The third and final issue of the Journal of Latin American Geography in 2016 continues with the established tradition of covering a wide range of topics, in variable contexts, from diverse methodological perspectives.

The issue begins with “El Estado paralegal: México dentro de la estrategia de seguridad hemisférica,” Alfonso Valenzuela´s trenchant examination of the ways in which the Mexican government is going through a process of institutional deterioration that has wide-ranging impacts for the governance of national territory. By using the work of Agamben as an analytical lens, Valenzuela presents geographical insights based on political theory that could be widely applicable in other Latin American contexts in different eras.

In the next article, “Child Migration and Transnationalized Violence in Central and North America,” Kate Swanson and Rebecca Torres examine the life-worlds of children who make the harrowing journey to El Norte from Central America into the militarized border region. They argue that a spatially expansive understanding of violence will allow us to grasp more completely the geographic extent of state policy and practice regarding (im)migration.

The third article, “Now We Have Equality”: A Feminist Political Ecology Analysis of Carbon Markets in Oaxaca, Mexico, by Miriam Gay-Anataki uses a Feminist Political Ecology approach to examine the ways in which gender relations impact upon the ability of carbon sequestration projects to create positive impacts for the communities in which they are sited.

Next, in “La circulación de políticas urbanas: la Corporación Antiguo Puerto Madero y “Mendoza-Madero,” Guillermo Jajamovich examines the ways in which discourses of “success” that surround the Puerto Madero project in Buenos Aires, Argentina created markets for consultants and their projects in other cities. Importantly, the so-called Mendoza-Madero project fails to materialize as “urban revitalization”, and the ways in which this failure occurs offers strategic lessons for cities and citizens throughout the region that will inevitably be targeted for “redevelopment”.

In the final research article, “Soy expansion and the absent state: indigenous and peasant livelihood options in eastern Paraguay,” Mario Cardozo and co-authors explore how the overlapping jurisdictions and alternations between state presence and absence, as well as the Eastern Paraguay soy region´s proximity to Brazilian markets, have created a very fraught social and legal conjuncture within which large-scale agricultural interests are in conflict with smallholders. Far from indicating a potential resolution to this crisis, readers learn how difficult it can be to unravel the complexities and nuances of conflict even when we are on the ground talking to those involved.

The issue concludes with an with Carlos Walter Porto-Gonçalves, one of Brazil´s most prominent geographers, and reviews of the following books:
1. Spell of the Urubamba: Anthropogeographical Essays on an Andean Valley in Space and Time by Daniel W. Gade
2. Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Nineteenth-Century Colombia by Nancy P. Appelbaum
3. A Fragmented Continent: Latin America and the Global Politics of Climate Change by Guy Edwards and J. Timmons Roberts
4. Hispanic and Latino New Orleans: Immigration and Identity Since the Eighteenth Century by Andrew Sluyter et al.
5. Guatemala–U.S. Migration: Transforming Regions by Susanne Jonas and Nestor Rodriguez