The Latinoamericanist

Ezequiel Gonzalez Ocantos is Professor of Comparative & Judicial Politics and a Fellow of Nuffield College. He first came to prominence with his book entitled The Politics of Transitional Justice in Latin America: Power, Norms and Capability Building (2020) in which he showed how judges in Mexico, Peru Chile and Argentina came to be influenced both by civil society expertise in the field of human rights and also by international human rights law. The book won prizes from the American Political Science Association, the International Studies Association and the Latin American Studies Association. Since then he has published a stream of work and is very much a rising star both in the field of Latin American politics and in political science more broadly. Our conversation is about the judicialization of politics, or the politicization of the judiciary, a subject which has drawn increasing attention in Latin America as judges have found themselves called upon to adjudicate incases involving corruption and human rights–topics which politicians and soldiers used to keep out of the reach of the courts, but which now are often held to be judiciable by prosecutors or judges. Also, politicians themselves often take their disputes to the courts. As you will discover, once judges are called upon to rule on these issues they get drawn into turbulent waters and to some extent they have to deploy the same tools as politicians in order to protect their independence and their reputations.

Welcome to The Latinoamericanist, the podcast from the Centre of Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge. I am David Lehmann, and today we have the honour and pleasure of welcoming Mara Viveros Vigoya, a distinguished figure in Colombian public life, writer, professor, and pioneer in the study of gender, race, and the relationship between the two.Mara has served as President of LASA, the Latin American Studies Association based in the United States, which today brings together scholars and researchers from across the world. In 2025, Mara also held the Simón Bolívar Chair at the University of Cambridge, previously occupied by prominent figures such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes, among others.During this conversation, we will speak in part about the publication of her book El oxímoron de las clases medias negras: movilidad social e interseccionalidad en Colombia. Other publications by Mara include La masculinidad incómoda and the French-language work Les couleurs de la masculinité.Mara is someone who speaks comfortably about gender from the perspectives of both femininity and masculinity.Join us for this first episode.