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Objective/Context: The paper provides a comprehensive overview of Latin American mining history, exploring cross-pollination opportunities between mining historians and scholars of the emerging field of the new history of capitalism. The analysis spans from the region’s integration into global markets during the 1500s to the twilight of export-led growth in the early twentieth century. Methodology: The study builds on an overview of both classic and contemporary literature, offering new insights into understanding existing data on mining history within a global context. By incorporating perspectives from geology, ecology, and economics, the article investigates the connections between specific mineral deposits and different paths of capitalistic development across Latin America. Originality: The paper sketches some of the gaps in the analysis of global and local flows of minerals and comments on notable contributions to the broader field of Latin American history. It introduces innovative approaches for the study of output cycles, geological and ecological endowments, technological spillovers, and mining economics. Conclusions: First, the existing literature has predominantly focused on precious metals, with few scholars studying non-precious metals and non-metallic minerals. Second, the narratives surrounding mining history have been primarily centered on silver, overshadowing the significance of bimetallism in understanding the emergence of global capitalism. Thirdly, examining the microeconomic dynamics of mining in the region may present fresh opportunities to explore the impact of mining on sectoral and managerial transformations. Finally, studies of the two-way interaction of capitalism and mining need to include research on the energy and environmental systems that underpinned mineral extraction and production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population aging has positioned as a key demographic change. This paper analyzes the characteristics of older adults in situations of dependence, care strategies and the profile of caregivers for Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, El Salvador and Uruguay. The population in a situation of functional dependence is mostly female and over 75 years old. Between 54% and 70% receive some type of care, with unpaid family care being the main care strategy. Unpaid caregivers are mostly women, under 65, and economically inactive. We evidence a negative relationship between the status of elderly caregiver and employment, that is stronger for women. Although elderly informal care leads to a lower probability of employment among individuals of all ages and income quintiles, the employment gap between caregivers and non-caregivers narrows substantially among higher-income people. Improving care for older people would have positive effects on female employment and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the development of Latin America over the past three decades by using growth incidence curves and weighted growth rates calculated on the basis of harmonized microdata from national household surveys. Over the past three decades, Latin America has made progress in fundamental socioeconomic indicators. On average, there has been significant growth in income as well as some educational and housing variables, particularly among the lower income strata. In contrast, progress was slower among the most vulnerable population in other important areas (e.g., higher education, female labor participation). Despite notable improvements in various areas of development captured through household surveys, the evidence reveals that substantial shortfalls and disparities still persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/context: The paper examines the contribution of think tanks (TTs) to debating ideas and their relationship with the environment. Specifically, it analyzes the variations introduced by the electoral campaign in the political positions of TTs and the role of ideology and party affiliation as possible determinants. Methodology: The content of the web pages of ten TTs is monitored before and during the electoral campaign for the 2021 presidential elections in Chile, where numerous TTs have become protagonists. For each TT, attention to socio-political issues is analyzed, and the trend of their positions is recorded. Conclusions: The analysis shows that TTs adapt their communicative agenda to the electoral campaign and that their ideology is a principal variable in this strategy. Originality: Evidence is provided on the entry of TTs in electoral campaigns with differences between conservatives and progressives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives/Context: The main objective of this paper is to present an explanation for the divergent development trajectories of two regions of the capitalist world-economy, Latin America and East Asia. Methodology: starting from the concepts of world-economy, world region, regional focus and long durée, it is intended to verify how the forms of integration of the two regions to the capitalist worldeconomy affected them in three essential dimensions for economic development: State, capital accumulation and technological capability, from the 16th century to the present. Conclusions: having autonomously developed the three dimensions analyzed to the point of equating to the West at least until the end of the 17th century, when it was incorporated into the capitalist world-economy in the first half of the19th century, East Asia was able to take advantage of this integration and advance in global hierarchies of wealth and power. On the other hand, Latin America, which as a geopolitical entity was born together with the capitalist world-economy in the 16th century, was at that moment at a relatively low level of development in these dimensions, which, together with colonialism, continued to restrict its development and maintaining the region in its historical position as a periphery of the capitalist world-economy. Originality: the originality of this research is to establish a historically grounded principle of variation to explain the divergence in recent development trajectories of Latin America and East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Territorial inequality associated with the location of population and activities, access to infrastructure and services, employment and material living conditions, is a historical reality in Latin America. This phenomenon has accompanied the demands of successive development models, and since the mid-twentieth century it has begun to be recognised in its full complexity with the installation of developmentalist governments. As a result, various public policies were adopted that failed to have a significant impact on these inequalities or to address their social consequences. Given the need to reformulate approaches, optimise resources and overcome obstacles in the implementation of public policies, this paper seeks to analyse the policies on the government agenda in Argentina from the change of management materialized at the end of 2019, identifying the limitations, achievements and potentialities of the policies proposed in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico and their effects on territorial inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has exposed, reproduced, and created new inequalities in Latin America and the world. In this introductory paper, we discuss the impact of extant inequities on vulnerability to COVID-19 but we also identify new, and some unexpected, vulnerabilities. We emphasize vulnerabilities to the disease as well as vulnerabilities to policies and other responses in the fight against