A land of mañana

For many centuries before statehood arrived in 1964 Malta was controlled by outsiders, some of whom valued the location as a military base. During this period Malta came to depend on external finance. Since then there has been a new dependence, on tourism. The small size of the country and its limited resource options arguably make one or other form of dependence inevitable, with consequent imprints on the Maltese landscape. This paper examines the changing nature of the dependence and looks at some of its land‐use implications for the spatial structure of the islands.     

Huacayñán (1952–1953) and the biopolitics of in(ex)clusion

The foundation of the modern Ecuadorian State in the 1940s and early 1950s coincides with a series of attempts to synchronize and incorporate certain “problematic” sectors of the population that were supposedly resistant to progress and whose forms of life were incompatible with modernity, a capitalist economy, and a cohesive nation. This biopolitical project for the modernization and governance of the population also had repercussions on—and analogous manifestations within—the discourse of national identity, the design of cultural policies, and the production of State-sponsored national art. This article analyzes Huacayñán / El camino del llanto / The Way of Tears (1952–1953), a collection of FIGURE 3 aintings by Oswaldo Guayasamín that was commissioned by the government of Ecuador in 1951. Huacayñán was conceived within the ideology of mestizaje as an instrument of aesthetic cultural modernization and as a visual artistic showcase of the harmonious integration of ‘Ecuadorians.’ Despite, or even because of its governmental overdetermination, however, this article shows how Huacayñán instead materialized the exclusionary logic of the syncretic and biopolitical policies of the State, displaying dystopic visions of violence and exclusion, and of a fractured nation inhabited by monsters and resistant to mestizo-ization.     

Estimating the Number of Combatants during the Mixtón War in the Peñol de Nochistlán

Abstract

The objective of this article is to determine the number of combatants in the Mixtón War (1541–42), one of the most important military confrontations of the early years of the vice-royalty in Western Mexico, by analysing the Peñol de Nochistlán. To this end, information provided by historians has been compared with the population estimates established from the density of settlements known from archaeological evidence in order to define the area occupied by the armies involved in the conflict. This exercise resulted in a shifting array of spaces that could have been used by the combatants during confrontations. However, it will enable more intense archaeological prospecting in the area around the site of El Tuiche — the place identified as the Peñol of Nochistlán — revealing new evidence of the events that occurred on this battlefield.     

Más de cincuenta años del nacimiento del teatro catalán moderno: retrospectiva del Teatro Independiente

More than fifty years after the founding of Els Joglars and several similar events, it is time to evaluate what Catalan independent theater meant for the whole of Spanish drama and the future of theater in Catalonia. This article outlines an original route through theater companies, directors, playwrights, etc., with the aim of a retrospective drawing of a new map of Catalan theater of the 1960s and 1970s.     

Thirty Years of Criticism of the Works of Florencio Sánchez

Through John Kronik's insights on self-conscious art, in particular his essay "Galdosian Reflections: Feijóo and the Fabrication of Fortunata," this article examines the self-conscious dimension of contemporary neorealist texts, in particular the use and role of the video game in the novel Ático, by Gabi Martínez.     

The Archaeology of Copán, Honduras

Copán, a major Classic Maya center in western Honduras, has been the focus of archaeological investigation for over a century. An intense period of research since 1975, involving projects and scholars from many institutions, has resulted in a comprehensive understanding of the origin, maturation, and decline of this major Maya polity.     

Contesting the Nature Relations of Sámi Culture

Sámi culture is said to be characterized by a very close relationship to nature, regardless of time and place. However, the human–nature relation is a complex, multidimensional issue. Before we can make any substantive claims about the Sámi relationship to nature, we need first of all to define the “nature” to which the Sámi relate themselves. We study presentations of the Sámi nature relation and compare them to empirical research. We argue that there are in fact two different nature relations, which we describe as practical and discursive. It seems that on the one hand, the “special” nature relation of the Sámi refers to local habits and areas and therefore is not generalizable. On the other hand, there are political and performative constructions of indigenous Sámi identity that are tied to notions of nature relations.     

Juan Fernández de Heredia's History of Greece

Abstract

The Aragonese Hospitaller Juan Fernández de Heredia, Master of Rhodes from 1377 to 1396, was an outstanding patron of historical compilations, all of them translated into Aragonese. He promoted the earliest translations into any western language of Plutarch's Lives, of parts of Thucydides and of Zonaras' Epitome of Byzantine history; he also produced a version of the Chronicle of the Morea with an entirely original section which covered much of the fourteenth century. These and other sources in his corpus formed the basis for a unique initiative, a continuous history of Greece.     

Working Borders: The Contexts of Copán Archaeology

The work of archaeologists and the knowledge they produce both help create, and are conditioned by, a variety of kinds of borders, including political, academic, and cultural. In this article I review a series of borders that shape and determine the social conditions in which archaeology at the well-known site of Copán in western Honduras takes place and takes on meaning. I argue that the histories of these borders, their construction, and their crossings reveal structural tensions in the overlapping registers of academia, public history and popular discourse, in which archaeological knowledge circulates. These histories must be consciously interrogated in order to be negotiated. I suggest that by becoming fluent in the cultural conversations ongoing in a place, archaeologists are best able to begin productive collaborations and make informed choices about how they participate in the border-making processes of their work.