In Chiapas, one of the poorest states in Mexico, an estimated 150,000 children are malnourished. To end this problem, governments have implemented food security policies, including food importation and industrial food production. In 2008 alone, Mexico imported 20 million tons of food. While these policies certainly help to remedy the problem in the short term, the massive importation of basic foodstuffs and incentives to industrial agriculture may widen social inequality, threaten health and deteriorate biodiversity and ecosystem services. I will present the objectives and achievements of initiatives born in the highlands of Chiapas to enhance local food production free of hazardous pesticides and appropriate to the culture of the region. Examples include the rescue of local knowledge for food production, a school gardens program and the Network of Producers and Consumers for Healthy Local Food.

This presentation by Dr. Helen Pollard from Michigan State University's Department of Anthropology is part of MSU's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies

This presentation explores the concept of experience in the works of three contemporary Brazilian authors, namely Milton Hatoum, Bernardo Carvalho and Joa

One of the fastest growing global markets is pharmaceutical sales. With changing political landscapes and an increased awareness of new customers worldwide, sales have increased in Eastern Europe, Asia, and especially Latin America. As researches expand into countries with poor socio-economic and political infrastructures, guidelines such as the Helsinki Declaration, the Nuremburg Code, and the Belmot principles are being challenged. Regulatory and ethical guidelines have not kept pace with the explosion of international research and the potential for such human research abuses is great. The most fundamental ethical principle of clinical research is the idea of respect for persons or the concept of autonomy. Autonomy, as used in research guidelines, must meet two criteria, that people need to be treated as autonomous agents

The belligerent anti-immigrationism of recently-retired CNN television and radio commentator Lou Dobbs has become so much of a trademark in U.S. popular culture that reviewer after reviewer of the 2008 Patricia Riggen film La misma luna (Under the Same Moon) has used his name as a shorthand reference to tell their readers what to expect from the movie: Lou Dobbs, grab your hankie

Over the past several decades the increasing prevalence of natural resource crises has led many ecologists to seek alternatives to Western resource use paradigms. Primary amongst these alternatives are systems guided by indigenous knowledge (IK). It is commonly presumed that these systems represent institutions uncorrupted by the exploitative hand of Western culture and state domination and therefore hold the key to rectifying the unsustainable behaviors of Western societies. Yet this ignores the disruption of IK and associated resource regimes perpetrated by colonial powers. This historical oversight, in turn, leaves corrupted indigenous systems open to criticism and further subordination if, upon government sanctioning and implementations, they fail to function as resource management panaceas and results in Western patterns of overexploitation. It is thus important to historicize IK to explore how it has been altered by colonization. Only through an understanding of these changes can practitioners, indigenous leaders, and government officials implement IK in contemporary resource use systems in a just and responsible manner that does not put indigenous rights at risk. In this work, I present a historical narrative documenting the colonization of traditional Miskito knowledge of the green turtle (Chelonia mydas) and its harvest. I proceed to draw a historical analysis comparing this history with the broader Western human-animal relations literature, as well as key informant interviews with Miskito green turtle fisherman, to display how Miskito IK has been altered by colonial powers and the implications this has for current attempts to regulate the turtle fishery.

Within Brazil, the Northeast region has been represented in popular music, literature and film as a wellspring of cultural authenticity, pre-modern roots and a living past. However, it has also been the site of terrible periodic droughts and mass migrations that have contributed to it being portrayed as a space of misery. Linked to its status as a space of poverty, the arid serta

The state of Yucatan, located in the southeast of Mexico, is home to many highly marginalized communities. These communities harbor a series of problems that limit their development. On one hand, educational delays in Yucatan affect half the population fifteen years and older.

The speech delivered by Eduardo Frei Montalva in Santiago's Teatro Caupolica

Access to water is very unequal in Mexico and indigenous municipalities are particularly disadvantaged. The paper analyzes empirically the unequal access to water across Mexican municipalities and across individuals for the period of 2000-2005 using regression analysis. The contributions of this paper are two-fold. First, it expands the focus of the literature of ethnic fragmentation and public good provisions from level to distribution; and second, it presents an ethnic fractionalization index at the municipality level based on salient ethnic divide. The results show that there is a systematic water gap between indigenous and non-indigenous populations, even after controlling for various factors. The findings suggest that explanations of the negative relationship are related to discrimination and marginalization rather than differences in preferences across ethnically diverse groups.

As Experience Latin America

The Sixth Goal of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases such as tuberculosis. In Bolivia, a country with a population of over 8,000,000 people, it was claimed in 2006 that there were 2366 confirmed cases of HIV. According to the World Health Organization, Bolivia is considered to be a country with a low incidence of the virus affecting 0.10% of the adult population. In contrast, it has been estimated that 50% of the population is infected with Chagas Disease with 60% of the country declared as endemic. Fifty thousand people die from this illness in Latin America every year. Bolivia has the highest incidence of infection in the region, the majority of whom live in poverty-stricken areas. This paper will discuss how global development policies perpetuate a form of social injustice within developing countries by the prioritization of health problems which respond to global trends rather than those indentified within individual countries. Using Chagas Disease in Bolivia as an example I will argue that the policies and actions which favor HIV/AIDS over Chagas Disease reflect a form of social injustice. I support this claim through Iris Young's work on social justice, where she describes the need to move beyond the distributive paradigm where the focus is on the patterns of distribution, to one which focuses on the level of participation in deliberative and decision-making processes.

HPOL is a collection of invaluable audio materials some available for the first time on this website capturing significant political and historical events and personalities of the twentieth century. The materials range from formal addresses delivered in public settings to private telephone conversations conducted from the innermost recesses of the White House. Our aim is to provide an accessible source of audio information to enliven instruction and scholarship in history and politics and to enable easy access for all persons to the rich audio archives of American history and politics.

Globalization seems to lead towards uniformity, but this tendency is not observed in Mexico since joining many others in signing the International Labor Organization's Convention 169. This was the basis for promoting the recognition of uses and customs

In 1928 the Peruvian writer Josa Carlos Maria

A principal objective of the MSU semester-long study abroad program in Peru entitled Community Engagement and Interdisciplinary Study of Global Issues in the Peruvian Highlands

In his 2007 book, Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America's Soul, Michael Reid reports that although it has been largely overlooked

Vicente S

This presentation by Dr. John Kerr from Michigan State University's Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies is part of MSU's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies