Current Issue

The journal publishes original manuscripts that address Latin America and the Caribbean from any of the disciplinary approaches of the social sciences and humanities. Researchers from all over the world are welcome to submit their manuscripts, in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Normalización de la Deuda y Retailización del Crédito como Pilares del Neoliberalismo Chileno Avanzado

By Alejandro Marambio-Tapia, Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile.

Debt is structural to late, financialised capitalism. In particular, it is a crucial stronghold of Chilean socio-economic model, with massive and normalised household debt. This has allowed the rising of economic holdings that provide precarious jobs, access to consumption and debt. However, behind these significant household debt figures, there are household narratives that offer significant evidence about how families deal with credit prompting a myriad of practices in-and-out of market, namely moralities and non-economic rationalities. This way, households show some degree of agency in trying to “domesticate” credit and to adapt to the structural conditions upon which credit has expanded. The latter is particular to the Chilean case since it was led by department stores, supermarket and other retail businesses.

Using a macro structural analysis of indebtedness, a historical-institutional analysis of credit industry, and the micro narratives of indebted households, I aim to contribute to the understanding of financial capitalism and mature neoliberalism, such as the Chilean case, considering debt as a key device for the setting of precarious consumer society, and beyond the understanding of debt as merely an economic device. Upon an unwavering and ideological support to neoliberalism as a public policies system, Chilean neoliberalism forces to deal and live under a constant and uncontested indebtedness, normalising debt.

El Estado, la Ciudad y el Virus: Una explicación política de la crisis del COVID-19 en Guayaquil

By Pablo Andrade, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Ecuador

One of the localities most heavily affected by the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic was the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil. Despite the media attention given to this development, and the now abundant literature on the pandemic, there have been no attempts to explain the Guayaquil crisis. Using a case centric process tracing the present investigation argues that the existence of two differentiated political regimes, one acting at the national level and the other at the sub-national level (Guayaquil), caused the simultaneous collapse of the city’s public hospitals and funeral services. The phenomenon studied is relevant both for the literature on subnational regimes and for discussing public health policies.

https://www.iberoamericana.se/articles/10.16993/iberoamericana.532/