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This exploration is based on joint fieldwork conducted by an interdisciplinary research team in the city of Quetzaltenango (Xela), Guatemala. It uses the notion of commoning as an analytic lens to understand social transformations in this intermediate city, and in contemporary Latin America at large. The interplay of commoning, de-commoning and re-commoning processes draws attention to the cocreation and collective production of tangible and intangible resources happening at different scales. The proposed commoning perspective further aims to critically assess the binary contrasts and presumed dualisms that inform academic and policy approaches to social change, in order to create a better understanding of the drivers, interactions and practices of transformation in intertwined rural-urban contexts. Resumen: Comunizar Xela: Negociando espacios colectivos alrededor de una ciudad intermedia centroamericana Esta exploración se basa en un trabajo de campo conjunto realizado por un equipo de investigación interdisciplinario en la ciudad de Quetzaltenango (Xela), Guatemala. Utiliza la noción de “comunizar” ('commoning') como una lente analítica para comprender las transformaciones sociales en esta ciudad intermedia y en la América Latina contemporánea en general. La interacción de los procesos de comunizar, descomunizar y recomunizar llama la atención sobre la creación conjunta y la producción colectiva de recursos tangibles e intangibles que ocurren a diferentes escalas. La perspectiva de “comunizar” propuesta tiene como objetivo evaluar críticamente los contrastes binarios y los supuestos dualismos que informan los enfoques académicos y de política para el cambio social, a fin de crear una mejor comprensión de los impulsores, las interacciones y las prácticas de transformación en contextos rurales-urbanos entrelazados.

Urban Latin America has become synonymous with violence and insecurity. Whereas levels of violence since 2000, in terms of homicide rates, dropped everywhere else in the world, Latin America and the Caribbean were the exception. Often, efforts to explain this make a connection between poverty, crime, and violence that finds its typical representation in peripheral urban areas: shanty towns. This paper challenges such one-dimensional assumptions by critically examining the complex nexus between violence, insecurity and urban space in urban Latin America. We will define contemporary urban violence in the region and discuss its key characteristics and explanatory factors. Then, we will examine the socio-spatial dimensions of violence and insecurity in three domains: the linkages between criminal gangs, drugs, and violence in peripheral areas; the impact of violence and fear on the strategies of seclusion employed by specific social classes; state responses, especially policing, to show how regimes of public security are differentiated in socio-spatial terms We will argue that these differences reflect differences in citizenship status and citizenship subjectivity, between the privileged and the excluded. This in turn generates bottom-up responses by urban residents that take matters of security and law enforcement in their own hands.

Exactly ten years after the disappearance of Miguel Angel Bru, his family members, friends, fel low-students and neighbours gather in front of the police station, as they do every year.2 The meet ing starts at 7 p.m. and lasts until 2 a.m., because it is believed that Miguel was tortured and mur dered during this period of time. His parents express their gratitude by offering those present a bar becue, which gives the meeting an even more special character: all the people eating, drinking, chatting and sometimes singing in front of the police station, thereby keeping Miguel's memory alive but also showing their dissatisfaction with the eighteen policemen who, besides the two con victed policemen, are also held responsible for Miguel's death, (fieldwork observation Marieke

In Latin America, and particularly Brazil, inequality and social exclusion continue to plague the quality of democracy despite two decades of transition and consolidation. Still, in Brazil, the Workers’ Party has been remarkably successful over the past decade, explicitly addressing the problem of social exclusion and ‘incomplete citizenship’. This paper provides an analysis of the case of Porto Alegre covering the four Workers’ Party municipal administrations from 1989 to the present in order to assess the significance of social incorporation and citizenship for the quality of democracy in Brazil. The paper discusses some conceptual notions that are relevant for the question of democracy in Brazil, particularly the role of citizenship and civil society in ‘deepening’ democracy. Then the paper goes into the evolution and dynamics of Porto Alegre’s system of ‘participatory budgeting’. The paper’s assessment of this experience with respect to its performance, depth and robustness shows that ‘participatory budgeting’ has had positive effects with respect to the provision of public goods services, the quality of governance, and citizens’ participation in what is seen as a new ‘public space’ shared by the local state and grass roots organisations. The paper concludes by relating the case experience to the question of citizenship, civil society and democracy and by reflecting upon its wider implications for the current and future quality of democracy in Brazil.

Outlining the debate1 Twentieth-century Latin America has been the continent of political soldiers and military politicians. Effectively, the true significance of the Latin American armed forces is in their political nature. As a 'stabilising force', as 'disinterested arbiter', as a 'protecting power of the constitution', as 'guardian of national development', the military constantly intervened in political matters. In this intervening capacity, generals became politicians in uniform, more than the leaders of soldiers. Political militarism continued to affect Latin America during the 'third wave' of d?mocratisation (Diamond, 1999). During the 1980s and early 1990s, military discontent with the civilian governments' performance erupted into barrack revolts or attempted coups in Argentina and Venezuela. The military in Brazil and Chile gave occasional shows of force to air their views on key issues such as constitutional reform, labour policy, or human rights. In Peru, the military backed the 'self-coup' of elected president Alberto Fujimori in 1992. In Venezuela, former revolt leader Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998, while in Bolivia former military strongman and dictator Hugo Banzer made a political comeback through the ballot box. After Guatemala's presidential elections in December 1999, the former military dictator Efrain R?os Montt became the president of the nation's congress. Not only did elected presidents resort to the instrument of the military-backed coup and former dictators or putchists re-entered politics through the ballot box. The classical pronunciamiento also renewed its lease on life. In Paraguay, Colonel Lino Oviedo helped bringing down the long-standing regime of the old dictator Alfredo Stroessner in the late 1980s. Subsequently promoted to general

Violence, crime, and insecurity cast a shadow over the acclaimed success of Brazil as a consolidated democracy that champions human rights, promotes social reform, and claims greater international prominence as an emerging power. Violence and crime, especially in cities, reflect the deep rooted structures of inequality and exclusion. Public security policies, especially law enforcement, are often ineffective, repressive and harmful to human and citizenship rights. Violence and insecurity in Brazil are embedded in a perverse dynamic of legal and extralegal networks and interactions that undermine the quality of democracy and reproduce social, spatial and cultural segregation in its cities.

