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

This article analyzes the interpretations about money that build expert knowledge in social programs of cash transfers. It is based on a qualitative investigation of in-depth interviews with relevant experts in the field of social policies of the Argentine Republic, between 2015 and 2016. The results show the need to build a perspective of analysis that not only asks for specialized knowledge that expert knowledge uses to refer to money transferred to the poor sectors, but also challenges such interpretations incorporating reflections from the sociology of money in the popular world.

In this paper some reasons for the scarcity of qualitative research on elites are exposed, fact that is more visible when dealing with intellectual elites. The importance of conceptual clarity is considered as well as some challenges and obstacles that we, as researchers, may face in fieldwork; therefore, some useful alternatives are given, emphasizing that capacity and ability of researchers to adapt ourselves to different scenarios presented by this kind of research are of the utmost importance. Although some situations I faced are of anecdotic nature, I consider them as pertinent examples on how, from our trench, we can complete a good fieldwork despite of some adversities.

The foundations of an oil policy were established in Chile between 1914 and 1945. In a first stage, it sought to ratify fiscal domain over presumed deposits existing in the country. In a second stage, to define the State’s participation in the importation, processing, distribution, and sale of fuels. Fiscal interference in the activity that had been successfu¬lly implemented in other countries in Latin America, was exceptional in Chile’s case, considering that legislation preceded the discovery of the first oil deposits and the imple¬mentation of necessary infrastructure to produce refined products.The greatest singularity of the oil issue in this period, however, were the peculiar initiatives adopted not to stimulate its use, but to inhibit it, done through the protection that the State gave to the national coal industry to consolidate it as the main energy matrix. This factor was as decisive as the widespread conviction, assumed as an unquestionable truth, of having abundant deposits throughout the country, which encouraged real state speculation on potentially available exploitable land, backed by geological surveys of doubtful validity. With an increasing demand due to its industrial use and the increase of the automotive fleet, the dependence on imported fuels was not accompanied by defined political and economic guidelines in this field. The dependence on hydrocarbon imports, and the consequences of its irregular provision, conditioned the launch of a long-term in¬dustrial policy, considering the importance of the energy factor and the limited absorption capacity of the domestic industrial and consumption goods during the study cycle.  

This article analyzes the emergence of the identity among Chilean’s disabled from the war of the Pacific. It studies the promulgation and the application of the Law of Military Compensations of 1881, that gave pensions to incapacitated soldiers by establishing a typology of disability. It speculates that, that legislation first influenced the formation of identities among disabled veterans, and after among uninjured veterans through the founding of mutual societies. The accumulation of shared historical experiences articulated a common political praxis that permitted the inclusion of veterans in the political and bureaucratic stage, giving form to a reclamation movement during the period of 1901-1905.

With the aim of amplifying the focus on worker politization and to contribute to the cultural history of workers, this article first analyzes the critical position of the Socialist Workers Party regarding the consumption of alcohol among the working class. Since their critique looked to modify the cultural patterns that they understood as obstacles for worker’s emancipation. Secondly, it examines the display of alternative entertainment practices that this party implemented between 1912 and 1922 with the intention to provide celebratory experiences to working-class families to help them overcome exploitative conditions. This article sustains the hypothesis that between popular culture and socialist culture existed a conflictive relationship due to the contradictions between working-class customs and the illustrated worker speech. This proposal is analyzed starting from the revision of partisan periodicals

The small-scale image of the Virgin Mary that is known and venerated to this day under the name of “the Virgin of Socorro” [the Virgin of the Helpless] in Santiago (Chile) is also held to be the very first pious image to have landed on this pe-ripheral colonial city. From early on, it inspired a number of legends highlighting its alleged miraculous character, its role in the Foundation of Santiago and the first steps of the Franciscan Friars in the city. This paper delves into the key-paradoxes surrounding the image’s supernatural origins and very common upon sacred Christian images: on the one hand, it was offered as a gift to reward the miraculous intervention of the Virgin Mary in the midst of a battle against the Indi-ans; on the other, some sources suggest that the image itself performed the supernatural feat. The image concentrates a host of key-features that are discussed below: (i) it helped shape a new imagery that came to define the Christian  practice in these regions; (ii) it exemplifies the gradual usurpation of an originally Mercedarian topic to the profit of the Franciscan Order; (iii) it summarized the triumph ofthe Christian faith over the native rebel populations of Chile’s central region; (iv) and it was also coopted as the preferred devotion by the political elites. The paper concludes by advancing a hypoth-esis about the image’s iconography, which may stem from the appropriation of an alien typology (Saint Mary Magdalene), due to the scarcity of pious images in these peripheral regions. 

No presenta resumen

This article explores how informal indigenous slave communication networks developed and were maintained in sixteenth-century Castile, as men and women served as witnesses or sources of information for those indigenous slaves initiating lawsuits to gain their freedom. Based on dozens of lawsuits in the section Justicia of the Archive of the Indies (Seville, Spain), I argue that the distinct oral communication channels formed by indigenous men and women living in different cities and towns of Castile constituted an important element of litigation suits, before, during and after a sentence was reached or the lawsuit ended. In the heart of the Spanish empire –Castile– slaves and freedmen and women inside and outside of the legal “courtroom” engaged with legal discourse about what it meant to be identified or to identify oneself as an indio (person of the Spanish Indies).

During the last third of the nineteenth century, Buenos Aires physicians dealt extensively with hysterical pathology, especially among the female population. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the various theoretical fabrications elaborated by those professionals about the disease. After recognizing a first set of writings in which a certain morbid autonomy was not granted to the condition, the theoretical frameworks prevailing in the subsequent works are described in detail. Special attention is paid to clinical devices used by doctors in their practice, since it is assumed that those devices had a clear impact on the ways the pathology was understood.