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Is Costa Rica Different?
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Recent Articles
Seeing Health Equity Through Homeless Eyes
It was at the end of 2022, during a school project led by the beloved teacher Aline Arruda, that we read the book “Blindness” by José Saramago.
The Magical Willy Chavarria
The first time I saw a fashion show by Willy Chavarria online, I cried for a day.
The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History
One afternoon in 2014, driving along a dirt road that snaked through countryside several hours outside of the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, I came across an ancient woman on foot, carrying a load of firewood on her back. I pulled up alongside her and asked her if she wanted a lift. She didn’t seem to comprehend at first, whereupon I explained that was offering her a ride to her destination. She smiled and shook her head. She would carry on walking, she said, but said that if I had some alms—she used that term, limosna, in Spanish—she’d accept them.
From Our Current Issue
Youth Unemployment Crisis in Costa Rica: A Call to Action
As a Costa Rican student at Harvard, I discovered an alarming situation back home when I returned to my country for winter break: youth unemployment.
Yes, Costa Rica is Different: A Successful Experience at Risk
Everyone knows her as “Doña Nena.” At 75 years old, she has been a leader for half a century in the community of Luzón, in Matina—one of the poorest counties in Costa Rica—on the Caribbean coast, 84 miles northeast of the capital: San José.
Voices of the Caribbean: Afro-Costa Ricans Move Towards Empowerment and Equality
Dawn begins to appear on the coast of Cocles in the Costa Rican Caribbean and the first rays of the sun reflect on the sea. With an invitation from the Brown Hudson family, local residents who are proud Afro-Caribbeans, I am on my way to a journey of discovery and connection
Spotlight
Perspectives in Times of Change
Check out these reflections on social, economic, cultural and political transformations in Latin America, the Caribbean and Latinx communities in the United States.
The DNC Misses a Beat: A Political History of Migration through Latinx Pop Songs
For three short days this past August, Chicago danced ‘til dawn at the Democratic National Convention, where Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were elected as the party’s 2024 Presidential ticket. It was not the first time that the Windy City had hosted the event, yet it was quite novel in one significant way: the music Democrats put front and center during their festivities.
Voices Across Borders: The Queer and In-Between Female Peruvian Writers
As an immigrant from Peru, I’ve often found myself dealing with many memories from the home country—as most immigrants do. My years as an undergraduate in Peru. My classes with the poet Giovanna Pollarolo and the scholars and feminists Susana Reisz and Francesca Denegri, and the things that I learned from them: “Literature and academic production made by women used words as a medium of liberation in response to a hetero-patriarchal society that controlled their bodies and voices.”
Motos
With his smile and twinkling eye, Rafael Sánchez embraced ideas, debating and tasting them like a connoisseur with fine wines. He would chuckle, too, not letting them take control. It is with his spirit of generous speculation that I wish to put forward some ideas about motorbikes in Global South, drawn from my experience in southwestern Colombia during which I have, in the past ten years, been overwhelmed by the massive increase in motos—and cellphones.
StudEnt Views
Gentrification in Puerto Rico: The Impact on Displacement and Local Livelihoods
Walking through the cobbled streets of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, I admired the colonial architecture, the ocean’s faint smell and the smell of alcapurrias, bacalaítos, and various other fried foods.
Into the Cloud Forest
“Mi estimado,” Wilder messaged me via WhatsApp a little before 9 PM. “Espérame en el portón para ir al frente a ver un caso. En 3 minutos llego.”
Reflections on Judicial Independence, the Colombian Constitutional Court
The Colombian Constitutional Court was created in 1991 as a body independent of the Supreme Court of Justice, tasked with the unique responsibility of judicial review.
Book ReviewS
A Review of The Brazil Chronicles
In the late 1940s, a young aspiring journalist Stephen G. Bloom was having trouble finding work at any stateside newspaper. After a stint at his college newspaper, the University of California Daily Californian, Bloom worked as a waiter at a Berkeley eatery, got arrested in Canada with his girlfriend for trying to bring pot across the border and got turned down for a reporter’s job by a raft of newspapers. The opportunity came up for a vague promise of a job in the Brazilian English-language language newspaper the Brazil Herald.
A Review of The Two Faces of Fear: Violence and Inequality in the Mexican Metropolis
On March 19, 2010, two graduate students at the Tec de Monterrey, Jorge Antonio Mercado Alonso and Javier Francisco Arredondo Verdugo, were killed by members of the Mexican Army inside the university campus. To cover up the murder, the Army and Mexican authorities initially claimed the victims were armed sicarios—hitmen— with organized crime connections. An investigation later revealed that Jorge and Javier were engineering students who did not belong to any criminal group and were unarmed when the perpetrators shot them.
A Review of Mesquite Pods to Mescal: 10,000 Years of Oaxacan Cuisines
Mexican culinary nationalists have enshrined Oaxaca as the “land of seven moles,” the diverse chile stews that provide an Indigenous counterpoint to the supposed cradle of creole gastronomy, Puebla, with its chile and chocolate centerpiece, mole poblano. Although the count of seven moles is an invented tradition, Oaxaca’s culinary roots indeed reach deep into the past, as is shown by the essays in this splendid collection. The volume also effectively illustrates the advances of the archaeological study of food, from an early focus on the processes of domestication and subsistence regimes.
DRCLAS Podcast: Faculty Voices
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