Contenu du sommaire : Mouvements sociaux et espaces locaux

Through the course of the first decade of the xxi century, there have been numerous social movements in Mexico that have focused their efforts on a local level. This article highlights two factors that have facilitated this development : the political impasse due to the closure of the political system to the demands of numerous social sectors, and the strengthening of a culture that sees social change from a local level. The second part of the article highlights the potential impact of these local movements on improving the quality of life on their members and residents of these communities, and then points out some limitations inherent in the political culture in which most of these movements are active.

The aim of this article is to analyze the issue and the scope of collective action that took place in Tijuana, a border town between Mexico and the United States. This mobilization highlights the capacity for action of the poor in the face of the effects of globalization, as well as the place of local movements on a transnational level. The way this group of women, former maquiladora workers and activists, managed to impose liability on the government of the United States for the actions of a private company is an innovative strategy of publicizing. It consists of building an audience both local and transnational, at the same time as producing a narrative in which issues related to environmental problems are combined with economic integration of North America and industrialization of the border. At the heart of this movement is the creation of the border as a shared territory, a local area utilized by two nations, in which the forces and players are national and global.

In spite of a strong centralization, and a limited democratization, the local and territorial issue has forcefully established itself in Chile, within the scope of the research of new forms of citizen participation. Starting with the description of movements in defence of neighbourhoods in the big cities and the Mapuche mobilisation in the south, this article demonstrates that, in spite of examples of mobilisation that are taking shape, or that establish themselves at a local level, the tension between representative democracy and the demand for participatory mechanisms at a local level cannot surpass the traditional forms of governance.

In the face of the abandonment, or of the closing of many of the factories in the country, these last ten years, Argentina has experienced a remarkable surge of occupation and recuperation of these factories by their workers. This mobilisation tempers the announced disappearance by certain authors of the working class as the protagonist of the struggle. It also proves certain theories that, through the prism of mobilisation of Argentinean strikers (piqueteros), it can be seen that the social struggle has moved from the factory to the neighbourhood. It proves it even more, since this mobilisation distinguishes itself by its considerable local roots ; far from responding to the logic of deterritorialized classes by the unions or political parties, this mobilization responds to a specific logic of business, in which the culture and the relation to the factory owners has a crucial effect. In this article, we will see how the paternalism of one SME of Buenos Aires is at the origin of the unprecedented mobilisation of the workers.

The studies on the Latin American Aprista parties privileged for a long time the discursive approaches. However, they carried not enough interest in the interaction between the unitarian program of the A.P.R.A and the emergence of a nationalist revival in Latin America in the 1920s. In the present work, we would try to show that the A.P.R.A can be read as a producing transnational network of a nationalist speech for the Latin America. Examining for it the political's speech proposed by this movement in the light of its sociopolitical dimension, we suggest explaining the nature of a discursive project to revolutionary reach. Leaving an analysis of the role of the interpersonal links and the political magazine in the construction of a revolutionary speech, we propose an interpretation of this unifying claim as the resultant of collective action imperatives. But still, we watch to clarify the aprista revolution speech by explaining the relation which it maintains with the nationalism and a programmatic dimension articulated at the local and global level.

In the current context of indigenous mobility toward the largest cities, Bogotá and their outskirts have been witnesses of the establishment of Amazonian ceremonial houses – malocas – destined to a specific sector of the urban population. In order to reconstruct this process the present article analyzes the reconfiguration of the maloca and of some of it associated elements. Particularly, the figure of the anciano, the interethnic alliances with other native actors and not-natives of the urban setting and the progressive establishment of a distinctive group of “ethnic entrepreneurs” inside the indigenous community Uitoto resident in the city. The interaction among these actors questions the traditional image of the native, image that today seems to be dissolved to create a new spectrum of identification possibilities.

This article seeks to evaluate pro-market water and sanitation policies adopted by developing countries in the 1990s, under the influence of multilateral agencies, mostly in Latin America, dressing some lessons from the analysis of private management experiences which took place in Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil. While these experiences failed in the first two countries, the results of some case studies developed in Brazil are rather favorable in many regards. The author proposes that we must consider the social and institutional conditions that favor sustainable private participation in this sector to avoid ideologically biased analysis which may oversimplify the debate and avoid to see both the risks and opportunities generally implied in this kind of policy.

A scientific thought about the Colombian internal war took a long time to appear. However, since the nineties, accurate studies written by Colombian and Foreign investigators began to be released. They share the fact that they develop their reflections upon a resolute liberal philosophical infrastructure, not without nuances from one to another. Their pace is as well analytical and synthetic as it is normative insofar that they articulate with prudence the examination of the events, of their transformations, with the formulation of a political and moral judgement, that places further apart the ideological temptation. Thus, they could avoid the myths, particularly those related to the revolution. These studies could also pave way for a clear distinction between the action and the comprehension to the benefit of the latter: the illegal violence of direct action becomes a subject matter and is no more a medium transformed into an end. This evolution presupposes an appreciation of the inedited and the permanence of a history altered by the homogenisation of its development and by fatalism that impedes the intellection of the nuances. Then, the Colombian « civilist » tradition is also emphasized, which constitutes a fundamental aspect of the Colombian political culture that counterbalances the idea of violence inherent to the Colombian being and that leaves open the intellectual and practical possibility of an exit from the armed conflict by the establishment of confidence.