Abstract, "Political Participation of Pentecostal Minorities in Chile, 1937–1989" by Miguel Ángel Mansilla and Luis Alberto Orellana

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Political Participation of Pentecostal Minorities in Chile, 1937–1989 
by Miguel Ángel Mansilla and Luis Alberto Orellana

Chilean Pentecostals have been described as passive and politically conformist in their relations with the military government. Instead, there is historical evidence that they have been an active and interactive minority. Pentecostal denominations have participated in political projects associated with leftist political parties. Pentecostal leaders have associated themselves with various political parties as a form of political struggle for recognition, and active Pentecostal organizations resisted and protested during the military government.

Abstract, "Political Conflict and Spiritual Battle: Intersections between Religion and Politics among Brazilian Pentecostals" by Carlos Gustavo Sarmet Moreira Smiderle and Wania Amelia Belchior Mesquita

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Political Conflict and Spiritual Battle: Intersections between Religion and Politics among Brazilian Pentecostals 
by Carlos Gustavo Sarmet Moreira Smiderle and Wania Amelia Belchior Mesquita

A new interpretation of Evangelical actors’ increasing participation in Brazilian political and electoral contests is that elements of Pentecostalism predispose a believer to see the world as the site of an eternal struggle between God and Satan. The belief in demons that have territorial jurisdictions, known as territorial spirits, is one aspect of this theology. The cognitive universe of this belief induces the Evangelical voter to make electoral decisions on the basis of religious premises. It teaches the voter to conceive, without much reflection, the spiritual battle and the electoral game as territorial disputes.

Book, "FOR-GET Identity, Media, and Democracy in Chile" by Claudia Bucciferro

FOR-GET: Identity, Media, and Democracy in Chile

by CLAUDIA BUCCIFERRO

The election of Michelle Bachelet, the first female president of Chile, brought to the public sphere topics such as gender, inequality, and the legacy of seventeen years of military rule. Former dictator Augusto Pinochet instructed Chileans to “for-get” and move on, but this is complicated because individual and collective identities are anchored in memory and articulated through discourse. What happens to a nation and its people when the obliged referent of their recent history is one that hardly anyone wants to address? This book reveals the incongruity between what current media say...

Abstract, "The Legacy of Liberation Theology in Colombia: The Defense of Life and Territory" by Leila Celis

:::::: Abstract ::::::

The Legacy of Liberation Theology in Colombia: The Defense of Life and Territory 
by Leila Celis

Liberation theology was very important in Latin America between 1970 and 1980. While it is less significant today, it has not disappeared. If we look at Colombia, we can see the pastoral and political commitment of the religious and the laity in various regions as they accompany marginalized communities, victims of government and parastatal violence, in conformity with their preferential option for the poor. Motivated by the crucified Christ, the heirs of liberation theology have developed a theology of life or of human rights. As human rights advocates, they identify among the causes of violence the policies of capitalist development, denounced as imperialist and responsible for the poverty of the majority of the population. This development has its origin in the parallel dynamics of social and international relations and the associated adaptation of the social movement.

Book, "The U.S. Mexican Border Today. Conflict and Cooperation in Historical Perspective", Third Edition, by Paul Ganster - with David E. Lorey

"The U.S.-Mexican Border Today. Conflict and Cooperation in Historical Perspective", Third Edition  PAUL GANSTER - WITH DAVID E. LOREY Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Pages: 296 • Size: 6 x 9 978-1-4422-3110-8 • Hardback • August 2015 • $85.00 • (£54.95) 978-1-4422-3111-5 • Paperback • August 2015 • $29.00 • (£19.95) 978-1-4422-3112-2 • eBook • August 2015 • $28.99 • (£19.95) Series: Latin American Silhouettes Subjects: Political Science / World / Caribbean & Latin American, History / Latin America / Mexico, History / United States / State & Local / Southwest (AZ, NM, OK, TX), Social Science / Human Geography Courses: Political Science; International Relations; Foreign Policy; Latin American, Political Science; Comparative Politics; Government & Politics; Latin America

ABOUT THE BOOK

Abstract, "New Forms of the Relationship between Politics and Religion: Ecclesiastical Base Community Activists in Mexico City" by Hugo José Suárez

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New Forms of the Relationship between Politics and Religion: Ecclesiastical Base Community Activists in Mexico City 
by Hugo José Suárez

Beginning in the 1960's, new forms of living the faith emerged in Latin America that linked it with a political dimension. The Catholic Church changed its pastoral orientation, and ecclesiastical base communities were established as part of an “option for the poor.” The reflection that accompanied this process was known as liberation theology. By the end of the 1970's these communities were organizing conferences, publications, and theological reflections with strong international links and included hundreds of believers both in the countryside and in the city. During the following two decades, they were active participants in the construction of leftist political alternatives. While a minority pastoral practice today, they continue to hold national gatherings and maintain their international contacts. In-depth interviews with three members of ecclesiastical base communities in a working-class neighborhood in Mexico City show how these individuals have built their socio-religious practice and their religious beliefs. Their experience is part of a global reconstitution of belief systems in Mexico that affects all of the salvation enterprises in their various expressions.

