Latin American Perspectives

On October 25, Brazilians returned to the polls for the runoff of their presidential election, and President Lula da Silva came from behind to defeat far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, eldest son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro, 51.8 percent to 48.2. Three weeks earlier Bolsonaro had finished first, making Lula the first candidate in Brazil's modern democracy to win the presidency after placing second in the first round. Bolsonaro has refused to recognize the result and has since left for the United States. In the second of our two episodes on the election, Felipe Antunes de Oliveira returns to trace the three weeks that turned the race around, read the results, assess Lula's victory speech and what his fourth term can achieve facing a Congress dominated by the right, and consider what the outcome means for Latin America and the world. Felipe Antunes de Oliveira is a senior lecturer in International Relations at Queen Mary University of London and a coordinating editor at Latin American Perspectives. Outside the academy, he has served as a diplomat for the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as General Coordinator of International Financial Affairs at the Brazilian Ministry of Finance. He is the author of Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024). The views expressed in this episode are his own and do not represent the Brazilian government. Links Part one: "Fighting Against the Return of Bolsonarismo: Brazil's First Round Election w/ Felipe Antunes de Oliveira" [link] Felipe Antunes de Oliveira, Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina: A Critique of Market and State Utopias (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024): https://upittpress.org/books/9780822948100/ Felipe's faculty page at Queen Mary University of London: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/politics/staff/profiles/antunesdeoliveirafelipe.html From the Latin American Perspectives archive Brazil under Bolsonaro, Vol. 50, No. 1 (January 2023), eds. Tulio Ferreira and James N. Green: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lapa/50/1 Armando Boito, "The Rise of Fascism in Brazil," Vol. 50, No. 1 (January 2023): https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221140419 Brazil: Assessing the Past Half Decade, Vol. 50, No. 5 (September 2023), ed. Paulo Simões: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lapa/50/5 Brazil and the Changing Music of the Spheres of Influence, Vol. 53, No. 2 (March 2026): https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lapa/53/2 Latin American Perspectives is a peer-reviewed journal publishing critical scholarship on Latin America, its people, politics, and culture. Subscribe to the journal: [link]. Annual print subscriptions start at $74, with discounted rates for students and LASA members. Follow us: Facebook · Instagram · X · TikTok · Bluesky Listen and subscribe: Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube Hosted by Alexander Scott, member of the LAP editorial collective.

  On October 4, Brazilians voted in the first round of a general election, and for the first time since 1998 Lula did not finish first. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, eldest son of the imprisoned former president, took 47 percent to Lula's 45, forcing a runoff on October 25, while the Bolsonaro family's Liberal Party became the largest force in both houses of Congress. Two days after the vote, Felipe Antunes de Oliveira joins us to walk through the electoral map, explain why the left did so badly, and look ahead to the second round and what a Flávio Bolsonaro presidency would mean for Brazil, the region, and Brazil's place in the world. Part two will follow the runoff. About the guest. Felipe Antunes de Oliveira is a senior lecturer in International Relations at Queen Mary University of London and a coordinating editor at Latin American Perspectives. Outside the academy, he has served as a diplomat for the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as General Coordinator of International Financial Affairs at the Brazilian Ministry of Finance. He is the author of Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024). The views expressed in this episode are his own and do not represent the Brazilian government. Links Felipe Antunes de Oliveira, Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina: A Critique of Market and State Utopias (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024): https://upittpress.org/books/9780822948100/ Felipe's faculty page at Queen Mary University of London: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/politics/staff/profiles/antunesdeoliveirafelipe.html From the Latin American Perspectives archive Brazil under Bolsonaro, Vol. 50, No. 1 (January 2023), eds. Tulio Ferreira and James N. Green: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lapa/50/1 Armando Boito, "The Rise of Fascism in Brazil," Vol. 50, No. 1 (January 2023): https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221140419 Brazil: Assessing the Past Half Decade, Vol. 50, No. 5 (September 2023), ed. Paulo Simões: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lapa/50/5 Brazil and the Changing Music of the Spheres of Influence, Vol. 53, No. 2 (March 2026): https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lapa/53/2 Latin American Perspectives is a peer-reviewed journal publishing critical scholarship on Latin America, its people, politics, and culture. Subscribe to the journal: https://www.sagepub.com/shop/subscribe-to-a-journal/latin-american-perspectives-200875#subscribe . Annual print subscriptions start at $74, with discounted rates for students and LASA members.  

