Gender, Race, and Political Representation in Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Piscopo ◽  
Kristin N. Wylie
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Women Candidates ◽  
Action Measures ◽  
National Legislatures

Women, indigenous peoples, and Afro-descendant populations remain underrepresented in the national legislatures of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Latin America. The descriptive (or numeric) representation of marginalized groups in national legislatures matters because legislatures make policy, check the president’s authority, and communicate who has full membership in the body politic. The inclusion of women, indigenous peoples, and Afro-descendants in legislatures sends information about the overall depth and quality of the democratic regime. Most legislatures have become more representative of women, primarily due to affirmative action measures designed to raise descriptive representation. As of October 15, 2019, every Latin American country except Guatemala and Venezuela had a statutory quota law for women candidates, resulting in women holding nearly 30% of seats in the region’s legislatures. However, such gains have not come without costs, including rising violence against women candidates and elected officials. Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela also use affirmative action to incorporate indigenous peoples into the national legislature, using reserved seats. However, reserved seats typically elect lower proportions of indigenous peoples relative to their population percentage. Afro-descendants face more barriers, as they must largely win legislative elections without the benefit of affirmative action. Afro-descendants remain excluded from formal politics even in Brazil, where the majority of the population self-identifies as black or brown. Indigenous and Afro-descendant women face barriers that emerge from both their gender and their race/ethnicity.

Indigenous Political Representation in Latin America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Rice
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Indigenous Movements

Indigenous peoples have become important social and political actors in contemporary Latin America. The politicization of ethnic identities in the region has divided analysts into those who view it as a threat to democratic stability versus those who welcome it as an opportunity to improve the quality of democracy. Throughout much of Latin America’s history, Indigenous peoples’ demands have been oppressed, ignored, and silenced. Latin American states did not just exclude Indigenous peoples’ interests; they were built in opposition to or even against them. The shift to democracy in the 1980s presented Indigenous groups with a dilemma: to participate in elections and submit themselves to the rules of a largely alien political system that had long served as an instrument of their domination or seek a measure of representation through social movements while putting pressure on the political system from the outside. In a handful of countries, most notably Bolivia and Ecuador, Indigenous movements have successfully overcome this tension by forming their own political parties and contesting elections on their own terms. The emergence of Indigenous peoples’ movements and parties has opened up new spaces for collective action and transformed the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state. Indigenous movements have reinvigorated Latin America’s democracies. The political exclusion of Indigenous peoples, especially in countries with substantial Indigenous populations, has undoubtedly contributed to the weakness of party systems and the lack of accountability, representation, and responsiveness of democracies in the region. In Bolivia, the election of the country’s first Indigenous president, Evo Morales (2006–present) of the Movement toward Socialism (MAS) party, has resulted in new forms of political participation that are, at least in part, inspired by Indigenous traditions. A principal consequence of the broadening of the democratic process is that Indigenous activists are no longer forced to choose between party politics and social movements. Instead, participatory mechanisms allow civil society actors and their organizations to increasingly become a part of the state. New forms of civil society participation such as Indigenous self-rule broaden and deepen democracy by making it more inclusive and government more responsive and representative. Indigenous political representation is democratizing democracy in the region by pushing the limits of representative democracy in some of the most challenging socio-economic and institutional environments.

Populism and Political Parties

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth M. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Party ◽  
Theoretical Integration

Populism and party politics are often studied separately, yet neither can be understood in isolation from the other. Any explanation for the rise of populism must inevitably address the deficiencies of party-based modes of political representation for which populism claims to offer a corrective. Indeed, populism thrives where mainstream parties are in crisis, or at least where they exclude or ignore major currents of opinion in the body politic. The study of populism, therefore, must be situated in the larger domain of political representation, and it is necessarily intertwined with the study of party politics. To enhance this theoretical integration, this chapter begins with an analysis of the representational deficiencies that are conducive to the rise of populist challengers, giving special attention to the recent European and Latin American experiences. It then explores the construction of populist parties and their transformative effects on national party systems.

scholarly journals WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION AND DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION IN LATIN AMERICA

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (19) ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Leslie Schwindt-Bayer
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
National Level ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Legislative Politics ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
National Legislatures ◽  
Latin American Countries

A consolidated representative democracy requires representation of all citizens—including women. Yet, most Latin American countries fall short of gender equality in legislative representation at the national level. In this paper, I analyze women’s representation in Latin America asking three questions:  What does women’s representation in Latin America look like? Why does it look that way? And, what are the consequences of women’s representation for legislative politics and democracy in Latin America? I answer these questions drawing on recent research conducted on women’s representation and present original data from my research on women’s representation in Latin America. I conclude that women’s representation in national legislatures has increased over time in just about every country but to varying degrees. Women’s representation today continues to vary widely across the region. The primary explanation for this is the nature of electoral institutions in Latin American countries—specifically, the magnitude of electoral districts, gender quota laws, party control over their ballots. The benefits of including women in national legislatures are myriad but include most importantly greater attention to women’s issues in the legislative arena. Yet, challenges still persist for women in political office, specifically, their continued lack of access to real political power. These obstacles must be addressed for women to attain full political representation in Latin American democracies, and thus, for Latin American democracies to be fully consolidated.

