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Out in the Periphery explores how Latin America, a region known for its Catholic heritage and machismo culture, came to embrace gay rights. At the heart of this analysis is the activism of Latin America's gay rights organizations, a long-neglected social movement even by students of Latin American social movements.

Transitional justice, a movement devoted to bringing accountability to departed political regimes, has been the engine of the international human rights community in the past four decades. But while much has been said about how transitional justice enables successful democratic transitions, some of the movement's legacy is more checkered—from endangering such transitions to rekindling old feuds and undermining the rule of law. Acknowledging this seldom discussed darker side of transitional justice is not an argument against holding an old regime to account for its actions, but rather a recognition of the limits of what justice can do to advance democratization.

Abstract: A central paradox in the relationship between separatism and democracy is that while democracy provides a fertile environment for separatism—often by means of democracy's own institutions, mechanisms, and policies—democratic states are also well equipped to thwart and defeat separatist movements. The same pluralistic flexibility that allows pro-independence movements to blossom provides the tools to subvert and even crush separatist aspirations. Whether stonewalled by constitutional constraints, locked into systems of regional autonomy, undercut by counter-separatist movements, or cowed by the economic consequences of going it alone, separatist movements in democratic states are likely to turn quixotic. Catalonia and Scotland—two regions that only a few years ago seemed to be on the cusp of realizing longtime dreams of independence—prominently display the paradoxical politics inherent in separatism in democratic systems.

Abstract
Democratic backsliding, or the debilitation of democracy by those elected to protect it, looms large in the current debate about the global crisis of democracy, including Sara Wallace Goodman's Citizenship in Hard Times: How Ordinary People Respond to Democratic Threat. In keeping with the prevailing view of backsliding as a political phenomenon rooted in extreme partisanship and polarization, Goodman is concerned with strengthening the citizenry's commitment to democratic norms and practices—in other words, boosting democratic citizenship. Placing the roots of backsliding in the political system itself, this essay argues for pushing the debate about backsliding beyond citizen solutions and toward institutional remedies, especially accountability against those who harm democracy and modernizing the democratic infrastructure.

This essay reviews the following works:
Memory's Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil. By Rebecca J. Atencio. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014. Pp. xviii + 144. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780299297244.Human Rights Policies in Chile: The Unfinished Struggle for Truth and Justice. By Silvia Borzutzky. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Pp. 242. $119.99 paperback. ISBN: 9783319536965.Intermittences: Memory, Justice, and the Poetics of the Visible in Uruguay. By Ana Forcinito. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018. Pp. xii + 257. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822965664.Democratization and Memories of Violence: Ethnic Minority Rights Movements in Mexico, Turkey, and El Salvador. By Mneesha Gellman. London: Routledge, 2016. Pp. xv + 242. $52.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781138597686.Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America. By Theresa Keeley. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020. Pp. xiv + 352. $49.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9781501750755.Sovereign Emergencies: Latin America and the Making of Global Human Rights Politics. By Patrick William Kelly. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xx + 318. $29.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781316615119.The Brazilian Truth Commission: Local, National and Global Perspectives. Edited by Nina Schneider. New York: Berghahn, 2019. Pp. 382. $135.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781789200034.Phenomenal Justice: Violence and Morality in Argentina. By Eva van Roekel. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020. Pp. 208. $32.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781978800267.Los pelotones de la muerte: La construcción de los perpetradores del genocidio guatemalteco. By Manolo E. Vela Castañeda. México, DF: Colegio de México, 2015. Pp. 454. $32.03 paperback. ISBN: 9786074623680.Acts of Repair: Justice, Truth, and the Politics of Memory in Argentina. By Natasha Zaretsky. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020. Pp. 252. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781978807426.