This article argues that one of the most important contributions of Carlos Fuentes's Terra Nostra is its rewriting of the modern subject. Through its metafictional dimension, the novel seeks to change the legacy of the recoding of subjectivities begun in the Spanish Golden Age. More specifically, it is through the construction of its characters and the way in which the latter depend on, and grow out of, the structure of the novel that Fuentes revises modern individualist conceptions of the subject. Although critics have tended to privilege the novel's realm of myth (understood as transcendent and timeless), this reading depends on the novel's evocation of a Marxist narrative of culture as struggle driven that Carlos Fuentes never loses from sight. The novel's structure arguably promotes a diachronic understanding of history into which both the mythic and material strands feed. Myth, in this reading, is a consciously embraced worldview that grounds, and dialectically informs, this vision of history rather than shying away from it.

This article examines nineteenth-century citations of Silvestre de Balboa Troya y Quesada's Espejo de paciencia (1608, 1838) in Cuban histories and literary anthologies of that period. Although contemporary scholars reference these citations in their study of Espejo, they have not questioned the treatment of Salvador Golomón, the poem's enslaved epic hero, in these texts. Doing so not only elucidates concerns regarding race in Cuban nation building reflected in the trajectory of the nineteenth-century citations of the poem but also places race at the very center of any discussion of Espejo's historical and literary authenticity by contemporary critics and scholars alike.

The tradition of intermediaries negotiating conflicts between Indigenous and Western worlds in Latin America can be traced back to the colonial period. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, semiprofessional or petty lawyers known as tinterillos assumed a seemingly ubiquitous presence in rural communities in Ecuador. Often local elites with some education, tinterillos commanded respect among their largely nonliterate Indigenous neighbors because of their ability to read, write, and handle documents. These intermediaries commonly exploited their privileged position for their own economic, social, and political benefit. Nevertheless, Indigenous peoples came to rely on tinterillos to petition the government and to challenge landholder abuses. On occasion, rather than feeling disempowered or victimized, Indigenous peoples learned to negotiate these relationships to their advantage. Tinterillos provide a convenient medium through which to examine how power relations were negotiated between different cultures and across deep class divides.

Desde al año 1971 estamos organizando lo que actualmente se llama el Archivo del Fuero Agrario. Esta institución fue conocida antes con el nombre de Centro de Documentación Agraria y ahora, de manera resumida, se le dice simplemente Archivo Agrario. Desde el año mencionado un grupo de investigadores científicos sociales e historiadores percibieron que con el proceso de Reforma Agraria (Decreto Ley 17716) en las haciendas que iban siendo expropiadas quedaban un conjunto de documentos que debían ser centralizados en un local. Fue de esta manera como se empezó a reunir los documentos de empresas agrícolas o ganaderas. De esto han pasado ya seis años y se puede decir que ya hay un importante archivo que facilita la comprensión del mundo rural peruano desde el interior de las unidades de producción. Esto es algo así como penetrar dentro de un organismo y comprender, desde su interior, el funcionamiento de sus distintos sistemas. El Archivo Agrario es un caso único en América Latina y en el mundo. Hay casos particulares de documentos muy similar a los que tenemos en el archivo que han sido utilizados por investigadores sociales, pero en ninguna parte hay concentrado el volumen del material documental del tipo al que nos estamos refiriendo. Esto es lo que tenemos ya construido. Y no solamente se trata de un repositorio de documentos sino que se trata de algo más que ello. Se está creando un centro donde colaboramos en orientar las investigaciones históricas agrarias y donde los que trabajamos ahí hacemos historia del mundo rural. Estamos creando una institución donde también hay organizados mapoteca, hemeroteca, fototeca, todo ello del ambiente rural peruano.

This is a response to the recent critique of my book The Mexican Revolution: Federal Expenditure and Social Change Since 1910, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, 1970) by Felix G. Boni and Mitchell A. Seligson. Their factor analysis of my data on poverty suggests, first, that their methodology is more “sensitive” than mine; second, that they have confirmed the thrust of an earlier analysis by Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter H. Smith; and third, that the task of quantitative history is to reduce data of “unwieldy proportions” so that it is subject to greater understanding.

Se procurará deslindar algunas significaciones que cobija la debatida noción de filosofía latinoamericana; sin ánimo de suponer por ello que se esté frente a un asunto que, al estilo neopositivista, pueda disolverse bajo el mero análisis lingüístico. Por el contrario, se trata de un problema que elude las divisorias tajantes, tal como la naturaleza que avanza y se entremezcla más allá de las marcaciones cartográficas. Al mismo tiempo, se ilustrarán los aspectos acotados, aunque posponiendo el examen de sus tan desiguales grados de importancia reflexiva y pragmática.

Several years ago a single voice, representing the frustration of many of us trying to carry out research on women in Latin America, decried the “lack of core bibliography, methodological apparati, or thematic models” (item 182:125) as major problems besetting the study of women in Latin America. As of 1975, these research hurdles had not been completely overcome, but certainly steps have been and continue to be taken.

An annotated bibliography on women in Spanish America will soon be published and other bibliographic guides of a more limited scope have been or are in the process of being compiled. Both in North America and Latin America, conferences, seminars, and workshops have been held to discuss methodological problems as well as recent research efforts. Associations, committees, coalitions, and centers have organized to promote the cause, lend support, gather and distribute information, and generally represent a growing concern with women's issues.

Gabriela Mistral's uncharacteristic short stories, which she began writing at the age of fourteen, demonstrate the Chilean poet's need to express violence through the brief narrative genre. Mistral wrote six short stories and in all of them she blurs the boundaries between gender and violence. For the sexes to be defined, Mistral seems to use violence as a means to distinguish them. When women suffer through men's actions, both gender performances become more pronounced and defined: women and men exist precisely because of men's harmful actions. A shift of perspective and agency occurs when men fail to recognize their own behavior and blame women for their fate. Both sexes lose their subjectivity (or sexuality) and become so intertwined that their differences are no longer perceptible. The two stories analyzed in this essay are the first story Mistral wrote, “El perdón de una víctima” and her last, “El rival.” In both, Mistral demonstrates her wariness to define a norm for heterosexual relationships, while at the same time, she attempts to discern female difference.

El presente artículo combina la reflexión académica con la propuesta política. Retoma la pregunta sobre la importancia de las políticas culturales e intenta fundamentar una nueva respuesta. Sostiene que las políticas culturales no pueden concentrarse únicamente en la pura organización de eventos. Más allá del fomento a la producción cultural, del establecimiento de mejores mecanismos para su circulación y de dirigirse a públicos diferenciados, el ensayo apuesta por una política cultural que apunte a la deconstrucción de los imaginarios hegemónicos, vale decir, al intento por intervenir en aquellos sentidos comunes que se encuentran hondamente afianzados en los habitus sociales. Si el capitalismo contemporáneo basa buena parte de su poder en la dominación simbólica, este ensayo entiende que los símbolos y la cultura en general son igualmente un lugar de respuesta.