human Madrid 84–85; Cuban Revolutions
rights protection 230; Indigenous 103–113; Cuba–U.S. relations
Authorities of Colombia 228–229; 120–121; Cultural Revolution 80;
MANE (see Mesa Amplia Nacional distance and avoidance strategies:
Estudiantil (MANE) [National translation/betrayal 89–90;
Student Round Table]); “modern” Encuentro de la cultura cubana
Index 393
84–85; exile of signatories 84, electoral law 104; 1953 events
85; exile of writers 78, 81–82, 109; exact compliance 112; fall
86; fear of exile 84; Fidel Castro’s of Fulgencio Batista 114; form
Revolution 79; freemasonries (see of revolutionary calendar 115;
Cuban freemasonry); generation Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias
of exiles 80–81, 89; incessant 121; General National Assemblies
travellers and borderless literary of the Cuban People 115; 1929
world 94–95; Latin American global economic crisis 107; Grau’s
Freemasonry (see Freemasonry, government 107–108, 122n3;
Latin American); list of exiled poets guerrilla war 110; historical
78–79, 93–94; “Mariel generation” moment 114; historic events of
83; mutatis mutandis 95; “mythical 1933 109; 1906 La guerrita de
discourses” 77; nostalgic look Agosto [The Little August War]
86–89; Padilla Case 82–83; parodic 106; law and institutions 117–118;
discourse of authors 91; religion in laws and fundamental measures
13–14; revolution as inherent part 112; liberal economic development
(see Polish perspective; revolutions); models 113; longue duree
separatism 78; social game 92, perspective 114; mambises guerrilla
93; tradition of Exile 78–81; units 104, 107–108; “meantime”
Traduttore, Traditore: “Tradittore” 114; military-civilian agreement
90–91 108; “natural person” – el hombre
Cuban Constitution 105 natural 105; Platt Amendment
Cuban freemasonry: and Castro 105; Republica Mambisa 103,
regime 295–296; Christian beliefs 106; revolucion martiana – Martí’s
296; independentist movement 293; revolution 106; 1910 Revolution
La Gran Logia magazine 293–294; 33; 1933 Revolution 103, 106,
lodges in 292; Masonic diplomacy 108–109, 121; 1952 Revolution
292–293; Pentarchy of 1933 294; 121; 1959 Revolution 103, 109,
and politics 294–295; Student 121; revolutionary law 111–112;
Directory movement 294; at the self-government elections 104;
twentieth century 293 Sierra Maestra Manifesto 110;
Cuban National Party (Partido social justice 108; struggle (1957–
Nacional Cubano) 104 1959) 109; Tenth Anniversary of
Cuban Revolutionary Party (El Revolution 116; transformation
Partido Revolucionario Cubano or period 104, 109–111; War of
PRC) 105 Independence, 1902 103–104, 121
Cuban revolutions 10, 16, 77, 79, Cuban War of Independence
83, 90, 118, 120–121; abolition (1895–1898)103–104
of the Platt Amendment 107; Cultural Cold War 252
Agrarian Reform 115; agricultural Cultural Revolution 80
development 106; case of Fidel
Castro 110–113, 116; centrales Daiko Moriyama 374
azucareros [sugar plants] 106– decentralization processes 1
107; Constitutional Assembly “Declaration of Cuban intellectuals”
104–105; 1940 Constitution the 83–84
Supreme Law of the State 111; Declaration on the Rights of
“Cuba for Cubans” policy 107; Indigenous Peoples 223
Cuban Revolutionary Party 104, Decree-Law (1937) 181
105; 1895–1898 Cuban War of Decree-Law (1938) 181
Independence 103; Cuba–U.S. Decree-Law (1942) 181
relations 120–121; decisions and Defence of the Revolution (CDR) 117
laws 114–115; Declaration of the deindustrialization 40
Revolutionary Group of Cuba Dembicz, Andrez 210
107; education and arts 118–120; Dembicz, K. 16
394 Index
Democratic Union of Workers 263 Europe: European Credit Transfer
desirable immigrants 171–172 and Accumulation System 135;
“deviance” sexual and hostility to European Higher Education Area
power 79 framework 135; of industrialization
Devoto, F. 207, 208 and urbanization 28; neoliberal
Díaz, Gustavo 286 university modernization in
Díaz, Jesús 84 135–137
Díaz, Jorge Crespo 84 Evangelising Youth Movement
Díaz Martínez, M. 84 342–343
Diaz, Porfirio 29 Exclusion and Expulsion Act (1920)
distance and avoidance strategies 185
89–90 Ezquerro, M. 92
distributionism 6
Domenech, E. 17 Fabelo, Roberto 85
Drumont, Edouard 307 Falcon, Ramon 190
Duany, Jorge 80 Falklands War 321
Duhau, E. 39, 42 Farrell, Martín 253
Federación Nacional de Profesores
Echeverria, Luis 286 Universitarios (FENALPROU)
ECLAC (Economic Commission for [National Federation of University
Latin America and the Caribbean) Professors] 66
127 Fernández, Pablo Armando 85
Ecuador: Amazonian peoples 232– Ferreira Aldunate, Wilson 251, 266,
233; campesino movement 232; 267
Citizen’s Revolution 234; CONAIE Fifth Pan-American Conference 179
232–234; Constitution of 1998 233; Filippi, Emilio 260
1999–2000, great mobilizations First Declaration of Havana 115
233–234; Levantamiento (Uprising) First World War (1914–1919) 29,
of 1990 232; Liberation Theology 174–175, 182, 206, 208, 210–211,
231; passports’ issuance 180–181; 216n4, 368
“political extremists” 234–235; Fletcher, Tenshin 376
in pre-colonial times 231; social Florit, Eugenio 83, 86, 90, 94
indigenous mobilization 232; in Fonseca, Deodoro da 290
