Suchergebnisse

Objectives To establish and quantify the effect of the internal armed conflict in Colombia on infant health, particularly birth weight.Methods This document explores time differences in relation to the impact of the internal armed conflict in Colombia, measured by municipal homicide rates, on infant health, quantified as infant mortality and birth weight. Based on individual data from the 1995 and 2000 Colombian National Demographic and Health Surveys, along with annual municipal data on violence and economic performance, results obtained from two biological siblings are compared using a maternal fixed logistic regression, as one was born in a violent era and the other during a peaceful moment.Results Political violence negatively affected infant health outcomes during the peak of violence experienced by Colombia in the 1990s, with worse outcomes for male infants than for females. Controlling fixed maternal effects shows a three times greater probability of being born with low birth in infants born during increased violence, compared to their siblings born in more peaceful times.Conclusions These results make visible all the effects of intense and long-lasting armed conflicts, as is the case of Colombia, since not only direct actors involved in conflict are affected, but also infants who show worse health outcomes. These results allows targeting policies for reducing the effects on populations in conflict or during the reconstruction period; in this case, the provision of maternal care during the gestational period and special care for newborns in areas under high violence levels should be a priority. ; Objetivos establecer y cuantificar el efecto del conflicto armado interno en Colombia en la salud infantil, particularmente en el peso al nacer.Métodos este documento explota las diferencias en el tiempo de la intensidad del conflicto armado interno en Colombia, medido por las tasas de homicidios municipales, sobre la salud infantil, cuantificado como mortalidad infantil y peso al nacer. Mediante el uso de datos individuales de las encuestas nacionales de demografía y salud de Colombia de 1995 y 2000, combinados con datos anuales de nivel municipal sobre violencia y desempeño económico, se confrontan los resultados entre dos hermanos biológicos, uno nacido en una era violenta y otro en un momento pacífico utilizando una regresión logística de control materno.Resultados La violencia política afecta negativamente la salud infantil, lo que se pudo cuantificar durante el pico de violencia que experimentó Colombia en los años 90, con peores resultados para los bebés varones que en sus contrapartes. El control de los efectos fijos maternos muestra una probabilidad significativa tres veces mayor de nacer con bajo peso al nacer para los bebés nacidos durante el aumento de la violencia, en comparación con sus hermanos nacidos en épocas más pacíficas.Conclusiones Estos resultados hacen visibles la totalidad de los efectos de conflictos armados intensos y duraderos, como es el caso colombiano, en donde no sólo los actores directos involucrados en el mismo se ven afectados, sino que también los recién nacidos muestran peores resultados de salud. Los resultados de este estudio permiten focalizar políticas en la reducción de los efectos en poblaciones en conflicto o durante el período de reconstrucción, en este caso se sugiere la provisión de cuidado materno durante el período gestacional y cuidado especial para recién nacidos en áreas de altos niveles de violencia como una prioridad.

At the periphery of Portuguese right-wing authoritarian rule, in the Atlantic archipelago of the Azores and its Central Group, political repression remained part of local life in the period after the Second World War. However, in spite of the Portuguese political police being installed in Terceira (in the Central Group) in 1954, this repression remained porous, and many Azoreans used the loopholes for their own advantage. The everyday life history approach allows us to understand these strategies and challenges: it shows how individuals used the internal conflicts amongst the agents of the Portuguese state or the presence of one of the principal US American military bases of the Cold War in Terceira Island. Medical doctors played out their social prestige to defend themselves of accusations, and elites of small towns used the political police to further their own goals. In some extreme cases, profiting from the internal contradictions of the regime even meant committing some small acts of democratic choice on the local level, or mobilizing against an unpopular bishop.

AbstractAs a coerced labour force living under repressive conditions, contract workers in São Tomé e Príncipe's cocoa plantations belong to a wider phenomenon of global plantation experience during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Flight appears as an important element of that experience and this article is an attempt to interpret the strategies of runaways in São Tomé's turbulent Great Depression years after 1930. The work set out here benefitted from a large selection of unexplored sources of the island's labour inspectorate, which can be found in the archipelago itself. Its analysis has enabled interpretation of the motives of escaping workers, and with it discussion of three principal strategic contexts of flight: the experiences of runaways who formed communities; attempts by escaped workers to hide and become part of "native" (forro) communities in rural areas or in the city of São Tomé; and the agency of workers trying to run away to subsequently renegotiate their conditions with labour inspectors or with plantation administrators sympathetic to their situation. The last part of the article attempts to locate that experience in the global history of runaways, connecting it with the types of "ecosystems of running" discussed for Atlantic slavery and later indentured labour systems.

Accepted version ; First Published December 13, 2020 ; The effects of the Great Depression on the important cocoa plantation sector of the archipelago of São Tomé e Príncipe – a Portuguese colonial laboratory for social change in plantation agriculture shifting between coercive practices and attempts at accommodation – were drastic: initially backed by a right-wing authoritarian government, plantation managements lowered workers' wages and made already repressive conditions of worker exploitation worse. This article highlights the processes of degradation in plantation workers' life. However, in ways that might seem paradox at first glance, the crisis years of the 1930s also opened the ways to changes in social experiences in the plantations. Labour inspectors were increasingly called upon to scrutinize existing abuses on the plantations, and although this might have been in the first phase simply lip service to certain international debates on good standards in colonialism, inspectors internalized the need for reform and turned out to be critical observers. At the same time, the workers expanded their repertoire of responses – from individual resistance to ever better-organized escape strategies and the manipulation of offers of settlement schemes for small groups of workers. By 1937, these trends were important precursors to changes that would achieve their full impact in the 1950s.

The effects of the Great Depression on the important cocoa plantation sector of the archipelago of São Tomé e Príncipe – a Portuguese colonial laboratory for social change in plantation agriculture shifting between coercive practices and attempts at accommodation – were drastic: initially backed by a right-wing authoritarian government, plantation managements lowered workers' wages and made already repressive conditions of worker exploitation worse. This article highlights the processes of degradation in plantation workers' life. However, in ways that might seem paradox at first glance, the crisis years of the 1930s also opened the ways to changes in social experiences in the plantations. Labour inspectors were increasingly called upon to scrutinize existing abuses on the plantations, and although this might have been in the first phase simply lip service to certain international debates on good standards in colonialism, inspectors internalized the need for reform and turned out to be critical observers. At the same time, the workers expanded their repertoire of responses – from individual resistance to ever better-organized escape strategies and the manipulation of offers of settlement schemes for small groups of workers. By 1937, these trends were important precursors to changes that would achieve their full impact in the 1950s.