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Inequality
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Recent Articles
Bridging Worlds: Learning, Culture and Connection in Chile
My first morning in Santiago, Chile, the city greeted me with a kaleidoscope of life. The Andes rose sharply in the distance, their peaks dusted with snow in the early Chilean winter. Street vendors sold fresh empanadas and pastel de choclo, their aromas blending with the crisp mountain air. That morning, I also met my host family, who would become my home away from home for the summer (Boston’s summer is Chile’s winter).
A Chair in the Room: The Semiotics of Sitting
In Latin America, the chair occupies a central and often overlooked place in everyday life. It is present in rural homes and public plazas, inside crowded city schools and at the edges of municipal offices.
A Review of Serial Mexico: Storytelling across Media, from Nationhood to Now
When I was in undergrad at Emerson College, I met a student from Croatia who spoke to me in perfect Spanish. When I asked her how she was so fluent, she predictably told me she’d studied it in school. To my surprise, however, she punctuated her explanation with, “I [also] grew up watching Mexican telenovelas!” It was the turning point at which I began thinking of telenovelas as existing beyond televisions in Mexican households.
From Our Current Issue
When the Water Rises, Inequality Overflows: A Tale of a Foretold Tragedy
Tatiane Flores, a physical therapist in her early twenties, arrived at the place where her first-floor apartment used to stand. All she saw was a pile of mud and debris. The acrid smell of dirty water still lingered in the air. “ Now I come here and don’t even know if I have a home anymore.
Waxing and Waning: Institutional Rhythms of Inequality
Zelia Maria Magdalena Nuttall was famous in her time, well-known as an archaeologist, an Americanist, an antiquarian, an ethnologist, a folklorist and “a lady scientist”; she was a woman “making it” in a man’s world from the 1880s to the 1930s. Deeply engaged in research about ancient civilizations in Mexico, she led a remarkable life as a pioneer in the evolution of anthropology as a field of study.
Urban Divide: The Structural Roots of Housing Inequality in Tijuana
The transformation hits you as soon as you cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
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.
El Salvador: Waves of Erasure – The End: With the Flow of Time
“If you can count on waves, time will give you everything,” explains Aitor Francesena Uría, AKA ‘Gallo’ (rooster), when asked about Surf City and El Salvador.
El Salvador: Waves of Erasure – Chapter 5: A New Barter
Our modern days mark the end of an era that began in the 15th century. King Henry the Navigator and his Portuguese caravels, joined by the Crown of Castile’s three ships under Christopher Columbus launched the exploration of Africa and America that ultimately led to globalization.
El Salvador: Waves of Erasure – Chapter 4: Yearning for home
Upstream from Chepe Aleta, following the winding road alongside the river that ends at El Palmarcito, after crossing what Yovani Hernández Ramírez calls the “Puentes de Plata y de Oro” (Silver and Gold Bridges), you arrive at the hamlet of Acahuaspán
StudEnt Views
Carving a Life: Don Abel and the Soul of Guatemalan Woodwork
In my grandmother’s foyer in Guatemala City sits a massive round table of solid mahogany, its lion-shaped feet gripping the rug like it’s been there forever. I grew up admiring it, running my hands along the carved details and pondering the skill required to make it.
Eena Mi Saal
What does it mean to be eena dem saal?
I asked my mother who referred me to my grandmother who referred me to my great grandmother.
“Eena dem saal?… Mi neva hear dat one before,” my great grandmother told me.
Oppression Disguised as Aid: The Colonial Legacy Behind Haiti’s Struggling Healthcare System
In rural communities in the United States, it takes an average of 34 minutes to reach the nearest hospital. In rural Haiti, the average is two hours. Infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera and HIV/AIDS go untreated due to the lack of basic healthcare infrastructure and the violence disrupting the provision of health services.
Book ReviewS
A Review of The Necromantic State: Spectral Remains in the Afterglow of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution
Death does not always mean an end. In early 2013, Venezuela’s president known as Comandante Hugo Chávez died after struggling with cancer. Having won the 2012 presidential elections—and perhaps anticipating the imminent end of his life before taking office—he proclaimed Vice President Nicolás Maduro as his political successor and publicly urged supporters to vote for him should the electoral process need to be repeated.
A Review of Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina
In the early winter of 1990, one year into the presidency of Carlos Menem, the Buenos Aires police held a public auction of a small fleet of cars that had long been in their service. Immersed as I was in primary research for the book I was writing on the legacies of repression and torture in Argentina, I was horrified.
A Review of The Ends of Paradise: Race, Extraction, and the Struggle for Black Life in Honduras
Christopher Loperena’s book, aptly titled the Ends of Paradise, brings forth sharp analysis of the threats to Garifuna life in Honduras through what he calls a “racialized extractivisim” (13) that involves land theft supported by the state, state-developed tourism and appropriation of culture by the mestizo nation.
DRCLAS Podcast: Faculty Voices
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