twentieth century 231 Foote, H.G. 161, 162
Ecumenical Movement for Human Forcat, F. 355
Rights (MEDH) 335 Ford Foundation 272n12
Edwards, Jorge 83 foreigners, identification of see
egalitarianism 6 immigrants
Ehrlich, Ricardo 264 formal democracy 271n7
Elias, Plutarco 282, 284, 313 “foundational dictatorship” 264
employment, formalization of 7 Foundation of Christian Churches for
Encuentro de la cultura cubana Social Assistance (FASIC) 334
84–85 Foxley, A. 260, 263
Escalona, Luque 84 Fox, Vicente 130
Escalona, Roberto Luque 84 Fraginals, Moreno 86, 119
Espinosa, Julio García 85 Franqui, Carlos 119
Esténger, Rafael 83 freemasonry, Latin American: Brazil
Estévez, A. 90 288–292; Cuba 292–296; Mexico
Estorino, Abelardo 85 282–287; see also Individual entries
Estrada, Nancy 84 French Revolution 307
Estrada Palma, Tomás 293 Frente Amplio coalition 264
Estudios CIEPLAN [CIEPLAN Frenz, Helmut 333
Studies] 260 Friedman, Milton 249
ethnic 87 Fromm, Erich 372
Index 395
frontera 203 Gutiérrez, Lucio 233
de la Fuente, Vicente 307 Guzmán, Jaime 332
Fuentes, Carlos 92 “gypsies”/“nomads” 174
Fuentes, José Lorenzo 84
Fujimori, Alberto 128 Hall, C. 162
Full Stop law (Ley de Punto Final) Harvey, D. 2
271n5 Henestrosa, Andres 314
Heredia, José María 78, 79, 89
Galtieri, Leopoldo 248 Hernando, Asunción Merino 206, 215
Garategaray, M. 268 higher education: 1999 Bologna
Garcia, Alan 244 process 126; in Latin America
García, Calixto 103–104 126–127; National Board for
Garcia, Cristina 80 Professional Teaching Standards
Garcia, Mario 293 140; neoliberal university
Garretón, M. A. 260 modernization, Europe 135–137;
“Gas War” 237 perception 134–135; Peruvian
General Education Law 128 and Mexican education 128–131;
General Immigration Law (1849) prestige and rankings 131–134;
195n4 quality assessment programmes
Gera, Lucio 354 140; research on university teacher
“the German Holocaust” 310 training 137–138; Spanish case
Glissant, Edouard 86 135–137; training strategies 138–
globalization processes 1 140; World Bank’s 2003 document
Gomez, Jose Miguel 293 126
Gómez, Máximo 103, 292, 296 historical inequalities 5–6
González Mujica, Mónica 260 Hitler, Adolf 313, 315, 318, 321
Gonzalez, Roberto 80 Hurtado, Alberto 327
“good immigrant” 172
Goti, Jaime Malamud 253, 254 Ibaragi, Tomojiro 368–369
Gougenot, des Mousseaux Roger 307 Iberian Union 304, 306
Gramatges, Harold 85 Icaza, Jorge 221
Granados, Manuel 84, 93 “illegal residents” 178
Great Depression (1929–1931) 29; of immigrants 178; in Chile, 1918
world economy in 1929–1930 36 Residence Law 179; Chinese
Great War 162 immigration 179; definition 171;
“green revolution” 33 desirable 169, 171–172; “good
gross domestic product (GDP) growth immigrant” 172; “spontaneous
29; growth poverty 8; of India and immigrants” 179; undesirable 169;
Poland 1; industry’s participation “vicious or useless immigration”
40; of manufacturing 30 172
Grupo Universitario Latinoamericano Immigration Agreement (1939) 177
para la Reforma y el Immigration and Colonization Act
Perfeccionamiento de la Educación (1881) 195n4
(Latin American University Immigration and Colonization Act
Union) 127 (1876) 178, 182, 195n4
Guajajara, Sonia 242 immigration process, Brazilian:
Guardia, Ricardo Fernández 158 Brazilian foreign policy 211–212;
Guarga, Rafael 265 and German descendants 213;
Gudmundson, L. 162 immigration to Brazil (1884–1933)
Guédez, Guillermo Álvarez 86 207; Japanese immigrants 210;
Guevara, Alfredo 85 La Plata Region (1822–1945)
Guevara, E. 118, 236 200–202, 206, 214; nineteenth
Guicharnaud-Tollis, M. 16 century 200–206; “restricted
Guiteras, Antonio 108, 109 nationalization” 212–213;
396 Index
spontaneous migrations 199–200; Kataristas 236
Triple Alliance 211; twentieth Kaufman, Theodore 310
century 206–213; twenty-first King Francis I 92
century 213–216; in World War II Kinoshita, Senryu 368
213 Kirchner, Néstor 249
immigration promotion policies 169 klapers for Yiddish onomatopoeia 304
“immigration stamp” 181 Kojrowicz, C. S. 209
import-substituting industrialization Kopenawa, Davi 242
30, 36–37 Kozer, José 89, 91
inculturation 12 Krauze, Enrique 314
indigenous communal territories Kula, M. 102
(Resguardos) 229
Indigenous Conference 228 labor market 5
industrialization: conditions 33; “La Cofradía” [The Brotherhood] 345
development 28–32; economies la complicidad grande [the great
30, 31; establishment of popular complicity] 305
housing 37; “European model” Lagos, Ricardo 259
28, 32; evolution index of sector La guerrita de Agosto (1906) [The
product 30, 31; first phase of 32; Little August War] 106
import-substituting 30, 36–37; low- Lama, Dalai 375
cost labour of 34; post-World War Lama Gangchen 377
II industrialization 32; in previous Lame, Manuel Quintín 227, 229
historical phases 32 Lamont, M. 9
inequality 3; in capitalism 3; ethnicity Lamore, J. 82
6; of gender 6; historical 5–6; Lam, Wifredo 86
income 6; institutionalization of Land Law in 1850 203
practices 4; material and symbolic La Plaza 266
networks 3; social and economic 4, Latin America (1880–2020):
8; structural 4; in urban areas 6 accelerated urbanization 32–36;
Infamous Decade (1930–1943) 176 agricultural development 28–32;
