This article explores understandings of race, mestizaje, and criollismo among blind people in Chile and Venezuela. It demonstrates that visually perceived markers are not self-evidently constitutive of race as a social category. Participants show sound knowledge of racialized categories but also reveal significant differences in the identification of racial markers and in the way that race informs their understandings of mestizaje and criollismo in Chile and Venezuela. In Chile, where racial markers convey identity fixity and intersect overtly with social class categorizations, mestizaje and criollismo are conceptualized as separate elements of national identity. In Venezuela, where racial markers convey more identity porosity, mestizaje and criollismo are conceptualized as intertwined foundations of national identity. These social configurations counter naturalizing conceptualizations of race and enable a reconsideration of how different notions of admixture continue to permeate ideals of personhood and social relations in Latin American countries. They also erode academic conceptualizations of race that unwittingly contribute to legitimize the naturalization of race in public discourse—and potentially in governmental policy and practice.

This article investigates the effect of priming the existence of corrupt connections to the bureaucracy and of trusted references on the demand for intermediary services. We performed an experimental survey with undergraduate students in Caracas, Venezuela. Participants are presented with a hypothetical situation in which they need to obtain the apostille of their professional degrees in order to migrate and are considering whether to hire an intermediary (“gestor”) or not. The survey randomly reveals the existence of an illicit connection between the gestor and the bureaucracy and whether a trusted individual referred the intermediary. Our findings are not consistent with the “market maker” hypothesis that revealing the existence of illicit connections increases demand. Consistent with the view that trust is a key element in inherently opaque transactions, we find that the demand for intermediaries is price inelastic when gestores are referred by trusted individuals.

The presence of Al-bearing goethites has been unequivocally established in Venezuelan laterite sediments by means of infrared spectroscopy (IR), chemical dissolution, and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) methods. The composition of these samples ranges from [Fe0.89Al0.11]O(OH) to [Fe0.76Al0.24]O(OH). The data of dissolution experiments using a modified dithionite (CDB) treatment suggest a parallel behavior between Fe and Al; the gradual dissolution of Al is associated with the destruction of the Al-containing goethite. The interpretation of the CDB dissolution results for SiO2/Fe2O3 is different; silica was only slightly extracted from phases other than goethite. Substitution of Fe3+ by Al3+ in these goethites was represented on the XRD patterns by a lowering of the (110) and (111) reflections corresponding to a reduction in size of the unit cell of goethite. IR spectroscopy showed the formation of such solid solutions by a shift of the 405 cm−1 absorption band, assigned to v (Fe-O) in synthetic goethite, to >460 cm−1 in the spectrum of Al-bearing natural goethite. Moreover, this spectrum shows a shift of the 3140 cm−1 absorption, due to v (OH), to higher frequencies, indicating a H-bond weakening in [FexAl(1−x)]O(OH) compared to FeO(OH).

Scholarship on the political economy of natural resources in the Global South has often relied on the concept of the “resource curse” to explain the negative features of extractive economies and their alleged tendency to promote rent capture at the expense of national sovereignty and development. Such theories link the behavior of social actors to an excess of “unearned income,” with little reference to the concrete forms of political and cultural mediation that reproduce this structure of growth. This article explores the role of the devil symbol in populist discourse in Venezuela and how this spectral figure comes to mediate subaltern consciousness. Tracing the origins of this image to colonialism and efforts to grasp the dynamics of the modern petrostate, the analysis shows how use of this symbol to mediate the forecast transition from a rentier to a productive economy has given workers in a state enterprise a potent set of signs to articulate opposition to unjust labor conditions. Venezuelan leaders have deployed figures drawn from local folklore to divide society into two competing power blocs. Yet, while these discourses are effective at forging coalitions and justifying specific reallocations of oil wealth, they do not obviate the tensions of this transition, and a counternarrative using these same figures has arisen in response. The article concludes with an analysis of parallels between global theories of the resource curse and local Venezuelan iterations of this discourse as well as a discussion of the role of translation in theories of culture and modernity.