Abstract, "Religion, Autonomy, and the Priority of Place in Mexico’s Maya Highlands" by Ruth J. Chojnacki

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Religion, Autonomy, and the Priority of Place in Mexico’s Maya Highlands 
by Ruth J. Chojnacki

The irruption of Mexico’s highland Maya on the world stage with the 1994 New Year’s Day uprising by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation generated a torrent of publications. Relatively neglected in this literature is the deconstruction of costumbre (ancestral Maya tradition) by Maya youth dislocated by Mexico’s early-1980s economic collapse. In one exemplary Tzotzil Maya pueblo, the acquisition of biblical literacy and the cognitive skills it entails in Catholic Church–sponsored courses oriented to liberation theology propelled a generational religious revolt. The ensuing reclamation of ancestral territory from ladino ranchers upended colonial relations, enabling indigenous peasants in this and other highland Maya communities to institute autonomous modes of production. Driven by a dialectic of religious ritual and agricultural labor, this assertion of Maya agency attests to the salience of religion and the priority of place as indispensable resources for indigenous socioeconomic autonomy confronting neoliberal assault.

Book, "Rethinking Latin American Social Movements: Radical Action From Below"

Rethinking Latin American Social Movements: Radical Action From Below  Edited By LAP Editors Richard Stahler-Sholk; Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker  Latest Publication available November 2014  PURCHASE THIS EDITION  List Price: $39.95  ISBN: 978-1-4422-3568-7  Publication Date: November 2014  416pp

ABOUT THE BOOK

Abstract, "Religious Pluralism and New Political Identities in Latin America" by

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Religious Pluralism and New Political Identities in Latin America 
by Cristián Parker

The role of religion in Latin American politics can no longer be interpreted with reductionist schemes. The faithful—citizens—are combining faith and politics in unprecedented ways, and churches and denominations are no longer factors of political identity. The reconfiguration of new social and political movements interweaves complex linkages with the religious. The transformations of the political field and especially of democratic processes have reshaped identities in a context of increasing religious and cultural diversity with relatively less Catholic presence and greater Evangelical presence. Institutional secularization and religious pluralism seem to go hand in hand with a new cleavage between religion and politics.

Book, "Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-first Century: Resistance, Power, and Democracy" Edited by Richard Stahler-Sholk, Harry E. Vanden, and Glen David Kuecker

Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-first Century: Resistance, Power, and Democracy 
Edited by Richard Stahler-Sholk, Harry E. Vanden, and Glen David Kuecker

PURCHASE THIS EDITION

List Price: $38.99
ISBN: 978-1-4616-0190-6
Publication Date: April 2008 404pp

When elected civilians replaced military authoritarian regimes in Latin America in the 1980's, democracy seemed at hand. Yet those nominally democratic regimes implemented widely unpopular neo-liberal policies, opening the economies to global market forces with devastating impact on the poor. This clearly written and comprehensive text examines the uprising of politically and economically marginalized groups in Latin American societies. Specialists in a broad range of disciplines interpret the new wave of social movements, including movements in Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina, the Vía Campesina global peasant network, and Mesoamerican coalitions against regional free trade agreements. This volume assembles original research from a variety of case studies in a student – friendly format. Section introductions help students contextualize the essays, highlighting social movement origins, strategies, and outcomes. Thematic sections address historical context, political economy, community-building and consciousness, ethnicity and race, gender, movement strategies, and transnational organizing, making this book useful to anyone studying the wide range of social movements in Latin America.

Abstract, "Spirits, Bodies, and Structures: Religion, Politics, and Social Inequality in Latin America" by Jennifer Scheper Hughes and Maria das Dores Campos Machado

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Spirits, Bodies, and Structures: Religion, Politics, and Social Inequality in Latin America 
by Jennifer Scheper Hughes and Maria das Dores Campos Machado

Religion has been married to the colonial and imperial project in Latin America since the Spanish conquistadors planted the first cross on American soil. Even as the new European religion took root across the continent it became incarnate precisely in the large, impoverished, racially complex, subject, and politically marginalized population that the Catholic Church itself helped to create through the long colonial period. Religious institutions were intimately involved in producing and then maintaining structures of social inequality from the very “invention” of Latin America: thus was the vein opened. At the same time, just as religion was essential to colonial processes, it has been, inevitably, part of anticolonial and decolonializing movements and struggles. This issue returns again to the theme of religion and social inequality and the social movements (religiously motivated and otherwise) that seek to address religions’ ambivalent legacy across the continent. The election of the Argentine Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the first Latin American pope brings global attention to the complexity of the Latin American religious landscape as the religious context that shapes his agenda. Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) has made the problem of inequality central to his papacy, decrying the “unfettered market” and the resulting global “economy of exclusion.” Not only did he speak on the evils of capitalism before a joint session of the U.S. Congress but he garnered international media and public attention in April 2014 when he famously tweeted “Inequality is the root of social evil.” It would appear that Rome itself now calls for attention to the problem of inequality.