informality 45 Buddhism in (see Buddhism in
“insile” 270n4 Latin America); challenges for 8;
Institutional Act Number Five 291 crisis, neoliberalism and urban
Integral Educational Reform 112 restructuring 39–40; decomposition
Inter-American Development Bank of peasant productive forms 32–36;
(IDB) 127 demographic growth 1; economies’
International Development Research structural processes 161–162;
Centre (IDRC) 272n12 emergence of new productive
International Institute for Higher methods 3–4; inequalities and
Education in Latin America 127 migration 7–10; modern “world-
International Labor Organization system” 161; “The National”
(ILO) 9, 223, 229, 241 in (see “The National” in Latin
International Monetary Fund (IMF) America); people, poverty, and
39: rise in domestic fuel prices 234 politics 4–7; process of gradual
international relations 111, 114, 186 expansion of rights 71; production
Invernizzi, Hernán 254 of neoliberal metropolis 40–43;
de Ípola, Emilio 255, 256, 257 rate of urbanization 27; and
Iriarte, Jose 344 regional cities 44–45; religion
Islas, Maya 87 10–15; from rural villages to large
metropolises 44–45; “scientific”
Jackson, Giorgio 56, 57 antisemitism in (see “scientific”
Jalife, Alfredo 318 antisemitism in Latin America);
Jones, A. M. 9 social 1–4; transformation of cities
“journalistic literary critique” 268 36–39; urban planners 2; youth
Index 397
and mobilizations (see youth and Mannheim, K. 52, 55
mobilizations in Latin America) Manzano, V. 71
Latin American Episcopal Marcha Patriótica [Patriotic March]
Conference 12 66
“Law for the Promotion of Investment “Mariel Generation” and the Writers
in Education” 128 around the review of the Exile:
Law of Expiration of criminal Mariel (New York, 1983–1985)
responsibility 251 83–84
Law of War 211 Marruz, Fina García 85
Law on Foreigners, Extradition, and Martí, Carlos 85
Naturalization (1921) 180 Martí, J. 78, 79, 104, 105, 106, 109,
Leal, Eusebio 85 113, 116, 117, 118, 121, 153, 292,
Lechner, N. 262 296, 314
Ledo, Joaquim Gonçalves 289 Martínez, Javier 260
Lefebvre, Henri 5 Martínez, J. E. 54
leftist regimes 303 Martín, Ramón Grau San 107–109,
Lenski, G. 6 121
Lesgart, C. 268 Masferrer, A. 162
Lewkowicz, I. 55 Masonic landmarks 292
Ley 30 (Law 30) 65 Massey, D. 4
Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Matsumoto, Kakunen 368
Educación (LOCE) [Constitutional McKinsey Global Institute (2012) 1
Organic Law on Education] 64 Meinvielle, J. 316, 318, 320
Lichtensztejn, Samuel 265 Mella, Julio Antonio 109
Lima, José Lezama 79, 81, 86, 94 Mendieta, Carlos 108
“Living well” 225–226 Menem, Carlos 249
LOCE [Constitutional Organic Law Menendez, Marcelino 307
on Education] 64 Menoyo, Eloy Gutiérrez 110
LOMLOU (2007) 135 Mercader, Sofía 17
Lopez, Adolfo 286 Mesa Amplia Nacional Estudiantil
López, Lisett Márquez 15 (MANE) [National Student Round
Lopez, PortilloJose 286 Table] 65; creation of a new higher
Lorca, García 94 education law 66; criticism of
Loynaz, Dulce María 90 dominant system 67; educational
Loyola, José 85 reform 65; first Minimum Program
Luaces, Juan Lorenzo 78 67; free trade agreements 68; Ley
Luís, Washington 290 30 (Law 30) 65, 67; Mesa and
Luther, Martin 310, 313 organizations 66; practices of
direct democracy 66; proposals 67;
Maalouf, A. 86 student strike in 2011 65
Maceo, Antonio 104, 292, 296 Metuktire, Raoni 242
Machado, Antonio 293, 294 Mexican-American War 321
Machado, Gerardo 106, 107 Mexican Constitution 285, 287, 308
Macri, Maurício 214 Mexican education: America
“macro-ecumenism” 12 Economia ranking 133, 135;
Maduro, O. 11 “Bases for the Sector Programme
Maezumi, Taizan 373 of Education 2001–2006” 130;
Maffia, D. 253 Comprehensive Programme for the
Mahatma Gandhi 163 Development of Higher Education
Mahuad, Jamil 233, 234 (1986–1988) 129; Global
Malvinas War 256 Competitiveness Index of the
mambises guerrilla units 104 World Economic Forum 130–131;
Mañach, Jorge 93 1990, National Association of
managerialism 16 Universities and Institutions of
398 Index
Higher Education 129–130; “undesirables” (see “undesirables”);
national economic crisis in 1995 “gypsies” or “nomads” 174;
130; National Higher Education identification of foreigners 178–
Program, 1985 129; perceptions of 182; inadmissibility of foreigners
potential enrolment 135; political 172–173; “mass immigration”
evolution of 129–130; programme era 171–172; passports and
for Educational Modernization identification records in Argentina
(1989–1994) 129; public and 182–184; passports, registers and
private universities 131; QS World identity cards 178–182
University Ranking 133–134, 135; Milanés, Juan Jacinto 78
quality of teaching or research Milanés, P. 119
141; rankings of universities 133; Minga de Resistencia Social y
1980s, devastating effects 129; Comunitaria [Minga of Social and
Shanghai ranking 133; Webometris Community Resistance] 66
ranking 133 mining production 28
Mexican freemasonry: affiliation of modern colonial capitalism 9
presidents and political leaders Molina Jiménez, I. 162
286; “brother masons” 286; case of “Monja Coen” 376
Miguel Aleman 286–287; European Montaner, Carlos Alberto 84
and U.S. past 285; “external” Montes Huidobro, M. 79
