The book "Imaginarios ambiguos, realidades contradictorias. Conductas y representaciones de los negros y mulatos novohispanos, siglos XVI y XVII" by Úrsula Camba Ludlow is reviewed.
Since July 4, 1991, a new constitution has allowed Colombians to exercise their citizenship by displaying cultural diversity rather than by concealing it as required by the previous political charter. Paradoxically, invisibility continues not only to impede full ethnic inclusion of Afro-Colombians but to aggravate ethnic asymmetries that, in turn, erode nonviolent coexistence among the black and Indian people who have shared portions of the Baudo River valley (Department of Choco) for at least 150 years.
Countries in this region have been able to maintain good growth rates over recent years; however the outlook for inflation has worsened and the area's dependence on foreign borrowing has grown markedly. The ability of these countries to adjust in the future will depend critically on good economic management.
"A change in attitudes toward nature and "natural persons" during the 1920's-30's in the United States led in part to a revision in North American attitudes toward Latin Americans. Insofar as the peoples of Latin America, including Indians, blacks, women, children, and the poor, symbolized natural folk - that is, those individuals not participating in mainstream capitalist culture - they became the substance of a stereotype made popular by a countercultural revolution in the 1920's-30's." (author)
Hamburg, Germany: Institut fur Iberoamerika-Kunde (IIK), GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies/Leibniz-Institut fur Globale und Regionale Studien
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Most economies in Latin America and the Caribbean were supported primarily by exports in 2005, and economic growth, though slower than in 2004, was at more than 4 % and still above the average annual growth rate from 1996-2005. While slower but still relatively robust growth is anticipated for 2006, the outlook is not particularly favorable for approaching the remarkable growth in other developing nations and regions as serious economic risks threaten development.
For almost twenty years, Latin American and Caribbean "autonomous feminism", a small yet active movement, provokes debates and proposes important analysis which renew and deepen those proposed by dominant feminism. This movement, in which some indigenous and afrodescendant lesbian feminists play a very significant role, stems from a criticism of international institutions's role in the domestication of feminism (and especially the United Nations).
