Entre 1949 y 1952, funcionarios del Ministerio de Educación Pública del Perú, encabezados por el intelectual peruano José María Arguedas, grabaron alrededor de doscientas piezas musicales vernáculas con miras a formar el primer archivo peruano de música tradicional. Esta iniciativa no logró sobrevivir a las adversas condiciones materiales e institucionales del sector cultural público a pesar de los esfuerzos de sus gestores. Este artículo estudia el proceso a través del cual folkloristas adscritos al Ministerio de Educación Pública construyeron el primer archivo nacional sonoro en el contexto de la temprana gestión cultural pública en el Perú. Tales esfuerzos incluyeron intercambios transnacionales de alto nivel y cooperación entre diversas instituciones culturales peruanas. Nuestro análisis abarca el periodo de 1945 a 1952 y se basa en fuentes administrativas, epistolares y hemerográficas revisadas en archivos institucionales del Perú y Estados Unidos. Argumentamos que la constitución de este archivo musical folklórico estuvo marcada por la precariedad del sector cultural estatal y por el anhelo de los folkloristas/funcionarios del ministerio por construir un repositorio sonoro a pesar de las condiciones adversas. Esta investigación ofrece significativos hallazgos históricos sobre las tempranas iniciativas oficiales de registro de música tradicional y sobre la gestión pública del folklore en el Perú de mediados del siglo XX.

This article explores how the editors and contributors of Revista de Avance formulated an idiosyncratic version of visual modern art and how that discernment shaped their idea of a nationalist and regional culture. Their artistic disquisitions were influenced by complicated political agendas and funding. After the collapse of the Cuban economy in the early 1920s, the magazine’s editors, who held socialist and anti-American imperialist beliefs, looked to Spain as a cultural model. In its pages, the magazine privileged Spanish civilization and conflated it with both European modernist culture and Cuban art and literature. At the same time, Revista de Avance voiced the ideas of the Institución Hispano-Cubana de Cultura, led by Fernando Ortiz.

Este artículo cuestiona la suposición común de que las organizaciones negras son inherentemente antirracistas, enfatizando la necesidad de explorar cómo esas organizaciones desarrollan perspectivas antirracistas que se integra en su trabajo y prácticas. A partir de una experiencia de trabajo con Sankofa Danzafro, este estudio analiza los resultados de seis laboratorios de danza realizados con niños, adolescentes y jóvenes afrocolombianos. Estos laboratorios culminaron en la creación de “Ancestros del Futuro”, una obra de danza inspirada en el afro-futurismo y el Black joy, interpretada por la compañía de danza afro contemporánea en Colombia. Esta investigación resalta cómo la perspectiva antirracista en la danza afro contemporánea se forma a través de una combinación única de estéticas que emergen de prácticas de danza rutinarias y una dimensión afectiva que evoluciona en momentos clave en las trayectorias de vida de los bailarines. Esta fusión desafía los discursos antirracistas dominantes que generalmente enmarcan el antirracismo como una agenda programática estática, presentándolo en cambio como una conciencia política-afectiva dinámica desarrollada mediante un compromiso reflexivo con el cuerpo a través de la danza.

This article explores understandings of race, mestizaje, and criollismo among blind people in Chile and Venezuela. It demonstrates that visually perceived markers are not self-evidently constitutive of race as a social category. Participants show sound knowledge of racialized categories but also reveal significant differences in the identification of racial markers and in the way that race informs their understandings of mestizaje and criollismo in Chile and Venezuela. In Chile, where racial markers convey identity fixity and intersect overtly with social class categorizations, mestizaje and criollismo are conceptualized as separate elements of national identity. In Venezuela, where racial markers convey more identity porosity, mestizaje and criollismo are conceptualized as intertwined foundations of national identity. These social configurations counter naturalizing conceptualizations of race and enable a reconsideration of how different notions of admixture continue to permeate ideals of personhood and social relations in Latin American countries. They also erode academic conceptualizations of race that unwittingly contribute to legitimize the naturalization of race in public discourse—and potentially in governmental policy and practice.

