Heights, Nutrition, and Well-Being in Argentina, ca. 1850-1950. Preliminary Results

Este ensayo presenta resultados de estimaciones de estaturas medias para diversas regiones de Argentina durante el período 1850-1950. Esta evidencia, tomada de registros de reclutas y prisioneros, es utilizada para cuestionar algunas de las generalizaciones sobre el crecimiento económico argentino, basadas en datos de ingresos per-cápita y salarios. Se sostiene que, en términos de estatus nutricional y de salud, la era del progreso liberal derramó menos bienestar que el esperado. Algo similar ocurrió con el crecimiento agro-exportador de principios del siglo XX. Por el contrario, el período conocido como la «gran demora» —el período de inter-guerras— fue testigo de notables aumentos de bienestar biológico, particularmente en la década de 1930. Se sugiere también que durante la segunda guerra mundial y los primeros gobiernos peronistas, las estimaciones sobre alturas indican un retraso nutricional y de salud en el conurbano bonaerense. El ensayo presenta además datos sobre la distribución regional de las alturas, que reflejan un alto grado de desigualdad regional hacia la década de 1920.This essay presents recent estimates of average heights for different regions of Argentina during the period 1850-1950. This evidence, taken from registers of prisoners and military recruits, serves to question some traditional views of Argentine economic growth based on income and wage data. The essay suggests that the era of liberal progress resulted in less welfare among the lower classes than is usually assumed. A similar situation occurred during the agrarian-export growth of the first decade of the 20th century. In contrast, the period known as the «great delay» witnessed notable improvements in biological welfare, particularly during the 1930s. In addition, height estimates indicate that during WWII and the first Peronist administrations there was a nutritional setback in the Buenos Aires industrial belt. Data on the provincial distribution of heights for the 1920s show an important degree of regional inequality

The Regional Dimension of Biological Welfare: Argentina in the 1920s

A large database containing the heights of recruits for the 1924 cohort allows us to review the regional dimensions of Argentina’s biological welfare, in particular the idea that concentration of resources in Buenos Aires and the Pampa region left the interior provinces economically backward and physiologically weak. The findings confirm that very large differences in stature separated recruits of the Pampa region from those of the Northwest and Northeast in the 1920s. Estimates suggest that transportation improvements, urbanization, and basic literacy had a positive impact on the height of Argentines. In turn, districts with peasant economies, minifundia, high proportion of non-owners, and greater disease risk were associated with lower-than-average heights. Mean stature also correlated with the type of agrarian production: people living in «cereal» areas were generally taller than people coming from districts producing sugar or other non-export goods. Data on average height shows greater variability across space than any other data on income or wages, and thus serves to uncover this hidden dimension - the regional - of welfare.La altura de los reclutas nacidos en 1924 permite revisar la dimensión regional del bienestar biológico en Argentina, y en especial la idea de que la concentración de recursos (capital humano, inversiones y tierra de alta productividad) en Buenos Aires y su zona circundante, la Pampa Húmeda, dejó a las provincias interiores en una situación de atraso económico y debilidad corporal. Los resultados confirman que en los años veinte grandes diferencias separaban el estatus nutricional y sanitario de los habitantes de la Pampa de los nacidos en las regiones Noroeste y Nordeste. Las mejoras en transportes, urbanización y alfabetización básica tuvieron efectos positivos en la altura de los argentinos. Por el contrario, distritos con economías campesinas, alta proporción de minifundios y de nopropietarios y mayor riesgo de enfermedad, tuvieron más bajas alturas medias. La estatura media también estuvo correlacionada con el tipo de producción agraria: los reclutas provenientes de regiones cerealeras eran más altos que los que provenían de distritos que producían caña de azúcar u otros bienes no exportables. Las alturas medias muestran mayor variabilidad espacial que cualquier dato conocido sobre ingreso o salarios y sirven para examinar una dimensión oculta del bienestar: la dimensión regional

Disciplinary Conquest

In DISCIPLINARY CONQUEST, Ricardo Salvatore argues that the foundation of the discipline of Latin American studies, pioneered between 1900 and 1945, was linked to the United States’s business and financial interests and informal imperialism. In contrast, the consolidation of Latin American studies has traditionally been placed in the 1960s, as a reaction to the Cuban Revolution. Focusing on five representative U.S. scholars of South America—historian Clarence Haring, geographer Isaiah Bowman, political scientist Leo Rowe, sociologist Edward Ross, and archaeologist Hiram Bingham -- Salvatore demonstrates how their search for comprehensive knowledge about South America can be understood as a contribution to hemispheric hegemony, an intellectual conquest of the region. U.S. economic leaders, diplomats, and foreign-policy experts needed knowledge about the region to expand investment and trade, as well as the U.S.’s international influenc

