Endspiele des Caudillo

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan-Henrik Witthaus

The dictator novel is a central genre of political literature in Latin America. But what does the term "political literature" mean in this case? The narrative texts considered here not only criticize the machinations of criminal autocrats; they also display the procedures of political staging and the way in which the dictator is drawn into a field of political visibility. He not only observes himself, he is also observed by others. The calculations and accidents of such forms of staging refer to the person of the autocrat, in particular to his body. This can be understood as a symbolic point of reference for regimes, and its endangerment by illness, assassination or death represents an existential threat of destabilization for his regime. These connections are central themes in the dictatorial novels by Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier and Augusto Roa Bastos, which are examined in this essay.

1980 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Coad

We publish below a list of writers and journalists abducted by the security forces and numbered among the ‘disappeared’ in Argentina since 24 March 1976, the date of the military coup that installed General Jorge Rafael Videla in power. Two eye-witness accounts illustrate the way in which such abductions usually take place. Finally, Robert Cox, editor-in-exile of the daily newspaper Buenos Aires Herald, describes how independent-minded journalists and the families of los desaparecidos ( ‘the disappeared’) have been affected. The material is introduced by Index on Censorship's researcher on Latin America, Malcolm Coad.


2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-117
Author(s):  
Daniel G. Kressel

AbstractThe article examines the ideological character of Juan Carlos Onganía's dictatorship by exploring its ties and dialogue with Francisco Franco's Spain. Known as the “Argentine Revolution,” Onganía's regime (1966-70) was, the article shows, one of the first Cold War Latin American dictatorship to overtly use Francoist ideology as its point of reference. While building on the conventional wisdom that the legacies of the Spanish Civil War informed right-wing thought in Latin America, the study then shifts its focus to Spain's 1960s “economic miracle” and technocratic state model, observing them as a prominent discursive toolkit for authoritarian Argentine intellectuals. Drawing on newly discovered correspondence and archival sources, the article first excavates the intellectual networks operating between Franco's Spain and the Argentine right during the 1950s and 1960s. Once handpicked by Onganía to design his regime, these Argentine Franco-sympathizers were to decide the character of the Argentine Revolution. Second, the article sheds light on the intimate collaboration between the two dictatorships, and further explores the reasons for Onganía's downfall. In doing so, the study adds to a burgeoning historiographic field that underscores the significance of the Francoist dictatorship in the Latin American right-wing imaginary.


Significance National GDP nevertheless contracted by just 1.5% in 2020 -- less than almost any other country in Latin America. Resilient remittances and exports, coupled with unprecedented policy support, have mitigated the effects of the pandemic and subsequent containment measures, leaving the country better placed for recovery than its neighbours. Impacts Enduring poverty, inequality and violent crime, and the impacts of accelerating climate change, will drive further migration from Guatemala. The government will pursue banking law reforms, to reduce risks to financial activities in the post-pandemic business environment. Infighting and corruption scandals will hinder the opposition's ability to benefit from the decline of the president's popularity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-115
Author(s):  
Roberto Breña

This article provides an overview of some prominent aspects of intellectual history as practiced today in Latin America, especially regarding conceptual history. It delves into the way this methodology arrived to the region not long ago and discusses the way some of its practitioners combine it with the history of political languages, often ignoring the profound differences between both approaches. Therefore, the text stresses some of the most significant contrasts between them. In its last part, the article is critical of the purported “globality” of global intellectual history, an issue that is inextricably linked with the pervasive use of the English language in the field. Throughout, the text poses several of the challenges that lie ahead for intellectual history in Latin America.


2017 ◽  
pp. 65-77
Author(s):  
Andrzej Denka

Botho Strauß (b. 1944), German playwright, novelist and essayist, devotes his book Herkunft [Origin] (2014) to a subtle portrait of his slightly underestimated father, who died in 1971. This sample of prose is typical of Strauss as it encompasses meditative descriptions, disquisitions, aphorisms and narrative fragments. This narration contains numerous biographical details about his father, as well as his mother and the writer himself, and it tells us a lot about his youth and cultural maturation. Strauss’ hometown, Bad Ems, provides a certain topographic point of reference here. This is a highly personal and emotional text which simultaneously exhibits all esthetic properties that characterize Strauss’ style. This text is also about the way different sensory stimuli incite our memory and how difficult it is to find a literary form adequate to reconstruct memory.