COVID-19. Building on insights from Peter Hall and Michele Lamont's work on social resilience, we draw on the papers of this special issue to identify the important role of the state in addressing vulnerabilities and discuss the types of social resilience that vulnerable groups have turned to in their response to COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically studies the impact of government quality on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in a sample of 46 economies in the 1996-2018 period. In particular, we comparatively examine to what extent quality of government influences FDI inflows in two groups of countries that show relevant differences in their levels of government quality: 33 OECD countries and 13 Latin American countries. Applying panel data methods, we found that institutional quality positively affects FDI in both groups of countries, and the impact is stronger in OECD countries than it is in Latin American countries. This study reveals that the design of public policies that strengthen institutional quality is essential, particularly in Latin American countries with weaker institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/Context: This paper studies the role of the Chilean state during the great drought of 1967-1969 as a mediator between human beings and nature. Institutional adaptations and the effort to improve the infrastructure were elements of continuity with respect to previous droughts, but there were novelties as well, such as attempts to pursue weather modification and the artificial melting of glaciers. The support of technologies and scientists operating from peripheral state institutions was essential for these purposes. All the above took place in the context of the Cold War when the predominant environmental imaginaries made human intervention look favorable and necessary for the modernization of countries. Methodology: Diverse primary sources were used, such as ministerial documents, decrees, bulletins, and reports of different state institutions that allowed understanding the logic of state management during the water crisis. Similarly, research in national and international press helped identify how imaginaries about the environment were expressed and disseminated publicly, which tended to validate novel efforts to control nature. Originality: This is an original study for Latin America, which addresses the early appearance of science and technology in the efforts of what today would be known as geoengineering: mainly through the observation of new actors, which expanded the traditional forms of mediation between humans and nature, led by the state, concerning climate crises. Conclusions: In the 1960s, optimism grew for the human capacity to control and manipulate water resources by appealing to ways other than those previously known, associated with infrastructure development. Expert knowledge was placed at the service of peripheral institutions of the state to promote these changes with lasting consequences. The human desire to control nature at all costs was validated, which helps explain the temporal projection of experiments with artificial rain and glacier control to the present day in Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the relationship between regional integration and industrialization in Latin America over the past seventy years. To this end, it shows how ECLAC's structuralist thought and integrationist dynamics have influenced each other in practice. It outlines the positions on regional industrialization found in old regionalism, open regionalism and in 21st century regionalisms, and how such positions were shaped by conflicts between social groups. Specifically, it introduces the Andean Pact, MERCOSUR and ALBA as examples. This paper's contribution consists in reflecting critically on Latin American experiences of drafting and implementing common industrial policy in diverse contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/Context: This text sets out a succinct overview of the sweep of the history of emotions and sentiments, from the decisive steps taken by Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns in the 1980s up to some of the essential contributions made to the field by numerous academics from Latin America in subsequent moments. The fundamental goal of this exercise is to provide context for the contributions of the articles included in the current issue of Historia Crítica. Methodology: I will point out the main methods and approaches of numerous papers about the history of emotions and sentiments produced in North America and Europe. At the same time, I will inquire about the attention this field has received in Latin American historiography and present the articles of the dossier. Originality: The text condenses and compares a substantial set of historical viewpoints about emotions and sentiments, the pathways it opens to widening historical explanations and invites exploring them from Latinamerican historiography. Conclusions: The articles collected in this issue suggest the importance of continuing to move forward in the study of the history of emotions and sentiments in Latin America, given the authors of these texts prove that the weight of regimes and the signification of emotional experiences matter in the spectrum of causalities, in the decisions, and the agency of individuals and groups, in the formation of political loyalties, in power contests, in revolutions, and wars, in the representations of order and the manners in which to subvert it, but also in the elucidation of the deepest creases of the lives, feelings, and words of the societies of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of money demand enables us to understand the macroeconomic effects of monetary policy. In this paper, we estimate the money demand for 15 Latin American countries from 1996 to 2016, using panel cointegra-tion and FMOLS estimation methods. We also estimate a model of dynamic common factors to test for the existence of common trends between countries. The results show a long run relationship between money demand, income, and interest rates. However, there is no evidence of common factors between countries, which is consistent with the heterogeneity observed in the estimated elasticities. Contrary to what we expected, in several cases, the estimated income elasticity is greater than one, which could be associated with agents' higher risk perceptions which affect their liquidity preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the trajectories of payment for ecosystem services (PES) from the 1990s to the present, with an emphasis on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). It is concluded that these trajectories were configuring a strategy for nature conservation within the framework of North-South relations within the international system. It emerged in academic-scientific institutions in the United States, and was subsequently projected at the multilateral level through the Global Millennium Ecosystem Report, published in 2005. In Latin America and the Caribbean, a technical and political discussion developed on the possibility of measuring nature and assigning it an economic value, and cases were implemented that legitimized the PES proposal with external financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects upon a decisive issue, namely, the relation between modernity and coloniality in the Latin American context. What remains to be settled is whether European modernity is inherently colonial, or, in other words, whether all modern European thought is indistinguishably and inseparably interwoven with grammars of coloniality that, even today, are reproduced in the arenas of knowledge and power. The guiding thread