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Papers by Rosallnd Bresnahan

Latin American Perspectives, May 1, 2010

Benjamin Kohl is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Templ... more Benjamin Kohl is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. He has written extensively on Bolivia and is coauthor, with Linda Farthing, of Impasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal Hegemony and Social Resistance (2006) and, ...

Latin American Perspectives, 2010

Evo Morales assumed office in January 2006 with a resounding mandate from marginalized indigenous... more Evo Morales assumed office in January 2006 with a resounding mandate from marginalized indigenous peoples to reinvent Bolivia. Five hundred years of colonial and republican rule, combined with 20 years of neoliberal economic policy in this poorly consolidated democracy, constrained his ability to reshape the country during his first term in office. Morales still faces the fundamental challenges of (1) national oligarchies, (2) limited administrative capacity, (3) rent seeking and institutionalized corruption, (4) social movements, and (5) transnational actors. Rather than being distinct, these challenges are overdetermined: the economic challenges of transforming an extractive economy are intertwined with the lack of government capacity that is the legacy of exclusionary social and political processes since the Spanish conquest. Armed with the firm political will embodied in the new constitution, he has consolidated his support, and this has allowed his government to begin its secon...

Latin American Perspectives, 2003

Reflecting on the possibility that Chile's ruling Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia migh... more Reflecting on the possibility that Chile's ruling Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia might have lost the close 2000 presidential runoff election between its candidate Socialist Ricardo Lagos and his right-wing rival Joaquín Lavín, the video producer Hermann Mondaca voiced a frustration common among journalists and other media producers who had risked their lives to create the impressive array of independent media that so tenaciously fought the Pinochet dictatorship (interview, Santiago, August 9, 2000): If we had lost the government, what would we have been left with? We would have had much less than we had in 1989. In '89, we had organized social movements, mobilized with demands and strategies, and in '99, we didn't.. .. More than that, we had a systematic voice on the radio, in the press, in the mass media and micromedia, and also in the audiovisual area, and in '99 we no longer had those media. Coldly putting it like that, one has to ask, "What was it we worked so hard to achieve?" The decline of both media diversity and social mobilization during the Chilean transition are interrelated manifestations of the limitations of neoliberal democracy. Although the Chilean media no longer face the overt repression that killed or disappeared 40 journalists and communication workers, sent another 300 into exile, and left approximately 1,000 more unable to find work (Uribe, 1998: 31), the dramatic decline of media diversity since 1990 highlights the Concertación's failure to treat the media as a crucial democratic site whose openness to all sectors of civil society should be actively supported by public policy. Instead, the Concertación's embrace of the neoliberal conception of media democratization has facilitated national and transnational corporate control of the principal means of public expres-39 Rosalind Bresnahan lived in Chile from 1969 to 1972 and conducted research there during the summers of 1998, 2000, and 2002, interviewing approximately 100 people involved in media production, distribution, and policy making during the dictatorship and the transition to democracy. She most recently taught in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University San Bernardino, and her research was funded by two faculty professional development grants and a Latin American studies travel grant.

Latin American Perspectives, 2010

On January 22,2010, Evo Morales began his second term in office as the first president eligible t... more On January 22,2010, Evo Morales began his second term in office as the first president eligible to serve consecutive terms under the new constitution approved in a 2009 referendum. His first electoral victory in 2005 had made him Bolivia's first indigenous president and represented a watershed in Bolivian politics, ending a peculiar form of Andean apartheid. Even though the majority indigenous people1?who are estimated to account for from 60 to 70 percent of the country's population?had finally gained the right to vote after the 1952 Revolution, they were still socially and culturally subordinate and largely excluded from formal participation in government. As discussed by Postero (2010) in the previous issue, Morales's Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Toward Socialism?MAS) merged indigenous activism with opposition to neoliberalism from socialist and populist sectors in support of an "indigenous nationalist" agenda advocating indigenous rights and eco nomic and popular democracy. Having spent much of his first term consolidating political power, Morales entered office in 2010 controlling the majority of the new "Plurinational Legislative Assembly" This issue, the second to examine Bolivia under Morales, analyzes the country's historic struggle focusing on the new phase heralded by his inauguration in 2006.2 Dominant classes do not give up privi lege without a fight, and Morales's first term was marked by their struggle to maintain their power. Opposition came largely from the old dominant politi cal classes represented by conservatives centered in the Media Luna (Half Moon), the country's four eastern departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni, and Pando (Figure 1).