An Introduction to Gender and Representation in Latin America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
And Gender

In this introductory chapter of Gender and Representation in Latin America, Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer argues that gender inequality in political representation in Latin America is rooted in institutions and the democratic challenges and political crises facing Latin American countries. She situates the book in two important literatures—one on Latin American politics and democratic institutions, the other on gender and politics—and then explains how the book will explore the ways that institutions and democratic challenges and political crises moderate women’s representation and gender inequality. She introduces the book’s framework of analyzing the causes and consequences of women’s representation, overviews the organization of the volume, and summarizes the main arguments of the chapters.

scholarly journals Pueblos originários y educación: De la colonialidad a las experiências decoloniales en Brasil y Chile

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Juan Guillermo Mansilla ◽  
José Rubens Lima Jardilino
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Return Of Results ◽  
Documentary Analysis ◽  
Abstract Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Written Sources

This article on the education of indigenous peoples in Latin America is a synthesis of an approximation of studies on the history of Education of indigenous peoples (schooling), taking Brazil and Chile as a case study. It represents an effort of reflection of two researchers of the History of Latin American Education Society (SHELA), who have been studying Indigenous Education or Indigenous School Education in Chile and Brazil, from the theoretical perspective of “coloniality and decoloniality” of indigenous peoples in Latin America. The research is based on a comprehensive-interpretative paradigm, whose method is linked to the type of qualitative historiographic descriptive research considering primary and secondary written sources, complemented with visual data (photographs). The documentary analysis was made from material based on primary written sources, secondary and unobtrusive personal documents. The study included three distinct phases in the process of producing results: 1) a critical review of the data of our previous research, in addition to the bibliographic review of research results regarding the presence of the school in other indigenous cultures of the Americas; 2) capturing and processing of new data; and 3) validation and return of results with the research participants. Content analysis was carried out in order to reveal nuclei of central abstract knowledge, endowed with meaning and significance from the perspective of the producers of the discourse, as well as knowledge expressed concretely in the texts, including their latent contents.

Neither Russia nor the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth S. Manley
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equity ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Foreign Intervention ◽  
The Face ◽  
Dominican Women ◽  
Social Upheaval

Chapter 4 addresses three inter-related strategies employed by women following the demise of the Trujillato to reconstruct the body politic in the face of drastic political transition, a second U.S. occupation, and general social upheaval. First, Dominican women again called on the rhetoric of motherhood and maternalism in support of a return to domestic tranquility and for a nation free of dictatorial politics and foreign meddling. Second, political participation by women served to demonstrate a re-envisioning of the nature of Dominican politics through their burgeoning support of full gendered equality. Third, as now long-term members of a number of inter-American organizations, women called for continental solidarity to return sovereignty to Latin American nations plagued by foreign intervention, particularly their own. These strategies demonstrate both the potential for maternal politics as a form of national healing as well is its limitations for creating true gender equity.

scholarly journals When the Body Speaks (to) the Political: Feminist Activism in Latin America and the Quest for Alternative Democratic Futures

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natália Maria Félix de Souza
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Political Function ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Feminist Movements

Abstract The article claims that the feminist movements emerging in the context of contemporary Latin American political struggles – such as Ni Una Menos – allow for a re-conceptualisation of the political, along with its subjects and objects. The uniqueness of these movements is predicated on the way they managed to link the ordinary killings of women’s bodies to the extraordinary alliances between different social movements. A closer inspection into these ongoing experiences that mobilise different, rhizomatic arenas of political entanglements – such as the internet and the streets – allows us to see how Latin American feminist attachments and movements can redefine democratic practices and build different forms of community. By resisting what is perceived as ‘a war against women in Latin America,’ these movements allow for understanding the operation of a gendered necropolitics, which ties women’s death with the ultimate functioning of modern politics and modern subjectivities. In doing so, they politicise not only the lives (and therefore voices) of women who are struggling in/for the political, but also the deaths (and therefore silences) on which the political has been built. Furthermore, by politicising the role of the body in the political and ethical arena, these movements open our political imaginaries to the possibilities of new attachments, filiations and articulations that are not subsumed under abstract universal categories and values, nor limited to identitarian and thus legalistic affirmations of the political. Following these arguments, I argue that contemporary feminist articulations in Latin America productively dispute the validity of the abstract, universal, modern ‘human’ to think alternative political futures. By politicising materiality and embodiment alongside language and discourse as productive of political ontologies, feminists open the space for reclaiming the political function of the female body.