Freemasonry 307; form of Moré, Benny 86
clientelism 284; lodges 285–286; in Morejón, Nancy 85
nineteenth centuries 283, 287; rise Moreno, J. L. 208
of Cardenas 284–286; during 1930s Morgenthau, Henry Jr 310
and 1940s 283; “second-class” Mornard, J. 90
308; “secret” Freemasonry 307; in Movement for Socialism (Movimiento
twentieth century 282–283, 287; al Socialismo) (MAS) 238
urban elite and middle class. 284 Movement of Priests for the Third
Mexican Revolution (1910–1917) World (MSTM) 330, 356
46n5, 308 Movimento pelo Passe Livre [Free
Mexico: about one hundred thirty- Pass Movement] (MPL) 58, 59
two and forty-three 68–70; cycle Movimento Tarifa Zero [Zero Tariff
of mobilizations 70; dynamics of Movement] (MTZ) 58
mobilization and social conflict Movimiento de Acción Popular
69–70; education in (see Mexican Unitaria-Obrero Campesino [United
education); freemasonries (see Popular Worker-Peasant Action
Mexican freemasonry); Latin Movement] 259
American Freemasonry 282–287; Movimiento de Acción Popular
Mexican Constitution of 1917 Unitaria [United Popular Action
307–308; political evolution Movement] 263
of education 128–130; PRI Movimiento 26 de Julio [Movement
[Institutional Revolutionary Party] 26th July] 110
68; “scientific” antisemitism 307; Movimiento Democrático Popular
types of University 130–131; [Popular Democratic Movement]
#YoSoy132 (#IAm132) movement (MDP) 261
68–70 Movimiento Nacional-Socialista de
migration and border control Chile (MNSC) [National-Socialist
policies, South America: Bolivia, Movement of Chile] 311
1924 law, “health passport” 180; Mros, G. R. 211
deportations 184–189; Ecuador, MRTK political party (Tupac Katari
passports’ issuance 180–181; entry Revolutionary Movement) 236
control, selectivity, and exclusion Muelas, Lorenzo 229
171–174; expulsion of anarchists Muñoz Gaviria, D. A. 54
in Argentina 189–192; expulsion of Murillo, Gerardo 314
Index 399
Nacistas see Movimiento Nacional- National-Socialist Movement of
Socialista de Chile (MNSC); Chile 311
National-Socialist Movement of National Union 263
Chile National Workers’ Command 263
Napoleonic Wars 209 nation-states 164n6
Nash, J. 223 Navarro, Francisco 306
National Agency for Quality Neoclassical/Art Nouveau style
Assessment and Accreditation design 36
(ANECA) 136 neoliberal metropolis 39;
National Agreement accumulation of capital 42–43;
(2002) 128 cycle of expansion-consolidation-
National Association of Universities expansion 42; Economically Active
and Institutions of Higher Population 42–43; “fight against
Education 129 poverty,” 43; financialization of
“national construction” 155 economies 41; medium for mobility
National Federation of Peasant 42; megaprojects of the real estate
Organizations (Federación Nacional capital 41; production of 40–43;
de Organizaciones Campesinas) production of popular habitat
(FENOC) 232 42; public-private partnership
National Indigenous Organization of schemes 41; social crisis 42; “social
Colombia (ONIC) 228 interest” housing 41–42; state
“The National” in Latin America: interventionism 40; structural
“American dream” 155; Anglo- features of 2; violence 43; world of
American cultural model 155; informality 43
colonialism’s legacy 152; colonial Netanyahu, Benjamin 320
legacy 151–152; defenders of New York Stock Exchange Crash
“academic Castilian” 158; (1929) 206
elaborations of national cultures NGO conferences 243
156–159; Enlightenment 153–154; Nieto, Enrique Peña 68
“era of nationalism” 164n7; nineteenth century: Brazilian
era of wars and caudillismo monarchy and republic 200–206;
156–157; “ethnic minorities” 154; consolidation of nation-states
European invasion 151; “false 200–206; independent republics 36;
self-appointed emperors” 157; mercantile capitalist accumulation
formation of “official” nationalism 36–37; political context 200–205;
158; Iberian mercantilism 153; push of immigration
“Ibero-American Thinkers” 154; 205–206
indigenism 156; intellectuals and 1932 Act 187
Creoles 155; inward-looking Nino, C. 253, 254, 258
one process 155; liberal nations Noboa, Gustavo 234
159–163; “the mestizo America” Nova Central [New Central] 60
151–152; “national construction” Novak, Jorge 330
155; “national hegemony” 156; Nuez, Iván de la 89
“national histories” 158; nation’s Núñez, Ana Rosa 87
invention 157; new American
republics 153; States of Creoles and Obama, Barack 120
Caudillos 152–156; struggle for Obregon, Alvaro 282, 283, 287
“second emancipation” 155; “true Obregon, M. 329
American identity” 156 O’Donnell, G. 252
National Party 263 OEI (Organization of Ibero-American
National Revolutionary Movement States for Education, Science and
(Movimiento Nacional Culture) 127
Revolucionario) (MRN) 235 “Old Republic” 290
National Revolution (1952) 235 Oostra, M. 17
400 Index
Organic Law of Universities (LOU of the World Economic Forum
2001) 135 131; 2009, law for colleges and
Organization for Economic universities 129; levels, central/
Cooperation and Development regional/local 130; National
(OECD) countries 2 Agreement (2002) 128; National
Ortega y Gasset, J. 52 Education Project (2005–2006)
Ortiz, Fernando 86 128–129; perceptions of potential
