Lecture slides 2023-4

Lecture slides 2022-3

CC seminar slides

Seminar questions:

• How democratic were the “transitions to democracy”?
• How did democratic governments address the legacy of military rule?
• What was the relationship between politics and economics?
• What role did civil society groups (women, the indigenous, black movements, church groups, landless workers) play in the process? Were there links/ conflicts between the activism of these different groups?

Required Reading: please choose at least ONE of the following four items, and come to class prepared to summarise it for others who have read different pieces:

• David Pion-Berlin, "Between Confrontation and Accommodation: military and Government Policy in Democratic Argentina," Journal of Latin American Studies, 23: 3 (Oct 1991), 543-571. [on how newly democratic governments dealt with the legacy of military rule]
• Weyland, Kurt, “Neoliberalism and Democracy in Latin America: A mixed record,” Latin American Politics and Society, 46:1, Spring 2004, pp. 135-58 [on the relationship between neoliberal economics and democracy]
• Benedita da Silva, Benedita da Silva: An Afro-Brazilian Woman’s Story of Politics and Love (1997), Introduction; chapter 5, "Feminism"; chapter 6, “Exploding the Myth of Racial Harmony” [please download the scans and then you can rotate them the right way around!]
• Primary sources: Landless Movement (MST), “The Reality of the Brazilian Countryside,” in The Brazil Reader, eds. Robert Levine and John Crocitti (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 264-7; and: choose articles and news on MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores sem Terra, Landless Workers Movement) website: [version in English] [on landless and peasant movements in Brazil and Latin America]

Further Reading

• Agier, Michel, "Racism, Culture and Black Identity in Brazil,” Bulletin of Latin American Research, Sept. 1995
• Eckstein, Susan, et. al eds. Power and Popular Protest : Latin American Social Movements. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
• Manuel Antonio Garreton M. “Human Rights in Processes of Democratisation.” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 26, no. 1, 1994, pp. 221–234.
• Garretón, Manuel Antonio, and Edward Newman (eds), Democracy in Latin America: (re)constructing political society (United Nations University, 2002)
• Jane S. Jaquette, ed. Feminist agendas and democracy in Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.
• Milanesio, Natalia. Destape: Sex, Democracy and Freedom in Post-Dictatorial Argentina. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019.
• Montero, Alfred, and David Samuels, eds. Decentralisation and Democracy in Latin America. University of Notre Dame Press, 2004.
• Guillermo O’Donnell et. al., eds. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1986.
• Hooker, Juliet, “Indigenous Inclusion/Black Exclusion: Race, Ethnicity and Multicultural Citizenship in Context.” Journal of Latin American Studies, 37:2, May 2005, pp. 285-310.
• Oxhorn, Philip. “Understanding Political Change after Authoritarian Rule: The Popular Sectors and Chile’s New Democratic Regime.” Journal of Latin American Studies, 26 (1994), 737-59.
• Peeler, John, Building Democracy in Latin America. Boulder, 2004.
• Stephen, Lynn, Women and Social Movements in Latin America: Power from Below. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997.
• Van Cott, Donna Lee. From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The Evolution of Ethnic Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Vergara-Camus, Leandro. “The Politics of the MST: Autonomous Rural Communities, the State, and Electoral Politics,” Latin American Perspectives, 36:4 (July 2009): 178-91.
• Wilde, Alexander. “Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile's Transition to Democracy.” Journal of Latin American Studies, 31:2, May 1999.

  • Miguel Teubal and Mariana Ortega Breña, “Agrarian reform and social movements in an age of globalisation: Latin America at the dawn of the twenty-first century,” Latin American Perspectives, 36:4 (July 2009): 9-20.