Deck 12: Social Class and Social Movements in Latin America

Question 1

If you took a Marxist approach, as Portes takes, to describing a country's social class structure, you would groups people by their...

A) Income
B) Inherited wealth
C) Occupation and relationship to the means of production
D) Standard of living

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Several terms have been used to describe those at the boom of the urban social order, as described by Portes. Which one of the following is least descritive of the poorest part of the popular sectors?

A) Working class
B) Marginalized
C) Excluded
D) Informal

Answer 2

A

Question 3

What most accurately describes Brazil in terms of social class structure?

A) Brazil is fairly homogenious with social classes structures fairly the same in every region.
B) Brazil's Northeast tends to have the highest percentage of people, mostly of color, living in poverty
C) Brazil's Southeast tends to have the highest percentage of it population living in the affluent and middle class sectors.
D) Brazil's Amazon interior is rapidely becomeing the most affluent and technologically dynamic part of the country.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

In which of the following regions would you expect to find the highest percentage of families living in precarious conditions?

A) Southeast Brazil
B) Northeast Brazil
C) Costa Rica
D) Uruguay

Question 5

Where they are prominent, Latin America's "drug lords" largely conduct their operations as:

A) Businesses that do little to impact the overall conditions of their country's economy
B) Small rural farms that off local police to survive
C) Businesses with signfiicant export earnings and value chains not so different from that of transnational corporations
D) Businesses that drain their countries export earnings and hurt their balance of payments

Question 6

Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST) has attracted attention because it:

A) Is a successful example of organizing peasants into labor unions
B) Is probably the largest social movement in Latin American
C) Has shown that poor peasants, if organized, can produce and generate large export earnings
D) Has trained and educated poor workers so that they can find employment in the cities

Question 7

In which job sector would you expect to find the WEAKEST labor unions in this list?

A) Large, foreign owned mining operations
B) Public sector workers such as teachers, transport workers, civil servants
C) Maquila factories
D) Oil fields

Question 8

In Latin America most labor unions and confederations are different from those in the US (and Euorpe) because:

A) They tend to be strongly influenced by Marxist ideology
B) They are often closely integrated into political parties and subsidized by the state
C) They tend to be organizations of middle class professionals rather than workers
D) They show a great deal of unity and little internal conflict

Question 9

The most vigorous movements in poor areas of Latin American cities have been:

A) Ethnic organizing
B) Vigilante justice
C) Popular assemblies
D) Unionization of street vendors

Question 10

The relationship rural workers to the land and to landowners in Latin America can best be described as:

A) Many rural workers a peasants still living in semi-feudal relations on large haciendas
B) Many rural workers are landless or live on small plots, relying on seasonal labor to surruvive
C) Many rural workers labor and live on large plantations earn wages and benefits
D) All three relationships exist

Question 11

Tarrow's concept of "political opportunity structures" refers to:

A) How political office creates opportunities for corruption
B) How interest groups lobby governments
C) One of the ways that social movements form in reaction to openings generated by social or economic disruptions or by political reforms
D) Election rules that influece the possiblities for new parties to form

Question 12

Women's movements in Latin America have organized around all of the following demands in their history, but the one that stands out in terms of urgency in recent years has been:

A) Resistence to femicide
B) Abortion rights
C) The right to vote
D) Elimination of the glass ceiling in corporations

Question 13

What best describes the status of LGBTQ+ organizations in Latin America?

A) They hardly exist and have little visibility due to the region's conservative religious culture
B) They have made some gains in terms of legal protections and public visibility, but they still face discrimination and violence
C) The decline of Catholics and rise of new Protestant churches has opened space for advances for LGBT+ rights
D) The LGBTQ+ movement has acheived acceptance and protection that exceeds norms in Western Europe and North America