Oshiro, Jisen 376 enrolment 134–135; Peruvian
Agency for International
Padilla Case (1971) 82–83 Cooperation 129; political
Padilla, Herberto 82, 83, 119 evolution of 128–130; public,
Padoin, M. M. 17 private non-profit, and university-
Pakkasvirta, J. 17 enterprises 130–131; quality of
Palestine Liberation Organization teaching or research 141; rankings
(PLO) 303 of universities 132–133; Superior
“Pan-Americanism” 191 Council of the National System
Paraguayan War 216n1 of Evaluation, Accreditation
Parisian urbanism 36 and Certification of Educational
Partido Accion Nacional [National Quality, 2011 128; types of
Action Party] 314 university 130–131; Webometris
Partido Independiente de Color (the ranking 132–133
Independent Party of Colour) 106 Peruvian expulsion law (1920) 187
Partido Revolucionario Institucional Piassini, C. E. 202
(PRI) [Institutional Revolutionary Piglia, Ricardo 255
Party] 68, 287 Piketty, T. 3
Passports and Customs Procedures Pineda-Alfonso, José A. 16
Conference 179 Piñera, Virgilio 79
Paulsen, Fernando 260 pinguinos, penguins 63
Paz, Senel 85 Pinochet, Augusto 63, 249, 250, 259,
Peace Agreement 177 261, 263, 325, 333
Peace and Justice Service (Serpaj) Pixacao 73n4
Chile 334 plutocracy 3
peasant productive forms 32–36; Pogolotti, Graziella 85
pre-capitalist peasant forms of police conferences 191
production 33 Polish perspective 102; context
Peña, Alfonso 229 of longue duree 102; Cuba and
Pentarchy of 1933 294 Revolution in Latin America 102;
People’s Socialist Union 263 Cuban Revolution of 1933 102
“Percepción del egresado universitario “political language” 256
en las empresas 2013” 134 politics: constructions in Latin
Pereira, A. 17 America 17; cultural platforms in
Pérez, Amaury 85 Southern Cone 17; extension and
Pérez, Antonio Eiju 376 development of two notions in
Pérez Esquivel, Adolfo 248, 335 motion 53–57; immigration process
Pérez Firmat, G. 77, 81, 88, 91, 95 in Brazil 17; indigenous movements
Permanent Assembly for Human in South America 17; migration and
Rights (APDH) 335 border control policies 17; youth
Persistent Inequality (Tilly) 9–10 and 53–57
Peruvian Agency for International Polo Democrático Alternativo
Cooperation (APCI) 129 [Alternative Democratic Pole] 66
Peruvian education: America Pomar, Jorge 84
Economia ranking 132; expansion Ponte, Antonio José 90
of 128; General Education Law Pope John Paul II 11
128; Global Competitiveness Index Popular Socialist Union 261
Index 401
population growth 7 11; “independent churches” 13;
population growth rates (PGRs) 7 instrumentalization 13; Latin
Portantiero, J. C. 255, 256, 257 American Episcopal Conference
Portillo de la Luz, César 85 12; Liberation Theology 11–12;
Portuondo, Omara 85 “macro-ecumenism” 12; “Marxist-
poverty: fight against 8; great Christian” dialogue 11; New Age
recession of 2008–2009 5 movement 13, 15; new outlook
Pradilla Cobos, E. 15 on Latin American Freemasonry
PREAL (Programa de Promoción de 17–18; Pentecostalism 10; Pew-
la Reforma Educativa en América Templeton Global Religious Futures
Latina) 127 project 14; poverty and poor 12;
Prida, Dolores 89 “the privatization of religion” 15;
“the privatization of religion” 15 Protestants, Pentecostals and Neo-
Proclama de la Agrupacion Pentecostals 12; religious affiliation
Revolucionaria de Cuba 14; 2018 Religious Freedom report
[Declaration of the Revolutionary 14; Transformations of religiosity
Group of Cuba] 107 14
Puebla, Carlos 118 “repertoire,” notion of 73n5
Puryear, J. 262 Republica Mambisa 106
Republican Right 263
Quesada, Vicente Fox 314 Residence Act (1902) 185
Quijano, A. 9 Residence Law 190; Argentina’s
Quintero, Densho 376 1902 188; Bolivia’s 1911 laws 188;
Quintero, José Agustín 78 Chile’s 185, 188; of early twentieth
Quinteros, M. 177 century 184–185; 1902 Residence
Quintín Lame 229 Law 175; 1918 Residence Law 179
Retamar, Roberto Fernández 85
Radical Party 248, 257, 261, 263 Revolution of 1933 106
Ragin, C. 6 Revolution of 1952 238
Rambo, A. B. 203, 205 Revuelta, Raquel 85
Ramírez, J. 180 de los Reyes, G. 17
Ratzinger, Joshep 11 Reygadas, L. 3, 4
Ravallion, M. 8 Reynaga, F. 236
Ravelo, Bernardo Marqués 84 Ricciardelli, Rodolfo 343–344
Rawls, J. 8 Risech, F. 80
Reagan, Ronald 39 Rivanera Carlés, F. 308, 309, 320
Reano, A. 268 Rivero, E. 87, 88
Reconstruction and Development Rivero, Gabriel 343, 349
Bank (World Bank) 127 Rivero, Raúl 84, 93
regional cities: informality 45; Rodó, José Enrique 163
istorical urban inequality 44–45; Rodríguez, Alfredo 260
polarized manifestations 45; Rodríguez, E. 52, 53, 56
population of urban agglomerations Rodríguez, Silvio 85
44, 44; from rural villages to large Rojas, María Teresa de 82
metropolises 44–45 Rojo, Antonio Benítez 85
religion 10–15; antisemitism in rolezinhos 61
Latin America 18; in Argentina Rome Conference for Social
10; bestowal from Argentina Defense 191
to Latin America 18; Buddhism Romero, J. L. 44, 45
in Latin America 18; Catholic Roosevelt, Franklin D. 310
Church 10–11; Catholic Church Rosen Takashina Roshi 373
and cover of human rights Roshi, John Tarrant 377
18; in Colombia 10; in Cuba Rothschilds, Jacob 320
13–14; democratic transitions Roussef, Dilma 214, 241