of this inquiry will be the theoretical proposals of Walter Mignolo, a thinker who argues precisely for the consubstantiality of modernity and coloniality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article sets out to trace a conceptual history of the right to the city in Latin America. Based on a critical reading of Lefebvre's work, the essay reconstructs the theoretical frameworks that accompany the practical transformations of the right to the city in the region. The paper covers a period that starts with the publication of the book in 1968 and finishes with the decline of "the new left" in Latin America. The essay argues that, over this period, there are three different configurations of the right to the city, in which distinct theoretical displacements accompany the appropriations made by social movements and its inclusion into public policy arenas. During a first instance, associated with social movements, the notion is used to describe forms of collective action associated with housing and spatial injustice. A second configuration is marked by an institutional and bureaucratic appropriation, where Lefebvre's original conceptual coordinates transfigured. The right to the city is presented as an empty signifier and articulation emerges as a distinct political practice. In a third more recent configuration, social movements and collectives linked to social architecture actualize the notion of the right to the city around issues of construction and prefiguration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief article seeks to introduce the reader to this special number on industrialization in contemporary Latin America. It does so considering three issues. First, the importance of industrialization in sustaining high rates of economic growth leading to high levels of income per capita. Second, the long-standing debate in global historiography regarding the successes and failures of industrial policy: markets vs. states. Lastly, Latin America's industrial trajectory through the lenses of four historiographical tendencies, and the ways in which each of the four original papers relate to the extant literature, and contribute to enhancing our understanding of one of the most important economic transformations in the history of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two objectives. Firstly, it proposes rethinking the relationship between populism and democracy, by challenging the positions which create a radical antagonism between these two political dynamics. In order to do this, the paper refers to guidelines put forward by Ernesto Laclau, relating to the rupture and reconstruction of populism understood as political logic. This idea is complemented by contributions from Jacques Ranciére, in order to explore the democratizing dimension of populist movements. Secondly, the article analyzes two examples of contemporary governments - that of Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, and of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil - to show how they invite us to re-examine the theoretical-political debate on the concept of democracy as it is currently understood. Re-establishing the debate on the tension between the formal and the substantive dimension of democracy will allow us to rethink the various ways in which a populist logic might lead to a democratizing logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to estimate how the gender differences in the labor market (participation and wage gap) affect both poverty and income inequality, based on four Latin American countries (Bolivia, Brazil, Perú, Uruguay). The methodology is based on a multiple imputations technique (Rubin, 1987) applied to the construction of counterfactuals. While the effects on poverty are always positive and strong, the effects of the elimination of the gender differences on the labor market on labor and household income cannot be generalized. They depend on the country, and the scenario since modifications on different parts of the income distribution is observed, associated with the starting point of each one. These results are in accordance with the differences in the sort of inequalities between men and women observed among countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the development of an idea: American continental unity as an object of study in Latin American intellectual history of the twentieth century. To achieve this, the article is organized in three stages: the idealist, which starts with José Enrique Rodó; the confrontation between Pan-Americanism and Americanism, which rises from the opposition against imperialism and the revindication of mixed heritages (mestizaje); and the confrontation between policies to implement development and revindicate continental unity driven by the Cuban Revolution. The paper emphasizes that gray area that emerges today, marked by an open questioning of national unity as a paradigm; in other words, the paper sets forth a question regarding the political and intellectual relevance of a topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fundamental idea developed within this paper --he result of a thorough study of the recent bibliography on the relationships between the Komintern and Latin America-- is that there exist new conditions, following the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), in an attempt to approach, upon less passionate and less compromised bases, from the standpoint of the political parties, the history relevant to analyze the political cultures in Latin America during the XX Century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the evolution and main features of the railway system of Peru in the 19th and early 20th centuries. From mid-19lh century railroads were considered a promise for achieving progress. Several railroads were then built in Peru, especially in 1850-75 and in 1910-30. With the construction of railroads, Peruvians saved time in travelling and carrying freight. The faster service of railroads did not necessarily come at the cost of higher passenger fares and freight rates. Fares and rates were lower for railroads than for mules, especially for long distances. However, for some routes (especially for short distances with many curves), the traditional system of llamas remained as the lowest pecuniary cost (but also slowest) mode of transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the main patterns and trends of alternative definitions of labor informality in Latin America and the Caribbean, by exploiting a large database of more than 100 household surveys covering the period 1989-2005. The evidence suggests that there are no signs of a consistent pattern of reduction in labor informality in the region. Regardless of the definition used, labor informality remains a pervasive characteristic of labor markets in LAC. In several countries the increase in labor informality seems to have been associated more to a sizeable increase in the propensity to set informal arrangements within groups, than to changes in the national employment structure toward more informal sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper to provides a state of art discussion of general elite theory by developing a taxonomy of the academic literature on this topic, based upon theoretical and historical criteria, and by discussing recent analytical tendencies in Latin America concerning the problem of intellectuals and technocrats. This field of study offers alternative research tools and important analytical keys for understanding current transformations in the exercise of political power, its legitimizing tools and the consequences of today's capitalist model for distinct forms of social regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]