Economic Vulnerability and Partisanship in Latin America

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (03) ◽  
pp. 80-103
Author(s):  
Melina Altamirano
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Informal Economy ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Economic Vulnerability ◽  
Social Security Benefits ◽  
Cross National

ABSTRACTA significant proportion of the population in Latin America depends on the informal economy and lacks adequate protection against a variety of economic risks. This article suggests that economic vulnerability affects the way individuals relate to political parties. Given the truncated structure of welfare states in the region, citizens in the informal sector receive lower levels of social security benefits and face higher economic uncertainty. This vulnerability makes it difficult for voters to establish strong programmatic linkages with political parties because partisan platforms and policies do not necessarily represent their interests and needs. Using cross-national microlevel data, this study shows that individuals living in informality are skeptical about state social policy efforts and exhibit weaker partisan attachments. The findings suggest that effective political representation of disadvantaged groups remains a challenge in Latin American democracies.

scholarly journals Mecanismos de representación política en las democracias latinoamericanas: las cuotas electorales de género

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Roberto Álvarez San Martín
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Costa Rica ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Participation Of Women ◽  
Las Mujeres ◽  
America Latina

Resumen: A partir de cifras y hechos planteados por PNUD, CEPAL, FLACSO Chile e INSTRAW sobre la participación política de las mujeres, se realiza una revisión de los debates, aplicaciones y efectos de las cuotas electorales de género en América latina. Se toman en cuenta las diferentes barreras que deben sortear las mujeres en la arena política, y se analizan la definición, alcances y argumentos en pro y en contra de las cuotas electorales de género. Se analiza este mecanismo a partir de los casos de Argentina y Costa Rica, los más exitosos en términos de resultados; mientras México evidencia el impacto incremental de las cuotas en la representación femenina, Perú pone en evidencia la influencia de la fuerte tradición presidencialista. Brasil es un caso paradigmático, que representaría el fracaso de las cuotas de género. Se concluye que, salvo Argentina, las otras democracias sólo han podido acelerar el proceso de inclusión real de mujeres en los procesos eleccionarios, pero sin que los resultados sean realmente compatibles con lo esperado. Las mujeres latinoamericanas, con cuotas o sin ellas, siguen estando sub-representadas en los espacios de participación política.Palabras clave: Participación política femenina, cuotas electorales de género, mecanismos de representación política.Abstract: On the basis of data and facts put forth by UN, CEPAL, FLACSO Chile e INSTRAW about the political participation of women, this article analyzes the debates about the application and effects of electoral gender quotas in Latin America. The barriers to women’s political participation are taken into account, analyzing the definition, reach and arguments for and against gender quotas. The cases of Argentina and Costa Rica, the most successful in results, are analyzed. While Mexico shows the increased impact of quotas, Peru makes evident the influence of the strong presidential tradition. Brazil is a paradigmatic case, representing the failure of gender quotes. In conclusion, save for Argentina, other democracies have only accelerated the process of women’s inclusion in election processes, but without results compatible with expectations. Latin American women, with out without quotas, are underrepresented in the spaces of political participation.Key words: feminine political participation, electoral gender quotas, mechanisms of political representation.

scholarly journals Cuerpos políticos y políticas sobre el cuerpo en las dictaduras latinoamericanas

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleder Piñeiro Aguiar
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Scientific Production ◽  
The Body ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
America Latina ◽  
América Del Sur

Por medio del análisis de contenido se propone relacionar la teorización que desde diversas fuentes académicas se ha venido realizando en torno al cuerpo con momentos históricos del pasado reciente en Latinoamérica, en concreto en periodo dictatoriales. Se propone una revisión de la tortura y la desaparición como elementos centrales en la construcción nacional y en la formación capitalista; así como el uso y producción de discursos en torno al cuerpo como resistencias frente al orden estatal que ha venido imponiendo la violencia en el contexto de diferentes dictaduras en países de América del Sur. Rastrearemos la producción científica para entender el cuerpo humano como algo social y simbólicamente construido y expondremos mediante un recorrido histórico ciertos estudios de caso. En dichos casos el ejercicio de suplicios, malos tratos y vejaciones han servido para generar dinámicas de poder-resistencia en torno a la persona, no vista desde un punto de vista individual o psicológico sino social, relacional  y en construcción.  Palabras clave: tortura, resistencia, violencia, neoliberalismo, América Latina   Political and politicians bodies in the Latin American dictatorships Abstract Through content analysis it is proposed relate theorizing from various academic sources has been carried around the body with historical moments of the recent past in Latin America, particularly in dictatorial period. A review of torture and disappearance as central elements in national construction and the  capitalist formation is proposed; and the use and production of speeches around the body as resistance against the state order that has been imposed violence in the context of different dictatorships in countries in South America. We will track the scientific production to understand the human body as social and symbolically constructed and will discuss a historical journey through some case studies. In such cases the exercise of torture, ill-treatment and harassment have served to generate power dynamics-resistance around the person, not viewed from an individual or psychological but social, relational and construction sight.  Keywords: torture, resistance, violence, neoliberalism, Latin America  

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