402 Index
Rubio, Lucas Domínguez 17 Second Declaration of Havana 115
Ruderer, S. 18 Second World War (1939–1945) 7, 29,
Ruiz, Adolfo 286 37, 177, 211–213, 215, 369–371,
Rumbaut, Rubén 81 374, 378
rural-urban migration 34 Selective Immigration Law in 1845
195n4
Saavedra, María Fernanda Campo 66 Semana Santa uprising 254
Saco, José Antonio 78 Semán, P. 15
Salama, P. 6 semi-feudal 159
Salbuchi, Adrian 318 ‘Semitism’ 321n1
Salinas, Carlos 287 Sen, A. 6, 8
Salinas de Gortari, Carlos 129, 375 Seregni, Líber 251, 267
Sanchez de Lozada, Gonzalo 237 Serpa, Víctor Manuel 84
Sandino, Augusto César 163 Shoji, R. 18
Sanguinetti, Julio María 251, 265, Shunkyo Aoki 374
266, 267 Sierra Maestra Manifesto 110
Santacilia, Pedro 78 Silva Henríquez, Raúl 326–327, 332,
Santana, Efraín Rodríguez 89 333
Sarduy, S. 77, 80, 86, 91–93 Silva, Manuel Flores 267
Sarlo, Beatriz 255 Sindicato de Trabajadores de las
Sarmiento, D. F. 154, 156, 161 Universidades de Colombia
Sartre, Jean-Paul 83 (SINTRAUNICOL) [Union of
Sausen, J. V. 17, 212 Workers of the Universities of
Schiller, Herman 254 Colombia] 66
Schmitter, P. 252 Sindicato de Trabajadores de
“scientific” antisemitism in Latin Universidades Nacionales
America: Abascal’s movement (SINTRAUNAL) [National
313; Catholic conceptualisation of University Workers’ Union] 66
politics 317; Catholic organisations Sobrino, J. 12
313; Centinela contra Judios 305; social: between past and future 16;
“colonialist” powers 321; converso recent trends in higher education
community 304–305; El problema 16; revolution as an inherent
judio [The Jewish problem] 317; part 16; from rural villages to
on Facebook 318–319; the fall large metropolises 15; youth and
318–321; fascist and antisemitic mobilizations in Latin America 16
movements 311; “the German “social contract” 8
Holocaust” 310; on Instagram Social Defense Law (1910) 175, 190
320; Jewish materialism 314; la Social Democratic Party 261, 263
complicidad grande [the great social form 71–72
complicity] 305; in Mexico 307; “social interest” housing 41–42
nacista movement 311–312; Socialist Party 263
Nazism 313–314, 318; Operation socialization process 9
Just Cause 321; preliminary social media 18, 68, 69, 71, 302,
considerations 302–303; Protocols 318–319
of the elders of Zion 318; the rise social reproduction: general
303–318; social media 319–320; conditions of 34
Soviet-style “Marxist super- social space 5, 19, 58
capitalism” 311; Timon [Helm] Solás, Humberto 85
315; on Twitter 319; visionaries “Son of the Stars” 227
320; wars of Independence Sorbonne Declaration 135
305–306; “world domination Soros, George 320
programme” 318 Soto-Zen Buddhist Association of
Scorza, Manuel 221 Argentina 376
Sebastián Acevedo Movement against South America: in Andean Cordillera
Torture 334 221; Bolivia 235–239; Brazil
Index 403
239–242; “Civilization or Spencer, Herbert 159
barbarism” 221; Colombia 226– state interventionism, decline of 39
231; colonial shattering 220–222; state-owned public universities 131
Ecuador 231–235; indigenous Stavenhagen, R. 155, 156, 158
as social movements 223–224; structural inequality 4
indigenous movement 222–223; Student Federations of the University
international articulation 243– of Chile 263
244; Latin American Indigenous substantive democracy 257; vs. formal
resistance movements 225–226; democracy 271n7
migration and border control Supreme Law of the Republic 111
policies (see migration and border Suzuki, D. T. 372
control policies, South America Swedish Agency for Research
(1900–1945)) Cooperation in Developing
South American International Police Countries (SAREC) 272n12
Conference 191
Southern Cone or “Platinean Tacuaras (neo-fascist group) 316
America” 17; activism of Tapia, L. 56
organisations 248; “Chilean Tello, Rafael 354; bibliographical
miracle” 249; creation of summary 342; Book of Ecclesiastes
CONADEP 249; Cultural Cold 341; conflict from youth pastoral
War 252; cultural platforms, Chile action 344; ecclesiastical authorities
259–263; cultural platforms in 342; Evangelising Youth Movement
long transition, Uruguay 264– 342–343; future, popular pastoral
268; military government 248; action 354–356; “La Cofradía”
Naval Club Pact 251; political [The Brotherhood] 345; liberation
organisations 250–251; process 353–354; people and popular
of national reorganisation 248; culture 351–353; priestly formation
restoration of intellectual field, 343–344; theologal and pastoral
Argentina 252–258; “terrorist” 349–351; theological method
period 249; transitions to 346–349; withdrawal from public
democracy 247–248 sphere 345; Youth Pilgrimage in
Souza de Murayama, Claudia 376 October 1975 342
Spanish Civil War 318 Temer, Michel 214, 240
Spanish university system: Bologna Ten Years’ War (1868–1878) 292
Declaration 135; European Credit Terragno, Daniel 377
Transfer and Accumulation “terrorist” period 259; between 1973
System 135–136; European and 1980 249
Higher Education Area framework Teutonic language, Germany 216n2
135–137; European Research Area Thatcher, Margaret 39
136; LOMLOU 135; Millennium Thévenot, L. 9
Development Goals and Education Third World see Movement of Priests