Journal of Radio Studies, 2002

... Rosalind Bresnahan (Ph.D., Temple University, 1994) is an Assistant Professor in the Departme... more ... Rosalind Bresnahan (Ph.D., Temple University, 1994) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University ... August 1988, one of the guests was Carmen Gloria Quintana, a young woman who, along with her friend Rodrigo Rojas,9 ...

Latin American Perspectives, 2003

Latin American Perspectives, 2012

In September 1989, the best-selling book Los zarpazos del puma (Verdugo, 1989) documented the Car... more In September 1989, the best-selling book Los zarpazos del puma (Verdugo, 1989) documented the Caravan of Death—the trail of executions of Allende supporters ordered by General Arellano Stark as he helicoptered from province to province in the month following the 1973 coup. In June 1990 the well-preserved, mutilated bodies of 21 “disappeared” were unearthed by human rights activists at Pisagua in Chile’s northern desert. Thirty years after the coup, the film Machuca, which depicts the coup through the eyes of two schoolboys of different social classes, became a blockbuster. These are some of the “memory knots” highlighted in Steve J. Stern’s Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Questions in Democratic Chile, 1989–2006. This volume completes his comprehensive trilogy The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile, which offers a multifaceted analysis of struggles over memory since the military dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet brutally crushed Chile’s brief experiment in creating a democratic transition to socialism. The first and shortest of the three volumes, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London, 1998 (2004), introduces the premises and concepts that Stern develops in the subsequent books. He recognizes memory as a central terrain of political and cultural struggle that involves not merely the recollection of historical facts but the subjective meanings given to these occurrences by individuals who experience them in different social locations and through different ideological lenses. To analyze the complex interplay between individual and social memory-making in a politically polarized society, he introduces the concepts of loose versus emblematic memory and memory knots. Memory knots are “sites where the social body screams.” They include sites of humanity (such as human rights activists and investigative journalists,) sites in time (politically charged anniversaries such as September 11, the date of the coup), and sites of physical matter or geography (such as torture centers and mass graves) that serve to project issues of memory into the public domain. They are key moments or nodes in the ongoing social struggle between competing ways of understanding the major events of recent Chilean history (the Allende government, the coup, and the dictatorship) that shape the ways in which loose (personal) memories become integrated into broader frameworks of social understanding (emblematic memories). Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–1988 (2006) involves a more detailed examination of the dictatorship’s struggle to achieve politico-cultural legitimacy by portraying the coup and military regime as the salvation of Chile from Marxist ruin. How this effort to establish a hegemonic emblematic memory was contested by the diverse forces that gradually coalesced into the victorious Coalition for the No in the 1988 plebiscite on Pinochet’s continued rule is the central drama of this volume. Reckoning with Pinochet encompasses the lengthy period between Pinochet’s defeat in the 1988 plebiscite and his death in 2006. Examining the political and social dynamics of the Concertación era, Stern insists on recognizing the complexities and nuances of 458418LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X12458418Latin American PerspectivesBrESNAHAN / Book rEVIEw 2012

