scholarly journals Hidden in Plain Sight: Dominion Theology, Spiritual Warfare, and Violence in Latin America

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 648
Author(s):  
Virginia Garrard

Historically, Protestant churches in Latin America regarded the ‘world’ as a realm of sin and impurity. The proper focus of the church, they believed, was on salvation, and building a community of the saved. In recent years, this has begun to change, as evangelicals have entered the political arena in force. Many are motivated by ‘Dominion theology’, a long hidden movement that works to bring a network of conservative Christians to political power in order to affect ‘dominion’ over the earth to hasten the Kingdom of God. Although its origins are in the United States, this is a global movement, hidden in plain sight. The movement has shown strength and drawn notable political allies all across Latin America, with notable cases in Central America and Brazil. This remains a minority and a much-contested movement in Latin American Protestantism, but its advocates are working hard to gain positions of influence.

Author(s):  
Alderí Souza De Matos

Latin America is a significant part of the so-called two-thirds world. During the twentieth century, the region witnessed the vigorous growth of the Protestant churches. One of them is the Presbyterian communion, whose first congregations were established in the 1850s. For more than a century, Presbyterian denominations in the United States and Scotland made an enormous investment in the evangelization of Latin America. Nevertheless, despite their significant presence in Mexico and Brazil, Presbyterian churches represent a small percentage of the region’s total Protestant constituency. They have, however, made contributions to society that are out of proportion to their numbers. Besides their important spiritual and ethical emphases, they have impacted countless individuals, families, and communities through their educational and medical efforts. Their greatest challenge today is to establish clear priorities and devote their energies to strengthening Presbyterian work in the countries they have already reached and implanting their faith in the areas where it is absent. Latin American Presbyterians are convinced that the Reformed faith can greatly benefit their part of the world.


Author(s):  
Amy C. Offner

In the years after 1945, a flood of U.S. advisors swept into Latin America with dreams of building a new economic order and lifting the Third World out of poverty. These businessmen, economists, community workers, and architects went south with the gospel of the New Deal on their lips, but Latin American realities soon revealed unexpected possibilities within the New Deal itself. In Colombia, Latin Americans and U.S. advisors ended up decentralizing the state, privatizing public functions, and launching austere social welfare programs. By the 1960s, they had remade the country's housing projects, river valleys, and universities. They had also generated new lessons for the United States itself. When the Johnson administration launched the War on Poverty, U.S. social movements, business associations, and government agencies all promised to repatriate the lessons of development, and they did so by multiplying the uses of austerity and for-profit contracting within their own welfare state. A decade later, ascendant right-wing movements seeking to dismantle the midcentury state did not need to reach for entirely new ideas: they redeployed policies already at hand. This book brings readers to Colombia and back, showing the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of midcentury statebuilding. The untold story of how the road from the New Deal to the Great Society ran through Latin America, the book also offers a surprising new account of the origins of neoliberalism.


Author(s):  
Cynthia McClintock

During Latin America’s third democratic wave, a majority of countries adopted a runoff rule for the election of the president. This book is the first rigorous assessment of the implications of runoff versus plurality for democracy in the region. Despite previous scholarly skepticism about runoff, it has been positive for Latin America, and could be for the United States also. Primarily through qualitative analysis for each Latin American country, I explore why runoff is superior to plurality. Runoff opens the political arena to new parties but at the same time ensures that the president does not suffer a legitimacy deficit and is not at an ideological extreme. By contrast, in a region in which undemocratic political parties are common, the continuation of these parties is abetted by plurality; political exclusion provoked disillusionment and facilitated the emergence of presidents at ideological extremes. In regression analysis, runoff was statistically significant to superior levels of democracy. Between 1990 and 2016, Freedom House and Varieties of Democracy scores plummeted in countries with plurality but improved in countries with runoff. Plurality advocates’ primary concern is the larger number of political parties under runoff. Although a larger number of parties was not significant to inferior levels of democracy, a plethora of parties is problematic, leading to a paucity of legislative majorities and inchoate parties. To ameliorate the problem, I recommend not reductions in the 50% threshold but the scheduling of the legislative election after the first round or thresholds for entry into the legislature.


1926 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-30
Author(s):  
Percy Alvin Martin

To students of international relations it has become almost a commonplace that among the most significant and permanent results of the World War has been the changed international status of the republics of Latin America. As a result of the war and post-war developments in these states, the traditional New World isolation in South America, as well as in North America, is a thing of the past. To our leading sister republics is no longer applicable the half-contemptuous phrase, current in the far-off days before 1914, that Latin America stands on the margin of international life. The new place in the comity of nations won by a number of these states is evidenced—to take one of the most obvious examples—by the raising of the legations of certain non-American powers to the rank of embassies, either during or immediately after the war. In the case of Brazil, for instance, where prior to 1914 only the United States maintained an ambassador, at the present time Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, and Japan maintain diplomatic representatives of this rank.Yet all things considered one of the most fruitful developments in the domain of international relations has been the share taken by our southern neighbors in the work of the League of Nations. All of the Latin American republics which severed relations with Germany or declared war against that country were entitled to participate in the Peace Conference. As a consequence, eleven of these states affixed their signatures to the Treaty of Versailles, an action subsequently ratified in all cases except Ecuador.