Abstract, "Public Policy and Religious Diversity: Interreligious Spaces in Two Hospitals in a Brazilian Capital City" by Emerson Giumbelli

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Public Policy and Religious Diversity: Interreligious Spaces in Two Hospitals in a Brazilian Capital City 
by Emerson Giumbelli

Recently in Brazil, diversity has become a guiding principle in formulating public policy, and “interreligious spaces” have been established in public hospitals for the use of religious groups of various kinds. An examination of the use of these spaces in two major public hospitals in Porto Alegre makes it clear that religious diversity has fundamental political dimensions involving the representation and recognition of social groups and that a commitment to religious pluralism does not rule out other hegemonies.

Book, "Latin America's Radical Left. Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century" Edited by Steve Ellner

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Book:  "Latin America's Radical Left. Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century"
Edited By Steve Ellner. Foreward by William I. Robinson

Abstract, "The Antidote to Wall Street?: Cultural and Economic Mobilizations of Afro-Cuban Religions" by Jalane D. Schmidt

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The Antidote to Wall Street?: Cultural and Economic Mobilizations of Afro-Cuban Religions 
by Jalane D. Schmidt

When revolutionary Cuba’s governmental cultural policy apparatus cast Afro-Cuban religions as “folklore,” certain religious forms, especially Santería, gained visibility in scholarly investigations, publications, documentary films, and state-sponsored cultural programming. Since the 1990s these discursive treatments of Santería have been monetized by the Cuban tourism industry and state-owned manufacturers and repackaged as merchandise that garners the attention and revenues of Cuban consumers and international visitors. This “ethno-business” produces a paradox: Afro-Cuban popular religions—long admired by the nation’s intellectual and artistic avant-garde as subaltern cultural rebuttals of dominant Cuban bourgeois opinion and U.S. economic pressures alike—are now promoted and consumed in a manner that conforms to neoliberal logic. The Cuban state confronts the challenges of late socialism with the methods of late capitalism. To some extent, the commodification of Afro-Cuban religions acts to fortify and extend revolutionary cultural policy.

Book, "Gender, Body, and Medicine in Urban Ecuador: Ethnographic Explorations of Women’s Embodiment" by Erynn Masi de Casanova

Gender, Body, and Medicine in Urban Ecuador. Ethnographic Explorations of Women’s Embodiment 
by Erynn Masi de Casanova

Book Reviews of:
Casandra Paola Herrera Caicedo Cuerpos en re-construcción: El consumo de cirugía estética en la ciudad de Ambato. Quito: FLACSO Ecuador, 2012.
Elizabeth F. S. Roberts God’s Laboratory: Assisted Reproduction in the Andes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
Ann Miles Living with Lupus: Women and Chronic Illness in Ecuador. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. London and New York: Zed Books, 2013.

Abstract, "Strategies of Self-Proclaimed Pro-Life Groups in Argentina: Effect of New Religious Actors on Sexual Policies" by José Manuel Morán Faúndes and María Angélica Peñas Defago

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Strategies of Self-Proclaimed Pro-Life Groups in Argentina: Effect of New Religious Actors on Sexual Policies 
by José Manuel Morán Faúndes and María Angélica Peñas Defago

Over the past few decades political processes recognizing and broadening sexual and reproductive rights have produced a reaction from conservative sectors seeking to block those gains. Although the Catholic Church hierarchy and some Evangelical churches have led the opposition to these rights, various sectors of civil society have begun to foment resistance to pluralist sexual politics. In Argentina self-proclaimed pro-life nongovernmental organizations have become important in the local context, using channels legitimized by contemporary democracy. While they initially devoted themselves primarily to the issue of abortion through activities associated with assistencialism and cultural impact, their actions since the 1990s have diversified, entering into the politico-institutional field and aiming at other issues associated with the country’s sexual policy. The movement and religion overlap at many levels and are separate in others. The complexity of the relationship between them requires rethinking of the normative frameworks through which progress on sexual and reproductive rights in Latin America is usually theorized. The separation of religion and politics under the paradigm of laicism can be insufficient to guarantee sexual pluralism in our societies.