La Conquista y sus otros : breve informe de un encuentro reciente

Reseña de las XII Jornadas de Historia de la Universidad Torcuato Di Tella llevadas a cabo en noviembre 14-15 de 2012. sta vez, el tema de convocatoria fue “Conquistas Americanas: Territorios, poblaciones y violencia”. Las Jornadas invitaban a reflexionar sobre los procesos de ocupación territorial, movimientos de poblaciones y violencia en el contexto de “las conquistas”. El plural enfatizaba el afán comparativo, propuesto por los organizadores, que intentaba revisar lo que tenían de común y de diferente las conquistas a territorios y poblaciones indígenas del siglo XVI, de mediados de los años 1830s, y del período 1878-85, conocido como “ciclo de las campañas del General Roca”

Murder and mass murder in pre-modern Latin America: from pre-colonial Aztec sacrifices to the end of colonial rule ; an introductory comparison with European societies

"Over the past several decades, the study of violence and homicide in a number of pre-modern and modern European societies has become an area of considerable scholarly focus. Through the painstaking efforts of many scholars, we now can state with considerable confidence that the long-term trajectory of homicide rates in most European societies has undergone a dramatic decline over the centuries. Indeed homicide rates an average in European societies appear to have declined by a factor of fifteen to twenty times from the late 15th century to the present, with the biggest drop taking place in the years between roughly 1450 and 1750. In this special Focus of Historical Social Research six scholars from five different countries and three different continents collaborate to discern if similar trends took place during these same years in violent behavior in Latin American societies. Although only some parallels are immediately apparent, this collaborative and comparative effort marks perhaps a beginning scientific step toward an understanding of patterns of Latin American and global violence over the long haul of history." (author's abstract

Disciplinando mediante la pena capital: ejecuciones de soldados durante el gobierno de Juan Manuel de Rosas

During the rule of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1829-1852), the death penalty was used to discipline soldiers from the federalist army. The threat of execution was used to dissuade soldiers from deserting army ranks. These death spectacles were witnessed by officers and soldiers from all the barracks and regiments. Disciplinary rules, including actions that were punishable by death, were read out to the troops each morning, together with other instructions about uniform, posture and response to calls. The military code used in this period was taken from the Royal Ordinances of Charles III. The Argentine Patriotic forces, including Rosas’s new army after 1835, did not have their own regulations.Durante el gobierno de Juan M. de Rosas (1829-1852), la pena de muerte fue utilizada para disciplinar soldados del ejército federal. La amenaza de muerte por fusilamiento sirvió para amedrentar a aquellos que contemplaban abandonar las filas del ejército. Estos espectáculos de muerte fueron presenciados principalmente por los oficiales, suboficiales y soldados de cada cuartel o regimiento. Las normas disciplinarias, incluyendo las acciones penadas con pena de muerte, eran leídas por la mañana en los campamentos, junto con otras instrucciones relativas al uniforme, la postura y la respuesta de los soldados. Curiosamente, las ordenanzas militares que se utilizaron en este período fueron copias o extractos de las ordenanzas reales de Carlos III. Los ejércitos patrios, entre los que se encuentra el nuevo ejército de Rosas desde 1835, no se dieron un reglamento propio

Patrones de sentencias en la Argentina moderna, 1878-1948

El ensayo provee nueva evidencia -proveniente de los libros de sentencias de los presos de la Penitenciaría Nacional- que indica claramente una “inflación” de penalidad entre las décadas de 1870 y de 1940. Las penas por los mismos delitos aumentaron significativamente (en términos de años de prisión por preso), aunque no hubo en la legislación cambios en este sentido. Se sugiere que las mejoras en el registro de la reincidencia, cambios en la forma en que los jueces computaban las penas por “delitos concurrentes” y la presión de la opinión pública hicieron que los jueces endurecieran sus sentencias para delitos violentos. Los castigos muestran un crecimiento gradual y sostenido en el tiempo, por lo que se presume que el aumento de la severidad punitiva no se debió a cambios políticos.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Multimodal Prediction based on Graph Representations