Latin American Perspectives, 2012

Mass student protests have convulsed Chile in the past few years, and their demands have focused ... more Mass student protests have convulsed Chile in the past few years, and their demands have focused attention on the failures of the educational system after nearly 40 years of dictatorship and neoliberal democracy. Robert Austin’s work calls attention to an often neglected but important second front in the struggle to meet the educational needs of Chileans—adult and popular education. Diálogos sobre estado y educación popular en Chile: De Frei a Frei (1964–1993) is a companion to his earlier work The State, Literacy, and Popular Education in Chile: 1963–1990 (2003). In this volume, through interviews with an impressively wide range of government officials and nongovernmental organization (NGO) personnel, Austin traces the changes in literacy and adult education efforts over three decades of dramatic political change as Chile experienced Christian Democratic reformism, the Unidad Popular’s attempted transition to socialism, the harshly repressive neoliberalism of the dictatorship, and the more socially conscious neoliberal democracy of the early Concertación. Each of the book’s 24 chapters presents a semistructured interview based on 10 questions designed to elicit information and opinions on topics such as the premises underlying literacy programs, programs for women, and the role and effectiveness of organizations such as the Ministry of Education, various NGOs, churches, international agencies, and the media. Some involve accounts of personal experiences and discussion of philosophical issues that go on for as much as 40 pages. Others are much briefer, taking only 2 to 5 pages. The interview subjects discuss and disagree on a variety of topics, among them, the definition of illiteracy and the impact on adult education of various bureaucratic restructurings such as Pinochet’s municipalización of education (making municipalities rather than the central government responsible for operating schools). In addition to criticisms of programs under other administrations, some interviewees engage in retrospective self-criticism of the programs they designed and/or implemented. One constant in the interviews is the emphasis on the influential role of Paulo Freire. In June 1964 Freire began a five-year exile in Chile just months before Eduardo Frei Montalva was elected president promising a “revolution in freedom.” This historical coincidence profoundly shaped literacy programs and adult education in Chile from that time forward. With the Cuban Revolution inspiring leftist movements throughout Latin America, Frei’s reformism was seen as an alternative to more radical transformation and received substantial financial support from the United States. Central to Frei’s programs were an agrarian reform based on asentamientos (cooperatives) and promoción popular, the creation of a variety of organizations such as juntas de vecinos (neighborhood councils) and centros de madres (mothers’ centers) to increase social participation at the local level. Freire, in addition to publishing the books that established his reputation—in 1967 Education,the Practice of Freedom (Freire, 1976 [1967]) and in 1968 456683LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X12456683BRESNAhAN / BOOk REvIEWLatin American Perspectives 2012

Latin American Perspectives

Understanding Community Media, 2000

Journal of Radio Studies, 2007

... of civil society become producers, and not merely receiv-ers, of information and opinion and ... more ... of civil society become producers, and not merely receiv-ers, of information and opinion and are ... Radio was to provide the opportunity for average people “to ex-press themselves, raise their ... station returned to the air having built up its audience through its public presence and ...

Latin American Perspectives, May 1, 2010

Benjamin Kohl is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Templ... more Benjamin Kohl is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. He has written extensively on Bolivia and is coauthor, with Linda Farthing, of Impasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal Hegemony and Social Resistance (2006) and, ...

Latin American Perspectives, 2010

Evo Morales assumed office in January 2006 with a resounding mandate from marginalized indigenous... more Evo Morales assumed office in January 2006 with a resounding mandate from marginalized indigenous peoples to reinvent Bolivia. Five hundred years of colonial and republican rule, combined with 20 years of neoliberal economic policy in this poorly consolidated democracy, constrained his ability to reshape the country during his first term in office. Morales still faces the fundamental challenges of (1) national oligarchies, (2) limited administrative capacity, (3) rent seeking and institutionalized corruption, (4) social movements, and (5) transnational actors. Rather than being distinct, these challenges are overdetermined: the economic challenges of transforming an extractive economy are intertwined with the lack of government capacity that is the legacy of exclusionary social and political processes since the Spanish conquest. Armed with the firm political will embodied in the new constitution, he has consolidated his support, and this has allowed his government to begin its secon...

