La ejecución de Atahuallpa: Símbolo andino de colapso y resistencia

This article studies Los dramas de Atahuallpa (Atahuallpa's Dramas) as an oral and ritual memory of the Andean natives. In those texts are traces of the resistance of the European domination initiated during the middle of the sixteenth century. They also recall the destruction of the Inca empire. The discussion points out the work done by the panaca, a Tahuantisuyo institution dedicated to preserving the memory of each Incan emperor's public life. During the twentieth century and the present years of the twenty-first, the tradition of representing Atahuallpa's death has been an expression of the political projects built by the native Andean as well as a symbol of the resistance against the conquest and its results.     

Espacios locales y espacios trascendentales de la conversión: las Postrimerías de Carabuco y la producción performativa de epistemologías transculturales

The monumental paintings of the Postrimerías [Four Last Things] from the church of Carabuco (1684) serve as objects to study the complex dynamics of the visual and performative production of religious knowledge in a colonial contact zone. The article presents different ‘readings’ of the series that focus on possible uses and receptions of the paintings by local actors. These readings are based, on the one hand, on the idea of conceiving the series as a ‘cycle of meditation’ and product of the influences of Christian mysticism that played an important role in the ‘eschatological politics of conversion’ of the southern Andean Highlands. On the other hand, the paintings relate the eschatological message with the local hagiographic narratives of a pre-Hispanic apostle associated simultaneously with the Christian apostle Bartholomew and the Andean deity Tunupa—the most important figure of Aymara mythology. These works therefore represent objects of memory that participate in the local construction of time and space and that refer not only to Christian eschatological concepts but also to local Andean ontologies.     

La destrucción y la creación en Los siameses y Flores de papel

Many Hispanic American plays of the twentieth century, such as Flores de papel and Los siameses, among others, depict the social-economic imbalance visible among the different social classes. This inequality is seen as inevitable, forcing the working class first to destroy elements of the status quo, in order then to construct a new reality. Thus it attempts to produce radical changes, including the alteration or reconstruction of the class system itself, through destruction-construction of the surrounding reality. Hence, the dramatists, considering the role of the theater and of the writer, present these struggles and class discrepancies in an attempt to find a solution to the problems of their characters' social environment.     

‘Las Indias del Pirú en lo alto de España … ’. Relaciones entre la Nueva corónica de Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala y los qeros coloniales

It is proposed that there is an iconographic and epistemological relationship between some drawings in Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno and the images recorded in several colonial wood vessels (qeros) which circulated widely during the time that Guaman Poma was writing his letter to the King of Spain. This connection shows that the work of Guaman Poma was not an isolated or singular act in the colonial context and that both communicative and creative processes, that of the Nueva corónica and that of the qeros, formed part of a process of shared colonial semiosis through which Andean societies maintained a certain autonomy in the production and circulation of their own discourses. Secondly, the article discusses the epistemological tension that results from the coexistence of different narratives (European and Andean) that used their own temporal and spatial categories to account for new colonial conditions.     

Violencia y género en Los comendadores de Córdoba de Lope de Vega

This article studies the correct generic framing of an early work of Lope de Vega,Los comendadores de Córdoba, which has attracted recent criticism, in part because the structure of tragedy is undermined by numerous laughable and grotesque elements. It therefore seems to be a play characterized by failure to follow the path of a specific genre. This article tries to overcome this problem by studying the relationship between gender and violence.     

Epistemologías transculturales: prácticas y producción de conocimientos en zonas de contacto colonial en los Andes y Paraguay

It is proposed that there is an iconographic and epistemological relationship between some drawings in Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno and the images recorded in several colonial wood vessels (qeros) which circulated widely during the time that Guaman Poma was writing his letter to the King of Spain. This connection shows that the work of Guaman Poma was not an isolated or singular act in the colonial context and that both communicative and creative processes, that of the Nueva corónica and that of the qeros, formed part of a process of shared colonial semiosis through which Andean societies maintained a certain autonomy in the production and circulation of their own discourses. Secondly, the article discusses the epistemological tension that results from the coexistence of different narratives (European and Andean) that used their own temporal and spatial categories to account for new colonial conditions.     