The social and economic history of North-Eastern Brazil has largely been written as the story of slave-holding plantations. In contrast, this article focuses on the peasant agriculture of tobacco in the state of Bahia. It shows how the small-scale cultivation of tobacco for the European (mainly German) export market had already started well before the end of slavery. Tobacco cultivation gradually expanded to become the most important export product in the first decade of the twentieth century. Apart from its economic significance, the history of Bahian tobacco agriculture throws an interesting light on the social and political relations in the region. Land ownership among the tobacco farmers expanded, but most of them remained locked into ties of dependency to commercial intermediaries and large landowners. On the other hand, the latter's dominant position did not lead to a strong position for tobacco interests in the regional political arena. Finally, the tobacco producers originated in the black (ex-)slave community. This article argues that this specific ethnic make-up played an important role in the organisation of the tobacco sector and its relative neglect by regional and national politicians.

This chapter addresses two types of assessment: first, to what degree has a prolonged period of local governance under democratic leftist administrations contributed to enhancing the quality and depth of democracy through a transformative focus on citizenship? Second, to what extent can such an experience be inscribed into the democratic polity itself, meaning that advances in terms of citizens' democracy through 'radical' or participatory designs will not be obliterated by electoral loss of its political mentors? The chapter situates the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and its track record of local administration within the broader framework of transformation of the left in Latin America and Brazil. It presents historical evolution of participatory governance in Porto Alegre. The chapter assesses the track record of 16 years of PT participatory budgeting in this city since 1989 and the impact of 'regime change', the ousting of PT from power in the 2004 municipal elections. Keywords: Brazil; participatory democracy; Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT); Porto Alegre; PT participatory budgeting; regime change

This article discusses the role of civil society in three recent and quite different cases of regime transition-cum - peace and reconstruction: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru. Open or ‘low intensity’ civil war characterized these three countries civil war in the 1980s and early 1990s, accompanied by severe socioeconomic problems and a difficult regime transition agenda. This poses a particular challenge to the role of civil society. Traditionally weakly articulated in these countries and battered by authoritarianism and violence, grassroots organizations, horizontal associations, and NGOs nevertheless took on an important role in the peace process in El Salvador, and especially in Guatemala. Peru, in contrast, witnessed the erosion and eventual breakdown of civil society as a result of the civil war and the related economic, social and political crises. As it turns out, the abandonment of a military and repressive logic within the state and state-related political actors is a first condition for a successful peace process and an active role of civil society. However, if the protagonists of the conflict manage to monopolize the peace process, the role of civil society in influencing the peace process and its implementation will be severely constrained. This may in turn lead to a less-than-optimal outcome and to ongoing political confrontations about the agenda of reconstruction and democratization. Este articulo analiza el papel de la sociedad civil en tres casos recientes de transicion politica cum reconstruccion post-conflicto: El Salvador, Guatemala y Peru. Estos tres paises experimentaron durante los 1980s y los primeros anos de los 90 un conflicto civil abierto de ‘baja intensidad’. Dichos conflictos fueron acompanados de graves problemas socio-economicos y de una compleja agenda de transicion politica. Este escenario influyo profundamente el papel a jugar por la sociedad civil. Organizaciones de base, ONGs y otros entes civicos se fortalecieron visiblemente durante los anos de violencia y represion. De esta manera, lograron asumir un papel importante en los procesos de paz, especialmente en El Salvador y Guatemala. En Peru, en cambio, se produjo una erosion y luego el colapso de la sociedad civil como resultado de la guerra civil y de una crisis social, economica y politica generalizada. El articulo concluye que la superacion de la logica militarista y represiva representa una primera condicion para el logro de un proceso de paz exitoso y la activacion de la sociedad civil. Sin embargo, cuando los protagonistas del conflicto logran monopolizar al proceso, la influencia de la sociedad civil resulta seriamente restringida y lleva a resultados menos favorables y a confrontaciones permanentes respecto al contenido de la agenda de reconstruccion y de democratizacion.

The aim of this chapter is to review the military regime in Brazil (1964–85) from the point of view of the political orientation of the military corporation. This approach takes as a point of departure the proposition that, in order to properly understand the dynamics of institutionalized militarism in South America, we must primarily take into account the role of the armed forces as a ‘political actor’. This is especially relevant in the case of Brazil, given the long history of political interventionism of this country’s military and also in view of the specific nature of the Brazilian military governments between 1964 and 1985. This specific nature rested on the preservation of considerable elements of the pre-coup political structure, in combination with a high degree of autonomy enjoyed by the military in power. This meant that the military was able to shape, as one would of course expect, the nature of the regime it established, but also that it only succeeded in doing so by elaborating sophisticated political strategies. The result was a complex military–civil ‘authoritarian situation’ that brought out quite clearly the factors that influence the constitution and evolution of the military as a specific political actor.