In this article, I argue that Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s sociohistorical analyses of the formation of Brazilian society in Raízes do Brasil are based on a non-sociohistorical assumption. Holanda prioritizes the influence of the Portuguese colonizer on that formation based on a determinist-organicist standpoint. Although he also attributes deleterious traits to the Portuguese, he describes them as endowed with a consistent character able to adjust to adverse natural conditions and other ethnicities. As for African and Indigenous peoples, conversely, besides deprecating their temperament, Holanda reduces their influence to a peripheral and reinforcing function to the Portuguese temperament. Furthermore, he attributes the leading role in shaping Brazilian identity to the Portuguese. As I demonstrate, Holanda’s overvaluation of the Portuguese and his oversimplification of African and Indigenous peoples’ contribution to the sociohistorical development of Brazil reflect his view of peoples’ identities as naturally given, as organic-like features, and not as socially constructed.

Indigenous peoples belong to the most underprivileged groups worldwide. To address this situation, countries in Latin America and beyond increasingly recognize Indigenous rights constitutionally. However, these constitutional rights are not implemented equally everywhere. This could relate to the corresponding ordinary law—or lack thereof. Here I ask, under which conditions are Indigenous peoples represented in ordinary legislation? To answer this question, I collected the original INDILEX dataset on the status of Indigenous peoples and their rights in the legislation of sixteen Latin American countries (1979–2018). Building on the political representation literature, I contrast descriptive representation with political allies, social movements, and favorable context factors as determinants of the substantive representation of Indigenous peoples. The analysis shows that leftist presidents and a broad constitutional mandate are key predictors of Indigenous rights legislation. The role of Indigenous civil society and democracy depends on the time frame and operationalization choice.

This article explores Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s (1648–1695) strategic poetic approach, aimed at democratizing writing and knowledge among women during her period. It examines her engagement with the literary academy, Casa del Placer, believed to have included nuns from Portuguese convents and women of the nobility. Specifically, the study analyzes Sor Juana’s final poetic work, the Enigmas ofrecidos a la Casa del Placer (1695), comprising twenty unanswerable poetic enigmas. In this collection, Sor Juana departs from individual lyric expression, a shift I call a “poetics of dedication,” advocating for a communal cultural identity centered on her persona’s fame. Through this gesture, Sor Juana appropriates and challenges patriarchal narratives that labeled her as a “monster” due to her perceived exceptionalism. My article shows how, toward the end of her life, Sor Juana embraces and subverts discussions about her exceptional status and transatlantic identity, fostering a sense of transoceanic sorority among women writers of the colonial period.

O presente artigo tem por objetivo demonstrar as relações transimperiais no extremo sul da América, entre os anos de 1722 e 1726, considerando as alianças das autoridades da América portuguesa, da espanhola, com as do reino e com os homens de negócio. Nessa perspectiva, como metodologia, tratou-se da análise da administração governativa de Pedro António de Vasconcelos, incluindo as indicações que fez para a ocupação de postos na alfândega criada na região, instituição da qual era autoridade máxima. Examinou-se, também, cartas, requerimentos, ordens, relação, verbetes de diversos agentes da administração, plantas e tratados, documentos que foram localizados nos arquivos brasileiros (Arquivo Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro), argentino (Arquivo Nacional de La Nación Argentina), portugueses (Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino) e espanhol (Arquivo Geral das Indias). Tendo em vista os aspectos observados, a governação na Colônia do Sacramento deve ser entendida como uma forma de garantia de trânsito, circulação de informações e de contatos de diferentes grupos sociais no sul da América.

This article analyzes the urbanization and privatization of communal lands (ejidos) in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, via a computer vision model that utilizes Google Street View (GSV) and Geographic Information System (GIS) imagery. Our innovative methodology reveals how processes of ejidal urbanization in Mexico’s northern borderlands contributed to the rise of multinational factories (maquiladoras) and geographies of inequality and violence. Past scholarship on the (d)evolution of ejidal land tenure details how periurban ejidal lands throughout Mexico were often sites of impoverishment and a lack of investment, featuring informal settlement and rapid or chaotic urbanization following the country’s 1960 urban turn. Through its use of novel sources and methods, this article demonstrates that the urbanization process in Juárez’s principal periurban ejidos diverged from this classic model in specific ways. By combining conventional historical sources with visual data like GSV and GIS imagery, Juárez’s former and current ejidal landscapes reveal high levels of investment, formal planning, and infrastructure. We argue that Juárez’s distinctive physical, political, and economic geographies shaped the overwhelmingly industrial, private, and invested character of the city’s (former and current) periurban ejidal lands. This process occurred via a globalized modernization regime that forged disparate landscapes of investment and inequality beginning in the 1950s.

