Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This article has a purpose to portray the impact that the "Interinstitutional Program for Attention and Comprehensive Development of Adolescents and Youth, for the promotion of a Culture of Peace" has had. This program is part of the Restorative Justice model applied in Nicaragua and is contemplated within the Public policies directed to youth and adolescents. Restorative Juvenile Justice is also known as conciliatory, restorative or restorative. It is intended that adolescents who violate the law reestablish the broken social bond and reinsert themselves socially. The system mainly applies socio-educational measures. In this sense, it is important to note that restorative justice is a complement and not a replacement for the conventional justice system. To strengthen our work we present a statistical analysis. Interviews were conducted with members of the National Police, in order to learn about the program's strategies and the implementation of restorative justice in Nicaragua. Finally we present our thoughts on the subject.

COVID-19 is a highly contagious infectious respiratory disease that spreads rapidly from person to person through secretions and close contacts, quickly becoming a pandemic. In many countries various preventive measures such as quarantine and social distancing have been taken for a long time. This situation can have short and long-term consequences on people's mental health, as it is a source of prolonged stress, it can increase the risk of presenting mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and risk behaviors such as increased substances use such as alcohol, tobacco, sedatives and other drugs during the course of the pandemic, as possible coping strategies in the face of stress. Despite the fact that various investigations have been carried out on COVID-19 and the mental health of the population, there is still very little information on the relationship between the pandemic and substance use, in the current circumstances and in the future. It is necessary to systematically study the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and substance use and abuse through longitudinal research designs.

This article is aimed at presenting the role of aesthetic experience in the creative process of teachers at the Rodrigo Peñalba National School of Plastic Arts. It is a qualitative study based on the historical-socio-cultural theory of Lev Vigotsky on the analysis of art from its processes in relation to the artistic work. The idea of this proposal is to present a set of knowledge to understand in a general way, the mechanism of creation in the plastic arts, to later describe its mediating role in artistic teaching. The need arises to relate the phenomena of aesthetic experience, creative process with the representative-creative imagination of the artist; subordinated to emotion and subjective need for it. The development of the analysis of the investigation based on the information obtained and an analysis of the work of art related to the imagination is presented.

Bolivia’s political transition in 2006 represented more than just a transfer of power. It also marked the arrival of a new political, economic and social paradigm. The newly elected leader (Evo Morales Ayma) and his political party, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) brought with them an ambitious agenda for social change. Most of the initial efforts were aimed at responding to electoral promises and the demands from the myriad of social movements that supported Morales’ ticket. As time progressed, the ideological components of the model were refined and transformed from an anti-neoliberal rhetoric to a comprehensive agenda of state reform. Part of the ideological components were rooted in the notion of “Vivir Bien” [Living  Well], which in essence is a balanced approach for development considering human wellbeing in harmony with mother nature. The political challenge, however, has been the transformation of this holistic approach into a practical one and the policy implications that this entails ‒a particularly difficult issue in a country with weak institutional settings and limited state capacity. This article argues that although there have been many gains, particularly in reorienting the notion of the welfare state and in key economic and social areas, the model is still highly dependent on a  neo-patrimonial  state  that relies heavily on a few commodities to support a growing social agenda. Moreover, in the past years the political emphasis and efforts have favored economic reforms over social ones, which might jeopardize the whole model in the not so near future.  

This is a review of Leonardo García Pabón. El cuento sentimental romántico en Bolivia (siglo XIX). La Paz: Plural Editores, 2017. Pp. 457.

This paper focuses on the writings by Bolivian anthropologist/linguist Xavier Albó in relation to the widely publicized TIPNIS (Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure) road conflict in Bolivia’s Amazon basin. The first part of this paper provides a brief historical review of the emergence of TIPNIS beginning with 1990’s territorial rights march through its most recent related protest march in 2011 and its related ongoing controversies and conflicts. This background section provides the context for a discussion of selected Albó writings as contributions to the debates surrounding TIPNIS. His writing examines the multiple problematic impacts of TIPNIS as a controversial infrastructural project for its various environmental, indigenous rights, developmental, and coca-cocaine related issues and dimensions. The paper argues that a continuing concern throughout Albó’s writing on TIPNIS is the importance of the struggle for indigenous political unity as a necessary foundation for the effective operations of Bolivia’s innovative plurinational state. 

Bolivia has accomplished some of its goals since Evo Morales was elected president in 2006. It has made advances in expanding inclusion for indigenous peoples and reducing levels of poverty. They have expanded services and infrastructure for the poor and prioritized long-abandoned rural areas. Middle class has grown by more than 10% and both government and the economy have tripled in size. Yet Bolivia remains deeply embedded in extractivist economics. This piece looks at the relationship to global trade and the political paradoxes that gas drilling, soy production and mineral extraction create for the country. Export-oriented dependency have had predictable effects on labor relations, policy planning, and most significantly the lives of people on the ground.

This article reviews recent ethnographic approaches to indigeneity in Bolivia from the global north. It examines some consequences of ethnographic choices to treat indigeneity as primarily a political challenge of power and inclusion, where indigenous identity is understood to be most characteristically expressed in collective terms or through social mobilization. At the same time, it also assesses a complementary ethnographic focus upon legacies of neoliberalism, as a major context for situating contemporary indigenous projects in Bolivia, specifically, ethnographic contrasts drawn between political indigeneity and the liberal subject. Finally, this article offers an account of indigenous sense-making for the urban landscape of Quillacollo and explores the relevance of indigenous claims as integral to that small city’s “cholo politics,” and as an alternative means of understanding the construction of indigenous subjects.  

This article examines the relationship between the Aymara, Quechua and Spanish languages in the central valleys of Bolivia, as this was observed by the author during several fieldtrips to the region in the 1990s. It is based on the premise that the socio-geographic distribution and patterns of use of these languages is best explained in terms of the unequal social, economic and political relations of power that pertained between the urban and rural sectors of society during that period. The article first gives an overview of the sociolinguistic landscape of Northern Potosí. It then proceeds to an analysis of the mutual influences between the three languages, in a series of lexical fields in particular. Using an anthropological linguistic approach, emphasis is placed on speaker perspective and cultural context, in order to explore the significance of words arising from language contact, rather than on their formal features alone.  

This response summarizes and compares three scholars’ approaches (Marcelo Bohrt, Robert Albro and Pamela Calla) to the Morales administration’s efforts to decolonize the government of Bolivia. Seeking the common ground among them, I find that all three recognize the importance of symbolic and discursive changes, which have allowed some previously-excluded individuals to access positions of authority within the state apparatus. On the other hand, these changes have been uneven, exposing rifts between indigenous communities, exacerbating existing inequities, and establishing new or renewed hierarchies of subordination.