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abordagem pluralista dos autores não é tão inovadora quanto era nos anos noventa, já
que hoje representam o padrão acadêmico mais comum.
Embora esteja um pouco decepcionada com o fato de que a versão por-
tuguesa do livro não tenha sido atualizada, reconheço que o esforço necessário para
traduzir um livro é tremendo, e elogio os autores por terem encomendado o tra-
balho. A tradução foi bem feita, prestando atenção às diferenças entre inglês e portu-
guês na apresentação do material, e também corrigiu alguns erros que foram cometi-
dos no original. A tradução traz as contribuições do livro para muitas pessoas além
de geógrafos, inclusive um grande contingente de pesquisadores e outros que tra-
balham com vários aspectos da Amazônia, que agora podem dialogar com o material.
It happens frequently that, when traveling through Latin America, we find our-
selves hard-pressed trying to sort out who is the momentary señor Presidente, is, which
were the constituencies that brought her/him to power, which parties are at the helm,
and which issues dominate the political discourse of the respective countries. While we
can glean some information from the newspapers about the current political debate and
on the achievements or the failures of the party that won the last presidential election, we
are usually in a fog as to the location of the strongholds of the incumbent government
and the bastions of the opposition.
To fill this information gap the Atlas Electoral Latinoamericano comes in handy.
It provides a wealth of information about recent elections in twelve countries, span-
ning from Mexico to Argentina. The work is the product of French political scientists
and Latin American co-authors for whom ideology is not the only motivator of voting
decisions, but who also recognize the influence of place and locale on electoral choices.
Socio-geographical traits of a population, such as education, employment, income, gen-
der, male/female ratio, age, place of residence, or quality of life, play a decisive role in
electoral decision-making, transcending- at times - ideology alone. Identifying the weight
of these non-ideological variables has been hampered by the lack of suitable statistics,
and thus, their role has been neglected in the analyses of Latin American elections. Most
political analysts limit their discussions to national results -- leading their audiences to
infer a monolithic response by the national electorate – disregarding the fact that disag-
gregation into regions is more helpful in revealing particular demographic and socio-eco-
nomic characteristics. Through the use of those regional indicators, political geographers
are opening avenues of analysis that were not considered in previous studies on voters’
behavior.
The Atlas is a collection of monographs on presidential and congressional con-
tests held in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salva-
dor, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru, from 2003 through 2006. Although the
snapshots are not suitable for establishing trends among voters, they are a first step in
establishing tendencies in the regional support for any specific political current. Never-
theless, the large number of maps illustrating the backing of candidates or coalitions, or