Latin American Perspectives

The strategy adopted by the neoliberal state to maintain social order and safeguard private property in a context of economic deregulation and social precariousness has destroyed the welfare state and aggravated poverty, depriving the masses of any form of social protection while subjecting them to repression. The reinforcement of the repressive state apparatus is associated with the social instability provoked by the lack of social policies, the degradation of living conditions for the great majority of the population, and the amplification of income and property inequalities both in the so-called capitalist periphery and in the richest industrialized countries. The penalization of misery is revealed as a new expression of class domination.

Police brutality is part of Latin American social history, not merely a consequence of the “authoritarian legacy” of military regimes. Violent police practices persist because of the weakness of institutional mechanisms for controlling police activity. This can be seen by analyzing some of the police control mechanisms present in Rio de Janeiro, including legislation, standards of conduct, policing strategies, mechanisms of internal and external control, and the judiciary. The efficacy of these control mechanisms is tied to the pattern of relationship that exists between the state (and police) and society. The introduction of new control mechanisms or the improvement of existing ones would mean a recalibration of this relationship.

Theories of decolonization (principally those of Dussel, Quijano, and Mignolo), hold that knowledge is produced not from a neutral and universal position but from the different positions of actors within a hierarchical structure of power. Analysis of the thought of Brazil’s unionized domestic workers as a subaltern voice reveals that these workers’ political activism produces a form of knowledge that articulates class, race, and gender and allows us to problematize the national hegemonic narrative, destabilizing the hegemonic cultural meanings structured by the myths of racial democracy and the good master.

Informal economic activity has been increasing in Brazil in the midst of neoliberal reforms, skyrocketing unemployment, and business strategies designed to cut labor costs. Today half of the Brazilian economically active population works informally, as do 40 percent of private-sector employees, now the largest group of informal workers. In both Salvador and Brazil there are more informal salaried workers than there are informal self-employed entrepreneurs, contrary to what most theories of informality would predict. The state is not adequately enforcing its labor legislation, and employers increasingly contract their employees informally. Outsourcing (subcontracting to smaller firms) also contributes to informality, since micro-enterprises are less likely to formalize their employees’ status. Theories of informality need to recognize that there is no such thing as a separate “informal sector” of the economy and that informality increasingly extends to employees of formal firms.

There was much discussion in the 1980s and 1990s about the crisis in the union movement in Brazil, and some writers even began to talk of its historic decline. An analysis of union activity in Brazil from 2000 to 2009—how many strikes took place, how many strikers were involved, whether their objectives were defensive or offensive, how such conflicts were conducted, the extent of each, and, perhaps most important, what the workers thought they were achieving—suggests that, on the contrary, we are witnessing a definite recovery in union effectiveness.

The electoral loss of the Sandinistas in 1990 marked the beginning of a transformation agenda in Nicaragua aimed at dismantling the revolutionary legacy. During the presidency of Enrique Bolaños (2002–2007), efforts to attract transnational capital to tax-exempt free-trade zones intensified. Advertising campaigns directed toward presumptive investors, workers, and the general public attempted to brand Nicaragua as an ideal destination for transnational capital, frame neoliberal restructurings in terms of a “common good,” and depict free-trade zones as a vehicle for female emancipation. Analysis of some of the products of these campaigns highlights efforts to legitimate new forms of the state and citizenship and suggests that the narrative of progress is troubled by intersecting power relations of gender and class that open the way for divergent interpretations of the global division of labor.

The aggregated economic impact of textile maquiladoras in rural Yucatán has recently been studied, but little is known about the characteristics of the maquila workforce there. A case study of a garment maquiladora in Motul in 2003 focused on these characteristics and provides insight into the region’s maquiladora operations. In contrast to northern urban maquiladoras, the Motul garment maquiladora has attracted mainly young workers, primarily men. Similar to its northern urban counterparts, it is characterized by low salaries, high turnover, and limited use of Mexican inputs.