La virtud sospechosa: Teresa de Jesús y su condición femenina

ABSTRACT

Teresa de Jesús (1515–1582) lives in a patriarchal society opposed to the intellectual and spiritual development of women, something that she will not only not accept but also fight against, claiming a series of rights (the right to life, to expression, to autonomy, to the free development of her abilities, to have an active role in the Church, to relate to God through prayer, etc.) in spite of the restrictions of censorship and the cloud of suspicion that hung over her for being a mystic, the founder of convents, and the daughter and granddaughter of a converso. Furthermore, Teresa, with her reforms, would present an alternative life for women, as her convents would be spaces for freedom and women's solidarity.     

Revuelta plebeya,conciencia criolla y reivindicación jesuita: política y gobernanza en la Historia del Reino de Quito,de Juan de Velasco

Este artículo propone una lectura de la Historia del Reino de Quito en la América Meridional (1789), de Juan de Velasco, a partir de las ideas políticas y jurídicas de su autor. Sugiere abordar el tomo tercero de la Historia no solamente como un relato del declive social y económico que aqueja a la Audiencia de Quito, sino como un comentario a la crisis de gobernanza que, según Velasco, inicia con el ascenso de los Borbones al trono. La incapacidad jurídica de controlar la mestización de la sociedad y las desacertadas políticas de las autoridades peninsulares, resultan en la Rebelión de los Barrios de Quito, episodio que representa el clímax de las penurias que atraviesa el Reino y que le permite a Velasco cuestionar el modelo de gobierno establecido por los reformistas ilustrados, abogar por la necesidad de un gobierno criollo y restaurar la desgastada imagen de la Compañía de Jesús.     

‘Vienen de gente de mucha discreción y entendimiento:’ ethnic identity,ambivalence, and colonial discourses in Diego Muñoz Camargo’s Descripción de la ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala

Diego Muñoz Camargo's Descripción de la ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala (1585) is a well-known reference on the history of Tlaxcala that scholars have studied to better understand Tlaxcalan participation in the conquest of Tenochtitlan, its relationship with the Spanish Crown, and the author's selective approach to local history. Often, these approaches present the historian as acculturated or Hispanized because of his celebration of the Spanish or criticism of local religious practices. This article complicates such approaches in order to show the complex ways that the author approached issues of cultural difference. Examining Muñoz Camargo's recourse to colonial discourses of morality, I argue that the author molds and tailors these discourses to fit local Tlaxcalan circumstances. In doing so, I show how he humanizes Tlaxcala's ruling elite while exemplifying the inherent ambivalence of moral authority in Colonial New Spain.     

“Melismas medievales” en Concierto Barroco: enumeración y artificiosidad de Alejo Carpentier

The distinction between condensation, proliferation, and substitution defines, according to Severo Sarduy, the tenets of the Latin American neobarroque movement. This article, though sympathetic to the ideas of Sarduy, aims at clarifying the terms in which Alejo Carpentier conducts a recreation and evocation of the baroque movement in Europe and America. Taking Leo Spitzer's definition of chaotic enumeration as a focal point, it aims to clarify the mechanisms of literary composition in Carpentier. It argues that Carpentier's vision relies on an absolute yet universal and inclusive role of America in the shaping of the modern world.     

La retórica bajo el barniz de la lógica: Samuel Ramos y su discurso sobre la inferioridad mexicana

Samuel Ramos reflects on the essence of the Mexican people in the philosophical essay El perfil del hombre y la cultura en México (1934). He emphasizes the sentiment of inferiority and the desire to hide this inferiority by camouflage strategies as a distinctive characteristic of the Mexican. This analysis of Ramos's Perfil unveils a discrepancy between the form that the author imitates—the scientific treatise—and the true argumentative constitution of his text—the rhetorical discourse. Along with the anti-rhetoric position of the rationalists, Ramos considers rhetorical argumentation as an inferior approach that has to be dissimulated and hidden under a layer of science.