1996 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 878-889 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry W. Knudson

The issue of professionalization of journalism and therefore of how to achieve professional standards has been of concern to journalists and to the general public for many years.1 In Latin America, one attempt at professionalization - the development of the colegio - has garnered some praise and has raised concerns about government control. Probably no issue in recent years concerning the Latin American press has aroused greater opposition or misunderstanding in the United States than the system whereby anyone must have a university degree in journalism and/or be a member of a colegio - a professional association - in order to practice journalism. Despite recent Supreme Court decisions in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica against obligatory licensing by their colegios of journalists, the institution is gaining headway in Latin America as a whole. Opponents maintain that the colegio system imperils freedom of the press. But others assert it raises professional standards and increases salaries. The author of this study notes that colegios frequently uphold freedom of expression under dictatorial or military regimes, and that opposition by publishers to colegios seems to be based on economic rather than “free press” grounds.


Author(s):  
E. Dabagyan

The article deals with a number of problems associated with the growing presence of China in the Latin American continent. The author emphasizes that mutual interest is based on economic factors. In particular, the rapidly developing Chinese economy needs more raw materials and agricultural products, which are available in abundance in Latin America. At the same time, the countries of the continent are interested in freeing from orientation solely to the United States and in a diversification of external relations. The present bilateral and multilateral agreements and treaties between China and Latin America showed a strengthening of trade and economic cooperation. But Beijing's strategy is based on a model of exchange of raw materials to finished products. This causes some resentment on the part of Latin American experts and entrepreneurs.


1977 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milton Silverman

A survey was conducted on the promotion of 28 prescription drugs in the form of 40 different products marketed in the United States and Latin America by 23 multinational pharmaceutical companies. Striking differences were found in the manner in which the identical drug, marketed by the identical company or its foreign affiliate, was described to physicians in the United States and to physicians in Latin America. In the United States, the listed indications were usually few in number, while the contraindications, warnings, and potential adverse reactions were given in extensive detail. In Latin America, the listed indications were far more numerous, while the hazards were usually minimized, glossed over, or totally ignored. The differences were not simply between the United States on the one hand and all the Latin American countries on the other. There were substantial differences within Latin America, with the same global company telling one story in Mexico, another in Central America, a third in Ecuador and Colombia, and yet another in Brazil. The companies have sought to defend these practices by contending that they are not breaking any Latin American laws. In some countries, however, such promotion is in clear violation of the law. The corporate ethics and social responsibilities concerned here call for examination and action.


2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosa E. Ficek

This article discusses the planning and construction of the Pan-American Highway by focusing on interactions among engineers, government officials, manufacturers, auto enthusiasts, and road promoters from the United States and Latin America. It considers how the Pan-American Highway was made by projects to extend U.S. influence in Latin America but also by Latin American nationalist and regionalist projects that put forward alternative ideas about social and cultural difference—and cooperation—across the Americas. The transnational negotiations that shaped the Pan-American Highway show how roads, as they bring people and places into contact with each other, mobilize diverse actors and projects that can transform the geography and meaning of these technologies.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. e54056 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Jaime Miranda ◽  
Victor M. Herrera ◽  
Julio A. Chirinos ◽  
Luis F. Gómez ◽  
Pablo Perel ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 542-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Edeza ◽  
Omar Galarraga ◽  
David Novak ◽  
Kenneth Mayer ◽  
Joshua Rosenberger ◽  
...  

In Latin America, men who have sex with men (MSM) remain disproportionately impacted by HIV. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is an effective HIV prevention tool and has been FDA approved in the United States since 2012, but no Latin American state, with the recent exception of Brazil, has implemented PrEP guidelines. We carried out a multinational online survey of MSM in Latin America (n = 22698) in 2012 to assess whether MSM at highest risk of HIV acquisition (i.e., those engaging in condomless anal sex [CAS; n = 2606] and transactional sex [n = 1488]) had higher levels of awareness of PrEP, PrEP use and interest in participating in a PrEP trial. After adjusting for demographic and psychosocial characteristics including depressive symptoms, hazardous alcohol use, childhood sexual abuse, and sexual compulsivity, transactional sex and CAS were associated with increased PrEP awareness (aOR = 1.29, 95% CI: 1.05–1.59, p < .001 and aOR = 1.22, 95% CI: 1.11–1.34, p < .001, respectively) and PrEP trial interest (aOR = 1.45, 95% CI: 1.25–1.71, p < .001 and aOR = 1.74, 95% CI: 1.57–1.95, p < .001, respectively). Findings demonstrate substantial awareness of and interest in PrEP among MSM with behavioral risk factors for HIV in Latin America, suggesting that this region is primed for PrEP implementation, which has been slow.


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