Abstract, "Religion and Politics in Argentina: Religious Influence on Legislative Decisions on Sexual and Reproductive Rights" by Juan Cruz Esquivel

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Religion and Politics in Argentina: Religious Influence on Legislative Decisions on Sexual and Reproductive Rights 
by Juan Cruz Esquivel

The interactions between the state and religious institutions in Argentina are expressed on the municipal, provincial, and national levels, in the sphere of legislation and public policy, and in a wide range of undefined informal relationships. Politics and religion have historically been intertwined, and their relationship can be described as subsidiary laicism, in which the recognition of civil rights coexists with significant intervention of the Church in the implementation of public policy and in which state support of religion at an intermediate level is considered legitimate. Religious institutions and convictions influence votes in the Congress on laws expanding sexual and reproductive rights, and under such influence provincial and municipal governments delay the implementation of those laws.

Book, "Mexico's Economic Dilemma: The Developmental Failure of Neoliberalism" By James M. Cypher and Raúl Delgado Wise

::::::Book Review::::::

Mexico’s Economic Dilemma: The Developmental Failure of Neoliberalism 
by James M. Cypher and Raúl Delgado Wise

PURCHASE THIS ISSUE 
List Price: $70.00
ISBN: 978-0-7425-5661-4
Publication Date: June 2010 226pp

Abstract, "Minoritization and Pluralization: What Is the “People” That Pentecostal Politicization Is Building?" by Joanildo A. Burity

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Minoritization and Pluralization: What Is the “People” That Pentecostal Politicization Is Building? 
by Joanildo A. Burity

The emergence of Pentecostalism on the Brazilian scene has raised new questions about the way religion relates to the definition of a “people,” how religious minorities can be politically and legally integrated into the mainstream of national identity, and to what degree the state-religion relation is constitutive of society in a context of increasing sociocultural, religious, and political pluralization. The argument draws on the concept of minoritization proposed by William Connolly, against the background of Laclau’s problematic of the formation of a people as a hegemonic actor. An analysis of Pentecostal discourse on “the public” and “the people” reveals that Pentecostalism minoritized itself in response to perceived exclusion and this accentuated pluralization within it. An unintended effect of this logic was the fluidity of the boundary between sacred and profane, religious and secular. In a context of growing cultural, social, and political pluralization, these discursive practices have the potential to lead either to the aggiornamento of Pentecostalism or to the regressive closing of a populist right-wing discourse.

Book, "Neighborly Adversaries Readings in U.S.–Latin American Relations Edited" By Michael J. Larosa, and Frank O. Mora

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Book:  "Neighborly Adversaries Readings in U.S.–Latin American Relations"

Edited By Michael J. Larosa, and Frank O. Mora

Abstract, "Political Participation of Pentecostal Minorities in Chile, 1937–1989" by Miguel Ángel Mansilla and Luis Alberto Orellana

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Political Participation of Pentecostal Minorities in Chile, 1937–1989 
by Miguel Ángel Mansilla and Luis Alberto Orellana

Chilean Pentecostals have been described as passive and politically conformist in their relations with the military government. Instead, there is historical evidence that they have been an active and interactive minority. Pentecostal denominations have participated in political projects associated with leftist political parties. Pentecostal leaders have associated themselves with various political parties as a form of political struggle for recognition, and active Pentecostal organizations resisted and protested during the military government.

The HUDSON RIVER and the Highlands by Robert Glenn Ketchum

THE HUDSON RIVER AND THE HIGHLANDS 

by Robert Glenn Ketchum

This is the story of my first major commission and book, THE HUDSON RIVER AND THE HIGHLANDS (Aperture, 1985). In 1984, #StephenShore, #WilliamClift, and I received a 2-year commission from the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund to photograph the #HudsonRiverValley. This blog tells the tale of the book, with many photos not seen before. Enjoy!

Monday, May 2, 2016

THE HUDSON RIVER AND THE HIGHLANDS #187:

HUDSON RIVER #187:   I thought I would end this blog with this image because most of what you have seen in my posts of the #HudsonRiver have been the "lower" river, a much bigger, broader body of water than these two small streams. However, from small streams, greater rivers grow. The Hudson is born from a small, somewhat swampy pond in the higher elevations of #Mt.Marcy, at 5,344-feet, the tallest peak in #NewYorkState. #LakeTearOfTheClouds spawns a rivulet that is debatably acknowledged as the source of the Hudson, yet others argue the #OpalescentRiver is the true source. Regardless, before you lies their juncture. The Hudson comes in from the left, and the Opalescent from the right. A definitive view point, a beautiful fall day, the ruins of some old stone architecture, and not a #HudsonRiverSchool painter in sight. I hope you have enjoyed this body of my work. Although my Hudson River blog is ending, I am using my blogs as my autobiography, so we are starting a new post which I hope you will follow: THE HIGHER YOU GET, THE HIGHER YOU GET - Sun Valley and the Decker Flat Climbing and Frisbee Club.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2016, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd @Wallacefdn @Aperturefnd @PentaxOnline

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