This chapter examines the origins of the Anti-China sentiment observed in Brazilian foreign policy during the Bolsonaro presidency (2019–2022). This first part of the chapter shows that responses to the impact of Chinese trade are asymmetric in Brazil; whereas residents in localities hurt by Chinese competition tend to hold more negative views about economic ties with China, those living in localities benefited by export shocks to China did not exhibit more positive views than Brazilians unaffected by Chinese trade. Similarly, interest groups that lost from Chinese trade have been far more vocal than winners in the period. Next, we explore potential explanations for the puzzling behavior of winners from Chinese trade, with a focus on soy-producing municipalities. We argue that low levels of vertical integration of the soy value chain prevent producers, and therefore the population living in soy-producing localities, from understanding the impact of Chinese trade on their welfare.

This chapter analyses Latin American trade policy trends from post-2008 to 2018 and offers in-depth case studies of Brazil and Mexico. At both aggregate and more detailed levels of analysis we document the significant rise in protectionism, and non-tariff measures (NTMs) in particular, in the decade following the 2008–2009 Global Financial Crisis. We focus on the preferential trade agreements (PTAs) that govern Mexico’s trade under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and Brazil’s trade in the context of the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR). We report two main findings regarding Latin American trade and commercial policy trends in the 21st century. First, PTAs – long considered as key trade and investment-creating conduits – are now emerging as venues within which NTMs (e.g., non-transparent interventions, import bans, licensing requirements, controls on safety standards) are simultaneously increasing. That is, members within the same scheme are deploying NTMs against each other. The good news is that membership in these PTAs has mitigated some intra-bloc protectionism, albeit against a backdrop of rising NTMs within these PTAs, nonetheless. Second, the rapid trade and investment integration of China into Latin America markets since 2002 has directly shaped trade policy patterns and responses in this region. In the end, neither Brazil nor Mexico has risen to the occasion in terms of generating a pro-growth trade strategy that delivers compelling distributional and productive returns. Some of these shortcomings are due to path dependence within each PTA, as policymakers in both countries have failed to update approaches that have clearly failed to deliver over time. Outside of these PTAs, the stale macroeconomic response of each country to dynamic and competitive challenges emanating from the global economy risks an extenuation of long-term patterns of political and economic underperformance.

This chapter presents a close reading of two witchcraft trials, one against the Spanish midwife Isabel de Morales in 1537, and the second against two women in Mexico City in 1566, doña María de Anuncibay and María de Lugo. The chapter analyzes peculiarities of these cases. Morales was a low-status Spanish woman who worked as a midwife in Mexico City. The Inquisition focused on multiple suspicious behaviors. She cured the evil eye; made suspicious incantations that nobody understood; and worked as a kind of gynecologist and performed surgeries (possibly on vaginas or uteruses) with a black-handled knife. She was a hybrid tiçitl-curandera. Her curing of the evil eye caught attention because such cures were considered superstitious. Midwives were always at risk from claims that they caused the evil eye or death of infants. The other case concerned a wealthy Basque woman, Anuncibay, and a lower-status Andalucian, who was an illegitimate daughter of the adelantado of the Canaries. These women were accused of keeping a familiar (spirit) in a glass jar and of getting tattoos on their legs – of some demon or possibly of a Mesoamerican god-like Quetzalcoatl.

This chapter offers the sociology of the earliest inquisitions in Mexico, from 1522 to 1571. An explanation is given of the difference between the Spanish Inquisition, a centralized Holy Office, and local inquisitions operating under the aegis of a bishop, which were numerous in New Spain before the establishment of the Holy Office in Mexico in 1571. A discussion is presented of the important role of Mexico’s first bishop, Juan de Zumárraga, in pursuing a vigorous inquisition between 1536 and 1541. The chapter also shows that there were no mass witch crazes in Mexico. Criminal prosecution of witchcraft fell to both royal (criminal) courts and to inquisitions operating by authority of a bishop. A discussion is also presented of the importance of canon law and the medieval bulls Canon episcopi and Ad abolendam in establishing the authority of bishops to investigate and punish heresy and witchcraft. Furthermore, an overview is given of local inquisitions operating in New Spain in Mexico, Oaxaca, Michoacán, and Zacatecas. The chapter shows how little emphasis was placed on punishing idolatry or sorcery in these local inquisitions.

Catalina de Peraza exemplifies the women found in this book. She was an illegitimate daughter of the Count of Peraza. An Andalucian from the Canaries, she represented the stereotype of oversexed and exotic Iberian woman. She migrated to Mexico around 1565, and was implicated for homicide but released because of her high status and ended up in Guanajuato, where she had designs on the royal magistrate, who seems to have rejected her, accusing her of being a prostitute and witch. Witnesses described a wealthy woman (she owned two domestic slaves), who mixed her vaginal bathwater with her paramour’s mustard supply. Most profoundly, she also ate peyote to divine the intent of this man. Peraza was the first documented case of a Spaniard eating peyote. Peyote use had originally been a sacred collective event for entire communities. Peraza was the first Spaniard to experiment with the creolization of hallucinogen use in Mexico.

This chapter explores favela upgrading in the communities of Pavão-Pavãozinho and Cantagalo in the wake of a terrible mudslide in 1983, under the administration of socialist governor Leonel Brizola. The chapter explores the huge ambitions of Brizola’s administration and the linked upgrading projects in Pavão-Pavãozinho in particular, analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of those projects, and places this in the context of larger economic, political and demographic transitions in the city.

This chapter explores the 1950 comedy film Aviso aos Navegantes (Warning to Sailors), a classic of the slapstick chanchada genre. The chapter examines the role of lead actors Oscarito and Grande Otelo in representing an idea of the Brazilian underdog, in ways that make fun of racial and social hierarchies and suggest nationalist resistance against foreign exploitation.

The Introduction makes the case for the book’s structure and approach, an idiosyncratic selection of ten key moments in the history of Rio de Janeiro, illuminating the ways in which tricksters, newcomers and strivers continually remake the city. It introduces themes of the legacy of slavery in the violence and inequality of the city, as well as its cultural expressions.

This chapter connects the burning and removal of the Praia do Pinto favela in 1969, the development of the Cidade Alta housing project on Rio’s north side, the development of the middle-class apartment complex Selva de Pedra on the former site of Praia do Pinto, and the preeminent soap operas of Globo Television in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The chapter shows how the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985) carried out a process of state-sponsored gentrificaion through favela removal and subsidized development for the conservative middle class.

This chapter explores the 1936 professional soccer season in Rio de Janeiro, and the best-of-three final between the Flamengo and Fluminense clubs. The chapter concentrates on the emergence of Black players in an increasingly professional league, and their creation of a distinctive Brazilian style of play.

This chapter explores the images of urban slavery created by French painter and lithographer Jean-Baptiste Debret. The artist sketched these images during his sojourn in Rio in the 1810s-1830s, and published them as a volume of lithographs upon return to France. They revealed the omnipresence of slavery in the streets of Rio, including both its grinding violence and manifestations of resistance and cultural invention.