This article traces the professional life of Rafael Almarza, the last royal escribano (notary) of Mérida in the captaincy of Venezuela, and his role in undermining monarchical authority among the enslaved community displaced in the plains region (Los Llanos) during the war of independence in 1814-18. Despite their status as minor officials within the Spanish imperial bureaucracy, notaries, through the records they made, helped to establish legally binding truths underlying everyday actions, making them influential agents of colonial rule in the community they served, particularly among those seeking notarial documents to obtain freedom. During the battles for independence, escribanos like Almarza facilitated the transition of sovereignty and created documents that fomented the independence cause among enslaved individuals during the years of total war. By examining the manumission documents found in the notarial book Almarza kept during exile, the author of this article shows the importance of enslaved people in granting legitimacy to the emerging leadership of José Antonio Páez and the Republican project. At the same time, this study aims to provide a new look at manumission during the early stages of nation-building and the involvement of underrepresented groups in this process.

In this article, we argue that the speeches and policy documents from the later period of Hugo Chávez's presidency exemplify ‘transnational populism’, a form of populist discourse that defies the close association between populism and nationalism that frames the scholarly literatures on both populism and Chávez. We explain why Chávez's populism took this distinctive form by reference to the history of international political thought in Latin America and the political context surrounding the creation of the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, ALBA). We suggest that while transnational populism may actually amplify the threat that other scholars have argued populist leaders pose to democratic institutions, it also offers an important corrective to how scholars think about the relationship between populism, democracy and international politics, suggesting that international institutions capable of restraining powerful states are essential to stabilising democracies in the Global South.

This article introduces the concept of international clientelism and discusses how this diplomatic tool was employed by Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro as a means to get political support from several Latin American and Caribbean countries. We operationalize the concept and apply it to assess Venezuelan practices put forth in the region. We argue that the reach of Caracas’s diplomatic strategy is broader and deeper than that of simple vote-buying tactics, as it implies the promotion of structural rather than contingent ties, shielding the country against unfavorable moves in international fora. An empirical test using data for all LAC countries for the years 1999–2015 confirms that clientelistic linkages produced political support for Venezuela at the United Nations General Assembly while also moving its partners away from the United States in that institution.

Studies of futurity typically privilege licit economies and assume that the lines between licit and illicit institutions are largely clear to the actors involved. But what happens to those actors, and their grip on the future, when such lines blur? This article explores the epistemic crossroads of futurity and legality by focusing on ambiguity. From 1986 to 2009, the Stanford Financial Group reaped billions of dollars selling fraudulent investment products to thousands of Venezuelans. During this span, Venezuelans suffered successive governments’ shambolic currency schemes, bureaucratic dysfunction, judicial corruption, political upheaval, and worsening street crime. As crises became routinized, middle-class Venezuelans faced “normative ambiguity,” a loss of familiar legal and moral certainties, undercutting their sense of futurity. Drawing on 54 interviews with defrauded investors and others linked to the case, this article shows how such ambiguity left investors vulnerable to a fraud that promised to restore that threatened futurity.

Between 1947 and early 1952, the International Refugee Organization (IRO), which was established within the framework of the United Nations to “solve” the so-called European refugee problem after the end of the Second World War, resettled one million European refugees—victims of Nazism as well as East European refugees who escaped the Red Army—all over the world. The IRO's resettlement project is regarded as a blueprint for the establishment of the postwar international migration regime, and it was the predecessor of later initiatives such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

In this article I argue that the IRO's history as well as the history of the migration regime after the Second World War has, thus far, mainly been written from the perspective of U.S. American and European history. Northern nations are considered agents in this history, while southern countries are considered as passive “destinations.” In the case of Venezuela, the article argues that the Global South's active role in the migration regime must be taken into consideration to understand postwar migration. From the perspective of a connective approach to global history, it shows how Venezuela, as a political agent, was involved in shaping the migration regime; how it perceived itself as an agent within that regime; and how it intervened on a small scale to shape its form and function.

Participatory democrats argue that citizen engagement at the local level serves an important educational function. Through involvement in participatory mechanisms, citizens develop various skills, become better informed, and cultivate a greater sense of political efficacy. There has been considerable debate in the academic literature over the extent to which participation can produce these benefits, but deliberative and participatory theoretical approaches have been criticised for neglecting power dynamics within participatory mechanisms themselves, and for overlooking structural inequalities between women and men. Numerous critics have charged that participatory mechanisms tend to mask, but not eliminate, gender inequalities, particularly in societies where these remain firmly entrenched. While the theory on the educational function of participatory democracy is well developed, there remains a lack of empirical work on the impact of participation on women in Latin America, a region that has been at the forefront of democratic innovation. Based on extensive fieldwork in Venezuela, Ecuador and Chile, this article identifies the types of skills that women gain through participation, and questions the extent to which these reproduce traditional gender roles.