Hosts Alexander Scott and Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli speak with Daniel Gunnar Kressel about his book Hispanic Technocracy: From Fascism to Catholic Authoritarianism in Spain, Argentina, and Chile, 1945–1991 (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Kressel argues that fascism did not simply die in 1945 but mutated, and that across Franco's Spain, Onganía's Argentina, and Pinochet's Chile a distinct post-fascist school of thought became state ideology, fusing Catholic spiritual mission, authoritarian rule, and early neoliberal economics. The conversation begins with Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora lecturing Chileans and Argentines in 1965 on a Spain that had supposedly left ideology behind for pure development, and why "bureaucratic authoritarianism" misses what these regimes were. Kressel traces the Hispanista networks that drew Argentine and Chilean rightists to Franco's Madrid in the 1950s as a third position against both Washington and Moscow; the rise of Opus Dei, whose ministers displaced the Falange, presided over the Spanish "economic miracle," and insisted they were realists without ideology; Onganía's ambition to be a Franco "in the most literal way"; and the ideological roots of Pinochet's terror and the subsidiary state that followed it. They close with the authoritarian nostalgia of Vox, José Antonio Kast, and Javier Milei, the corporatist model that never existed outside the regimes' own propaganda, and why Spain, Argentina, and Chile's democratic transitions came from the street, not from the technocrats. Daniel Gunnar Kressel is a Koch History Centre Fellow at the University of Oxford (Wadham College) and a historian of modern Latin America and Spain whose work examines transnational right-wing ideologies, networks, and identities during the Cold War. He is the author of Hispanic Technocracy (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and José Antonio Primo de Rivera in Latin America: The Pursuit of a Fascist Usable Past during the Cold War (Routledge, 2025). Get the book: Hispanic Technocracy: From Fascism to Catholic Authoritarianism in Spain, Argentina, and Chile, 1945–1991 is available now from Cambridge University Press: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/hispanic-technocracy/2C84722CD535BB901058E4748E10065B] More from Daniel Kressel: José Antonio Primo de Rivera in Latin America (Routledge, 2025) https://www.routledge.com/Jose-Antonio-Primo-de-Rivera-in-Latin-America-The-Pursuit-of-a-Fascist-Usable-Past-during-the-Cold-War-1939-1989/Kressel/p/book/9781032709796 Faculty page at Oxford:  https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-daniel-gunnar-kressel] Support Latin American Perspectives Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, and Bluesky. Subscribe and rate on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or preferred listening app. Annual print subscriptions start at $74, with discounted rates for students and LASA members.

Andrew Smolski returns to the podcast to continue ouron going conversation on US imperialism and Cuba, recorded September 11, 2026. We discuss labor and neoliberalization in Mexico, the Cuban economy from the Special Period to the present, the new sanctions on Cuba and the US oil agreement with Venezuela, and the return of a nineteenth-century colonial politics in the hemisphere. Andrew Smolski is an assistant professor of rural sociology in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education at the Pennsylvania State University and a coordinating editor of Latin American Perspectives. His research examines imperialism, development, and agrarian change in Cuba and Mexico.  Links Part 1: "US Imperialism and Cuban Development w/ Andrew Smolski" (July 2026)  Joana Salém Vasconcelos, Agrarian History of the Cuban Revolution (Brill 2023 / Haymarket 2024)  Hannah Garth, Food in Cuba: The Pursuit of a Decent Meal (Stanford University Press, 2020)  Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics (2025)  Christopher Chase-Dunn et al. "Trade Globalization since 1795: Waves of Integration in the World-System" (2000)  Current issue of Latin American Perspectives  US State Department, "Further Sanctions on Cuba's Elites, Financial Channels, and Resource Exploitation Apparatus" (September 3, 2026) Subscribe to Latin American Perspectives: https://www.sagepub.com/shop/subscribe-to-a-journal/latin-american-perspectives-200875#subscribe  

En esta segunda parte de nuestra conversación sobre el número de enero de 2026 de Latin American Perspectives, "Political Ecology, Gender and the Environment in Latin America", vamos directamente a la investigación junto a cuatro de las autoras del dossier. La discusión, facilitada por la coeditora del número Mayarí Castillo (socióloga de la Universidad Mayor), reúne a Evelyn Arriagada, Paula Contreras, Beatriz Cid y Paula Acuña para explorar cómo el género funciona como categoría crítica en la ecología política y los estudios ambientales en América Latina. A lo largo del episodio, las autoras conversan sobre el agua, el cuidado, la agroecología, la recolección de algas y la defensa de los territorios; sobre el diálogo del género con la interseccionalidad, los saberes locales e indígenas y la relación con la naturaleza; y sobre el protagonismo de las mujeres en las luchas socioambientales, desde el norte de Chile hasta la costa mapuche del Biobío. Si aún no la has escuchado, te recomendamos comenzar por la primera parte, nuestra conversación con Mayarí Castillo sobre los grandes ejes que estructuran el número. 🎧 Escucha la primera parte: https://sites.libsyn.com/456621/latinamericanperspectives/political-ecology-gender-and-the-environment-in-latin-america-con-mayar-castillo 📖 Explora el número de enero de 2026 aquí: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lapa/53/1 Invitadas y sus artículos Evelyn Arriagada — "A Feminist Political Ecology on Women's Environmental Activism from Latin America/Abya Yala" (acceso abierto). Propone una ecología política feminista situada para leer el activismo ambiental de las mujeres más allá del maternalismo y de una cercanía "esencial" con la naturaleza. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0094582X251413512 Paula Contreras (con Mayarí Castillo, Camila Cuevas y Pablo González) — "Water Scarcity, Gender, and Community Organization in Coquimbo, Chile". Sobre la organización comunitaria frente a la escasez hídrica en la provincia del Limarí y el papel del género en esos procesos. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X261419440 Beatriz Cid (con Magaly Mella Abalos y otros/as) — "Mapuche Lafkenche Women: Pursuing the Economic Revitalization of Kolloy and Caring for the Commons on the Tirúa Coast". Sobre las mujeres lafkenche, la recolección de kolloy y el cuidado de los bienes comunes en la costa de Tirúa. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X251415402 Paula Acuña — "The Ethic of Care in the Practices of Chilean Campesinas: Agroecological Responses in the Face of Climate Uncertainty". Sobre la ética del cuidado en las prácticas agroecológicas de campesinas en Paine frente a la incertidumbre climática. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X251414855 Introducción al dossier: Mayarí Castillo y Katy Jenkins, "Political Ecology, Gender, and the Environment in Latin America: An Introduction to the Field". https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X251411334 Sigue a Latin American Perspectives Síguenos en Facebook, Instagram y Twitter/X, y suscríbete y califica el podcast en Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube o la aplicación de tu preferencia. Las suscripciones anuales impresas a la revista parten en US$ 74,00, con tarifas rebajadas para estudiantes y miembros de la Latin American Studies Association.