Latin American Perspectives, 2003

Reflecting on the possibility that Chile's ruling Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia migh... more Reflecting on the possibility that Chile's ruling Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia might have lost the close 2000 presidential runoff election between its candidate Socialist Ricardo Lagos and his right-wing rival Joaquín Lavín, the video producer Hermann Mondaca voiced a frustration common among journalists and other media producers who had risked their lives to create the impressive array of independent media that so tenaciously fought the Pinochet dictatorship (interview, Santiago, August 9, 2000): If we had lost the government, what would we have been left with? We would have had much less than we had in 1989. In '89, we had organized social movements, mobilized with demands and strategies, and in '99, we didn't.. .. More than that, we had a systematic voice on the radio, in the press, in the mass media and micromedia, and also in the audiovisual area, and in '99 we no longer had those media. Coldly putting it like that, one has to ask, "What was it we worked so hard to achieve?" The decline of both media diversity and social mobilization during the Chilean transition are interrelated manifestations of the limitations of neoliberal democracy. Although the Chilean media no longer face the overt repression that killed or disappeared 40 journalists and communication workers, sent another 300 into exile, and left approximately 1,000 more unable to find work (Uribe, 1998: 31), the dramatic decline of media diversity since 1990 highlights the Concertación's failure to treat the media as a crucial democratic site whose openness to all sectors of civil society should be actively supported by public policy. Instead, the Concertación's embrace of the neoliberal conception of media democratization has facilitated national and transnational corporate control of the principal means of public expres-39 Rosalind Bresnahan lived in Chile from 1969 to 1972 and conducted research there during the summers of 1998, 2000, and 2002, interviewing approximately 100 people involved in media production, distribution, and policy making during the dictatorship and the transition to democracy. She most recently taught in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University San Bernardino, and her research was funded by two faculty professional development grants and a Latin American studies travel grant.

Latin American Perspectives, 2010

On January 22,2010, Evo Morales began his second term in office as the first president eligible t... more On January 22,2010, Evo Morales began his second term in office as the first president eligible to serve consecutive terms under the new constitution approved in a 2009 referendum. His first electoral victory in 2005 had made him Bolivia's first indigenous president and represented a watershed in Bolivian politics, ending a peculiar form of Andean apartheid. Even though the majority indigenous people1?who are estimated to account for from 60 to 70 percent of the country's population?had finally gained the right to vote after the 1952 Revolution, they were still socially and culturally subordinate and largely excluded from formal participation in government. As discussed by Postero (2010) in the previous issue, Morales's Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Toward Socialism?MAS) merged indigenous activism with opposition to neoliberalism from socialist and populist sectors in support of an "indigenous nationalist" agenda advocating indigenous rights and eco nomic and popular democracy. Having spent much of his first term consolidating political power, Morales entered office in 2010 controlling the majority of the new "Plurinational Legislative Assembly" This issue, the second to examine Bolivia under Morales, analyzes the country's historic struggle focusing on the new phase heralded by his inauguration in 2006.2 Dominant classes do not give up privi lege without a fight, and Morales's first term was marked by their struggle to maintain their power. Opposition came largely from the old dominant politi cal classes represented by conservatives centered in the Media Luna (Half Moon), the country's four eastern departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni, and Pando (Figure 1).

Journal of Radio Studies, 2002

... Rosalind Bresnahan (Ph.D., Temple University, 1994) is an Assistant Professor in the Departme... more ... Rosalind Bresnahan (Ph.D., Temple University, 1994) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University ... August 1988, one of the guests was Carmen Gloria Quintana, a young woman who, along with her friend Rodrigo Rojas,9 ...

Latin American Perspectives, 2003

Latin American Perspectives, 2012

In September 1989, the best-selling book Los zarpazos del puma (Verdugo, 1989) documented the Car... more In September 1989, the best-selling book Los zarpazos del puma (Verdugo, 1989) documented the Caravan of Death—the trail of executions of Allende supporters ordered by General Arellano Stark as he helicoptered from province to province in the month following the 1973 coup. In June 1990 the well-preserved, mutilated bodies of 21 “disappeared” were unearthed by human rights activists at Pisagua in Chile’s northern desert. Thirty years after the coup, the film Machuca, which depicts the coup through the eyes of two schoolboys of different social classes, became a blockbuster. These are some of the “memory knots” highlighted in Steve J. Stern’s Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Questions in Democratic Chile, 1989–2006. This volume completes his comprehensive trilogy The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile, which offers a multifaceted analysis of struggles over memory since the military dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet brutally crushed Chile’s brief experiment in creating a democratic transition to socialism. The first and shortest of the three volumes, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London, 1998 (2004), introduces the premises and concepts that Stern develops in the subsequent books. He recognizes memory as a central terrain of political and cultural struggle that involves not merely the recollection of historical facts but the subjective meanings given to these occurrences by individuals who experience them in different social locations and through different ideological lenses. To analyze the complex interplay between individual and social memory-making in a politically polarized society, he introduces the concepts of loose versus emblematic memory and memory knots. Memory knots are “sites where the social body screams.” They include sites of humanity (such as human rights activists and investigative journalists,) sites in time (politically charged anniversaries such as September 11, the date of the coup), and sites of physical matter or geography (such as torture centers and mass graves) that serve to project issues of memory into the public domain. They are key moments or nodes in the ongoing social struggle between competing ways of understanding the major events of recent Chilean history (the Allende government, the coup, and the dictatorship) that shape the ways in which loose (personal) memories become integrated into broader frameworks of social understanding (emblematic memories). Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–1988 (2006) involves a more detailed examination of the dictatorship’s struggle to achieve politico-cultural legitimacy by portraying the coup and military regime as the salvation of Chile from Marxist ruin. How this effort to establish a hegemonic emblematic memory was contested by the diverse forces that gradually coalesced into the victorious Coalition for the No in the 1988 plebiscite on Pinochet’s continued rule is the central drama of this volume. Reckoning with Pinochet encompasses the lengthy period between Pinochet’s defeat in the 1988 plebiscite and his death in 2006. Examining the political and social dynamics of the Concertación era, Stern insists on recognizing the complexities and nuances of 458418LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X12458418Latin American PerspectivesBrESNAHAN / Book rEVIEw 2012