Esta investigación plantea que el espacio urbano contribuye a la caracterización de movimientos sociales urbanos. Para ello, hace un análisis espacial cartográfico del Paro Nacional de 2021 en Bogotá y Cali (Colombia), el cual se realizó a partir de un mapeo de los lugares y tipos de protesta mediante revisión de prensa y redes sociales. Se encontraron patrones que permiten evidenciar estrategias de ocupación espacial de la protesta, así como una dispersión que caracteriza la agencia ciudadana. También se evidenció cómo la pobreza determina la selección de lugares por proximidad y visibilidad, mas no intersección, y que los sistemas de transporte guían la dispersión en función de su significado como materialidad del Estado. Finalmente, se identificó cómo tensiones sobre los bordes territoriales consolidan desplazamiento de las acciones del interior de los barrios o a los límites, lo que apoya procesos de territorialización que identifican a los movimientos sociales urbanos emergentes.

This essay reviews the following works:

Cultural and Literary Dialogues Between Asia and Latin America. Edited by Axel Gasquet and Gorica Majstorovic. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Pp. xiii + 274. $54.99 paperback. ISBN: 9783030525705.

The Japanese Empire and Latin America. Edited by Pedro Iacobelli and Sidney Xu Lu. Honolulu: Honolulu University Press, 2023. Pp. 310. $24.99 Kindle. ISBN: 9780824892999.

East Asia, Latin America, and the Decolonization of Transpacific Studies. Edited by Chiara Olivieri y Jordi Serrano-Muñoz. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Pp. xvii + 274. $54.99 paperback. ISBN: 9783030745271.

Peligro amarillo: La sombra de Japón durante la Revolución Mexicana. By Victor Kerber Palma. Mexico City: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2021. Pp. 396. MXN $400 paperback. ISBN: 9786074461695.

Race and Migration in the Transpacific. Edited by Yasuko Takezawa and Akio Tanabe. New York: Routledge, 2022. Pp. xiv + 265. $29.59 paper, $128.00 hardcover. ISBN: 1032210206.

The Migration of Chinese Women to Mexico City. Ximena Alba Villalever. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Pp. xv + 172. $129.99 paperback. ISBN: 9783030924218.

This essay reviews the following works:

Collision of Worlds: A Deep History of the Fall of Aztec Mexico and the Forging of New Spain. By David M. Carballo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xvi + 351. $37.99 hardcover, $23.99 paperback, e-book. ISBN: 9780197661451.

Conquistadores: A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest. By Fernando Cervantes. New York: Viking, 2021. Pp. vxiii + 496. $35.00 hardcover, e-book. ISBN: 9781101981269.

Inca Apocalypse: The Spanish Conquest and the Transformation of the Andean World. By R. Alan Covey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xix + 592. $34.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780190299125.

Death in the Snow: Pedro de Alvarado and the Illusive Conquest of Peru. By George W. Lovell. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022. Pp. xv + 280. $39.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780228014409.

Strike Fear in the Land: Pedro de Alvarado and the Conquest of Guatemala, 1520–1541. By W. George Lovell, Christopher H. Lutz, and Wendy Kramer. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020. Pp. xvi + 194. $32.95 hardcover, $21.95 paperback, e-book. ISBN: 9780806190044.

German Conquistadors in Venezuela: The Welsers’ Colony, Racialized Capitalism, and Cultural Memory. By Giovanna Montenegro. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022. Pp. xvii + 372. $95.00 hardcover, $75.99 e-book. ISBN: 9780268203214.

Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. By Matthew Restall. Updated edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xix + 272. $21.99 paperback. ISBN: 9780197537299.

