Population and Government in Colonial Buenos Aires. An Approach to the Study of the Tensions Generated by Demographic Growth in the City (1740-1776)

The relationship between population and government in the City of Buenos Aires is analyzed, focusing on the tensions generated by the arrival of new individuals, a local elite with great interests in commerce and in charge of community affairs, and Spanish functionaries that progressively adopted the ideals of the Bourbon Dynasty, despite also being implicated in local logics. It interests us to observe the governors’ perspectives with respect to everyday developments in the city, their preoccupations and interests, and how they would vary the mechanisms to which they resorted in order to organize daily life, in the period defined between 1740 and 1776.

Short reflections on the history of African communication

This article aims to propose a chronological subdivision in the history of African communication. African communication today is one of the most important axes for implementing development strategies, sustaining education, health, and schooling programmes, and so on. However, many of these programmes fail due to a lack of or ineffective communication between international organisations, local elite and lay people. The reasons for this situation must be found in Africa’s history of communication, which has undergone radical transformations in its different phases. Using the functionalist analysis drawn up by Jakobson, this article proposes a new chronological subdivision of Africa’s history of communication, reflecting on the current contradictions in contemporary communication in Africa.

Welfare Regimes and “progressive” governments in Latin America: The cases of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia

Several authors have applied the concept of Welfare Regimens for studying social policy in Latin America (Esping-Andersen, 1993 and 2000). Among others, Martínez Franzoni (2007) develops a typology, with fi eld work is at the turn of the millennium, and establishes three categories: State-productivist regime, state-protectionist and family orientated. Most countries in the region are placed in the latter category. The hypothesis of this article argues that with the emergence of governments considered “left” or “progressive” in several countries of the region from the late ‘90s and, more decisively, in 2000’, the map of welfare regimes models could have mutated substantively. The nationally transformative experiences are different (various socio-economic realities and political action in which they are located exists) but they have several contact points that can be summarized in a greater state intervention in different areas previously closed to their operating and recovery of important functions of welfare and care of the population by the government. The paper discusses with an exploratory and descriptive approach the welfare schemes that would shape in three countries that have constitutionalized the change from the neoliberal paradigm: Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Leopoldo Panero and his antology of the Spanish American Poetry. A “personal” reading of America

El presente artículo trata de ofrecer una lectura estética y política de la Antología de la poesía hispanoamericana que publicara Leopoldo Panero entre 1944 y 1945 bajo protección gubernamental. Para ello se parte de la particular biografía del escritor astorgano, su relación en los años treinta con los poetas hispanoamericanos –especialmente Vallejo y Neruda– y su gira por América ya como supuesto prohombre del régimen franquista en 1949 y 1954. La lectura sistemática de sus prólogos y selección de poetas revela la particular visión de Panero sobre Hispanoamérica, mediatizada por el concepto imperial de Falange pero formulada bajo su propia visión de lo que la lírica americana representa para la lengua castellana. Se sostiene así en estas líneas la tesis de que los postulados de Panero representan, a pesar de todo, una opción mucho más compleja de lo que se suele considerar.