This paper proposes a learning model, based on rank-fusion graphs, for general applicability in multimodal prediction tasks, such as multimodal regression and image classification. Rank-fusion graphs encode information from multiple descriptors and retrieval models, thus being able to capture underlying relationships between modalities, samples, and the collection itself. The solution is based on the encoding of multiple ranks for a query (or test sample), defined according to different criteria, into a graph. Later, we project the generated graph into an induced vector space, creating fusion vectors, targeting broader generality and efficiency. A fusion vector estimator is then built to infer whether a multimodal input object refers to a class or not. Our method is capable of promoting a fusion model better than early-fusion and late-fusion alternatives. Performed experiments in the context of multiple multimodal and visual datasets, as well as several descriptors and retrieval models, demonstrate that our learning model is highly effective for different prediction scenarios involving visual, textual, and multimodal features, yielding better effectiveness than state-of-the-art methods

Re-pensando Paisanos itinerantes. Respuesta a los comentarios de G. Davies, J. Farberman y R. Hora

Reflections and critical notes on the comments of Geraldine Davies Lenoble, Judith Farberman and Roy Hora around Ricardo Salvatore's book Paisanos itinerantes. Orden estatal y experiencia subalterna en Buenos Aires durante la era de Rosas. Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2018.Ensayo analítico que nuclea el debate en torno al libro de Ricardo Salvatore (2018) Paisanos itinerantes. Orden estatal y experiencia subalterna en Buenos Aires durante la era de Rosas. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. Se ofrecen algunas reflexiones en torno a la obra y notas críticas sobre los comentarios de Geraldine Davies Lenoble, Judith Farberman y Roy Hora

Synthesis and Release of Catecholamines by the Cat Carotid Body in Vitro: Effects of Hypoxic Stimulation

Producción CientíficaThe role of catecholamines (CAs) in cat carotid body chemoreception has been controversial. On the basis of pharmacological experiments, it would appear that endogenous dopamine (DA) may act either as an inhibitory or excitatory transmitter. Neurochemical studies on the effects of natural stimulation on the release of carotid body CAs in the cat have also been inconclusive. In the present study, we have characterized the synthesis and release of CAs in the in vitro cat carotid body preparation in response to different levels of hypoxic stimulation and have correlated these measures with the chemosensory activity of the carotid sinus nerve. The synthesis of [3H]DA and [3H]norepinephrine was linear for at least 4 h in carotid bodies incubated with their natural precursor [~H]tyrosine. Synthesis of both [3H]CAs plateaued when the [3H]tyrosine concentration in the media reached 40 uM, which is a concentration similar to that found in cat plasma. Exposure of the animals to an atmosphere of 10% 02 in N~ for 3 h prior to removal and incubation of the carotid bodies with [3H]tyrosine resulted in an approximately 100% increase in the rate of [3H]DA synthesis but no change in [3H]norepinephrine synthesis. This selective increase in [3H]DA synthesis was not detected when [3H]dihydroxyphenylalanine was used as precursor. Carotid bodies first incubated with [3H]tyrosine and later superfused with solutions equilibrated with different gas mixtures (0 100% 0 2 in N2) exhibited an increase in [3H]DA release and carotid sinus nerve discharge which were inversely related to the oxygen concentration. This relationship was strongest for the weaker stimuli (between 50% and 20% O 2 in N2), where both nerve activity and [3H]DA release increased almost in parallel. With lower oxygen concentrations (10% O 2 and 0% 02 equilibrated solutions), the increase in the release of [3H]DA was proportionally greater than the increase in carotid sinus nerve discharge. Our results demonstrate that hypoxic stimulation increases both the rate of synthesis and release of DA in the cat carotid body. Although the precise role of DA in this chemoreceptor organ is presently unknown, our findings suggest that this biogenic amine plays a direct role in generating or controlling the electrical activity in the carotid sinus nerve. INTRODUCTION The mammalian carotid body is an arterial chemoreceptor organ activated by low paO2, low pH and high p~CO2 (ref. 21). Structurally, the receptor complex is formed by clusters of two types of cells, the type I and type II cells; the clusters lie within a supporting connective tissue matrix containing a dense capillary net24, 41. Sensory fibers of the carotid sinus nerve (CSN) penetrate these cell clusters to end in synaptic apposition with type I cells, which are considered to be preneural (receptor) elements. Two perennial issues pertaining to arterial chemoreception, concern first, whether the type 1 cells are in fac