Conquistadors and Aztecs: A History of the Fall of Tenochtitlan. By Stefan Rinke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. ix + 328. $34.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780197552469.

This essay reviews the following works:

They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence. By Lauren Benton. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024. Pp. 304. $39.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780691248479.

The Age of Dissent: Revolution and the Power of Communication in Chile, 1780–1833. By Martin Bowen. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2023. Pp. xiii + 327. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780826364814.

The Cambridge History of Latin American Law in Global Perspective. Edited by Thomas Duve and Tamar Herzog. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. viii + 550. Open access e-book. ISBN: 9781009049450. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009049450.

The Cambridge Companion to Latin American Independence. Edited by Marcela Echeverri Muñoz and Cristina Soriano. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. xvi + 344. $31.25 paperback. ISBN: 1108729185.

The Cambridge History of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, Volume 3: The Iberian Empires. Edited by Wim Klooster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. xiii+ 612. £120.00 hardcover. ISBN: 1108475965.

Historia económica de Chile colonial. Edited by Manuel Llorca-Jaña and Juan José Martínez-Barraza. Santiago: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2023. Pp. 332. $226.98 paperback. ISBN: 9562893022.

A Companion to Latin American Legal History. Edited by M. C. Mirow and Victor Uribe-Uran. Leiden: Brill, 2024. Pp. xiv + 611. €160.00 e-book. ISBN: 9789004436091.

Re-imagining Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1780-1870. Edited by Eduardo Posada-Carbo, Joanna Innes, and Mark Philp. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. xxv + 420. $57.00 hardcover. ISBN: 0197631576.

El gobierno de la incertidumbre: La política financiera en Buenos Aires desde el Virreinato a la Confederación. By Roberto Schmit and Martín Wasserman. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2022. Pp. 280. ARS 25,500.00. ISBN 9789878164397.

Overlooked Places and Peoples: Indigenous and African Resistance in Colonial Spanish America, 1500–1800. Edited by Dana Velasco Murillo and Robert C. Schwaller. New York: Routledge, 2024. Pp. 248. $168.12 hardcover. ISBN: 9781032721392.

This essay reviews the following works:

Urban Latin America: Inequalities and Neoliberal Reforms. Edited by Tom Angotti. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017. Pp. 306. $37.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781442274488.

Urbanización y revolución en América Latina: Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires y Ciudad de México (1950-1980). By Óscar Calvo Isaza. Mexico City: El Colegio de México and Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2023. Pp. 398. $13.00 paperback. ISBN: 9786075644189.

Monstrous Politics: Geography, Rights, and the Urban Revolution in Mexico City. By Ben A. Gerlofs. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2023. Pp. xiv + 262. $39.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780826504777.

La ciudad latinoamericana: Una figura de la imaginación social del siglo XX. By Adrián Gorelik. Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2022. Pp. 424. $55.82 hardcover, $7.99 ebook. ISBN: 9789878011370.

Representing the Barrios: Culture, Politics, and Urban Poverty in Twentieth-Century Caracas. By Rebecca Jarman. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023. Pp. xvii + 352. $60.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780822947653.

Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labor on Rio’s Garbage Dump. By Kathleen M. Millar. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Pp ix + 248. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822370505.

Historia de las villas en la ciudad de Buenos Aires. By Valeria Snitcofsky. Buenos Aires: Tejido Urbano, 2021. Pp. 326. Open-access ebook. ISBN: 9789873779541.

This essay reviews the following films:

El agente topo. Directed by Maite Alberdi. Produced by Micromundo Producciones, Motto Pictures, and Sutor Kolonko. Chile, 2020, 84 min. Distributed by Micromundo Producciones, Mandra Films, and Volya Films.

La memoria infinita. Directed by Maite Alberdi. Produced by Micromundo Producciones. Chile, 2023, 85 min. Distributed by Micromundo Producciones, Mandra Films, and Volya Films.

Los niños. Directed by Maite Alberdi. Produced by Micromundo Producciones, Mandra Films, and Volya Films. Chile, 2016, 82 min. Distributed by Micromundo Producciones, Mandra Films, and Volya Films.