1982 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youssef Cohen

From the onset of industrial capitalism in Latin America, urban workers have been dependent on the state. This is particularly true in Brazil, where urban workers are still in a situation of extreme dependence on the state. Thus, the Brazilian setting provides an ideal opportunity for the study of the consciousness of dependent workers as well as an important point of reference for comparative study of working-class consciousness. This paper outlines the general characteristics of the situation of state-dependent workers in Latin America, with special attention to the Brazilian worker, in order to show how their dependence is reflected in their consciousness. The evidence for our interpretation is based on the attitudes of 617 urban workers who are part of a larger probability sample of the population in central and southeast Brazil.


1958 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-430
Author(s):  
Gustave Weigel

One of the constant worries of the United States, since the role of a dominant world-power has been thrust on her, is the situation of Latin America. Relations with Canada require thought and preoccupation but they produce no deep concern. Canada and the United States understand each other and they form their policies in terms of friendly adjustment. Yet the same is not true when we consider the bloc of nations stretching to the south of the Rio Grande. They form two thirds of the geographic stretch of the western hemisphere, and they constitute a population equal to ours. The dependence on Latin America on the part of the United States in her capacity as an international power is evident. What is not evident is the way to make our friendship with our southern neighbors a more stable thing than the fragile arrangement which confronts us in the present.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-115
Author(s):  
Roberto Breña

Abstract This article provides an overview of some prominent aspects of intellectual history as practiced today in Latin America, especially regarding conceptual history. It delves into the way this methodology arrived to the region not long ago and discusses the way some of its practitioners combine it with the history of political languages, often ignoring the profound differences between both approaches. Therefore, the text stresses some of the most significant contrasts between them. In its last part, the article is critical of the purported “globality” of global intellectual history, an issue that is inextricably linked with the pervasive use of the English language in the field. Throughout, the text poses several of the challenges that lie ahead for intellectual history in Latin America.


2021 ◽  
pp. 231-245
Author(s):  
Heba El Attar

In 2014, newspapers across the Spanish-speaking world covered how the international press paid tribute to García Márquez. Particular attention was given to the extensive eulogies in the Arab press. A special homage was paid to the author’s memory in Saudi Arabia, where the Third South American-Arab Countries Summit was being held at the time. This was not Naguib Mahfuz; this was García Márquez. How was it possible for a Latin American author to become that popular across the Arab world? How was it possible for his novels to be referenced naturally in popular Arab films such as The Embassy in the Building (2005)? Was all this simply due to the fact that in postindependence Latin America, particularly since the 1940s, there has been a growing de-orientalist discourse? Or did García Márquez craft a particular dialogue with the internal and external Arabs? With all this in mind, and by drawing on Latin American (de)orientalism in the works of Kushigian, Nagy-Zekmi, and Tyutina, among others, this article analyzes the dimensions and implications of García Márquez’s depiction of the internal Arab (immigrant in Latin America) in some of his novels as well as his dialogue with the external Arab (the Arab world) in some of his press articles.


2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-599
Author(s):  
Francisca Gutiérrez Crocco

AbstractScholars interested in labour in Latin America have traditionally paid little attention to trade unions’ legal mobilisation. However, the increasing number of legal complaints filed by workers with labour ministries and/or the courts in countries like Argentina, Brazil and Chile calls for a more serious debate on the role that trade unions play in this process. This article focuses on the Chilean case. Drawing on various sources, it shows that Chilean unions have turned legal complaints into a weapon to gain more rights and curb employers’ power. This process has involved the strongest and most combative unions, and is due to two historical conditions: (1) the obstacles placed in the way of successful resort to more disruptive tactics; (2) the increase in institutional opportunities to report infringements of the law. Overall, the article challenges the current image of the Chilean unions by foregrounding their agency and their achievements over the last decade.


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