Latin American Perspectives, 2012

Mass student protests have convulsed Chile in the past few years, and their demands have focused ... more Mass student protests have convulsed Chile in the past few years, and their demands have focused attention on the failures of the educational system after nearly 40 years of dictatorship and neoliberal democracy. Robert Austin’s work calls attention to an often neglected but important second front in the struggle to meet the educational needs of Chileans—adult and popular education. Diálogos sobre estado y educación popular en Chile: De Frei a Frei (1964–1993) is a companion to his earlier work The State, Literacy, and Popular Education in Chile: 1963–1990 (2003). In this volume, through interviews with an impressively wide range of government officials and nongovernmental organization (NGO) personnel, Austin traces the changes in literacy and adult education efforts over three decades of dramatic political change as Chile experienced Christian Democratic reformism, the Unidad Popular’s attempted transition to socialism, the harshly repressive neoliberalism of the dictatorship, and the more socially conscious neoliberal democracy of the early Concertación. Each of the book’s 24 chapters presents a semistructured interview based on 10 questions designed to elicit information and opinions on topics such as the premises underlying literacy programs, programs for women, and the role and effectiveness of organizations such as the Ministry of Education, various NGOs, churches, international agencies, and the media. Some involve accounts of personal experiences and discussion of philosophical issues that go on for as much as 40 pages. Others are much briefer, taking only 2 to 5 pages. The interview subjects discuss and disagree on a variety of topics, among them, the definition of illiteracy and the impact on adult education of various bureaucratic restructurings such as Pinochet’s municipalización of education (making municipalities rather than the central government responsible for operating schools). In addition to criticisms of programs under other administrations, some interviewees engage in retrospective self-criticism of the programs they designed and/or implemented. One constant in the interviews is the emphasis on the influential role of Paulo Freire. In June 1964 Freire began a five-year exile in Chile just months before Eduardo Frei Montalva was elected president promising a “revolution in freedom.” This historical coincidence profoundly shaped literacy programs and adult education in Chile from that time forward. With the Cuban Revolution inspiring leftist movements throughout Latin America, Frei’s reformism was seen as an alternative to more radical transformation and received substantial financial support from the United States. Central to Frei’s programs were an agrarian reform based on asentamientos (cooperatives) and promoción popular, the creation of a variety of organizations such as juntas de vecinos (neighborhood councils) and centros de madres (mothers’ centers) to increase social participation at the local level. Freire, in addition to publishing the books that established his reputation—in 1967 Education,the Practice of Freedom (Freire, 1976 [1967]) and in 1968 456683LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X12456683BRESNAhAN / BOOk REvIEWLatin American Perspectives 2012

Latin American Perspectives

Understanding Community Media, 2000

Journal of Radio Studies, 2007

... of civil society become producers, and not merely receiv-ers, of information and opinion and ... more ... of civil society become producers, and not merely receiv-ers, of information and opinion and are ... Radio was to provide the opportunity for average people “to ex-press themselves, raise their ... station returned to the air having built up its audience through its public presence and ...