Brazil: Moving Up and Moving Out
On a breezy Saturday morning in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Gardênia Azul, the women in the dos Santos family rise early for a long day of baking cakes. They have a good reason to be industrious: the wedding of Luis Miller dos Santos, 24, and his fiancé, Mayara Azevedo, 23, is barely two … Read more
Peru: Counting and Being Middle Class
Olga Meza, 31, has a job that gives her an insider’s understanding of Lima’s growing middle class: she conducts surveys for Ipsos-Apoyo, going door to door to find out what’s on her neighbors’ minds. Thanks to her work with the Brazilian-Peruvian survey firm, Olga knows exactly where her family fits in the the Peruvian economy. … Read more
Mexico: ¡Vivan Las Madres!
Six days a week, María Felicitas Camacho Maya, 62, unlocks the door to Lilian Michel, a bright white salon in Mexico City’s upscale Condesa neighborhood. She slips a white smock over her blouse and checks her hair at an island of oval mirrors. América Luz Valencia, a 27-year-old manicurist, arrives an hour or so later, … Read more
Ask the Experts
Alicia Bárcena answers: Educational achievement has always marked and defined the middle class. Public policies that have led to mass access to education have led to a broad-based improvement in educational accomplishments, among them higher completion rates in secondary and tertiary education. This has led to more upward mobility in terms of earnings and types … Read more
Brazil’s Strategic Leap Forward
During their meeting in Brazil in March last year, U.S. President Barack Obama and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff discussed a plan to send 101,000 Brazilian students overseas to study science, engineering, mathematics, and technology-based disciplines. Announced soon after, the initiative, Science Without Borders, has signaled President Rousseff’s interest in marking her tenure by building a … Read more
Latin America’s Middle Class in Global Perspective
Watch an AQ Q&A on India’s middle class and read the related sidebar. Read a sidebar on China’s middle class. Read this article on AQ’s new app, which can be downloaded on iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play. Latin America and the Caribbean is experiencing a dramatic surge of its middle class. In just a decade, the … Read more
Not Poor, But Not Middle Class Yet
During the first decade of the twenty-first century, Latin America’s increasing prosperity and social progress have led analysts to conclude that historic change is taking place. Indeed, poverty in Latin America fell from 41.4 percent in 2000 to 28 percent in 2010, even at a time of global distress1—a result, in part, of both sustained … Read more
Carolina Trivelli: A New Generation of Technocrats
This article is part of the Leaders of Social & Political Change series from the Fall 2012 issue of Americas Quarterly. View the full special section. Over the past 50 years, many changes have taken place in Latin America—most of them for the better. But the problem of poverty and social exclusion persists. With … Read more
Sergio Aguayo: From Rights to Governance
This article is part of the Leaders of Social & Political Change series from the Fall 2012 issue of Americas Quarterly. View the full special section. I was asked to give my opinion on the changes that have transpired in the hemisphere in the past 50 years and the role of philanthropy. Of course, … Read more
Ricardo Lagos: Advances in the Social Sciences
This article is part of the Leaders of Social & Political Change series from the Fall 2012 issue of Americas Quarterly. View the full special section. In 1962, the Ford Foundation quietly began work in the Southern Cone. At the time, the predominant economic model in the region, import substitution industrialization, was struggling to keep … Read more
Adriana Ramos: Social Rights
This article is part of the Leaders of Social & Political Change series from the Fall 2012 issue of Americas Quarterly. View the full special section. The ratification of Brazil’s federal Constitution in 1988 marked a milestone in the country’s commitment to the collective and common rights of its citizens. The Constitution expanded civil, … Read more
Marta Lamas: Reproductive Rights
This article is part of the Leaders of Social & Political Change series from the Fall 2012 issue of Americas Quarterly. View the full special section. Illegal abortions cause thousands of deaths in Latin America. As shown by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the vicious cycle of … Read more
Monsignor Juan José Gerardi: A Martyr for Truth
This article is part of the Leaders of Social & Political Change series from the Fall 2012 issue of Americas Quarterly. View the full special section. The 1998 assassination of Guatemalan Bishop Juan José Gerardi stunned a country ravaged by more than three decades of political violence. For four years, Gerardi had led an extraordinary … Read more
Marcelo Paixão: Confronting Race and Inequality in Brazil
This article is part of the Leaders of Social & Political Change series from the Fall 2012 issue of Americas Quarterly. View the full special section. The redemocratization of Brazilian society in the 1980s has meant the widening of the political sphere for a whole new set of social actors. But not all sectors … Read more
Nancy Pérez: Evolution of Migrant Rights
This article is part of the Leaders of Social & Political Change series from the Fall 2012 issue of Americas Quarterly. View the full special section. After the Central American peace accords of the 1980s and 1990s ended decades of civil war, thousands of refugees returned to their home countries. The rise in migration … Read more
