Abstract, Rural Brazil during the Lula Administrations: Agreements with Agribusiness and Disputes in Agrarian Policies

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Rural Brazil during the Lula Administrations: Agreements with Agribusiness and Disputes in Agrarian Policies

by Sérgio Sauer

President Lula’s two terms were maintained—and President Dilma Rousseff was elected—by a broad alliance that included backward sectors of the agrarian ruling class. This elite’s influence extended to the cabinet, and it partially ensured support of the rural caucus and agribusiness but prevented government action on land policies from producing more significant advances. The Workers’ Party administrations were marked by mistrust of the agrarian elite because Lula—and also Dilma—maintained a contradictory but friendly relationship with the agrarian social movements. Coupled with economic concessions and incentives granted to agribusiness, this alliance was critical in neutralizing and derailing structural land policies such as the expansion of land expropriation and settling landless families, resulting in an increase in monocropping and economic dependence on the export of raw materials. Such alliances did not prevent the agrarian elite from supporting the removal of President Dilma and allying themselves with the new government, demanding the elimination of the Ministry of Agrarian Development and openly denying land rights to indigenous people and traditional communities.

Abstract, Part-Time Miners: Labor Segmentation and Collective Action in the Peruvian Mining Industry

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Part-Time Miners: Labor Segmentation and Collective Action in the Peruvian Mining Industry
by Omar Manky


Over the past two decades, besides the transformation of the organizational structure of the mining industry, there has been a shift in the spatial organization of production, expressed by the replacement of mining towns with mining hotels. Two case studies in Peru show that these changes have produced new forms of labor segmentation affecting workers’ capacity to mobilize by turning those who are directly employed by the company into a minority. While subcontracted miners have managed to overcome organizational segmentation by organizing across companies, the spatial segmentation of the mining hotel model has made local coordination difficult. Workers are not, however, necessarily defeated, as greater spatial mobility may offer possibilities of networking with new actors.

Abstract, Pensions, Peasants, and the Informal Economy: Family and Livelihood in Contemporary Peru

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Pensions, Peasants, and the Informal Economy: Family and Livelihood in Contemporary Peru
by Susan Vincent


A Peruvian case study explores how urban informal workers negotiate their livelihoods as they age, highlighting reciprocity among urban informal workers, retired formal sector workers, and peasants in a pattern of rural-urban circular migration. Labor-intensive mining in the twentieth century created a proletarian workforce that included men from the peasant community of Allpachico. Their wages became an anchor for kin-linked clusters of households. Now, despite an economic boom, the lack of formal jobs forces younger Allpachiqueños to undertake precarious and informal work. Resource-sector-funded state social spending, such as through state-administered pensions for retired workers and the elderly poor, has replaced wages as a stable source of cash. This state mediation between the technology-intensive resource sector and citizens elicits suspicion and uncertainty. Dispossessed of the right to work and subjected to conditions of eligibility for social programs, urban informal workers continue to rely on kin and community.

Abstract, Pensions, Peasants, and the Informal Economy: Family and Livelihood in Contemporary Peru

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Pensions, Peasants, and the Informal Economy: Family and Livelihood in Contemporary Peru
by Susan Vincent


A Peruvian case study explores how urban informal workers negotiate their livelihoods as they age, highlighting reciprocity among urban informal workers, retired formal sector workers, and peasants in a pattern of rural-urban circular migration. Labor-intensive mining in the twentieth century created a proletarian workforce that included men from the peasant community of Allpachico. Their wages became an anchor for kin-linked clusters of households. Now, despite an economic boom, the lack of formal jobs forces younger Allpachiqueños to undertake precarious and informal work. Resource-sector-funded state social spending, such as through state-administered pensions for retired workers and the elderly poor, has replaced wages as a stable source of cash. This state mediation between the technology-intensive resource sector and citizens elicits suspicion and uncertainty. Dispossessed of the right to work and subjected to conditions of eligibility for social programs, urban informal workers continue to rely on kin and community.

Book, "Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador’s Modern Indigenous Movements" by Marc Becker

Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador’s Modern Indigenous Movements by Marc Becker

In June 1990, Indigenous peoples shocked Ecuadorian elites with a powerful uprising that paralyzed the country for a week. Militants insisted that the government address Indigenous demands for land ownership, education, and economic development. This uprising was a milestone in the history of Ecuador’s social justice movements, and it inspired popular organizing efforts across Latin America. While the insurrection seemed to come out of nowhere, Marc Becker demonstrates that it emerged out of years of organizing and developing strategies to advance Indigenous rights. In this richly documented account, he chronicles a long history of Indigenous political activism in Ecuador, from the creation of the first local agricultural syndicates in the 1920s through the galvanizing protests of 1990. In so doing, he reveals the central role of women in Indigenous movements and the history of productive collaborations between rural Indigenous activists and urban leftist intellectuals.