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

This paper analyzes the political, social and cultural implications of thespecial embassy sent to Buenos Aires by the Brazilian government in honorof Argentine’s celebrations of its Centennial of Independence in 1916 in thecontext of the Great War. This endeavor was led by the prestigious Brazilianjurist, senator and Conselheiro (counselor) Ruy Barbosa and demonstrates theclimax of a period of rapprochement between the two countries initiated bypresident Roque Sáenz Peña’s official missions in 1910. The analysis tracesBarbosa’s profile being both ambassador and jurist during his month-long stayat Buenos Aires focusing on images and identities presented in his speeches,public rituals of political and cultural approximation, achievements andtensions thereafter, as well as the impact Barbosa had in media and publicsectors by the study of the many letters he received. The peak of this diplomaticrapprochement between Argentina and Brazil was prompted by “Europe’sdemise into barbarism” as all rights and conventions were overturned.

Doctor Chanca, a physician who accompanied Columbus during the secondvoyage (1493-1496), wrote a letter to the Council of Seville, the very firstdescription about the caribbean Indians. The document is a portrayal of thosemen and women, includes not only information provided by savages thatColumbus previously qualified as good people, but also a very pessimisticvision about the bad savage to be civilized by Europe. His references tocannibals, that terrified Taino people because of their ferocity, served as acounterweight of the image of the “Noble Savage”, and lead us to a reflectionabout how it promoted the colonization of America and the vigilant eye ofethnographers.

Currently, one of the priorities in the agendas of governments and one of the elements that arouses greater media interest, is public transparency. Understood as the structuring principle of any Social and Democratic Rule of Law, public transparency brings institutions closer to citizens and allows them to be informed of what they do, how they do it and what public organizations perform their functions for. Transparency is materialized in the effective right to public information that any citizen has, although it can be active when the institutions offer data to society without prior request, or passive when citizens ask for them in advance. Without information, without this strategic resource that flows constantly in all areas of life, it is not possible to carry out any personal or professional activity, being therefore necessary that the citizen can obtain public data, exchange them and access the sources that guard them. The present investigation shows how the public data reuse policy produces a substantial economic change in the Knowledge Society, and how such a change is only possible if a deep political-administrative reform and modernization has been previously carried out, preparing the institutions to carry out effective treatment, exchange and provision of public information. In this way, the intelligent management of public data will require the coordinated action of the State, the Society and the Market, following a basic public management model in Political Science and Administration, called Democratic Governance. Honduras has a great challenge on the horizon, because although it is true that a transparency law has been approved in the country, the data reuse policy has not yet been addressed, when it is a basic piece in welfare economics.

Two of the main production programs (PPs) in manufacturing: Production strategy (PS) and technology management (TM) are here studied twofold: 1) testing and validating fit effects of the links between practices from such programs; and 2) Exploring the role played by the environment of plants as an inhibitor of the PS-TM fit. The paper is based on statistical analysis on a survey that involves 88 plants from the electronics industry, distributed among Austria, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and USA. Hence, the study proves the existence of fit between PS and TM practices. To do so, the paper provides analytical and empirical argumentations showing that PS and TM mutually reinforce each other’s practices in order to gain greater competitiveness, measured by operational performance. This may indicate that common implementation of studied production practices across the electronics industry is important in environments in which plants operate.The paper suggests a pattern of improvements where PS and TM have to be implemented hand-in-hand to take better advantage of their effectiveness. Production practices linkages provide ground over which fit originates, spreading its benefits throughout the organization.The research represents an attempt to operationalize and empirically validate linkages between production practices in an international industrial environment. Furthermore, the paper also provides original suggestions to practitioners and decision maker in plants on how to make the most out of implementing PS and TM in the international electronics industry.