for All 137; National Agency for the Third World (MSTM)
for Quality Assessment and Tilly, Charles: Persistent Inequality
Accreditation 136; neoliberal 9–10
university modernization, Tironi, E. 260
Europe 135–137; Organic Law Tolón, Miguel Teurbe 78
of Universities (LOU 2001) 135; Torpey, J. 170, 183
quality of teaching or research Torres, Juan Carlos 258
141–142; Royal Decree 99/2011 Tortolo, Paraná Adolfo 329
of January 28 136; Sorbonne Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra
Declaration 135; Spanish University [Landless Rural Workers’
Strategy 2015 137; University Movement] (MST) 58
Reform Law (LRU 1983) 135; Trachtenberg, J. 304
World Conference on Higher Transformations of religiosity 14
Education 137 “transitional dictatorship” 264
404 Index
transition to democracy 247 productive forms 32–36; economic
Treaty of Madrid of 1750 201 development 34; of employment 7;
Treaty on Extradition and Protection “European model” 28; expansion
against Anarchism (1902) 191 of urban mercantile activities 37;
Triguboff, M. 71 features of 2; population growth
“true American identity” 156 rate 34, 35, 36; pre-capitalist forms
Trump, Donald 120 of production 34; processes 1; rate
Tupac Amaru II 235 of 27; urban planners 2
Tupac Katari Revolutionary Urresti, M. 54
Movement 236 Uruguay: Aqui [Here] (1983–1989)
Turla, Leopoldo 78 265; Blanco Party 264; Brecha
2030 Agenda, goals of 7 [Gap] (1985-continues) 265, 266;
Busqueda [Search] (1981-) 265,
UDUAL (Unión de Universidades de 266; CIEDUR 264; Colorado Party
América Latina) 127 264; Conviccion [Conviction]
UN Declaration 241 (1983-) 265; El Correo de los
undesirable immigrants 169; Viernes [Friday’s Post] (1981–
“clandestine” 178; under control in 1985) 265, 268; El Dedo [The
Argentina 175–178; economic crisis Finger] (1982–1983, 1992) 265;
of 1930 176; expulsion of 184–189; “foundational dictatorship” 264;
“illegal residents” 178; League Frente Amplio coalition 264;
of Nations 179; lists 173–174; Jaque [Check] (1983–1990) 265,
notion of 175, 185; 1902 Residence 267–268; La Democracia [The
Law and the 1910 Social Defense Democracy] (1981–1985) 265, 266;
Law 175; “white slave trade” or La Plaza (1979–1982) 265–266;
“trafficking with prostitution” 173; military 251; model of consensual
World War II 177 democracy 250; negotiated
UN drugs conference 238 transition 250; Opcion [Option]
unemployment: fight against 8; rate 5; (1981–1982) 265, 266; Opinar
rising 9 [Comment on] (1980–1985) 265,
UN Environment Summit of Rio 266, 268; periodical publications
(1992) 243 and political parties 269–270;
União Nacional dos Estudantes (UNE) period of “transitional dictatorship”
[National Union of Students] 60 264; role of cultural platforms in
Unidades de Policía Pacificadora long transition 264–268; transition
(UPP) [Peacekeeper Police Units] 62 to democracy 251; UDELAR
Unidad Popular [Popular Unity] 259 264–265
Union Nacional Sinarquista [National Uruguayan law 187; of 1932 173,
Synarchist Union] 312, 319 174, 188, 189; of 1936 174
Union of Indigenous Nations (UNI) Usarski, F. 18
240
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Valdés, Chucho 85
(USSR) 29; emergence of 29 Valdés, Marta 85
United Nations Development Valero, Roberto 83
Assistance (UNDAF) 129 Vallejo, Camila 56, 57
United Nations Development Program Varela Cruz, María Elena 83, 84
(UNDP) 2 Vargas, Getulio 290
United States of America (USA), Vázquez, M. 72
hegemony of 30 Vázquez Semadeni, M. E. 282
university-enterprises 130 V Conference 13–14
University Reform Law (LRU 1983) Vega-Centeno, I. 14
135 Vega, Lorenzo García 89
urbanization: accelerated 33, Velasco, Jose Maria 312
37–38; decomposition of peasant Velázquez, Fernando 84
Index 405
Venezuela: oil boom 7; Venezuelan XXI century: Brazilian monarchy
law of 1937 186, 188–189 and republic 213–216; economic
Vernazza, Jorge 344 expansion 1–2; survival and
Vicariate of Solidarity 259, 325–327, valuation of culture
333–335, 337 213–216
Villaverde, Cirilo 78
violent or market-based dispossession #YoSoy132 (#IAm132) 68
33 youth and mobilizations in Latin
Vitier, Cintio 79, 85 America: Brazil 58–62; capitalism
Vommaro, P. 16 and modernity 51; Chile 62–65;
collective subjectivation and
Waldensians 202 recognition 55; Colombia 65–68;
War of Independence (1810) 308 deployment of youth practices
War of Reform (1857–1860) 308 52; hierarchies and verticalism
well-being: economic, political and 53; methods of participation
social 8 53; Mexico 68–70; “new Latin
World Bank 39 American youth movements”
World Conference on Higher 52; participation in elections
Education 137 56–57; political participation
53–57; process of culturalization
XX century: Amazon, civilization 55–56; sexuality or migration 51;
221–222; Brazilian monarchy and unemployment or poverty 51; youth
republic 206–213; Colombia in revolts of 60s 52
227; Cuba’s political system 106; youth revolts of 60s 52
Ecuador in 231; genocidal rubber Yunes, Miguel Angel 319
period, Brazil 239; Golden Era
and Decadence 206–213; Mexican Zayas, Alfredo 293
freemasonry in 282–283; rate of Zedillo, Ernesto 129
urbanization 27; workers’ and trade Zenea, Juan Clemente 78
union movements 163 Zibechi, R. 59

