This article examines the 1 July 1992 massacre of 18 Indigenous males and the concurrent cutting off of the hair of their wives and/or female kin carried out by the Shining Path in the Andean village of Huamanquiquia (Fajardo province, Ayacucho region). Based on first-hand accounts of the Maoist insurgents and the Indigenous women, I frame these events as a local case study of gendered atrocity that was experienced differently by men and women, focusing on the symbolic violence of haircutting. While this atrocity reflects some well-known patterns seen in other armed conflicts, it is shaped by two key factors specific to the time and place: first, particular understandings of the significance of hair within broader Andean cosmologies; second, tensions within the Shining Path movement at a key juncture in the war. I show that the Andean insurgents knew about the symbolic dimensions of haircutting, a crime against the integrity of the human body–soul – one understood to cause endless suffering in the journey to the afterlife in the Andean worldview – but they underplayed them. From this viewpoint, haircutting meant the mutilation of women’s physical integrity, with psychological, social and gender implications.

This article traces the history of estate landholding in the Andean valley of Antapampa over the first half of the twentieth century. It challenges a long-held and widely accepted belief that highland haciendas concentrated vast tracts of land in just a few hands. Rather, by the middle of the last century, many properties had fragmented into numerous more modest holdings. Others either held very little land at all, found themselves severely restricted by the mountainous terrain, or ceded most, sometimes all, of their possessions to a rapidly growing number of tenant farmers. The relative absence of mass land concentration, then, forces us to reconsider the role of a key institution in the countryside, in Peru, in Latin America and even beyond. To do so, this study draws upon extensive and original archival materials from roughly 300 Ministry of Agriculture case files, rarely, if ever, used before.

Understanding how policy design and implementation differ under populist and non-populist governments is complicated by the fact that populism never exists in a pure form and is always attached to a more developed ideology. Leveraging the near-simultaneous election of left-wing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico and right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, this article analyses populism’s effect on cash transfer programmes. Despite the diametrically opposed ideologies of their presidents, rather than diverging, Mexican and Brazilian cash transfer policies converged under populism. Both leaders rebranded the programmes they inherited and moved policy in an improvised, politicised and clientelistic direction.

This article analyses a complex period in Colombian history, from the electoral victory of the Liberal Party in 1930 to the end of the Frente Nacional (National Front) in 1974, from the perspective of constitutional politics and constitutional theory. During this period, Colombia transited from democracy to dictatorship (civilian and military) and back to democracy. We therefore divide the period according to changes in regime type and also to changes in the degree of institutional constraints on power. We show that, due to combinations of regime type and constraints on power, under the same Constitution of 1886 three different constitutionalisms ensued: abusive, window-dressing, and authoritarian constitutionalism. Our analysis on Colombia highlights the role of powerful actors, such as the armed forces and the Catholic Church, that breathed life back into key constitutional provisions when these served as focal points for coordinating their actions even under an authoritarian regime.

This article examines the role of Pedro Ibáñez Ojeda – a prominent Chilean politician and businessman – in the development of Chilean neoliberalism, with a focus on his international networks and the organisation of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) regional meeting in Viña del Mar, Chile, in 1981. I argue that Ibáñez represented a distinctive pathway within Chilean neoliberalism, here termed the ‘coastal route’, which highlights the movement’s multi-scale and polycentric nature. This route is multi-scale in Ibáñez’s promotion of liberal ideas through interconnected national, Latin American and global actors, and polycentric in showcasing independent yet complementary initiatives that collectively shaped Chile’s neoliberal trajectory. These dynamics position Ibáñez’s route as part of a broader Latin American and global community.

Whether referendums, initiatives, and other mechanisms of direct democracy enhance representative systems is a matter of debate. Skeptics note—among other criticisms—that turnout tends to be low in referendums, often lower than in candidate elections in the same country. If citizens do not care enough to participate, how useful can these mechanisms be for improving the quality of democratic systems? We argue that low referendum turnout has as much to do with parties’ disincentives to mobilize voters as it does with voter disinterest. Prior research on political behavior in referendums has focused largely on Europe and assumes that voters view them as elections of lesser importance. By shifting focus to Latin America, we introduce more variation in the features of political parties that influence levels of turnout. We draw on cross-national evidence, qualitative research in Colombia, and quantitative analysis of municipal-level referendum voting behavior in Brazil. The key to understanding low voter turnout in these settings is the relatively weaker incentives that political parties have to turn out the vote when control over office is not at stake. We demonstrate that, in clientelistic systems, party operatives have particularly weak incentives to get their constituents out to the polls.

This article examines how, why, and with what limitations judges have adopted a gendered perspective (perspectiva de género) in Chile. It addresses why the Supreme Court’s Secretariat of Gender and Nondiscrimination advocates for a particular understanding of the concept, how judges understand and apply it, and the barriers they perceive to its implementation. Drawing on interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and analysis of court rulings, the study identifies four ways in which judges understand a “gendered perspective”: as a method to detect stereotypes, a tool to analyze context, an instrument to reach a fair result, and a rejection of the notion of loosening evidentiary standards. The article argues that in contemporary Chile, different legal cultures shape disparate understandings about a gendered perspective. There is significant contestation between understandings endorsed by the dominant textualist legal culture and those favored by the emerging interpretive legal culture. By illuminating the limitations Chilean judges face in this evolving area of the law, the study contributes insights of relevance for our understanding of the factors that affect gender and judging in Latin America and beyond.