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Social, Political, and Religious

Movements in the Modern

This volume explores several notable themes related to social, political,

Pablo A. Baisotti is currently a research assistant at the Department of

20 The Nixon Administration and Cuba

22 Rio de Janeiro in the Global Meat Market, c. 1850 to c. 1930

23 American Divergences in the Great Recession

24 Social and Political Transitions During the

25 A New Struggle for Independence in Modern Latin America

26 Problems and Alternatives in the Modern Americas

27 Setbacks and Advances in the Modern Latin American Economy

28 Social, Political, and Religious Movements in the Modern Americas

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.

ISBN: 978-0-367-49260-1 (hbk)

Introduction: Social, Political, and Religious Movements

1 From Rural Villages to Large Metropolises in Latin

2 Youth and Mobilizations in Latin America: 20 Years of

3 Between Past and Future: Exile, Cuban Literature and

4 The Revolution as an Inherent Part of Cuban Society: A

6 Constructions of “The National” in Latin America 151

7 Migration and Border Control Policies in South America

8 An Overview of the Immigration Process during the

9 Indigenous Movements in South America: Culture,

10 Cultural Platforms during the Transitions to Democracy

11 New Perspectives on Latin American Freemasonry:

12 The Rise of “Scientific” Antisemitism in Latin America 302

14 People, Culture and Liberation in Rafael Tello’s

15 Buddhism in Latin America: From Ethnic Religion to

List of Contributors 383

This volume offers a compendium of social and cultural histories of the

Jay Corwin, Ph.D.

People, Poverty, and Politics

Inequalities and Migration

Organization of the Book

Late and Truncated Industrial and

import substitution, supported and promoted by state intervention that

Decomposition of the Peasant Productive Forms and

Source: CEPAL-CEPALSTAT. Database and statistical publications. Retrieved from https://estadisticas.cepal.org/cepalstat/Portada.html.

Source: CEPAL-CEPALSTAT. Database and statistical publications. Retrieved from https://estadisticas.cepal.org/cepalstat/Portada.html.

Source: CEPAL-CEPALSTAT. Database and statistical publications. Retrieved from https://estadisticas.

The Transformation of Cities

Crisis, Neoliberalism and Urban Restructuring

The Production of the Neoliberal Metropolis

Table 1.5 Population of urban agglomerations equal to or greater than 750,000

Country Urban 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Argentina Buenos Aires 8,105 9,422 10,513 11,847 13,074 13,606

Youth and Politics: Extension and Development of

more than asking or judging them for what they do or do not do in

Chile: The Penguins Keep Marching

Colombia: Hand in Hand with MANE7

to build education as a right without profit as motivation, with ad-

Likewise, in its first Minimum Program approved in August 2011, the

Mexico: About the One Hundred Thirty-Two and the

• The construction of links with the state based on direct dialogue,

Considering the successive waves of emigration since the Cuban Revo-

The Tradition of Exile from Cuba: Search for Freedom

I am the shell of myself, who in a foreign land /

For Matías Montes Huidobro, this poetry of exile, written or published

Under Fidel Castro’s Revolution, the exile of intellectuals, writers and

Exile and Writers in the Revolution

The Padilla Case (1971)

The “Mariel Generation” and the Writers around the

Encuentro de la cultura cubana (Madrid, 1996) and the

The signatories of this document were: Alicia Alonso, Roberto Fernán-